Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Cross and lose

Last night I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10. I must say it was a smooth upgrade, with all my own programs, like Second Life and Lotus Notes 8.5 beta 2,and my ATI card (!) still working perfectly after the process finished.

The current Second Life client however didn't perform well tonight. Earlier versions on 8.04 often made for a more smooth experience than Windows, but such that wasn't the case here. I don't know whether that had anything to do with Ubuntu, the SL client or Second Life itself however; I will reserve judgment on that until I have logged more user hours with it.

But, as I said, tonight it wasn't what it should be. Twice I lost an airplane while crossing a sim boundary, and I found myself alone in the dark skies, without a plane to pilot!

Monday, November 3, 2008

The neverending Linux Lib chase - part two

Yesterday I blogged about my problems with getting Mono and Nant going on a CentOS 5.2 64-bits Linux server. I need those to compile and run OpenSim, and I get stuck at the compiling part - the Nant task dies with an error.

Today I received notice from my old hosting provider, that my account cancellation was processed and will be effective - in april 2009! Apparently there's a six month period for cancelling. So I took the opportunity to use my old server there, a brand new CentOS 5.2 32 bits install, for another go at Mono/Nant/Opensim. And it worked, very easy even! Got Mono and Nant installed with Yum using the trick described in yesterdays' post, downloaded OpenSim, compile - it all just worked, at the first go.

Apparently the problem is with the 64 bits distro. There's no official Mono for RHEL 5 64-bits, so neither is there for Centos. The most recent available official Mono, is for RHEL 4 32 bits! I need to figure out what I have installed on the CentOS 64 bits server, and see if I can fix it to run reliably.

I don't pretend to understand why RHEL and CentOS are left out at Mono, but maybe the fact that much of the Mono downloads reside on Novell owned servers is a clue. Novell is RedHat's competitor in the Linux field, now that they own Suse, and they are sponsoring the Mono project. Perhaps that's why only recent Suse/OpenSuse distros are officially supported; all other Linux distros including RHEL, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu, are not. Well, hhat'll help if you want to turn Mono into an industry standard, right?

Sunday, November 2, 2008

The neverending Linux Lib chase

I am getting *so* tired of Linux, every now and then! I had some issues with my previous hosting party, so I switched to a new one, and I am currently renting a CentOs 5.2 64-bits server there. I got my IBM Lotus Domino server installed just fine, but the fun started when I tried to build an OpenSim install. I know I need Mono and Nant for that, so I installed those with a couple of yum commands, after adding the necessary repositories (see here). Getting OpenSim is easy, running prebuild too, but the fun starts with Nant. Nant actually builds the necessary executables, and this process fails with this error:

[csc] /opt/opensim/OpenSim/Region/ScriptEngine/Shared/CodeTools/Compiler.cs(34,17): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `JScript' does not exist in the namespace `Microsoft'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
[csc] Compilation failed: 1 error(s), 0 warnings
BUILD FAILED - 0 non-fatal error(s), 1 warning(s)

/opt/opensim/OpenSim/Region/ScriptEngine/Shared/CodeTools/OpenSim.Region.ScriptEngine.Shared.CodeTools.dll.build(14,10):
External Program Failed: /usr/lib/mono/2.0/gmcs.exe (return code was 1)
Total time: 0.9 seconds.


After this, it's been nothing but trying to install and reinstall mono, nant and other stuff, different versions and components, only to run into missing dependencies time and time again. Missing this.so, missing lib.xyz..0.08.so, missing another.yaddayadda.so - it goes on and on, two evenings in a row.

The worst are people who suggest that you should install a certain library to fix this. How am I supposed to know what package to install to get that library?? Half of the time is lost with googling names just to find out what the heck it is I need to install. And of course, when I fin$d the right package for that library, it will fail because of a missing dependency..

Friday, October 31, 2008

Ethelbert Airport


Ethelbert Airport, originally uploaded by seredwoollahra.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

An airplane passes overhead

It's a poor quality snapshot, but it was a such a fitting scene! While visiting a replica of a WWII Japanese warship, an airplane from the same era passed overhead. This could have been a real picture from those days.

"Different levels of usage.."

Today the Lindens posted an update concerning the openspace sim price hike. A quote:

"It is clear that some Openspaces are being used as they were intended originally, so we recognise that there are different levels of usage that we need to account for."


That is exactly what I intended when I suggested some sort of 'pay per prim' tier: a way to factor in load and/or usage into the tier to be paid for a given sim. The need for something like this seems to be acknowledged in this quote; I'm curious as to what Linden Labs will come up with.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

alternative openspace solution: pay per prim?

In my daily job, I am a systems analyst, working on a large financial transactions system. This system has a billing mechanism, that counts certain enduser actions, and creates billing information based on those. I.e. you download an account statement, you pay a small fee.

I was wondering about alternative solutions for the openspace situation. Obviously Linden Labs has a problem with certain uses of them and therefore decided to change prices and policies for all openspace sims. The problem is of course that lots of these are used just the way they were once intended (i.e. open spaces, low prim count), and these are punished as well.

Couldn't Linden Labs create a billing system for openspace sims, similar to the way billing is done in my financial transactions sytem? One of the indicators of sim usage is the number of prims: high on prims probably means higher overall system load as well.

Linden Labs obviously has ways of tracking the number of prims on a given simulator. They would have to devise a tier system for number of used prims per sim and attach a billing mechanism to it. LL could bill the 'prim tier' for the new month based on the number of prims you had on the simulator at a given date the previous month, for instance. This 'punishes' those who overuse openspace sims, but leaves room for the genuine, intended use.

Complicated? Perhaps, yes. But its certainly more honest than what's being done right now.

Monday, October 27, 2008

The new rentals at Promissa

Two of the new rentals in Promissa, seen from the Shipwreck Island - which itself is located in Timandra. Tropical Beach Rentals did a good job again, especially these two are located perfectly. I'd say good as the parcels across the Shipwreck Island in Timandra, as a matter of fact.

After last weeks' discussions on profitability and the rental business, I've been giving it more attention over the weekend. And with some result, I might add! Now that the last parcels are up for rent, and a few other small changes, I can now break even - which wasn't even possible earlier. Whether it will happen often, remains doubtful, given that I'd need more than 90% occupancy to get there. But, as of now, it's no longer officially impossible to achieve profitability :)

In order to achieve profitability earlier, I think one needs way more land than I currently own. I've been doing some math, and it seems that with double the tier I now have, I could be profitable at around 75%-80% occupancy, perhaps a bit earlier. But even then we're talking at most double digit amounts of US Dollars that could be earned, and you'd have to invest hundreds of them to get there. I don't think I'm going to do that anytime soon.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Twinity update

This week was a good week for mirrorworld Twinity.

First Metaversum, Twinity's creators, announced the Singapore government is going to sponsor the virtual replica of the city inside Twinity. Good news of course, this is not some VC operation injecting cash in exchange for shares; this is a solid investment.

The second bit of good news is that the Twinity user base has grown to over 50.000, after only a couple of weeks in public beta. As these two bits of news became public short after another, it is not likely that this number is already affected by the Singapore announcement. This means that the userbase will probably get another injection, from Asiatic users, when that region learns of Singapore's involvement in Twinity.

As for me, I check back in Twinity every now and then. I feel it's coming together nicely, it all operates much smoother these days, even though it's clearly still beta. But glitches happen in any computer environment, beta or not, and I had a curious one in Twinity. After logging in earlier this week, I couldn't see any avatars, not even myself! After clearing the cache and reinstalling, I got hands and heads; after another relog, I got avatars once again.

Where am I?


Hands and heads:


Here we are again!


It's a nice sequence of screenshots in itself, but they show another thing: these days there are more avatars on the Berlin landing point than I have ever seen previously in Twinity. The screenshot only shows a few, there were much more! It's getting busier there, and that's a good thing. People sometimes complain about empty sites in Second Life, and I had the same feeling when wandering alone through an alpha version of Berlin, a couple of months ago. I was the only guy there! That's a lot less likely to happen these days, and Twinity could profit from that, as it adds to the positive flow and momentum. Next up: London, another city that's supposed to become available in Twinity. I'm guessing it will be 2009 before we get to see it, but who knows..

(not) making money



While thinking about buying the Promissa parcel I blogged about, I stumbled upon this blog item by Prokofy Neva, about the profitability of rentals in Second Life. It seems it's hard to take a decent return on investment in the rentals business, mostly due to tier fees and other, associated costs.

I know I am not making a profit off my rentals, currently. For one, I wasn't using the available space in my land tier, meaning I paid Linden Labs a monthly fee for the right to own land which I didn't have. Unused space in a land tier an investment with zero return! Right now, after buying the Promissa parcel, my tier is used for all but 363 meters, meaning I'm finally (mostly) getting what I pay for.

Occupancy is the defining factor in profitability for rentals. If I have 100% occupancy in a given month, I am a few US Dollars short of breaking even. The chances of this happening, however, are very small; usually occupancy for my parcels is somewhere between 35 and 100%, hovering around 80% on average, meaning this whole business costs me a couple of US dollars each month.

In truth, if I could keep all the proceeds of my parcels myself, I could break even at 80% occupancy. But, part of the rental fee goes to Tropical Beach Rentals, Zena Silverstar's team, who take care of my parcels. They do an excellent job, I couldn't handle this land without them; they deserve their part of the cake.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to try to break even. I'll have to take a look at the rental prices, for instance. Some of the parcels are on an excellent spot. For instance the parcels in the snapshot at the top of this post: the parcel at the bottom is the new one I bought in Promissa and my parcels in Timandra are to the left. All of these are bordering at Linden owned waterways and have a really nice view of Shipwreck Island in the middle, realised there by Tropical Beach Rentals just for this purpose. And in Fortimus, I created Fortimus Harbour specifically to guarantee tenants a good spot and access to water. Perhaps those parcels could yield more rent in the future.

Also, maybe I need to do something about publicity: get occupancy up by advertising here or there. That's something I haven't paid any attention to, so far.

So why am I effectively paying money to be in the SL land business? Well.. Second Life is a game, isn't it? Part of the fun in SL for me, is the role playing element, which I do in the land business. I am enjoying myself, tenants get a nice place to stay, while paying the biggest part of the bill. I'm fine with that.

Expanding

As I blogged back in june, I own a couple of parcels in Timandra and Fortimus, which are up for rent. The ever excellent Zena Silverstar and her team of Tropical Beach Rentals manage my parcels, so there's not much for me to do except check up on the parcels every now and then.

Last week I noticed a parcel across my land in Timandra was up for sale. It's a square island on Linden owned waterways, in the Promissa region. The problem is, if I wouldn't buy that parcel, I don't know who will. You never know what a new neighbour will put up there, it might ruin the view from your parcels!

Plus, Tropical Beach Rentals created a nice 'shipwreck island' there, solely to provide tenants with a nice view - similar to the Fortimus Harbour I created for the Fortimus rentals. The parcel up for sale has a perfect view on Shipwreck Island, so it's only logical to keep it 'in the family' as it were.

Therefore I decided to buy it. Besides, it nicely used the space left in my tier; I now have only 363 meters left before growing to the next tier. Which I, to be honest, am not planning to do!



As per usual, I leave it up to Zena Silverstar and Tropical Beach Rentals to do something nice with the parcel. These should be a couple of really nice spots!

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Virtual Dom, Cologne


Virtual Dom, Cologne, originally uploaded by seredwoollahra.

It's not only China that rebuilds cultural heritage in a virtual world; before the Virtual Forbidden City, there were similar projects in Second Life! This is the Dom church, from the German city of Cologne (Köln). You'll never see it from this perspective in real life :-)

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Clarke and the credit crunch

A while ago I mentioned reading up on Arthur C. Clarke's works, and that many of his science fiction writings are still relevant today, sometimes decades after they were first published. This weekend, while on a short holiday, I bought another one of his volumes: Rama II, the sequel to the well known book "Rendezvous with Rama". Rama II was written in cooperation with Gentry Lee and published in 1989.

Rama II recounts how, after the first encounter with Rama in the 22th century, mankind turns to massive self gratification and self indulgence as a result of that event. People party like it's 1999, loaned money is recklessly spent on consumer goods, and it seems there's no end to economic growth. But there's serious flaws in the underlying economy, and soon warnings are heard to limit credit and balance budgets. These calls are not heeded and on one single day, three large global banks announce insolvency due to the huge amounts of bad loans on their balance sheets. As a result, stock markets all over the world crash, and when people attempt to dump their stocks en masse, the losses worsen to unprecedented lows. The result is a deep global recession that will, essentially, bring modern civilisation to it's knees. A period of unemployment, hunger, worldwide religious and political turmoil follows, resulting in a chaos that's essentially undoing mankinds' progress of several hundreds of years.

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it? When I first read this, it really hit me: we haven't seen the "turmoil and chaos" bit, and I sure hope we don't have to, but the rest fairly accurately describes what's been going on recently.

The difference between 2008 and Rama II so far, is that in Rama II politicians are unable to intervene in a meaningful way. We've obviously seen a lot of government intervention lately, but we don't know yet whether that will turn out to be successful or not. Speaking for the Dutch market, it seems that on the short term the government interventions have worked, but this crisis isn't finished yet. We'll have to wait and see. I just hope we'll be spared the turmoil-and-chaos phase that Rama II so accurately describes..

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Virtual Forbidden City: examine a copy

One of the cool things about the Virtual Forbidden City is the "examine a copy" feature, available in the information popup windows.

In the Virtual Forbidden City, information on objects (buildings, statues for instance) is available in popup windows, which can be triggered by clicking on said objects. The popup window provides written information and sometimes real world photos, but also a button that says "examine a copy". If you press it, a slowly revolving scale model of the object appears in the window. I've been using this function a couple of times to get a better view of a building or statue, and it really gives you a much better idea of the design, the layout or the proportions of it. You can also zoom in, rotate or move the camera to get a better view of a certain detail, or to view the object from any angle you want, including from below. Definitely not possible in the real Forbidden City :-)

Virtual Forbidden City - Throne at the Hall of Supreme Harmony

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Virtual Forbidden City: imperial dinner

I've spent some time in the Virtual Forbidden City, and I really like it so far. Anyone with a general interest in history or culture should pay a visit!
More information is here: Virtual Forbidden City".

For anyone who cares to post a screenshot to Flickr, I have created a Flickr group for the Virtual Forbidden City. It can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/virtualforbiddencity/.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Virtual Forbidden City


IBM's Almaden Island was one of the first places in Second Life I visited. Wandering around, I noticed a billboard apparently advertising a Second Life rebuild of the Forbidden City, China's imperial palaces in Beijing. Amazed, I tried to visit the place, but unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to. Even now, quite some time later, this sign is still up there, even though I've never heard of someone actually visiting it!

But it seems IBM is involved in more than one virtual rendering of the Forbidden City. In cooperation with The Palace Museum, the current inhabitants of the Forbidden City, they have published the Virtual Forbidden City. It is an IBM Corporate Citizenship project, intended to "provide the means for a worldwide audience to celebrate and explore Chinese culture and history."

It's a 200 MB download, and it runs in a window. You can just visit as a guest or register and become part of the community. I'm not sure what the added value of a community is for such an environment, but I registered anyway, to see what it can bring. As for visiting the city, I'm still at the gate as you can see below. Tonight I hope to explore more of the interior of the Virtual Forbidden City!

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Metaplace beta

A long time ago, I applied to particpate in the Metaplace alpha. I never really heard much from it anymore, but to my suprise I received an invite to join in, a couple of days ago. Here we go again: after Twinity, Google Lively, Just Leap In and OpenSim, here's Metaplace, brought to you by Areae, a venture capital backed company, presided over by Raph Koster.

Not a world
Metaplace, by the way, isn't a virtual world, it's a platform. Their goal is to do away with separate client installs for individual, separate, disconnected virtual worlds. Instead, they envisage an infrastructure of tailor made virtual worlds, interconnected if so desired, built on Metaplace technology and accessible through the browser.

Browser based worlds
This begins to sound familiar, doesn't it? Just Leap In more or less offers the same, and Google Lively also shares some of these properties. The difference is that both Google Lively and JLI require a separate plugin installation, while Metaplace uses Flash, something most endusers already have in their browser. Another difference between Lively,JLI and Metaplace is that Metaplace does not just provide a 'room' but an infrastructure. It has developers' tools, code, APIs and the like. In this regard it is much richer than JLI and Google Lively. More like Second Life, actually.

Competing with Linden Labs, OpenSim
If Metaplace wants to become the platform of choice for virtual (social or game) worlds on the internet, they'll have to compete with Linden Labs and OpenSim. On their own, Linden Labs can't really win this battle; Second Life is just one big virtual world amongst others. But with OpenSim and, more specifically, the Open Grid beta that's going on, the Linden Labs client technology suddenly becomes a much more viable platform choice. Anyone can install or create OpenSim worlds, and use the Second Life viewer - or open source flavors of it - to access them. The technology being built and tested in the Open Grid beta ties it all together: Second Life, other Linden Labs owned sims, OpenSim based worlds, all accessible from the same rich and tested client.

Graphics, UI
I am, currently, very busy with real life stuff, so I am not done exploring Metaplace yet - not by a longshot. But I must say, the graphics and UI are, currently, still underwhelming. I haven't found a way to change the camera point of view, for instance. And running on full screen, it definitely looks like some of the PC games my kids play, like Rollercoaster Tycoon. But hey, it's beta..

Monday, September 22, 2008

Twinity: in world jobs

I'm trying to spend a bit more time in Twinity, to get more feel for the whole environment. To get an idea of what's possible, I'm redecorating my place, an appartment in Amsterdam. Right now it's just a bare set of rooms, with ugly wallpaper to boot; it really needs a makeover! Because I participated in a couple of beta activities, I got some Globals (Twinity's currency), which I can spend on it. New wallpaper costs 9 Globals.

If I would need more Globals, I could do two things: buy them directly from Twinity, or apply for a job. Twinity has a collection of jobs on offer: DJ, waiter, usher, photographer, stuff like that. Spend 10 hours online doing one of these, and you earn 500 Globals! To be honest, I have no idea how much that is, but it amounts to 50 Globals per hour, so that thing better be worth something :-)



Ten hours is also quite a lot of time to spend in world. But still, I like the fact that Twinity arranges jobs like these. A world like Second Life already has an established economy; Twinity obviously doesn't, and this might help to get people involved, get some currency flowing into enduser pockets.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Twinity: real and virtual mix getting better

Twinity recently went into public beta, after being in closed beta for the best part of 2008. It's nice to see it develop over time! Some parts of the Twinity vision are much better articulated these days; the mixing of real and virtual for instance is becoming much more obvious as a center piece of Twinity's offering.

A good example of this mix is the Drykorn shop in Berlin - both the real and Twinity Berlin, that is! The similarities between the two are obvious.





Nicely done, I must say! Too bad one can't control the lighting in Twinity - for the European market, it means shopping in a dark store as you can see. Twinity's day/night cycle has always matched the real world cycle, and while I appreciate why that's done (remember, mixing virtual and real), the result is that I'm always stumbling around in the dark when visiting Berlin. I'd really like to have the option to influence this daylight cycle - in Twinity, I mean!

In the past, I've had a lot of crashes with Twinity. Today I adjusted the Twinity resolution to match my screen resolution (1440x900), and this seems to have a positive effect. I now can use control-alt to switch between Twinity and other applications without Twinity crashing, and the graphics look better too. So here's an advice to Twinity users: in the menu System - Display, set resolution to the same value as your display uses!

From the 'must fix' department: I'm still experiencing performance issues. Lots of harddisk and network activity, and lots of lag, even when I'm alone in a place. I use this same setup to play Eve Online, Second Life and other stuff, and Twinity doesn't look too good, compared with those. The Twinity client still feels clunky, too. From the splash screen and the startup messages, you can gather that the Twinity client is comprised of several pieces of third party software, glued together by Twinity code. That's a bit how it feels: not yet like a tight piece of software. I know it's still beta, and I acknowledge it's getting better, but this could still be a major roadblock for enduser acceptance.

Open Grid developments

My Open Grid server is still humming nicely, so I've waited a while with upgrading to a next build. But it may be necessary to upgrade in a while, because the Open Grid development team is working towards implementing the third draft of the Open Grid Protocol, for which a number of Jira issues remain open.



In the mean time, this is a snapshot of the Open Grid region Lexania. This beta tester, Lexa Sands, actually has two adjacent regions up and running. I teleported to the first, which somehow didn't rez. The second one however did, and seen from the first region it looked like an island drifting in the void! Of course I tried to fly from the first to the second region, and region handoff between the two regions worked like a charm!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

An extra bonus for Kiva?


Kiva is enrolled in a competition that may yield a prize of 1.5 million US Dollars. AMEX card user? Then, please, vote!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Just Leap In - update

One weird thing when logging in to JLI, is the fact that you don't have or are an avatar. You move your camera around and you can even put animated avatars there, but you yourself are not yet rezzed as an avatar. But, this will be available in an upcoming release, according to an announcement on the site.

Speaking of moving the camera: this is done by rightclick - drag, just like in Eve Online. I like this very much, and miss it dearly in Second Life.

Another nice thing is the physics: stuff bounces nicely in JLI. We'll have to see how avatar movement turns out when avatars become available.

For those of you who want to share snapshots: I have created a Just Leap In Flickr group.

..and another one: Just Leap In

Earlier this evening I caught an item at Vint's blog, about a new browser based 3D environment: Just Leap In. New stuff is always exciting, so of course I signed up for the public beta right away. It took an hour or so to get access; not too bad, better than promised! I've been online in JLI for half an hour or so, and so far it's been interesting. There's a lot of rough edges, which is not strange given that it's early beta.

The installation procedure and the initial user experience remind me a lot of Google Lively; both require an install of a plugin in the browser, and both offer a range of prebuilt room templates to choose from. Both offer a host of accessories to place at your room, too. But, it seems the JLI rooms are easier to customize with your own content; apparenlty. Just Leap In features a more open approach in this regard, more open than Lively anyway. That could make JLI interesting to companies looking for branding opportunities.

Just Leap In also offers the option to embed a room in a web page. The result is this:



Stay tuned for updates!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Underwater Archeology in Second Life?

On our OpenSim server, my kids are building underwater villas and a submerged cinema. Quite a weird thought one would say.. Yet, after seeing the results, I thought of something else: Second Life would be a great environment to recreate an underwater archeology site! Most of us never get to dive to the real thing, whether they be famous shipwrecks or lost cities in, for instance, the Mediterranean. From a promotional or educational perspective, this could be interesting!

I own some real estate in the Fortimus area; I centered a few rental houses around a water parcel; this way, every rental has open water access. Maybe I should try to create something like that, there. Too bad I'm a lousy builder :-)

Friday, September 12, 2008

Ugliness

I am, I must admit, a happy man. After a job switch earlier this year, I haven’t had one single traffic jam while commuting! The reason is simple: I no longer have a lease car, I am traveling by train. One of the unintended side effects of train travel is this: I used to see a lot of cars, but these days I see people. To be honest, I quite like the change, people are much more interesting!

One of the things I’ve noticed is, that I only very rarely see ugly or repulsive people. Even though most commuters definitely do not look like they could win the next Supermodel tv show, the majority of those travelling with me have something that touches me, makes them human, special or even beautiful, even when they look completely ordinary on first sight.

They are, often, imperfect but still beautiful people. Dignified, vulnerable, barely concealing emotions, relaxed or stressed out, playing a role or being their utter self - most of them have something redeeming, something that's disarming, that touches me. Perhaps it’s just a look in their eyes, or in the way they behave themselves; the way she reads a book or brushes her hair aside, the way he visibly enjoys being in the presence of his girlfriend, the nervousness in the young girls' voice, going to her first University week.

In a virtual world, we all can look perfect, if we want to. It's not that hard, if you can spare the cash for those extra nice clothes and bodily enhancements. And that's precisely why that beauty doesn't mean much to me; it lacks that human element which I notice daily in the crowds of commuters surrounding me. My consolation is that, beneath the pretty pixels on screen, you'll probably find those same humans again!

Perhaps a native english speaker would have found better words to convey what I'm trying to say here. I hope you get it just the same!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

server upgrade

When I first started out with OpenSim, I installed it on my server at home. Unfortunately, my adsl router doesn't do UDP over NAT, so I rented a low end Linux server at strato to get this stuff up and running. That was almost a year ago, and the choices for Linux distros at Strato were, at that time, not really up to par: they were all old. I finally went with RedHat Fedora core 6, because that seemed to be the best choice at the time.

Recently I noticed I could upgrade the server to newer stuff. Amongst the now available distros were OpenSuse and Ubuntu server, both contemporary versions. As I have some experience with Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop, I decided to go with that version on the server too. Yesterday, I downloaded all my own data to my local machine and, subsequently, had the machine reinstalled with the new Linux version. That didn't take too long - only 25 minutes, instead of the couple of hours Strato indicated.

Installing the necessary software went relatively smooth, googling the necessary commands for installing Nant and Mono. The latter wasn't that easy by the way, the command 'apt-get install mono' didn't work for me, even though I had enabled all the necessary sources, because my server couldn't find the package. Luckily, after installing Nant with 'apt-get install nant', Mono was installed too, so that was solved quite easily.

Running OpenSim with MySQL would not work until I installed the appropriate code page with the command "sudo apt-get install libmono-i18n2.0-cil".

Now everything is up and running, it works, it performs better and I'm feeling a bit safe again, being on an all new and up to date OS!

Now if only I could get scripts to work I'd be a happy man. Unfortunately they don't: Mono can't find the libraries because my ../opensim/bin directory isn't in it's path. I've set it in the user session and the environment, but still no dice. I'm going to use MONO_PATH I think, even though that's supposed to be a developers' tool, a kludge, and not a proper runtime tool. But hey, if it works..

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Gridnaut Bear

Those who succeed in building their own Open Grid beta enabled OpenSim and teleporting from there to Linden's Vaak region (on their Aditi betagrid), get to call themselves "gridnaut". Gridnauts can claim a trophy bear, allowing you to show off your OpenGrid prowess in the Second Life main grid :) I got mine from Whump Linden a couple of days ago. This is how it looks:



I like it. Too bad I can't get one in real life!

Two OpenSims

Yesterday I finally finished my OpenSim environment again. There's two installs now on my server: a plain OpenSim install for the kids, and a Open Grid enabled one for myself. I didn't know for sure if two installs would work, but it seems to be fine so far.

It even seems you can run two installs on one database. I accidentally forgot to change one database value in the OpenSim install for my kids, which caused their content to end up in the same database as my OpenGrid install. Result: I suddenly saw my sons' newly built house pop up on my Open Grid island!

I'm planning on leaving the kids' standalone OpenSim alone for a bit. It's good enough the way it is; no need to upgrade every couple of days. That's what I can use my OpenGrid install for!

My son at his new underwater villa:

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Gridnaut

It's been a while, but today I installed the latest OpenSim build on Linux, did the necessary configuration stuff, and tried to teleport from Linden's Vaak region to my own OpenSim region. And it worked!



The only problem I have is that my avatar doesn't rezz, and the terrain remains invisible. So all is not yet 100% good, but I'm definitely on my way.

I just teleported from a Linden Labs owned sim to my own and back! How cool is that!

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Confusion



For those who don't play Eve: many of the action in Eve takes place in asteroid belts. These belts provide ore to miners, but they are often protected by game generated enemies, which are nicknamed 'belt rats'. These belt rats show up as little red crosses in the distance. If you notice them, you'll usually fight them or get out of the belt, if you haven't got the firepower. One thing is clear: red crosses in the sky means an enemy, and, quite probably, battle.

Yesterday I was at a garden party - one of the very few this year, the summer hasn't been that great unfortunately. Standing in the dark I looked up to the star dotted sky, where even the milky way was faintly visible. Suddenly, my eyes caught a plane passing overhead, a little red light blinking away in the night. And for a second, that red light triggered a response in my subconscious: a belt rat! Lock on target, dispatch the fighting scout drones and open fire with the 125mm rail guns! And then, a fraction of a second later, I realised that it was just a plane. I wasn't playing Eve Online, I was standing in a very real garden watching a normal plane passing overhead..

My guess is this must happen more often to those engaged in immersive virtual worlds or games!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Still relevant after all these years: Arthur C. Clarke

It was a summer somewhere in the 1980's, I was twelve or so, and I needed books. This summer holiday we would be traveling a lot with the camper, meaning I had days and days to read while my father drove - so I needed quite a bit of reading. One of the volumes I ended up taking with me the local library was a book called "2010: Odyssey 2" by one Arthur C. Clarke. Its' cover intrigued me, and being an amateur astronomer, all things space travel fascinated me anyway. And it turned out to be very fascinating indeed! Even without having read part 1, which was not available, the story gripped me.

I'm still trying to find out what it was that appealed to me. The bits of dry wit, a fascinating future of space travel, the characters, new perspectives on time and space..all that and more, I think. Over the years I kept reading his books, bought several of them, watched him on TV and read articles about him, and I was impressed and amazed on more than one occasion.

Again it was summer, and I needed something to read for the holiday, and Arthur had just passed away. It seemed fitting to buy something from him again: The Collected Stories. It's almost a thousand pages and contains Clarke's short stories, written between 1937(!) and 1999.

Unfortunately it came too late for the holiday, but I have read a sampling of the stories, and again I was surprised by how relevant much of it still is. Many of the concepts found in Star Trek for instance, can be found in these short stories - but these stories often date from the 1940's or 1950's. Many of the stuff taken for granted in current scifi, can be found here - in writings fifty or sixty years old. And much of it is still science fiction even today!

Of course, some of the material is dated. Clarke couldn't, for instance, foretell the shape of the current internet in the 1940's, even though he wrote about reading the paper on an electronic device and over a network, in the late 1960's.

And, a disclaimer: it's possible that Clarke got some of his ideas from other, older writers. His bio on Wikipedia for instance mentions that Clarke, as a kid, read cheap US scifi pulp magazines - who knows what ideas found their humble beginnings in these mags?

But still. The man who has given us the communication satellite left us a great body of literature; food for thought for many years to come. I wouldn't be surprised if some of his stories are still relevant as SciFi stories in another fifty years.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Choose your life - real and virtual

I've been doing EVE online for some time now; about eight weeks I'd say. During that time I have chosen several EVE careers.

Solo or ..
At first I was content with flying solo, doing a bit of mining and shooting the incidental Serpentis belt rat. No real need to worry about skills and skill training, so I more or less neglected it, randomly choosing skills to train, without a real plan or goal. In hindsight, this was very shortsighted. After two shooting incidents I noticed I was too vulnerable, all alone in EVE's large universe, with only minimal protection and almost zero offensive capabilities; I needed to train skills to be able to fly a bigger, stronger ship, and I needed a corporation where I could learn and grow. I have been lucky to join TRACE, the Trade Association Corporation, which is a great corp - and not only for n00bs like me. I really learned a lot there, and the corp members are really nice.

Skills and changes
While working on skills for bigger ships, drones and guns, I needed to do missions too. They bring in money, train your combat skills and help you grow. These days, I don't even have a miner fitted on my ship anymore - what's the use? I'd rather fit an extra gun there! So without really noticing it, I switched from being a 'solo miner' to a 'mission runner within a corp'. Consequently, my skill training plan has changed too; I've been working on drone, cruiser and some weaponry related skills first, followed by skills needed to operate salvagers and tractor beams.

Mid Year Review
Today I had a mid year review at my current job. My manager and I discussed, amongst other things, my longer term prospects within the company: where do you want to be, two or five years from now? The answer to this question does have immediate consequences for the choices you make in everyday life - now! What training to choose, which people to link up with, what to read.. And then it struck me that reality doesn't differ that much from gaming in this perspective. The career path you choose has an impact on the skills you train, and this is true both in real life as well as in the gaming universe.

Time wasted
The lesson for me is, that I wasted valuable time when I first started out in EVE Online. I had no real goals, other than to enjoy myself a bit. Yes I trained some skills, but it was aimless, there was no structure, no comprehensive plan to it. I've wasted a lot of valuable skill training time this way! After todays Mid Year Review, I have decided I won't let this happen in real life too, as the time lost in real life is, obviously, infinitely more valuable than those skill training hours in EVE.

Do you know where you want to be five years from now? What's your five year plan?

Monday, August 11, 2008

The male office dwellers' guide to finding the right toilet

Something off topic I need to get off my chest: the male office dwellers' guide to finding the right toilet.

Usually, a man doesn't have to go through a lot of trouble to get rid of the waste his body produces. Liquid waste especially is easily disposed of - sometimes a tree is all a man needs.

But things change when you're locked up in this huge office building you get to spend your working days in. Especially for those of us who work in technical professions, finding a nice, clean toilet can be quite difficult, as offices occupied by the IT department tend to have a larger than average male population - young, geeky males I might add. This does have a distinct, noticable, negative impact on sanitary hygiene in bathroom areas in the immediate surroundings of said offices.

So what's a civilized man to do? Again, disposing of liquid waste is still not difficult, as long as you can hold your breath for, oh, 30 to 60 seconds and can find a dry spot on the toilet floor to stand on. But the real problem arises when you, a hygiene conscious man, need to get rid of the solid waste your body produced. You are definitely not going to sit on those toilets used by the IT dept - that would be beneath your human dignity, and you would need to take a shower afterwards, which is, even if possible, highly unpractical.

So here's how to go about this business: the male office dwellers' guide to finding the right toilet!

First off, locate those areas in the building where, on average, more women than man seem to work. Target your search; look for the HR or marketing department to begin with.

Once you've found such a location, locate the male toilets in the area, and execute a quick visual inspection of those premises. Also, use your nose. No need to sniff explicitly, just take notice of what signals your nose sends up to your brain.

If the visual and nasal inspection leaves room for doubt as to the level of hygiene at the site, repeat the steps above until you find a place that passes this first, initial test. Once you've succeeded, proceed with the steps below.

If no one is at the scene, proceed to inspect the available stalls, executing a more thorough visual inspection. If someone enters during this procedure, you're supposed to do like you were just entering the stall; enter, lock door, wait until other person leaves again and proceed as necessary. This should not be difficult, as males tend to ignore one another in bathroom areas anyway.

The nose plays an important role in this second, more thorough examination of the site. As you're not the only one looking for a suitable place to sit and relax a while, some of these stalls may have been used recently. No matter how clean they look, these should not be used unless you can hold your breath for many minutes.

By now, there are probably one or two choices left. Choose the one that has the least visual contamination on the installed hardware. After all, you need to sit on it. Ideally, there's no contamination at all, but you can still wipe the thing down a little with some toilet paper, just to be sure. Be careful to keep a couple of layers of paper between said hardware and your hand; no moisture should be able to penetrate the layer between the moment you wipe and you throw it away.

The best choice is the stall that has little dust particles floating in the water in the toilet bowl. This means it hasn't been used for some time, probably not since it was cleaned last night, and it's the best result an office dwelling man can hope to achieve in his quest for sanitation and hygiene. Sit down, let out a deep sigh and relax. You're safe.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Time to do OpenSim again

Last year, I spent many an evening on installing and running versions of OpenSim on Linux. The blog items I wrote about that, still get a lot of hits - apparently many people still have the problems I encountered then. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot, but some of the early issues with OpenSim prevented me to really do something with it. Not that I blame anyone for it, it was alpha or very early beta software! But after a while I stopped updating the install regularly, and recently I wondered if I, perhaps, should just deinstall it and stop paying rent for an unused Linux box..


Intergrid

But just before I went on holiday, something very interesting happened: a couple of IBM and Linden Labs engineers succeeded in teleporting an avatar from OpenSim to a Linden Lab Second Life simulator, essentially breaking down the barrier between the two simulators. I'm quite sure you read about that!

It looks like this was more than a proof of concept, as Linden Labs has opened a beta program for repeating and expanding on this first experiment: Open Grid is the name of it. I will apply, as did many others; but Linden Labs is giving precedence to those who will be able to bring up an OpenSim region. And I already have one, I just need to update the install and make the connection!

Soo.. time to dust off the cheap rental Linux box, update my OpenSim install, and hope Linden Labs will allow me to participate in this beta. Of course, I will keep you posted.

More information on this whole intergrid teleporting can be found on the Metanomics site. A good list of recommended reading is at the bottom of this page.

All about the..
As for Linden Labs' revenue model, my quick guess is that the Lindens see OpenSim as a good way to expand the reach of Linden Labs compatible technology. After all, anyone using an OpenSim simulator will have a viewer that's compatible with Second Life. This way, SL-compatible technology may be a bit closer to becoming a standard of sorts. Plus, Linden Labs gets to claim the moral high road in the interoperability debate by openly collaborating with an open source competitor to their main product.
Linden Lab could also position itself as the trusted, known grid provider with the most interesting, enduser generated content (products, entertainment) available. But they could also claim to be the most legally compliant or regulated grid and hence (perhaps) safe environment - not sure about that, but it's a thought. These are just quick guesses; I'm sure there are more thorough analyses out there. I'll see what I can find when I have the time.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Just a quick note..

Saturday, I have returned from a nice holiday in Austria! More specifically, we visited the Stubai Alps. A beautiful part of Tirol, with lovely flower filled fields punctuated by fierce mountain ranges and grim gletschers. Tomorrow it's back to work, and virtual world stuff will resume shortly, too!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Twinity update


It's been a while since I last blogged about Twinity; time for an update!

Real? Really?
Let's start with the good news. Metaversum is putting a lot of effort in digitally recreating parts of Berlin, especially the Hackescher markt district. But that's not all: Metaversum announced plans to add other metropolises as well . From the start it has been Metaversums' intention to create a mix of the real and virtual world (hence for instance the realistic daylight cycle in Twinity); bringing these cities online really adds to that vision. I have never been in the real Berlin, but I already know my way around the Neue Schönhauser strasse and the Hackerscher Markt; I easily recognized the streets on Google Maps as well. It would be interesting to check out Berlin in Twinity, and then see the same area in Google Streetview; would you still recognize it? As Berlin is not yet added to Google Streetview, we can't tell - yet!

More outdoor
Plus, one of the complaints I had during the early beta is really being solved this way: more and more outdoor areas have appeared in Twinity. Not only that, they have been given a more prominent place too! You are no longer confined to a list of available rooms, much as Google Lively is today. Glad to see that improve.

User created content
Another aspect which deserves attention, is that more enduser created content is appearing in Twinity. Blogger Tinsel Silvera for instance has a room at the Bitropolis area where he exhibits art like items he created. To be honest, I haven't paid much attention myself, I'm not much of a content creator. But for a real virtual world to be viable, the ability to create content and to subsequently sell it is, in my opinion, an important one. It is one of the things that sets a real virtual world apart from a 3D chatbox.

Resources
So what's not to like? Well, there are a few things that might need improvement before Twinity is ready for mainstream usage. I still have issues with stability and resource usage, for instance. Memory usage can run in to the hundreds of MB's of RAM - over 450 yesterday. After doing an ALT-TAB to switch to another app (say to Gimp to save a screenshot) it isn't always possible to return to Twinity; you sometimes need to stop the process and restart. Generally speaking, the application sometimes just feels clunky.. But, it's still beta, that obviously accounts for something. Nevertheless, I'd really like to see some improvements here. I will download a new fresh copy of the software, perhaps that helps.

Finally, performance remains an issue of concern. The overall world operates at satisfying speeds without much lag, but startup, search and teleporting to certain places take a long time. I understand that loading the virtual city of Berlin takes time, but a lot of users won't tolerate a delay of five to ten minutes to access a certain place. Perhaps it's a good idea to ship some of that content with the download package? Or provide it as a separate download? Eve Online does something like that too, both with regular and premium content, perhaps Twinity should too.

Oh and another feature of Eve Online which I really like: once you press the print screen button, a screenshot is automatically saved to a default directory - in high quality .bmp if desired. Very handy! I'd like that in Twinity too!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

For all you EVE Online fans out there



..it's an asteroid themed Lively room. Now if I could get a decent ship and some belt rats in here, this could be fun :)

Monday, July 14, 2008

Google Lively - the aerial view

A standalone room like this makes perfect sense to my eight year old daughter, who's very much into Habbo hotel and the likes. It has less appeal to me, I'd rather take a walk in a virtual city, fly my Sopwith Camel over Caledon, or my Catalyst through Eve's virtual universe..



This does not mean I don't see any value in Google Lively, but I am perhaps not the kind of user that's attracted to this sort of thing. I think I'm going to spend more time on Twinity instead. See how their virtual Berlin is developing!

No comment

Further thoughts on Google Lively

It's obvious that I need to spend more time on Google Lively before being able to make an in depth assessment of it. In the mean time, here's more thoughts on Google Lively.

Virtual yes - world no
First, I wouldn't call it a 'virtual world'. It is not. A 'virtual world' should, in my opinion, have certain properties in common with the physical world. A geography, maps, places, buildings and inhabitants, a currency and/or an economy, to name a few. One should be able to freely wander/fly/drive/swim around in a physical environment that could be real - in this or an alternate universe. In this regard, Second Life is a virtual world; Eve Online is a virtual universe. Metaversum is expanding Twinity to become a virtual world, too; their virtual rendering of the city of Berlin is interesting in this regard. Google Lively doesn't have the properties I expect in a virtual world, it is a flat list of separate rooms one can choose to visit. Lively is a virtual environment, a 3D chatbox, but not a virtual world by any of my standards! The comparison with Second Life is, in my humble opinion, an unfortunate one; it is comparing apples to oranges.

Lively, a new default browser plugin?
For those of you who haven't tried Lively yet: it runs in the browser, but it requires a small install. Once installed it can display all Lively rooms, and rooms can be embedded in web pages, as you can see in the blog entry below. It looks like Google created a 3D platform for the 2D internet with Lively: adding a 3D element (the Lively room) to an existing website is really easy, and I expect a lot of them to pop up in the coming months. In the near future, having Lively as an addon or plugin to your browser may be as common as having Adobe's Flash player or Sun Java are common plugins today. If I were an MSN executive, I'd be very worried about these developments, because why muck around with a 2D text message service if you can have a 3D room just as easy?

Marketing
This opens up all sort of interesting marketing perspectives as well. Going 3D suddenly doesn't require much; basically it's just a Google account you need. My room was ready in five minutes! I don't know yet how easy it is to brand a room; I know you can put advertisements up, but that may not be enough for all prospective Lively customers. My current employer for instance, a large bank, has a distinct visual identity, which must be used in all internal and external communications, but also in the layout and furniture of offices. Being able to sufficiently brand a room would be critical to management acceptance of a Lively room as a suitable solution for corporate communications. Disclaimer: I am, at time of writing, not involved in any 3D efforts my current employer may or may not deploy.

Safe
A Lively room is a relatively safe 3D environment too. A room does, for instance, not share anything with other rooms: you can't see you neighbours' smut store or gothic SM cave through your windows of your room! Something like this happened to us in Second Life. Two female (former) colleagues of mine were once confronted with a couple of girls having 'lots of explicit fun' on the lawn of our companies' test site. The couple said they chose the site on purpose, in order to piss off corporate users of Second Life. Lesson learned: SL mainland is not suited for corporate presence..

Important step
Google Lively may not be full blown virtual world (and hence not be of much interest to me, personally), it probably is an important step in the emergence of a 3D internet, by dramatically lowering the bar to an entry 3D presence on pretty much any 2D website. Coming soon to a website near you: the 3D internet.

A couple of minutes after writing the above, I stumbled upon an interesting interview with Google's Mel Guymon. It contains useful extra information: "Feature: Lively - Google's Contribution to the 3D Social Web?"

Lively - first impressions

Yesterday I signed up for Google Lively. It reminds me a lot of the early (not the current!) Twinity beta, where the environment consisted of just a bunch of room, without a real world to access. Lively is the same; it's dressed up 3D chatrooms. It's not an immersive environment either, because you always run in windowed mode as far as I can see.

Avatar editing is quite limited, you can't tweak your avatar as I'm used to in SL. The result is an avatar that doesn't look like me at all. Avatar movement is done by mouse, which requires you to keep the mouse button pressed down if you want to move the avatar. I think this may be quite hard on your hand muscles if you stay in Lively too long.

All in all I spent fifteen minutes in Lively, which is obviously too short for a thorough analysis. More to come later!

I've created a new room, put in some furniture. Feel free to check it out or add to it!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Even more boom

My thirty days EVE account is about to expire. I've got a bunch of things to blog, about Second Life, Twinity, Google Lively and other stuff; I'll try to get that done early next week.

In the mean time, I need to make good use of those EVE hours left. Here's a sequence of screenshots of an explosion. It nicely illustrates how Eve depicts such an event: the initial explosion, the expanding shockwave, flying bits and pieces, and finally the fading fires afterwards. Larger pictures available here.

Bits of boom from the depths of space!







Sunday, July 6, 2008

Dogfights in Eve Online

It's been a while, but I have participated in several dogfights in Second Life, with the Royal Caledon Air Force. Always lots of fun and lots of crashes (meaning: I got shot down a lot!) No problem, just teleport back to the airfield, rez a new plane and back into the fray you go!

Yesterday I found out that the same happens in Eve Online, too. A couple of corp members joined up for a pvp fight in the Mormoen system, and I joined in. We gathered at the Federal Administration station, where our corporation has a hangar. We were issues identical ships and ammunition; after that we headed out to a deserted part of the system where we fought each other. Unfortunately, just like in Second Life's RCAF dogfights, I lost, again due to lack of skills! With one difference: in Second Life I just didn't have the skills and the hardware to outmanouever the other players' aircraft, but in Eve I didn't have enough skillpoints to be allowed to use the armor repair set which was fitted on the ship! My opponent however was able to use that facilty; this meant that while my armor, once damaged, didn't repair itself, his did. Obviously, this made my ship more vulnerable, and so I lost my game. As in Second Life though, this didn't have negative effects on standings or points!

Five ships, almost ready for battle, orbit a cargo container containing a whole lot of ammunition:

Saturday, July 5, 2008

"Journal of VIrtual Worlds research"

Yesterday, while looking for scientific data on Second Life's Linden Dollar, I stumbled upon something new: the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, facilitated by the Texas Digial Library. Their mission, in their own words:

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is an online, open access academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is a transdisciplinary journal that engages a wide spectrum of scholarship and welcomes contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that intersect virtual worlds research.


Well, that sounds impressive, doesn't it? To be honest I was a bit sceptical at first, but the first issue does indeed have a couple of very interesting articles. And, I also note that Edward Castronova is an advisory editor. For those with more than a recreational interest in virtual worlds, this may become a good resource of information.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Old and new

In Second Life, several of my parcels at Timandra and Fortimus have been rented to tennants. We're still developing the land further, hopefully we'll be able to show some of that later.

Meanwhile, I've bought a new ship in Eve Online: a Gallente Catalyst, a destroyer class vessel. More firepower, better shields and armor. One thing I've noticed in Eve, is that ships are rarely 'just perfect'. There's always a tradeoff to be made! In case of the Catalyst, it's speed and medium power slots.

But still, with the added firepower and shields I was able to complete a certain mission without suffering any real damage. When I did the same mission with the Incursus frigate, I had to go back to a station for repairs - twice!

My trusted Gallente frigate, an Incursus:




The new Gallente destroyer, a Catalyst:

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Even more bang for your buck

A sequence of three snapshots,showing another deadspace explosion in Eve Online. I should have been closer for more detail, but it's quite difficult to catch the moment of these explosions. Once you hide the interface to get the best snapshot, you can't tell when the explosion will occur!

The smugglers' habitat module begins to explode..



..the pieces fly through deadspace..



..and the aftermath.

Bang for you buck


Bang for you buck, originally uploaded by seredwoollahra.

A huge explosion marks the end of a smugglers' complex somewhere in Lirsautton space. Actually, it's deadspace - special areas for missions, only accessible to those involved in the mission.

Blowing up stuff in deadspace can yield some nice visuals, even with the relatively limited ATI card in my laptop.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Second Life and Eve: raw materials


One of the similarities between Second Life and Eve Online is, that both have an internal economy. CCP, Eve Online's creator, even employs a full time economist to monitor this aspect of the virtual universe, while Linden Labs maintains web pages with all sorts of interesting looking statistics concerning economical activities. Both worlds have their own currency, which can be bought or sold in world, but also on independent web sites - although in case of Eve Online's ISK, this is deemed illegal by CCP. In both economies, large quantities of currency change hands (between players) over the sale of goods: land and luxuries in SL, ships and hardware in Eve, mostly.

There is one big difference however between the economies of SL and Eve: raw materials.

In SL, objects are built from prims. They are the basic building blocks of SL! Prims can, literally be created from thin air. Any user can create prims, just like that, by rightclicking and choosing 'create'. Existing prims may easily be copied as well (under normal circumstances, depending on the rights you have on the prim of course). This means, there is no way Linden Labs can control the amount of prims (and, hence, objects) that can be created. The only limit I can come up with, is the physical limit to a given SL parcel: the maximum amount of prims the land is allowed to carry.

Creating objects is possible in the Eve universe, too. You just need a blueprint (which you must buy on the market) and raw materials in the required quantities. This is an important difference between SL and Eve: Second Life does not require raw materials for content creation in world, but Eve Online does.

And CCP does have some control the amount of raw materials available in the Eve universe at any given moment. Raw materials are usually acquired by players mining asteroids for ores, as depicted in the snapshot above. These asteroids are obviously programmed by CCP, who can control what ores and what amounts of them will be available for mining. This gives CCP control over an important part (the source) of the raw materials market.

Another aspect of Eve's economy, is loot. When I destroy an NPC ship (a game generated 'enemy'), the resulting wreckage has a cargo hold, that often holds one or more objects: ammunition, devices, goods, drones or weaponry for instance. These objects are (part of) one's reward. You can tranfer them to your own cargo hold, keep what you need, and sell the rest on the market. Mind you, some players loot dozens of objects like this on a given mission! You can also choose to reprocess objects, instead of selling them. This breaks the objects down into their individual compounds which can then be sold off as raw materials again. Again, CCP controls the contents of NPC ships (they are game generated, remember), hence CCP has control over the amount and types of objects that will flow to players on a given day.

Of course there are limits to the bandwith of control that CCP has. If one day asteroids would turn up empty and NPC wreckage would no longer contain loot, a player revolt would probably ensue. Players are used to certain amounts and types of ore or loot. But CCP could, by gradually turning the dials - a little more here, a little less of that there - definitely finetune or shift the economy.

To determine whether CCP actually does that I would have to read the Eve quarterly economical reports, and frankly, they don't interest me that much. But it's an interesting difference between the two in game economies.

Defeated


Defeated, originally uploaded by seredwoollahra.

In Eve Online, battle occurs every now and then. Player versus player if so desired, but player versus game generated enemies is very common too. Here, such a non player corporation (NPC) enemy ship (a typical 'belt rat') explodes after I have pummeled it with several guns and a scout drone.