There was supposed to be an informal meeting this Friday for OpenSim/Hypergrid educators. Unfortunately a variety of factors have conspired to make this difficult so it is going to be more of a dropin than a meetup. I'll be on BioZone on New World Grid from 14-15:00 BST (06:00 SLT) on Friday 9th September so do come and say hello. New World Grid is now on OpenSim 0.7.1.1 so you won't be able to jump from ReactionGrid or JokaydiaGrid but you can register a NWG avatar and jump to the OSGrid Educator Enclave and visit John Rogate's freebie centres, including the new full-sim OAR from Linda Kellie (but remember to delete any inappropriate couples animations before use in teaching).
I'm not planning any formal talks now (maybe we can schedule a session another time) but if you want to catch Justin Clark-Casey, he is speaking in SL TODAY (7th Sept). Further info here.
If you come inworld at NWG Welcome, you can either do a map search for BioZone or walk into the adjacent building. There's a scripted teleport in the gallery at the end on the right. Just touch the image and that should get you to the sim. Once there, touch the big blue arrow and you should arrive at a sky-platform as per the picture. As ever, arrive a little early if possible. If you're using a series 2 viewer, don't be surprised if you freeze and have to close the viewer and login a second time. This seemed to be less of a problem last week (I suspect caching is part of it) but latterly has reappeared. Regrettably I've not had time to delag the sim so you will have to take us as you find us.
That's not to say that I haven't been doing at least some of what I'd envisaged. The picture above shows a model of the lower left quadrant of the hypergrid centred on the plywood structure on which my avatar stands (click through for more detail) which is at 10000, 10000. This corresponds to Wright Plaza on OSGrid. OSGrid now extends to 20000, 20000 but I'm not aware of any educators beyond the area shown though I haven't investigated ScienceSim in sufficient detail (this has the Newton region at 10000, 10000 -- remember that grids are essentially separate or, if you prefer, overlap as shown here).
Looking into the distance, the nearest blue platform represents the central areas of New World Grid with some green markers for regions of particular educator interest. Below it is the OSGrid Educator Enclave showing as mainly green. Note that these are magnified 100x compared to the region they represent. The maps were made on a best endeavours basis using Microsoft ICE to meld together screen captures and ImageMagick to cut them into suitable sizes for upload.
In the distance you can see JokaydiaGrid and ReactionGrid, the latter being the lower of the two.
The blue and pink quadrats show distances of 4096 regions in either direction, the limits for grid jumps. I've used different colours as the two lower grids are currently on different versions of the Hypergrid so there is no possibility of direct movement between them and NWG. Hopefully that situation will change soon but even then you will need to use an intermediate Hypergrid Gateway (there's a green marker for one on the platform in the overlap area). The maps themselves are possibly dated and in most cases small fragments of much larger ones. Other grids with edu content are missing, most notably closed institution-run grids and non-grid based entities such as Kitely. Of course, presence on the map does not necessarily reflect access but I thought it worth marking the fact that Drexel and UC Irvine have a presence on OSGrid, for example.
Most of the map-based markers are generated on-the-fly from notecards. The data from these are stored in a Google spreadsheet. A separate doc contains a list of educators whose id is used as contact in the region database (well, the list is just me at the moment). Clearly it would be better at some stage if these migrated to a database but I like the idea that anyone can edit, at least at this early stage. I want the markers themselves to be interactive, e.g. to offer a teleport and display metadata visually, but that is for the future. I'll post the URLs for the spreadsheets nearer the time.
Hope to see some of you on Friday!
(hat-tip to Jeff Kelley for the prototype of the map display)
5 comments:
I keep wondering why Reaction Grid will not upgrade to a newer version of OpenSim. I'm working this semester in Jokaydia Grid, and I'd have enjoyed logging on to show your group around Nevermore.
I suspect that Jokay's hands are tied because the RG folks--now so focused on Jibe--are neglecting OpenSim.
The company blog states "before July", albeit subject to successful testing. Beyond that, your guess is almost certainly better than mine though one might imagine their holding off for 0.7.2 and "proper" mesh.
A pity about Nevermore but Friday's session is just about touching base now.
I love the map concept! I was trying to figure out where FleepGrid would be in relation to the other grids but I confess I still have a hard time mentally mapping it out.
Hoping to make the meetup on Friday and looking forward to it - thanks for organizing it!
Is this map still available anywhere? I'd love to see it!
-- Maria
At the moment, yes, but I need to check on island access as we had some problems on Friday. In principle you should be able to hypergrid to grid.newworldgrid.com:8002:BioZone (it's in the 6900, 6900 range) and then access it via the large blue arrow (To Hypergrid Exhibit in hovertext) adjacent to the landing area. Map and scripted teleport from Welcome seems borked though others reported that tp to an adjacent sim and thence to BioZone worked. Weird bug.
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