I have to admit lately, I have been quite depressed about a lot of things in RL. I have not let effect my work, but it has made it harder to stay focused on work. I am kinda glad Cyber Wrld has not yet worked its way back into any grid list anywhere, as well it hasn’t been doing too well at all. Well hasn’t been doing anything at all, I have added several features and got a ton of work done to it, and it is ready for production use, minus currency and a few other small things.

I am just unsure if I can run Cyber Wrld, it is has been creating a lot of stress for me managing everything. So instead I am most likely looking to merge, break away from opensim all together, or join the team of another grid that has the same vision in mind. So with my mind not made up, I am going to voice all my views, ideals, and what I have planned for Cyber Wrld.

Currency I have been thinking really hard about currency, researching the use of currency in other grids, and on applications on facebook and IMVU. I found that most people who purchase virtual currency are not interested in actually withdrawing it back out to their own real currency, they just want to purchase what they want, just like on facebook apps, and IMVU. Now the ones who do wish to cash out, are the BIG merchants, the ones who do this for a living.

Once I had figured this out, I had decided to create it to where people could purchase currency. Now if you wanted the ability to cash out, you could file to have a merchant account, which would have the ability to cash out. Now, this works out well, because the grid will be able to earn more money, and only have to pay out to anyone who becomes a merchant resident of their grid.

Now also learning about all these other places, including IMVU, a large virtual world program, they are using the same thing that other facebook applications are using. I did some investigating and well, there are plenty of those Payment Wall companies, looking to partner up with more games/virtual worlds, where people can earn in game currency by doing surveys, downloading toolbars, etc. This creates more ways to make profit for your grid, and attracts more residents, because they can earn free in game currency!

HyperGrid Well I know Hyper Grid is the future, but I have learned to accept the fact that it is going to take a little bit of time before it becomes acceptable for everyone to use. I know it is just as insecure as closed grids, however, it has too many bugs still. I still loose my attachments hypergridding to NewWorldGrid and a few others.

I am not saying not to use it, I am just saying for grids with merchants, might be best to at least limit assets from traveling with them. I know it is painful to say this, but with the chance of loosing things you have purchased, could cause some major issues with grid owners and their residents.

Free Land Giving away free land is a great way of attracting new residents, however I have seen the ability to connect your own sims, or giving away whole simulators is much more attractive to residents. I think people have just seen how easy it is to make and host regions, why not give away free regions?

I found an easy way to do this, without costing too much. Offering a shared simulator limiting prims to say 3000 or 5000prims you should be able to offer up to 4 regions per simulator without any issues and not using more than 512mb of ram and 0.3%CPU however, I still see like 1/3rd sims and 1/4th sims are still in the market of high demand, but small parcels, are just soo outdated with today’s technology.

Cloud Hosting From my testing with Amazon’s EC2 cloud system, it is very possible to run serveral cloud instances, however, it is most defiantly NOT cost efficient if you are looking to have a 24/7 instance. You can get the same power, if not more out of a dedicated server at half the cost.

Also on this note, no offence to Kitely, but I really don’t think when they go hypergrid, they will be putting other hosting companies out of business. It will still be way cheaper for high traffic regions to be hosted on professionally hosted regions on dedicated servers. Now I see Kitely as the best for meetings, events, and maybe the entry level opensim users. They do make it much easier for many residents, I thank them much for all the stuff they have contributed back, and I wish them the best of luck with their model.

Aurora-Sim vs. OpenSim This is all personal preference, but I love them both very much. But I will be perfectly honest, the only real reason I do not recommend Aurora-Sim full time/production, is the scripting engine needs a little work. The features of aurora far outweigh most the bugs they have. However, it is true it is under heavy development where things break now and again, but do not take your eyes off it!

Now on the OpenSim side of things, it is quite stable and is under heavy development. It is also developed to be molded into anything, not just what most of us have been using it for(our own form of SecondLife) it can be used for hundreds of other things. I love it, because it has much more support and testers behind it, with a lot of professionally paid core developers.

What the hell with happen to SoftPaw Estates? Well if join another grid’s team, leave opensim, etc. I will be faithful to my clients, and newer clients, as with Cyber Wrld’s partner, we are not going anywhere in the since of hosting. Our partnership has defiantly been holding us together with a very strong bond server side. The only thing you would be able to expect, is more focus on improving and making SoftPaw Estates to become easier for the end user.

In Closing, Feel free to let me know what you think, I leave comments open for a reason!