There also haven’t been any additional updates on Gloebit’s Facebook page nor has Colosi responded to my requests for comment.
According to Discovery Grid owner Rene Vega, also known as Balpien Hammerer in-world, there are two aspects to the Gloebit payment problem. One was related to the Let’s Encrypt certificate expiration, which has since been addressed, and the other related to a breakdown in the Gloebit service where vending machines are not informed correctly when a payment has taken place. This second problem is still ongoing.
What happened with Let’s Encrypt
The Let’s Encrypt root certificate expired on Sept. 30. These certificates are used to encrypt Internet traffic. Let’s Encrypt had warned their users in advance to make the switch, but many companies had configuration problems, including Second Life, when the switch happened.
Discovery Grid‘s Vega has been running diagnostic scripts with his staff both on Discovery and on other grids to try to diagnose the issue.
“The first problem was that when Let’s Encrypt did their planned expiration of an old root certificate, that expiry invalidated all their security certificates,” he said, in a highly technical comment on our previous post. “But if the websites and grids had CertBot installed, that problem was resolved quickly.”
CertBot is an app from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, provided by Let’s Encrypt, that renews failed security certificates.
“This then restored access to Gloebit and transactions seemed to work again,” he said.
But CertBot is not set up correctly or if there is a configuration problem with how it is set up then the grid might be still using the old security certificate, he added.
“If you are, then Gloebit transactions will fail pretty much always,” he said. “You can check by going to your grid’s website to verify if your Let’s Encrypt certificate path is correct. The photo below shows how. The grids using Let’s Encrypt certificates that I visited were okay.”
(Image courtesy Rene Vega.)
The payment notification problem
So if the certificate is updated, then the Gloebit payments go through okay and the merchant gets paid, and the customer’s money is deducated from their Gloebit account.
However, the vending machines processing those payments are not being properly notified that the money has arrived.
“The script inside the object that does the actual delivery of the bought item is not getting its money event triggered,” said Vega. “So, when that tip jar is paid you’ll not see the ‘Atta boy, thanks for the tip’ message or worse you will not get those pair of shoes even though the merchant did receive the Gloebits.”
(Image courtesy Rene Vega.)
So far, he said, he’s run a diagnostic script to identify this problem on Discovery Grid, as well as on DigiWorldz, Kinky Haven, and Utopia Skye.
“We found that in these grids, though the Gloebit transactions completed, the script’s money event was not triggered,” he said. “What is interesting is that not all grids use Let’s Encrypt. DigiWorldz uses a RapidSSL certificate, on a totally different certification path, and that demonstrates the money event not triggering problem is not related to the Let’s Encrypt problem.”
That means that there’s a completely separate payment issue that Gloebit has, that has crept into the system at some unknown time in the past.
“I suspect all grids using Gloebit are having this problem,” said Vega.
Call for crowdsourcing
Since Gloebit doesn’t seem to be taking this issue seriously, Vega is calling on the OpenSim community to do some diagnostics of its own.
“Try this yourself,” he said. “In your home grid, go to a Gloebit-enabled region. Drop the following script into a newly-rezzed cube. The script sets up a pay button, you touch it, click on 1G$ and you pay yourself that amount. When the money event is triggered the script will llSay that it got the money event.”
He warned that people shouldn’t do this too often, since Gloebit takes a 2 percent cut of each transaction. That means that even if you’re paying yourself, you’ll lose money — for every 1 Gloebit you pay yourself, you’ll end up with just 0.98 Gloebit.
“This is how Gloebits works, it’s not me doing that,” said Vega.
If the system works property, you should get the following message:
[Money Event] received from {your avatar name} amount 1
“If you do not see that chat then your vendors, tip jars, or rental boxes are not working,” he said.
Vega asked the community to report back on how the script is working, on different grids.
I also have been doing my own ad-hoc Gloebit testing over the past few days.
I’ve teleported to Gloebit malls on several different grids, including DigiWorldz, and made donations, grabbed freebies, and tried to buy items.
Freebies were delivered to my avatar just fine, so the problem wasn’t with my avatar. And all the payments came out of my Gloebit account.
But I never received my purchases.
You can see my transaction history report below.
As you can see, I started out with more than 1,000 Gloebits in my account, connected to my Kitely avatar. I made purchases with several different vendors on different grids. Emmalena Damour, for example, is a mall on DigiWorldz.
The money came out of my account — but none of my purchases arrived.
There was also two “cancelled transactions” in my account this morning. I did not trigger it — I don’t know if a merchant did, or Gloebit did. I’ve contacted Colosi, but haven’t heard back.
One of those “cancelled transactions” deposited 4 Gloebits in my account — the other one withdrew 400!
Some grid owners have contacted me privately to say that they’re losing faith in the Gloebit system, and that they, too, have been unable to reach the company to get support.
Wildwood Bayou, Utopia Skye, and Enchanted Grid were all write-in grids. Most years, there’s at least one smaller grid that does well in the user surveys. We currently follow 1,709 grids total, of which 468 were active sometime this year, so only list the most active grids among our default choices. The full list of currently active grids is here.
Overall scores of the 13 grids that had the most responses. (Hypergrid Business data.)
Where do OpenSimmers live and visit?
Between them, this year’s respondents had visited 77 different grids and named 40 different grids as their primary homes.
OSgrid was the grid that was home to the most respondents, followed by AviTron, DigiWorldz, Alternate Metaverse, Kitely, Craft, Enchanted, and Discovery.
We also asked our readers about the grids that they had visited.
OSgrid, OpenSim’s largest and oldest grid, was the most visited — 74 percent of our readers had been to that grid. The next most visited was DigiWorldz with 54 percent, followed by Kitely, with 53 percent.
Where do OpenSim users like to travel? (Hypergrid Business data.)
The numbers add up to more than 100 percent because most people have visited more than one grid. In fact, the average OpenSim users has been to almost five different grids — that they recalled during this survey. Many users said “too many to mention” or “I’ve been to 33 different grids” without listing specific grids, and are not included in the average count.
Most residents said they were very happy with their grids — 93 percent would “absolutely” recommend them to others. Fewer than 2 percent said that they would not recommend, with the rest responding “maybe” or “I don’t know.”
Would you recommend your grid to others? (Hypergrid Business data.)
Technology, support, community, and content
I did not ask people to compare different grids and tell me which one is better. After all, nobody out there has visited all the grids and tried them all out. Instead, what I do every year is ask people what they think about the grid that they spend the most time on.
Typically, people rate their home grid highly. And that makes sense — after all, that’s the grid where they decided to spend their time. That’s why most grids had average responses of “very good” or “excellent” — which I scored as 4 and 5, respectively, when I tabulated the numbers.
As grids get larger, however, they also get more people who are generally discontented. In addition, larger grids may have problems maintaining their technology or support. And, as a result, smaller grids often do very well in these rankings.
You’ll notice that the difference between grids is often a fraction of a percent, so please do not take these results as pure gospel. Plus, with the relatively small number of users we have in OpenSim, the margin of error is high — one highly dissatisfied resident can skew the results quite a bit. So please take all of the following as “food for thought” as opposed to “absolute truth.”
Technology
This year, when our readers were asked how they would grade their grid’s technology, Kitely came out on top, with Wyldwood Bayou, Enchanted Grid, and Discovery Grid all close behind.
Kitely has a unique, on-demand region hosting system that allows them to offer better performance at a lower price than many other grids. Plus, it is also the home of the Kitely Market, OpenSim’s major online marketplace for virtual content.
Those who live on their own personal grid scored their grid the lowest for technology, which makes sense since these grids often run on personal, home computers and connect to other via grids via slow, residential Internet connections. Plus, their have to do their own tech support.
These survey results also only show how users feel about the technology — not about the effort that the grids have put into their platform. OSgrid, for example, is where the OpenSim developers do their testing. This contribution is not necessarily reflected in the poll numbers.
How readers rated their home grids on technology. (Hypergrid Business data.)
Support
In support, three grids received perfect scores from their residents — Wyldwood Bayou, Utopia Skye, and Dorena’s World — with Kitely very close behind.
OSgrid scored lowest, but, again, the grid is all volunteer-run and regions are hosted on home computers. And there’s only so much that volunteers can do to help since everybody’s home computer and networking configuration is different.
How readers rated their home grids on support. (Hypergrid Business data.)
Community
For community, Wyldwood Bayou had a perfect score, followed by Enchanted Grid in second place and AviTron in third.
Small, close-knit grids and startup grids with early and passionate residents typically have high community scores. It doesn’t mean that larger grids don’t have community spirit, but rather that it’s easier for someone to feel lost and alone on a large grid unless the administrators and other community organizers make a very concerted effort to get people involved.
How readers rated their home grids on community. (Hypergrid Business data.)
“My personal grid” had lowest score for community, for obvious reasons. Okay, if it’s not obvious to everyone, then let me explain. You see, a grid that you run yourself, on your own computer or on your own server, will only have the community that you yourself can gather together. If it’s a one-person grid for, say, creative building, then you’re not going to have much of a community at all.
Content
In content, Utopia Skye, Tangle Grid and Dorena’s World tied for perfect scores, with Wyldwood Bayou in close second place.
Again, “my personal grid” scored last, since these typically come with just free public domain starter content such as Linda Kellie OAR regions files.
How readers rated their home grids on content. (Hypergrid Business data.)
Additional comments from the respondents
The following are representative comments about the grids. There were more than 80 comments in all, higher than last year, some of them quite lengthy, and if anyone wants to see them, or use them on their websites, just email me. Again, I won’t include any personally identifiable information.
In addition to leaving out some of the repetitive comments, I’ve also skipped those that had negative personal attacks or that seemed libelous. And, of course, I also edited out any personally identifying information. The comments have also been very lightly edited for spelling and grammar.
“3rd Rock Grid is the third oldest grid in the metaverse and that says something. Many grids have come and gone but 3RG remains. We are stable, we have a great group of people that live here, great entertainment and great content.”
“3rd Rock Grid: so much integrity in this world, great entertainment.”
“Simple homemade grid. It’s a simple grid in a very simple but growing server. I would recommend it for availability, but they still have a lot of work to do. [There’s] land that can be purchased with Gloebit and resold and free land. Usual free content for OpenSim and regions from DreamGrid. Simple but available.”
“Alternate Metaverse has an amazing community and are a friendly and active bunch to hang out with. The technical side of the Alternate Metaverse grid is more than super and the owner really knows how to solve all issues in a professional manner .”
“Alternate Metaverse is one of the best grids I have ever had the honor to be on when it comes to virtual worlds and I will never leave”
“I have already recommended Alternate Metaverse to others”
“I have found Alternate Metaverse to be the most welcoming grid so far. I have set home to there.”
“I love this place.”
“It’s the best.”
“Living in Alternate Metaverse is an absolute dream for me and my girlfriend”
“Nice fun community, with lots of entertainment, amazing places to visit and staff. Technical, and most friendly grid”
“One of the most welcoming and kind people around OpenSim”
“The only grid — apart from Kitely — that offers automatic saves of OAR files, and automated uploads of OAR files, from their website. Amazing people and community.”
“This is an awesome grid with awesome people and events.”
“A fantastic staff. Well done. I have to be honest, until a few weeks ago I didn’t know any of these [other] grids … now I’m meeting and visiting them.”
“Among all I know is the one that has the most advanced technology and based on Linux system, which is more secure.”
“De todos los grids que he visitado AviTron es el mejor.” [Google translation from Spanish: “Of all the grids I have visited, AviTron is the best.”]
“Excelente servicio y muy buen sistema de soporte.” [Google translation from Spanish: “Excellent service and very good support system.”]
“Is clear that is just beginning and to be honest so far is doing OK, but I know there’s a lot of work yet to be done. It has lots of potential.”
“At Craft, I have been carrying on my project, the Museo del Metaverso, for years, I feel at home.”
“Definitely a wonderful grid with lot of content and people without being too crowded.”
“I love Craft.”
“In the past year there has been a growing number of artistic events of outstanding quality on Craft.”
“It is a great grid and the owner, Licu Rau, is more than just friendly — he is a friend! One notices, that he loves the grid and the work he is doing there!”
“DigiWorldz is a good grid with some technical problems. Of course all grids have technical problems… and I’m not sure how many of those problems are in OpenSim itself and Firestorm.”
“DigiWorldz is a great community to be a part of. The grid owner is honest and trustworthy. I feel at ease and trust that my information, data, and creations are safe!! And have no fear of the grid closing or ripping me off. Thumbs up for DigiWorldz.”
“DigiWorldz is more home to me then other grids.”
“Extremely well-run, quick response — ten minutes or less — to problems. High performance: 95 to 105 frames per second, 103-ish ping. Great for vehicles with uBODE physics option on sims, nightly backups to multiple servers, and a real relaxed vibe where you don’t have to worry if the grid is online when you want to log in.”
“I have recommended it to many people!”
“I have to go to other grids, like Discovery Grid or Kitely Market get products not available on DigiWorldz. I really like Discovery Grid, but it does not have the active population size I need for what I am building.”
“The best community IMO of any grid. Dedicated staff, talented creators and friendly people.”
“I’ve been in DigiWorldz for over four years now. I have learned so many new things over the years from so many of the awesomely creative creators here in DigiWorldz! As I learn more and more I only find that I want to learn even more and more! It’s so much fun learning, creating different things… what one can create out of a simple square prim is astounding. As I learn each new thing my mind soars into outer space and I have so many infinite ideas of more ways to create more objects and such. It’s only because of DigiWorldz that I have been able to express myself in such unique ways. I am in Second Life for over 16 years now and in DigiWorldz for over four years. In the quarter of the time that I have been in Second Life, I have learned so so much more here in DigiWorldz. I want to express my sincere gratitude to each and everyone of you people who have taught me what I know. I’m not taking away from anyone else in OpenSim that has taught me a host of everything… I do so appreciate the time and effort that everyone has taken to teach me different things. I am so blessed to have the privilege’s of learning from all of you! Onto my next note which is last but note least, are my love for my horses here in DigiWorldz! They all have such unique personalities and I love all of the beautiful coats they have, too. It’s amazing to me when I get a super rare coat! I just get so excited to see such awesomeness! Noxy! You’re doin’ one heck of a great job with them horseys! Keep up the great work! I commend you for the extremely hard work that you have put into your horses! Keep on keepin’ on! Huggelz!”
“Grid owner is always working to update the grid and make it better. Water connects all regions unless you don’t want to be. People are friendly and welcoming.”
“Myself and my business split time between Discovery Grid and Utopia Skye Grid — two of a small handful of grids I actually trust, where grid owners aren’t giving region owners god mode and aren’t rife with stolen content like several grids listed above. Discovery Grid and Utopia Skye Grid owners actually care about vetting stolen content and run high-end tech servers my business requires in order to run.”
“Enchanted Grid was a great surprise, my first day there I went to an event with a huge turn out and we had a lot of great conversations. There are lots of really creative regions, and many engaged friendly creators – some of my favorite InWorldz folk! — so I decided to get a few regions. I especially love the sailing in a Halcyon grid. Very awesome.”
“A closed grid, so most content created by its own residents.”
“No copybotted [stuff]. It’s a great grid with excellent creators.”
“No drama here, great tight community that welcomes new people.”
“This grid utilizes the same physics as InWorldz did and overall the grid is very similar to InWorldz. There are quite a few old InWorldz residents and I highly recommend this grid for anyone that was from there.”
“Any problems are quickly dealt with by the grid owners and greed and drama are rare.”
“Best tech support of any OpenSim grid. The Kitely Market grows steadily and is the easiest place to sell stuff to nearly anywhere — legally — in the OpenSim grids.”
“Grid is excellent, support is super good, pity that the avatars are very poor which is a comment for OpenSim in general. Quite some people I know left for this reason. Impossible to attract good clothing makers for OpenSim in general for this reason. Quality of avatars is super important as long as this issue is not handled OpenSim won’t get the real influx of people. I know that an effort has been done to get this up to date. With all respect go and look at the place and check objectively. It’s seriously substandard.”
“I have spent more time on this OpenSim hypergrid-enabled grid than any other. I’ve had land here for a few years. The weekly meetings are a good way to find out what is going on and the community itself is very drama free and there are many wonderful, magical places to visit. The technology is definitely top-notch for any OpenSim grid. It’s a very active grid which is sort of surprising since you can’t cash out money — but maybe that’s part of the charm. The regions you visit aren’t just shopping and clubs — they are virtual expressions of residents’ imagination.”
“Ilan Tochner’s support to Kitely users is beyond exceptional. Absolutely amazing. I believe he never sleeps.”
“Kitely continues to expand its range of offerings with its megaworld on a dedicated server and is now offering megaworlds with 24/7 uptime service, which is a major change to Kitely’s business model but has apparently paid off. [CEO] Ilan [Tochner] and [co-founder and VP of R&D] Oren [Hurvitz] consistently provide excellent support to fix bugs and respond to user needs and do so with expertise and professionalism I do not see on other grids. Their focus on stable service and excellent backend architecture is unmatched.”
“Kitely is fast, economical to use — i.e. have sims — and has a super supportive community. Additionally, the Kitely Market is the most powerful and well stocked one of the metaverse I believe. Not only that, but it connects to the whole hypergrid so that you can shop it from anywhere. Now that was super smart!”
“Kitely is the best at OpenSim. However, OpenSim is yesterday’s technology. I wish Ilan and Oren were inclined to create the next generation in a virtual worlds platform.”
“Kitely values in land are great. Tech support is very helpful.”
“Let’s face it, we all came from the same place. They offered small plots of land at a huge cost and had absolutely no customer service to speak of. They nickel and dimed us for every upload and honestly, the lag! How many years in and there’s still lag? I did a lot of research before hanging my hat in Kitely. I wanted a low cost, large land mass with stability. I wanted customer service, good customer service. I wanted a marketplace. I wanted community. Kitely has all of that, they checked off all my boxes and then some.”
“The robust servers Kitely uses, and the personal hands-on from their support team is par excellence!”
“We used to be in Second Life — but found Kitely is, in so many ways better — and getting even better.”
“This is a rough rating, butI was once a big fan of Metropolis Grid. But my feeling now, with no news over months, no answers from support even on tickets, I consider it slightly as dead. Sad!”
“Committed admins and a strong, caring community make this the grid to call home.”
“I love OSgrid. It’s the best grid in the universe.”
“Nice place to be…”
“OSgrid is the best, in my opinion.”
“OSgrid offers many options, from rented regions to nearly-free self-server lands. It’s main, serious downside is no community group announcements, which makes hosting events difficult. It is an experimental grid, not a community grid — and that is its weakness. But if you want 110 percent control over your lands, host your own server on OSgrid. Or… build your own grid.”
“I choose to make this grid my second home SOLELY because it’s population is by far the largest, and movement and communication is easier within a grid rather than outside of it.”
“Although my grid is non-commercial, I provide many 24/7 activities for visitors alone or with others. I also give out some very nice freebies that I make myself or know to be legal to give away.”
“Tangle Grid tries hard to keep updated with the newest OpenSim software. They also keep it’s residents updated via Facebook, MeWe and their own news website. Overall, they one of the best grids I have ever lived on. They go out of their way to make you feel at home. Most grids I have been on you never see the owners — with Tangle Grid this isn’t the case. They’re always there with any problems you may have. They even help with non-grid problem like computer setups, if you are having problems logging in. They been around for nine years and have very little down time. Region prices are also fair and they offer free land to try them out.”
“As an artist/builder/videographer, it is a grid I trust. Unlike some other grids listed, I am absolutely sure that my intellectual copyrights are respected there.”
“Small but friendly grid, only drama comes from the Golden Touch Theater and amazing particle shows.”
“Utopia Skye grid is a consistently progressive technology grid. It’s a holistic, artistic, creative space where people can enjoy events and building. The codebase is maintained by Mike Chase who is one of the creators of the Sasquatch version of the OpenSim codebase — a version that proves to be very reliable with zero downtime in over three years! While the grid may not boast some of the numbers others do, the numbers reported here are true numbers and the people who are here are loyal and enjoy a warm community. Plus the Golden Touch Theater performs here and the shows they put on are worth everything.”
“Utopia Skye is a small but professionally-run grid. We welcome residents who want to build a home and create in an environment that respects creator IP. You will never find a ‘freebie’ store that offers botted content that’s been ‘liberated’ from Second Life or anywhere else and we work closely with creators to protect their work.”
“The community here is the most welcoming I’ve found on the hypergrid.”
“This grid is made for visitors who love music, roleplay and exploring.”
“Wyldwood Bayou grid is non-commercial, so no shops or rentals. It is a destination grid, open to hypergridders so that they can visit, explore, participate in medi-fantasy roleplay at Brigantia or Ravenquest, and attend events at the superb music venues–Rockin’ The Blues, Hot Daddy’s, etc.”
“Wyldwood Bayou is a destination grid with a small but wonderful community. The grid offers sailable oceans, beautiful regions with role play and successful clubs which are based on friendships, and inclusivity as well as music. Very great places to visit here and wonderful people to meet.”
“Wyldwood has the best community in the metaverse. The music and the roleplay are outstanding and you will not find a warmer welcome anywhere.”
‘Wyldwood Bayou runs well and has a welcoming and kind community. They have weekly music events with different DJs and roleplaying events in fae lands.”
Note to grid owners
You are free to use any of the information from this article on your grid’s website or in any other promotional materials, including the quotes from survey responders. A link to this article is appreciated but not required. You can also request the raw — anonymized — data for your grid by emailing me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.
“It appears that starting Sep. 27, some grids had some notifications of completion of transaction not make it back to the grid,” Gloebit CEO Chris Colosi said in a Facebook comment earlier today. “It looks like our service couldn’t call back into the grid to notify it.”
As of this writing, Colosi has not responded to Hypergrid Business requests for comment.
It’s not clear yet what is causing the issue.
Christopher Colosi
“We haven’t changed the Gloebit service recently,” Colosi said in the Facebook comment. “The only thing I’m aware of is that the old Let’s Encrypt root certificate expired,” he added.
“If a grid server hadn’t been updated in a long time, it might reject our connection as untrusted,” he said. “However, this issue looks like it started on Sep. 27, not Sep. 30.”
Several commenters also reported problems, on both Linux-based and Windows-based OpenSim grids.
“Multiple grids have the issue described above,” said Facebook user Bonnie Stewart. “Payments can be made, but there is no message that it succeeded and the recipient is not notified. If an item is involved it is not delivered. However the transactions do show if you look at your Gloebit account.”
Shopping on DigiWorldz. (Image by Maria Korolov.)
I had the same experience.
Earlier today, I traveled to several different grids where I made Gloebit purchases at different malls from different merchants. In each case, the amount debited from my Gloebit account. However, none of the purchases made it to my inventory. I visited DigiWorldz, Dynamic Worldz, The Kaz Grid, and Mobius Grid.
Meanwhile, I was able to collect freebies from other grids without any issues.
“Direct payments are working, also payments through objects like tip jars or vendors,” said Facebook user Christian Descho. “But vendors do not get the info that the item can be delivered.”
Terry Ford
As of Sunday night, DigiWorldz owner Terry Ford hadn’t heard of anyone having problems like I did.
“We have not heard of any issues on our end,” he said.
He could see from the log files that there were no errors when my avatar arrived on the region. “So from a log file point of view, all looks well.”
In addition, tracking down the issue could be tricky.
“We don’t have access to the backend systems of Gloebit, therefore we have no way to troubleshoot any issues,” he said. “I’ve lost faith in Gloebits on my end and so have many other users.”
Alexsandro Pomposelli
Meanwhile, AviTron, the grid that first reported the problem to Hypergrid Business, is increasingly getting frustrated with the lack of response from Gloebit.
“I have made the decision to change AviTrons currency to Tron$,” AviTron grid owner Alex Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “I will study Podex but for now it will be Tron.”
When the Gloebit system last has a major outage, this past spring, several grids considered rolling out their own currency, or using the Podex currency system.
However Gloebit is the only platform that supports multi-grid shopping in an easy way. No other currency has been able to do the same.
The AviTron grid is reporting an outage in the multi-grid Gloebit payment system.
“I have been emailing these guys for two weeks now,” AviTron grid owner Alex Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “No response yet.”
Alexsandro Pomposelli
According to Pomposelli, the problem is that the Gloebit DLL needs to be updated.
The DLL is a helper script that allows in-world transactions such as vendor purchases or land payments.
“They do not respond at all,” he said. “No support whatsoever.”
When the Gloebit system last has a major outage, this past spring, several grids considered rolling out their own currency, or using the Podex currency system. When the Gloebit service was restored, most decided to stick with it. Gloebits are the most convenient multi-grid currency for OpenSim.
The company was launched five years ago by Christopher Colosi, who used to run the Second Life Marketplace and the Lindex exchange. If anyone could get an OpenSim payment system to work, it should have been him.
“I am now thinking about returning to our own currency, Tron,” said Pomposelli. “Gloebits was a great solution for OpenSim but it also is being pretty bad because I have over 500 members in my grid now and I can’t be having to wait two to three weeks for support.”
Website working, in-world payments could be problematic
I logged into my Gloebit account on the website and bought a couple of bucks worth of Gloebits — that transaction went through fine.
At the shopping mall on Serene Vineyard Island on DigiWorldz. (Image by Maria Korolov.)
Then I teleported over to a shopping mall on the DigiWorldz grid, at login.digiworldz.com:8002:Serene Vineyard Island. I tried buying a couple of items. The money was debited from my account, but I didn’t receive my purchases.
I’ve contacted DigiWorldz owner Terry Ford to find out if anyone else is having the same issue but haven’t heard back yet.
A purchase failure could be due to any number of things, not just a failure in the payment system.
Russia-based OpenSim company Caprica is now hosting private grids starting at just $20 a month.
The company also runs its own grid, also called Caprica, That grid, which was founded in early 2018, currently has 310 regions and reported 300 active users in the last 30 days.
Caprica’s new private grid offer starts with three standard-sized regions of up to 15,000 prims each.
There is also an automatic backup saved every three days and daily automatic scheduled restarts.
The servers can be configured in different geographic regions, Caprica owner Sam Adama told Hypergrid Business. ” In most cases, the servers are located in Europe, but we also have North American offerings and even Southeast Asia. We use the services of different providers: it all depends on the most suitable configuration for the customer of the service. We use exclusively Linux servers, which allows us to be flexible and fast.”
The default configuration also includes hypergrid connectivity, terraforming, ability to resell land, and a web interface. It also includes basic VoiP voice at no extra cost, while Caprica’s dedicated voice servers are an additional $5 a month.
The default configuration does not include currency, but Gloebit payments are an option at customer request, Adama said.
In addition, while the default configuration includes hypergrid connectivity, customers can request to shut it off if they prefer to keep the grid private.
After the customer places the order for the grid and makes the payment, it will take no more than two hours to have the grid up and running, said Adama.
But if custom configuration is required, then it could take as much as 12 hours, he said.
To help customers keep track of the status of their configuration, change requests, and support tickets, Caprica rolled out a new grid management dashboard for its clients three days ago.
“Each service or product ordered from us is a project for which a personal manager is assigned,” said Adama. “We keep full reporting on those works that are performed on the customer’s server. Each task and milestone is audited and documented in the customer’s control panel. At any time, the client can create a ticket or request to the support service, see the stages and tasks, invoices and orders, find out how much time was spent on job, what work was done and draw up a full report on the project.”
To celebrate the completion of my most recent novella, Time of the Meatheads, the first novella in set in the Krim virtual world, Krim Times, is free this weekend. And it’s got a new cover, too.
The book made the Amazon category bestseller list when it was released back in 2019, thanks to you guys. Next week, it will be back to its regular price.
Meanwhile, you can read all of Time of the Meatheads — and leave comments if you see something I messed up — on my new Krim World website.
This book will be up on my site until I publish it on Amazon. Amazon requires exclusivity if I want my books to be in the Kindle Unlimited program. But if you want to read it for free until then, you can.
I’m also almost done with Krim Deeds, a mystery set in the same world.
I’ll be posting a chapter of it a day up on my site over the course of the next few weeks, or you can download the full EPUB draft here.
I was originally planning to have it be a novella, at around 20,000 words, but it’s nearly 40,000 words now, about the size of your typical cozy mystery. Which it kind of is.
Now that I’ve got the website up and running, and have been making a daily habit of writing and posting, I should be getting a lot more stories out set in the same world.
Anyway, if you find any mistakes, or have any ideas for things I should do in future books, or want a character named after you and killed in some gruesome and spectacular way, drop me a line!
The folks over at HTC were nice enough to send me the new HTC Vive Focus 3 headset for review.
First of all, thank you. It’s a great headset.
Second of all, sorry for this review, but I don’t think that anyone should buy this headset.
On paper, this headset sounds great. Fantastic image quality. Great controllers. Wide field of view. It even fits over my glasses, though just barely. And it’s all-in-one, so you don’t have to connect it to you computer.
So let me tell you why you shouldn’t get it.
I may be smiling in this picture, but I’m not all that happy with this headset.
It costs $1,300
Yeah. $1,300. It doesn’t matter how good a headset is, who’s going to spend $1,300 for it?
Not consumers, for sure. Which means that video game developers won’t make anything for it. Which means that even those consumers who have money to burn won’t have much that they can do with it.
Maria with a loaner HTC Vive Focus 3 virtual reality headset.
It’s bulky and uncomfortable
This headset takes up a lot of room. And is huge on your head. I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time wearing it.
But what about enterprise users?
The Focus 3 has a pass-through camera. That means that you can hit a button and see through the headset’s camera to the world around you — to your keyboard, for example, so you can type something.
In theory, at least.
In practice, you don’t actually see the outside directly. You see a pixellated black-and-white image instead. It’s not good enough to see what’s on your computer screen.
So if, say, you’re using this headset for virtual meetings, and someone wants you to take some notes, or you want to pull up your calendar to see when you’re free next, or check to see if the email from the colleague has arrived, you’re out of luck. You’ll have to take off the headset to do any of that.
Really, just hold your meeting in Zoom.
But maybe you’re using virtual reality to prototype objects. Say, you’re an auto manufacturer and you want collaborators from all over the world to meet in a common space to look at car designs.
That’s a great use for virtual reality. It’s an even better use for augmented reality, like the Microsoft Hololens.
All the other most common enterprise uses just involve watching 3D videos — like, say, architectural walk-throughs. You don’t need a bulky $1,300 headset for those. Any headset that can play 360-degree videos will work.
Finally, say you have a reason to use a high-end VR headset for work. Chances are, you only use it once in a rare while. I haven’t heard of any use cases today where people have to spend time in VR regularly at work.
For gaming, sure. For work? Not so much.
That means that when you pick the headset up again you’ll probably need to charge up the headset itself. And both of its controllers. And there will probably be some software updates to install.
With something like Zoom, which you use every day, there’s nothing to charge up. You don’t have to go hunting for the cables. And sure, Zoom occasionally has software upgrades but if you’re using it in the browser, you won’t even notice, and if you’re using the desktop app the updates are infrequent. You won’t have to run them every single time you log in, especially if you use Zoom several times a day, like I do.
When people ask me to use another platform, other than Zoom, I’m usually annoyed because odds are, whatever it is, it will have been a while since I used it last and I’ll have to install a software update and remember how to use it again. For a VR headset, that annoyance factor is going to be multiplied ten-fold.
This is why I don’t actually use VR headsets.
I love them. I love the technology. I’ve tried all the headsets out there, and I own several headsets. In fact, I’ve owned dozens, but have given most of them away. My long-term plan is to avoid dying by getting uploaded into the metaverse, Matrix-style. (My backup plan is to eat lots and lots of preservatives.)
I would love to have a reason to use VR in my daily life, including at work. So far, I haven’t found that reason.
I recently filmed a video with the Focus 3 headset with my friend Terrence Smith, one of the writers for our sister site, MetaStellar. He’s also a big nerd, and a video game reviewer. You can watch the video below:
Every day I get a bunch of emails offering free guest posts for Hypergrid Business. Hey, cool — I love getting free material. And even better yet, many of them are offering to pay me money to run their articles. Excellent! Everyone always accuses me of selling out — this is my chance to finally do it!
Then I read further down and it’s a story promoting some random gambling site or sketchy VPN company. Nothing will kill a site faster than running this type of junk.
The number of these emails keeps going up and up. I’ve started marketing them as spam and deleting them the minute I see “guest post” in the subject line.
Anyway, I’m flattered, thank you to all the sites out there that think we’re up there with Wired and Tech Crunch!
But I apologize to all the real writers whose legitimate writing offers get buried among all the spam. If I haven’t gotten back to you — please revise your email so that it looks more real and less spammy (read below to find out how) and resend.
Here’s what a spammy guest post email looks like:
That’s just a random one that I pulled out from this morning’s inbox. Some have better grammar and spelling, but the gist is usually the same.
So if you send me an email that just says that you like my site and are interested in writing for me and would like me to get back to you — well, you’ll be waiting for a very long time. Like, forever.
Here are a few points to consider before writing an email to me — or another editor — when pitching an article:
Is your email full of lies? I don’t care if you’re a regular reader or not if you have an interesting article to contribute. Don’t try to start a relationship with me with an obvious lie like saying that you read my blog every day. I doubt even my biggest fans do — and I probably know all my biggest fans by name. OpenSim is a small community. If you lie, I’ll hit the “spam” button. You don’t want Google to think you’re a spammer, do you? I automatically delete any email that starts out with lies or flattery.
Are you offering me money? We don’t accept any money either on Hypergrid Business or on our sister site, MetaStellar. A few years ago, I tried, but it turned out that it took way too much work to manage it. I’d rather keep the site free than deal with the hassle. If, in your email, you offer to pay me, I’ll mark it as spam and delete it.
Is the article you’re pitching based on a Google search and some cutting-and-pasting? We all know how to use Google and can read Wikipedia. You’re not adding much value to the world if that’s all you do. What are you bringing to the table that’s unique and fresh? Do you have unique insights? Opinions? Expertise? Contacts? A unique sense of humor or style? If you don’t have any of those but want to have them, I’ll work with you. I love working with beginning writers. But be aware that you’ll need to add some value in order to get published. There are places that publish articles that have no value, “filler” articles. Newspapers used to put them on their back pages in to fill space between ads. Hardly anyone ever read them. Publications that have a high percentage of filler articles tend to go out of business quickly because they’re so useless. I once cancelled my Newsweek subscription when they started running a ton of sponsored stories, which are basically giant ads in story disguise. You get a couple of paragraphs in and suddenly feel a funny taste in your mouth and discover you’re reading an advertorial. Ughh. If you are pitching a filler article just to get your name out there, I’ll mark it as spam and delete it, and won’t see any more emails from you.
Are you pitching a generic article about SEO or marketing? If so, please go away. We do run stories about marketing, but they have to be focused specifically on our readership. So, for example, we’d be interested in marketing advice specifically tailored for OpenSim grid owners. If you want to do a story on website design, you should be prepare to analyze the designs of OpenSim grid websites.
Here are some tips for writing a guest post email that I will pay attention to:
Show you’re a real person. Real people — as opposed to spam bots — have social media profiles, LinkedIn pages, resumes, articles they’ve previously published. Include all of that.
Talk about your personal experience with our subject matter. What OpenSim grids have you visited? What virtual reality devices do you own? What books, movies or TV shows about virtual reality have you seen? What VR games have you played? If you can’t answer any of these questions, you’re probably not a good fit for Hypergrid Business.
Talk about your expertise. Do you know how to write OpenSim scripts? Do you know how to design a website? Do you know how to create a marketing campaign? Do you know how to build an online community? Do you know how to program a chatbot? Are you interested in developing expertise and are in the process of teaching yourself GiMP, or are taking an online course about AI and machine learning, or studying journalism, or watching YouTube tutorials about animation?
Talk about your goals. Do you want to launch a career as a book, movie, or video game reviewer? As an enterprise tech journalist? Do you want to promote your services as a consultant, marketer, developer, or website designer? Do you want to promote your latest book? Those are all great goals, and we’ll help you accomplish them. We are happy to promote our contributors’ products, services, and companies if they’re of benefit to our community.
Talk about the level of effort you’re willing to put in on articles. Are you willing to visit OpenSim grids and talk to residents? Are you willing to do email interviews with grid owners? Are you willing to try out products and test them out? Are you willing to watch movies or read books?
Pitch some articles. We might not necessarily assign you one of the articles you pitch, but it will give us an idea of what you’re interested in.
And, finally, write a good email subject line. One that doesn’t look like it was written by a spam bot. Briefly tell me who you are, and what you want to do.
Here are some ideas:
I’m an OSgrid resident and would like to write a tutorial about how to set up a free region on OSgrid
I’m a beginning tech writer and would like to write some video game reviews
I write LitRPG books and would like to write some reviews about other books in the genre
I’m a huge sci-fi fan and would love to review movies and TV shows that have virtual reality in them
I like playing with tech and would love to write VR headset reviews
I’m a marketing expert, and would like to look at some of the top OpenSim grid websites and offer some hints for how to improve them
I’m an AI expert, and would like to offer some tips on how to create free chatbots that you can use inside Second Life or OpenSim
I like to travel and take pictures on the hypergrid and want to write how-to articles and travelogues
I go to a lot of in-world music events on OpenSim grids and would like to interview the performers and write reviews for you
So, say you do all that, and you start writing articles for us.
What do you get out of it?
First of all — and this is the main reason why all those spammers keep trying to buy articles on our site — you get an in-bound link from Hypergrid Business, which has been averaging at a little under a million pageviews a year for the past few years. We have a good domain authority, good Alexa ranking, and are in Google News, which means that search engines consider inbound links from our site to be of high value.
In your author bio, at the bottom of each post, in addition to that in-bound link to your website, you can also promote your book, or service, or product, or Kitely Market store, or Steam game — whatever you like. You can link to your Amazon author page, your social media feeds, your mailing list subscription form, your YouTube channel, or your Patreon page. And you can change you bio at any time. So, for example, if you write ten articles for us this year, and you release a new book next year, then when the book comes out just email me and I’ll update your bio, and those ten old articles will now link to your book release page. Or maybe you plan to launch a new grid next year. You can spend this year writing how-to articles about OpenSim, or travelogues, or interviewing performers and fashion designers, and then next year, when you launch, update your bio and now you’ll have a bunch of inbound links to your grid’s website and you’ll get instant recognition by search engines. Plus, all those performers and fashion designers you interviewed and promoted might be grateful and help support your new grid.
Finally, you can start your tech journalism career with us. Before hiring you, editors want to see clips. We can assign you stories, edit them to Associated Press style, help you develop sources, teach you how to research and structure articles, and even help you set up a portfolio website. Then when you skills are at a professional level, I can introduce you to editors. Oh, and we have a freelance budget. So once you develop sources and start doing interviews, and your writing is good enough that it takes us less time to edit your article than it would have to write it ourselves, we will start paying you for your work. You won’t get rich, but you will start building a professional resume.
Oh, and we also accept guest posts at our sister website, MetaStellar, launched last fall. We publish original science fiction, fantasy, and horror, as well as reprints and book experts. But we also publish essays, book and movie reviews, and anything else of interest to speculative fiction fans. MetaStellar submission guidelines are here.
“Given the number of new features for users that have evolved in the past two years, we are interested in knowing more about what users want and need,” said CEO Lisa Laxton.
The results will help the organization set priorities for its development projects, she told Hypergrid Business. For example, the IMA is currently working on SceneGate and DreamGate viewers that are designed to improve accessibility and usability. The organization is also working on projects related to server and grids.
“Most importantly and the reason for the launch of the survey today, given current community concerns about the potential loss of public spatial voice, we have revived the EchoVoice project that was on hold due to limited resources during the pandemic,” she said. “It is currently our top priority in terms of development and funding.”
The IMA is also looking at providing free public spatial voice for the non-commercial community, she said. “Commercial options will also be made available for those needing assistance after the community needs are hopefully met. A meeting with developers and grid owners is planned to discuss decisions made for the EchoVoice project prior to the funding campaign launch.”
The survey is also looking at other topics, to get a sense of activities, needs and preferences of the OpenSim user community.
“It is likely other development teams and grid owners would also be interested in learning more as well,” she added.
A meeting of the Hypergrid Entrepreneur Group, with Vivox voice, on the old Hyperica grid.
According to Unity PR head Ryan Wallace, OpenSim grids can still sign up to get free Vivox voice services — but there might be some technical hurdles to jump through.
The current integration with OpenSim was developed a decade ago with the cooperation of partners who are no longer part of the project, he told Hypergrid Business.
As a result, it only supports Vivox version 4, not the current version 5.
Since Vivox does not currently have any paying OpenSim customers, Unity has decided not to continue this kind of specialized service.
“It has not had any paying customers for this service for several years,” said Wallace.
But Unity is not opposed to offering Vivox for free.
The service is officially free for up to 5,000 peak concurrent users, he said. OpenSim grids can sign up for this option. The problem is the lack of customized OpenSim integration.
All existing public OpenSim grids fall well below the 5,000 concurrent-user threshold.
Wallace also reiterated that existing OpenSim grids can continue to use Vivox voice with the integration currently in place, and there is no termination date scheduled as of yet.
And new grids can still sign up for Vivox, he added. They will just need to sign up for product’s enterprise and development portal.
“New grid owners can go this route,” he said. The challenge here will be integrating OpenSim with the latest Vivox 5.
But there is currently no viable alternative to Vivox that is integrated into the viewer and allowing for easy in-world chat.
That means if Unity discontinues its OpenSim integration, grids will be out of luck.
Nick Zwart
“This worries me a lot,” said Nick Zwart, owner of the 3DLES grid. “I have the EduGrid of 3DLES running Vivox, which is my demo area. I have the TeCoLa project running on Vivox, which is an educational research grid of five European universities. I have the EVA Park grid running on Vivox for the City University in London doing research on Aphasia therapy.”
All three grids use the free version of the platform.
He said that he will upgrade to a paid version of Vivox if he needs to – and if it is possible.
OpenSim grid owners have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get answers from Unity for months about what will happen.
“Our grid has the free version of Vivox set up, but I never got an answer to the request to get it working,” virtual worlds blogger Gwyneth Llewelyn told Hypergrid Business. “Now I know why! They very likely had started to ignore new requests for a while — and by ‘ignore’ I mean that I never received any feedback whatsoever.”
She’s worried that many OpenSim grids, including hers, will go silent.
“I wonder how hard it would be to use Mumble instead,” she said.
Shortage of alternatives
Vivox easily became the dominant OpenSim voice platform because it was free, because it integrated fully with OpenSim viewers, because it didn’t require users to log into any additional systems, and because it required no work on the part of grid owners to maintain it.
By comparison, open source voice systems like Mumble require grid owners to set up and maintain their own voice servers, and other cloud platforms — like Skype, Discord, TeamSpeak, Slack, or Telegram — require users to create accounts on those services and sign into a chat channel.
Geir Nøklebye
“There are very few — if any — free services that cover Linux, macOS and Windows, so it will be a bit of a pickle to replace Vivox, at least as something built into the viewer,” Xmir grid founder Geir Nøklebye told Hypergrid Business. “I guess a grid could use a standalone chat or voice solution alongside, but it will not be as immersive and most likely a paid for service.”
Nøklebye, who is also behind the OpenSim-specific Dayturn viewer, currently has the free Vivox voice on his grid. “I only use it on Xmir for testing the viewers, which is why I got the license.”
“One option that might exist is to build a Telegram client into the viewer, but I have not looked at the terms for doing that,” he said. “Also, Telegram is controversial with some audiences.”
Telegram has been in the news for extremist content, for example. Most recently, that’s been conspiracy theorists, but it’s also been a haven for foreign terrorist groups, like Isis. The platform also has a revenge porn problem and group chats don’t have end to end encryption.
Fred Beckhusen
“OpenSim used to run Mumble and FreeSwitch,” said Fred Beckhusen, owner of the OutWorldz grid and creator of the DreamGrid installer for OpenSim. “I know of no one who has gotten either to work, though one DreamGridder got it to run, but not connect to a viewer.”
Beckhusen said that he removed the Vivox sign-up screen from DreamGrid last fall, when Vivox first stopped accepting new signups.
Will developers and vendors step up?
Ideally, the OpenSim community will work together with Unity to get OpenSim working for Vivox 5, or develop an alternative that everyone can use.
Vincent Sylvester
OpenSim hosting and services company Zetamex Network is working on a solution, but its too early to provide any details, according to CEO Vincent Sylvester.
“Plans to handle this are already underway,” he told Hypergrid Business.
Alexsandro Pomposelli
Alexsandro Pomposelli, the original founder of the AviWorlds grid, current owner of the Avitron grid, and OpenSim personality best known for multiple grid shutdowns, failed business models and unfulfilled promises, is also getting into the action.
“I have already instructed my techs to look into creating our own Vivox services,” he told Hypergrid Business.
