Jupiter Rowland @JupiterRowland

Important announcement:

I have updated all my Clutterfly Upgraded and Clutterflakes boxes. All furniture uses the recent SFposer version 0.91112 now.

This includes a number of bugfixes:

The Clutterflakes cuddle lounge chairs had all animations wrongly oriented because I had put them directly into the furniture instead of taking over the animation cube.

The Christmas firepit set had the animations wrongly oriented in one tree stump with blanket because I've discovered that one of them has the stump as the root, the other one has the blanket as the root.

So far, I have replaced all boxes in the DropBox in OSgrid:
https://opensimworld.com/hop/91293

I've been encountering a strange phenomenon for quite a while now.

Firestorm reproducibly does not texture certain surfaces. They're rare, but they're always the same.

One example that comes to mind: Swiss Cafe (in case you know it), second ground floor window from the left, the "non-moving" parts. They're always "textured" plain white. Even on derivatives of this building, and regardless of on which sim on which grid they're located.

This happens to two different avatars of mine from two separate grids each (two avatars on one grid, two avatars on another grid). It also happens on two separate computers, both booting Debian testing, but I don't think the underlying OS has any influence. This rules faulty cache content out.

In fact, it even happens after I've completely deleted the cache manually outside Firestorm.

I've tested various Firestorm versions from 6.3.9 to 7.1.9 today, and they all show this strange behaviour. That is, I do recall having seen the Swiss Cafe properly with all textures in the past, using Firestorm.

A while ago, I tried saving the general settings and all avatar settings, then deleting the entire ~/.firestorm_x64 directory. It didn't change anything.

Eventually, I tried the Cool VL Viewer. It doesn't render that texture either. So it's actually independent from the viewer as well.

Can it be that assets can be damaged by faulty asset servers or something, and that damage spreads all across the Hypergrid and wrecks all copies and all derivatives of the affected content?

Now that the new PBR-enabled Firestorm is out...

https://opensimworld.com/post/110361

...in case you want to experiment with PBR, and you need materials:

ambientCG offers a whole bunch of PBR materials. Not only are they free-of-charge, but they're licensed under Creative Commons CC0 which is practically the public domain.

https://ambientcg.com/list?type=Material,Atlas,Decal

In case you didn't know: Firestorm 7.1.9 has been released yesterday. It's the first release that supports PBR (Physically-Based Rendering).

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-gets-physical-fo...

On the one hand, this means that the Advanced Lighting Model is now permanently on. You can't turn it off again.

On the other hand, Firestorm supports multi-threading now. Firestorm 6 and earlier only ever used one CPU thread. Firestorm 7 can use all of them.

So all fearmongering that you'll need a high-end gaming rig for Firestorm 7 is just that, fearmongering. Unless you've got an absolute toaster that was already built as an absolute toaster, and that has never been powerful enough for virtual worlds, unless you have to turn everything off from transparent water to shaders to light sources, chances are Firestorm 7 will actually be faster than Firestorm 6.

To give you an example: I have a Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB RAM and a Radeon RX590 graphics card with 8GB VRAM. This is nowhere near high-end.

What Firestorm 6 renders with 20-30fps with ambient occlusion and shadows off, Firestorm 7 may render with 50+fps with ambient occlusion and shadows on.

Let's talk about child avatar criteria for a moment.

This is Juno, my little in-world sister. Little as in one year younger. What she's wearing is something she isn't too unlikely to wear these days. It's still quite chilly outside after all.

Those of you who know her won't doubt that she's a grown-up woman. But there's a whole lot about her that may qualify her as an underage avatar. I'm not even joking.

Yes, on the one hand, protection against paedos and their unlawful ageplay is a necessity; see also Safine's most recent post: https://opensimworld.com/post/108176

On the other hand, paedos are trying to circumvent countermeasures. Add to this the most recent drama about Lindens being directly involved in sexual ageplay in Second Life.

As a result, sim owners ramp up their countermeasures. This goes well beyond more and more sims redefining the Adult rating as "G-rated, but no child avatars allowed". It's likely that the signs that an avatar is underage will be "upgraded", too.

And the wide-spread anti-underage paranoia has made them absolutely ridiculous quite a while ago already. There's so much that could qualify Juno here as a kid.

Let me sum it up.

First of all, her height. The most blatant sign and the only one that triggers auto-bans. She's "only" 1.74m which is 5'8½". Many childgates still run on default settings which ban everyone under 1.80m. And I guess their number will increase as more and more sim owners decide that 1.60m or 1.70m doesn't cut it anymore. I'm pretty sure Juno has fallen victim to childgates twice already.

The other criteria are purely visual.

Her shape is somewhat close to realistic. Her head is about ⅛ of her body height which is actually still a bit small for a real-life woman. By OpenSim standards, however, her head is rather large in comparison with her body height. This reeks of a kid shape.

Next, look at her skin tone. In early April in real life, this is a fairly typical skin tone. In OpenSim, however, grown-ups are basically required to have a deep tan. Even most goths have darker skins than Juno. The only avatars with such light skins are child avatars. Well, and Juno, but if you don't know her, you're easy to take her for a kid because her skin is so light.

Now, look at her face. Look at her lips. No pumped-up boat lips. This is what real-life lips look like, but in OpenSim, the only avatars with such thin lips are either male avatars or child avatars. Since she doesn't have a perma-stubble or a full beard, she can't be the former.

Anything else you notice about her face? Right, no make-up whatsoever. Practically all other adult female avatars out there at least wear lipstick. She doesn't even wear that. Well, sometimes she does, but not here, not now. Makes her look like a kid in comparison.

Speaking of make-up, look at her hands. No nail polish. AFAIK, not a single one of the popular female mesh bodies lets you go without nail polish. Especially Athena doesn't. So basically, if a female avatar doesn't wear nail polish, it's either a classic, mesh-less layer-and-prim avatar from, like, 2007 or a child avatar. And Juno doesn't look like she doesn't have a mesh body.

And her hair? Yes, that's a bob. In real life, it was a rather popular hairstyle in the 1960s. In OpenSim, hair significantly shorter than shoulder length is probably the second-most child-like girl hairstyle right after twin pigtails. As an adult woman, she should be expected to have a long lush mane. I've never seen a single female avatar with Paige hair. Black could be a saving throw because little girls are usually blond, but not necessarily.

Let's continue with her clothes.

She's covering a whole lot of skin, more than almost all other female avatars. Granted, most little girl avatars show a whole lot more skin, too. Just look at those super-short skirts that seem to be a requirement for underage girl avatars. But grown-up female avatars are basically expected to do the same. Thus, covering up makes her look less adult.

So does the rather loose fit of her clothes. Adult female avatars may be allowed to wear long denim jeans, but only of the skin-tight kind. But while Juno's jeans are labelled slim fit, they look rather like something a little boy could wear.

Her pullover gives the impression that she doesn't have a waist. You know what other avatars don't have much of a waist? Good thing she doesn't have a petite body because there's no petite variant of her body, otherwise she'd look almost flat in this pullover. Also, that shade of teal might be questionable at least. It'd be worse if that pullover was pink, but she doesn't have it in pink.

Finally, her footwear. She's wearing flat shoes. Adult female avatars are expected to always walk around on 6" heels. In fact, she's even wearing sneakers. Flat sneakers. Even tip-toe sneakers are questionable, but unless worn by a manly man, they're little girl material.

And if that wasn't enough, she's wearing them with white socks. The only hosiery adult female avatars may wear in OpenSim is nylon stockings, Zettai Ryouiki-style, showing skin on the thighs above. Socks are pretty much exclusively worn by children, so what does that make Juno?

I bet that if Juno wore this to events in places whose owners don't know her, chances are she'd be banned on the spot for being a kid. Good thing her usual party styles are of the kind that causes her to be accused of dressing like a grandma instead.

I've finally managed to add some contributions to this year's Cornflakes Week.

I've retextured Clutterfly cuddle lunge chairs, beach towels and bean bag chairs with a Cornflakes theme, all of them with SFposer, of course.

You can pick them up from my shelves in the DropBox.
https://opensimworld.com/hop/91293
Secondary pick-up location: Kaufrausch Mega-Store, Santiago.
https://opensimworld.com/hop/78061

And here's to hoping that the textures won't go blank again anytime soon...

Good news: I've been told that my boxes with Clutterfly SFposer conversions at DropBox couldn't be copied.

I've fixed them; you should be able to copy them now. Buying the contents has always been possible.

Find them here: https://opensimworld.com/hop/91293

Bad news (good news for all you Linda Kellie haters): Zadaroo seems to be offline.

Good news (bad news for all you Linda Kellie haters), in case you haven't heard it yet: The Zadaroo content has been uploaded to the Internet Archive late last year.

Find it this way: https://archive.org/search?query=zadaroo

Also, I've just heard the recommendation to take local copies.

OSgrid has announced a scheduled downtime from Wednesday, January 10th, to Saturday, January 13th.

https://www.osgrid.online/disruptions-downtime/downtime/

Given OSgrid's track record, I could impossibly not meme it.

I've released 14 new boxes with Clutterfly furniture, upgraded to SFposer. One of them is the super-rare Christmas Firepit Set, even the original version of which has become largely unavailable.

Get all 19 boxes in the DropBox in OSgrid or at the Kaufrausch Mega-Store in Santiago in Dorenas World!

https://opensimworld.com/hop/91293
https://opensimworld.com/hop/78061

Does anyone have all the loose items from the Christmas firepit set from Clutterfly?

I'm not looking for the sales box. The sales box as available on all instances of Clutterfly itself is broken. It only contains one tree stump.

So now I'm particularly looking for these items:
Christmas stump with blanket #1
Christmas stump with blanket #12
Christmas Cuddle/Sex Log with blanket #1
Christmas Cuddle/Sex Log with blanket #2

The Tree Stump and the Fire Pit are the same in all firepit sets, so I don't need them.

I've already mentioned that OpenSim has entered the Fediverse several months ago, and that there are even two dedicated Mastodon instances for OpenSim users. One is opensimulator.social (https://opensimulator.social/), run by Buzzy Cnayl of VivoSim (formerly Quintonia, see news below). The other one is opensimsocial.com (https://opensimsocial.com/explore), run by Lone Wolf.

But the Fediverse has more to offer than "Twitter clones" like Mastodon. With Reddit messing up big time currently, the time has come for the "Reddit clones" Lemmy and /kbin to grow.

And just a few days ago, Hyacinth Jean has started a Lemmy community (= subreddit) for OpenSim: https://sh.itjust.works/c/opensim/

If you already have an account somewhere in the Fediverse, e.g. on Mastodon, you can use it to join Lemmy communities. If not, or if you find that too inconvenient, feel free to join Lemmy instead.

For those who don't know: AviTron has essentially closed off its Hypergrid access. See here: https://avitron.net/avitron-hg-access

Technically speaking, the grid is still Hypergrid-enabled, but it only allows selected grids to connect. These grids, in turn, must not have Hypergrid access otherwise.

This means that none of us can access sims on AviTron unless they have an avatar on AviTron.

Now, one could argue that "AviTron is still Hypergrid-enabled" and therefore doesn't break OSW rules. If the rules are taken literally.

But from a practical point of view, AviTron no longer belongs here. Sacrarium had even easier Hypergrid access when it was banned. And since grids normally go all-or-nothing when it comes to Hypergrid access, I suspect that closed grids such as the TAG Grid don't activate Hypergrid access just to connect only to AviTron, not to mention that such grids aren't allowed here either.

Many don't know yet that AviTron has basically cut off Hypergrid access, also because many AviTron sims are still listed on OSW. They try to visit these sims, can't get in and blame it on the sim owners.

I'd say it's time to do something about this.

How come I barely ever see furniture, especially OpenSim-made furniture, with SFposer? It's always either PMAC or, if people don't even know PMAC or dislike its shortcomings, AVsitter.

Maybe it's because nobody knows that SFposer even exists. But it does: (https://opensimworld.com/library?view=44). A starter pack with a copy of the manual can be found on Satyr's sim OpenSimWorld (https://opensimworld.com/hop/74730).

For those who don't know it, and I guess it's most of you: SFposer is an animation controller. Much like AVsitter which can be found in just about all furniture copybotted from SL, probably also because it uses AVsitter in SL already which you can simply replace after the scripts got lost in transition. Very similar to PMAC which is often used in furniture made in and for OpenSim. And somewhat like poseball-based MLP which was state-of-the-art about a decade ago.

In other words, it makes those blue menus that pop up when you sit down on a chair or a bed, and that let you choose your sitting animation. This is what an animation controller does. This is what AVsitter and PMAC do. And this is what SFposer does.

Like PMAC which was created by the same person as the Clubmaster dance ball and those line dance floors, SFposer was made in OpenSim and for OpenSim. Its creator and maintainer is Satyr Aeon, the same person who runs OpenSimWorld and who also gave us the Satyr Farm and SFsail. And it's open-source, but that's what PMAC, AVsitter and MLP are, too.

Now, what's so great about SFposer? In which way shall it be better than PMAC and omnipresent AVsitter?

In general, SFposer combines all advantages of PMAC with almost all advantages of AVsitter. And it adds being the least resource-heavy animation controller on top. SFposer furniture only needs one single script, no matter what. And this one script safely shuts down after use.

If you compare it with PMAC, it's extremely similar. In fact, SFposer is backwards-compatible with PMAC. You can easily convert PMAC furniture to SFposer without even touching the config, just by replacing a few bits and pieces.

Its major advantage over PMAC is that everyone can adjust their position. This has always been AVsitter's killer feature over PMAC. With PMAC, only the owner can adjust positions and even this only by editing the piece of furniture and moving the position markers around. With SFposer, everyone can does that. SFposer is the ultimate animation controller for romantic and especially sex furniture.

Also, while PMAC is already easy on resources, SFposer is even easier. As I've already mentioned, SFposer only uses one script, and this script can do everything. PMAC's main script doesn't offer much beyond basic functionality. Extra functions require plug-ins, i.e. more scripts. SFposer doesn't need plugins.

This advantage is even bigger over AVsitter which is still widely considered the be-all, end-all, ultimate animation controller. AVsitter always needs two scripts per avatar. For absolute bare-bone functionality. A park bench for two needs four scripts at the very least. Any extra feature is an extra script. You want to make an orgy bed for four avatars with some extra bells and whistles? That's a dozen scripts at least. SFposer can do the same with one single script. The same and more.

This also means that SFposer can do stuff out-of-the-box for which AVsitter add-ons are very hard to find, if there are any in the first place. For example, NPCs. Or rezzing props on the furniture. Or rezzing props on avatars, e.g. in their hands. SFposer can put a mug in your hand if you're sitting on a café chair. All with that one script. Okay, the mug itself needs an internal script, but that isn't any different from PMAC.

Besides, SFposer makes it fairly easy for creators to adjust initial avatar positions when making furniture or scripting unscripted furniture. Just like PMAC, you can put it into edit mode, and then you get position marker prims which you can push around. No manually entering coordinates into notecards or something. Speaking of which: If you copy the SFposer settings from another similar but differently-sized piece of furniture, you don't have to re-adjust everything. You can instead enter a general offset for all animation positions. This also makes slapping an invisible prim onto furniture just for animations unnecessary.

AVsitter has only got one major advantage over both SFposer and PMAC: Since it comes from Second Life (don't worry, it's still legal), it's written in LSL, and it works on sims where pretty much all OSSL has been disabled by the sim or grid owner. Exceptions apply whenever an AVsitter-scripted piece of furniture can do something that doesn't exist in Second Life: Since Second Life doesn't have NPCs, you can't control them with LSL; it takes OSSL to control them. Thus, the rare NPC plug-in for AVsitter is written in OSSL.

Some minor advantages include a camera control plug-in and being able to specify different default starter animations for male and female avatars. Mimics control isn't AVsitter-exclusive; it's built into SFposer, too.

Those long-time OpenSim users amongst you who are several years behind in OpenSim technology may still see MLP as state-of-the-art because it was just that in their days. But PMAC already rendered MLP obsolete, and PMAC came before AVsitter.

So here are the advantages over MLP:

You don't have to click the furniture first before using it, nor do you have to wait for SFposer to initialise itself first. You can sit down right on the furniture instead of having to wait for poseballs to rez. There are no poseballs. Again, you can adjust your position even if you aren't the owner of the furniture. You can have NPCs. And it only takes one lightweight script to do what often requires over a dozen CPU-hogging scripts in MLP. MLP is easily the most resource-heavy animation controller out there; SFposer is the most lightweight one.

Fortunately, you can convert furniture from MLP to SFposer. You can also convert it from PMAC or AVsitter to SFposer.

PMAC to SFposer is easy: You throw out all scripts, you drop three items from the SFposer starter pack in, you reset the script, and you're done. Even tinkering with the config is optional. If you have plug-ins, convert their configs with this: https://opensimworld.com/tools/pmac

MLP and AVsitter to SFposer requires a bit more of an effort because you need new notecards. The notecard converter for MLP is here: https://opensimworld.com/tools/mlp2pmac The one for AVsitter's AVpos is here: https://opensimworld.com/tools/avpos2pmac

As we all should know, OSW doesn't allow entries of sims that are closed to the Hypergrid.

IMHO, this should be expanded to sims which are technically connected to the Hypergrid, but only accessible to members of the grid they're on, thereby excluding Hypergrid visitors. For the effect is the same: Nobody from outside the grid gets in.

I'd also include sims which are technically accessible to Hypergrid visitors, but only open for members of a certain closed circle. Nothing wrong with sims only accepting members of a group, but I'd draw a line where even asking the sim owner won't get you an invitation to the group because that group is only for close friends of the sim owner.

I have a suggestion for OpenSimWorld which will also involve the beacon, namely to sort avatars on sims into three categories.


One, staff and residents. These are the avatars that represent the sim owners, residents on homesteads and everyone else who lives and/or works on a sim. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a notecard. The UUID of the owner of the beacon should automatically count as staff.

Staff and residents should count as activity so that you know that someone is on the sim, but not influence the popularity.


Two, bots and decorational avatars. These are the avatars that are mere decoration and that serve similar purposes as NPCs, but that aren't NPCs for whichever reasons. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a separate notecard.

Bots and decorational avatars should be treated the same as NPCs. They should neither count as activity nor influence the popularity. (Downside, admittedly: They could be used as flies on the wall to monitor sims.)


Three, visitors. These are the avatars that aren't on any notecard.

Only they will influence the popularity.


This will require new beacons. But this could be done in such a way that OSW will treat all avatars detected by old beacons like staff and residents. Activity will be shown, but it won't have any impact on your sim's popularity unless you replace your beacon. You want your popularity ranked, then get a new beacon. You can't be bothered to replace your beacon, then say buh-bye to your popularity.

The sim entries on OSW would require another change: The avatars graph would have to be split into two colours, one for staff and residents, one for visitors. This would show if staff is present (not whether it's AFK, though) if a sim isn't a homestead, and it'd also show whether staff and residents are correctly listed as such.

In order to enforce the correct use of the new beacon, each sim that's caught not listing staff, residents or bots as such will have its visitor count set to Inaccurate until it has proven to have fixed the issue.

Anyone on Mastodon already? Or elsewhere in the Fediverse? I know some of you are, I've already got almost two dozen contacts from OpenSim. Mal Burns is already there, the maker of Inworld Review, as are Austin Tate a.k.a. Ai Austin, the maintainer of Ruth2 and Roth2 with a separate account for his avatar, and vrsimility who rebuilds Liverpool's Old Dock in OpenSim (in case you've seen it at OSCC21), just to name a few.

If you consider the switch from the Birdsite to the Fediverse, or if you generally want to dive into free and decentral social networking, I've got good news for you:

There is now a Mastodon instance for OpenSim users: https://opensim.world/

In spite of its name, I don't think it's that affiliated with OSW, maybe not yet. It comes from Quintonia, you know, who brought you the Satyr Farm enhancements.

So this may be a better place for you to go than the big and overloaded instances if you're an OpenSim user.

Anyway, whether you're already there or interested in joining, see you soon!

https://mashable.com/article/tuvalu-metaverse-country-clim...

Anyone else thinking this could be a use case for OpenSim? A Tuvalu Grid?

Tuvalu is 9 islands with 10 square kilometres altogether. In raw land mass, that'd be 10 4x4 varsims which is almost laughable. Even if you remap this to Tuvalu's actual topography, that'd be not only still considerably smaller than Wolf Territories, but mostly sailable water.

In fact, this begs for SFsail. Also, lots of tropical beaches = potential surf spots. Nothing that hasn't been done before.

Not to mention that OpenSim has vastly better graphics than everything else that labels itself "metaverse" nowadays.

I guess most other in-world assets such as buildings would be scratch-made, although creators like Bibiana Bombinante could provide some decoration.

Crazy day today. Two full fashion shows in five hours.

Greetings from Juno, she has been one of the models at the first fashion show at Artdestiny. Her first time as a model, and that was in front of more than 40 spectators. Six times out on the catwalk, four scheduled, another two spontaneously taken over from a model who had fallen ill as she told me.

So now we've recently had quite some drama about a crossplayer. Someone who uses at least one avatar whose gender isn't his own.

Being tricked into virtual sex and then ghosted if you were hoping for something permanent is one thing. The sudden discovery of avatars who are NOT the virtual representations of real-life people but completely unrelated to their users is another thing.

The biggest issue seems to be avatars with genders different from their users'. Or rather, people not knowing that this smouldering hot lady is a GIRL (Guy In Real Life). From this, demands arose that all cross-playing avatars shall inform people that they're cross-playing avatars. Some may even demand a total ban on cross-playing.

On the other hand, there are users whose avatars aren't them, and who want to keep their real lives as secret as possible. They also don't want to know anything about the users behind other avatars, especially not without asking first. OpenSim is a role-play to them, and real life breaks immersion.

Now, the question is: What'd be the best practice then?

Keeping it secret may end up in awkward situations with avatars that are virtual representations of their real-life users instead of fictional role-play characters. Blurting it out without being asked (female avatar arriving at a party: "Hi, I'm a cishet guy in real life!") leaves a lot of people with TMI (Too Much Information).

But there actually is a standard place for real-life information. And your real-life gender is exactly that, real-life information. That place is in your avatar profile.

No, not the "2nd life" page, the first page you see when you open your profile or someone else's. That page is exclusively for in-world information about your avatar.

The place for real-life information about you is on the "1st life" page. That and only that is also where a real-life photograph of you should go if you absolutely have to have one in our avatar profile. And that's the right place to tell people about your real-life gender.

A big advantage of this is that people who check your profile because they're interested in your avatar but not in your real life won't have real-life information about you slapped into their faces. The "1st life" page is not the first thing you see when looking at someone's profile.

Granted, this practice isn't perfect. There are people who find it inconvenient to have to navigate through a profile, and who demand all information they want to know be served to them on a silver platter, i.e. on the very first profile page. Others don't want to read profiles at all (or anything, in fact), they want male crossplayers with female avatars to tell them right away that they're guys in real life without themselves asking for it. The real-life information they want to know would be readily available to them, they just can't be bothered to look it up.

But I guess there are also people who don't want to see any real-life information in avatar profiles, who don't even want to accidentally stumble upon it by clicking on the wrong tab, because they don't want to know anything about the real-life people behind avatars, at least not more than necessary.

Stil, going this "official" way should be good enough for most people.