3rd Rock Grid : Will CLOSE on May 15 2024 !!

By Avatar : JayR Cela

Impromptu, Unscheduled 3rd Rock Grid Community Meeting, March 30 2024 @1:00pm grid time.

Location :: hop://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/Community%20Bravo/122/127/...

In case some 3rd Rock Grid residents that may still not be aware that the grid WILL CLOSE ! on May 15 2024 !

Efforts are currently underway to preserve some portions of 3RG and move what we can onto another grid. This hopefully will include as much as possible, however this may also require some additional work on our (current residents) part, to make this transition as seamless as possible. In order to do so it is important that if you are interested, that you attend this meeting, and the subsequent weekly meetings now scheduled thru April and part of May 2024 

Please note these meetings are for current and or past 3rd Rock Grid residents only, unless you have been specifically invited as a guest speaker then,  please attempt to contact your current friend(s) in 3RG and request an invitation.

Thank you.

JayR Cela

3RD Rock Grid : 3rd oldest Open Sim Grid Slated for closure May 15 2024

By Avatar: JayR Cela

    I am very sad to announce what seems to be the inevitable closure of the historical 3RD Rock Grid in OpenSim. I say historical because it is notable as being the 3rd official OpenSim grid to open for business many,many years ago. I joined 3RD Rock in early 2011, shortly after it opening and have been calling it my virtual home away from home since then. Due to a recent series of cascading events our servers are inaccessible by our Adim team, below I will post a portion of my transcript copied during our last community meeting date March 23 2024. 

[13:09] David7 Bravin: 5. GRID ISSUES.

[13:10] David7 Bravin: Anyone ?

[13:11] David7 Bravin: If not .....

[13:11] David7 Bravin: moving on to...

[13:11] David7 Bravin: 6. ANY OTHER BUSINESS

[13:11] David7 Bravin: Eldovar ?

[13:11] Eldovar Lamilton: yes, thank you

[13:12] Eldovar Lamilton: As all of you have noticed of the past one and a half years, fate has hit us hard during the past time.

[13:13] Eldovar Lamilton: 1. It all started when we lost our system administrator from one day to the other without any further notice. We were left without access and documentation to the grid, and the person refused any further contact. To the day we have no idea why he reacted as he did, because from our perspective there was no reason at all to do so, our relationship seemed good, he received much more than the money he requested for the work he did.

[13:14] Eldovar Lamilton: It took us a long time to get access to the servers again. And the biggest problem that remained was, that he had rewritten (and improved) a few core parts of the Opensim software, but other than agreed, he never gave us the source code of those program parts.

[13:15] Eldovar Lamilton: 2. In October last year we lost one of our most important servers: the one that was running the Starfleet regions and many more important regions, we call it server 107.  Kira Tiponi worked hard to get that server replaced and managed to restore all the regions that were there and finally, at the beginning of January this year, she succeeded.  The plan was, that she shows nme everything she has done and gives me full access to the new server 107 at the beginning of February this year.

[13:16] Eldovar Lamilton: 3. In January, we got the sad message, that Kira has passed away. She did not have time to pass over all the information that she had and that was necessary to access the new server.

[13:16] Eldovar Lamilton: This was the final stroke to the grid as well.

[13:17] Eldovar Lamilton: Despite all our efforts, the situation now is, that we don't have access to all the servers - I still try to get access to the server housing company where the physical bare metal servers are running. Even with that, we do not have access to all our servers, those few that we have access to, we cannot manage because the system administrator that helped us move from the Florida servers to the new servers in Europe, has rewritten some crucial part of the software, and we don't have the source code to it (as mentioned above).

[13:18] Eldovar Lamilton: To summarize the situation: this grid is not manageable anymore.

[13:18] Eldovar Lamilton: As a consequence, we have decided heavy heartedly, to shut down 3RG.

[13:19] Eldovar Lamilton: end

[13:20] Thoria Millgrove: Next month will make 15 years since I rezzed in 3rd Rock Grid

[13:20] Georgina Mills: 3rd oldest Opensim grid closes, I wish it wasn't so!

So in a nutshell that’s the story. If there is any assistance or advice you may have to offer, please feel free to contact me at 

jayr.cela@gmail.com

I will present any information during our next community meeting scheduled for April 6 2024 at 1:00pm grid time, 3rd Rock Grid is tentatively scheduled for official closure May 15th 2024

 Thank you.

JayR Cela

3rd Rock Grid : The Great Central Lake : August 2023 update

 By Avatar JayR Cela

    I have been working on this project in 3rd Rock, the OpenSim grid, for about 8 years or longer, all that time I have been trying to recreate a conglomeration of some of the many wondrous places I was able to visit and explore across the USA in my youth.  I have to admit that I enjoy the beauty of nature, especially lakes and rivers, creeks and so on. I also enjoy boating, especially power boats and other high performance watercraft. 

    The problem is I can not afford any sort of life other than the one I have, fixed income, low rent subsidised apartment, and it is not to bad, I have nothing to complain about. So I wanted to create my fantasy world. I have been gradually working on this project, and I doubt if it will ever end.

    I want to honor a deceased friend and one of the founders of 3rd Rock Grid, and the Great Central Lake 

Zinnia Frenzy : may she RIP

    Without her similar vision to mine, this project would have never become the project is becoming.  Also thanks to Dolfke Barbosa, Thoria Millgrove, Kira Tiponi, and way to many other people to list here, also special thanks to Emerson Ronas, and Light Sprite. So I say thank you everyone for contributing your ideas and making available so many free building assets.

      I am just waiting to show off -  share some pictures of the recently completed North East shore lines, with special thanks to all of the other friends I have met over the years, and now, I invite you for a look at the pictures and a visit.

    There are many full perm assets available.

JayR Cela :_)

grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002:Great Central Lake

grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002:Great Central Lake

 

Open Sim : Firestorm Viewer : Linux : Voice : and the Flatpak installation BLOCKED ! Updated mid September 2023

 By Avatar JayR Cela

Article Update : mid September 2023 the link is working properly again too install the latest available viewer.

___________________________________________________________________________________

     I don't get riled up very often about much of anything, however sometimes I do get a bit pissed off at narrow minded idiotic reactions to people just trying to use some OPEN SOURCE software in order to actually be able to use the Voice function while using the FireStorm virtual world viewer software while in a Linux desktop environment

    A bit of a background, several years ago the company that supplies the Vivox voice services made a decision to no longer support the Linux platform. This resulted in the loss of the Voice feature in OpenSim and SecondLife for all Linux users.

    This problem was able to be solved by using the Wine  https://www.winehq.org/ Windows programs  compatibility layer to run native Windows based programs while using your Linux desktop, and for the most part it works well. 

    There are a number of questionable issues that are of concern, this Flatpak, that is no longer working will download several window manager packages that are no longer supported and labeled so, at this point things get kinda weird, and it depends on which fork of the FireStorm project you download and use.

    It seems to me that the Flathub Firestorm download is currently not only Broken it is : FORBIDDEN

─ $ ▶ flatpak update

Looking for updates…

        ID                                  Branch Op Remote  Download

 1. [✗] org.firestormviewer.FirestormViewer stable u  flathub 1.0 kB / 168.3 MB

Error: While downloading https://downloads.firestormviewer.org/linux/Phoenix-FirestormOS-Releasex64-6-6-8-68380.tar.xz: Server returned status 403: Forbidden

Updates complete.

error: There were one or more errors

jayr @ action1  ~

└─ $ ▶ 

   What pisses me off is, I can not use Voice while using a Linux based computer, without the ridiculous workaround of installing WINE in order to have it function properly.

I guess that the Firestorm team is following Redhat when they will no longer allow access to the source code.

   This is just DUMB....

Jessica Lyon / please help us.

Article Update : mid September 2023 the link is working properly again too install the latest available viewer.

Open Sim supposed friends who scam you,or were they just in over their head bragging?

 By Avatar JayR Cela    

    I really needed to relax before I finally decided to post this. Yes my home grid, the one I consider home after being a resident for 12 years was ripped off by two people, one of them who was a long time trusted resident. I guess we should have known better that when you meet a know it all wind bag, you need to watch out before paying them any type of real currency to do a job they were not qualified to undertake in the first place, so shame on us. I will not be publishing the names of the persons involved or my home grids name. 

JayR :_(

    

Open Sim : Hypergrid : Scam Artists and Con Men : What do you do?

By Avatar AjayR Cela

     This is a subject I really thought I would never have to bring up here in Open Sim. I am talking about people that perpetuate a persona of them actually believing they are the Master Guru in OS and He or She possess's such vast amounts of knowledge in the Open Sim Universe, no one can compare.

      Or is this person a con artist ?

    The best part is when they sell you their non-existence services, and once they make numerous excuses, for why things are not working you are left holding the bag.

    These are scams.

I am about to expose a major one. 

OpenSim : Hypergrid : Firestorm Viewer for Linux now available as a Flatpak

By Avatar JayR Cela :     

    If you are a Linux user more than likely your familiar with the Flatpak application distribution method of publishing user applications, along with others such as Snaps and App Images. There are pros and cons to all three methods, my personal feelings favor Flatpaks over the later two, and I recently found the Firestorm viewer available on FlatHub : the Firestorm Viewer page. : https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.firestormviewer.FirestormViewer. This page does list an older and SL specific version of FS, however as is typical with Flatpak apps, the most recent version and with Opensim logins enabled is the one used during installation. It also seems that Vivox voice is working natively in Linux again as I can see the voice indicator  dot operate correctly above my avatars head as I key up the mic. I have not had a chance to test this with someone yet.

And this info is listed in the viewer Help > About Firestorm menu.

 Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.02.07

Dullahan: 1.12.2.202202071031

  CEF: 91.1.23+g04c8d56+chromium-91.0.4472.164

  Chromium: 91.0.4472.164

LibVLC Version: Using gstreamer 1.0

Voice Server Version: Vivox 3.2.0002.10426 

    If so this would mean no more having to use the Windows version of FS via WINE, just in order to use the voice feature again. Yay :_)

     One thing I need to mention here is the Firestorm team does not recommend the download and installation of their viewers from anywhere other than those linked on the official FS Web site. You have been warned. 

     My experience using Flathub and Flatpaks via my distributions Application Store over the past two years have been good, problems encountered so far were minimal and minor, also Flatpaks by design are run in a sandboxed environment, so the likelihood of a virus or trojan infecting you system are extremely low. As always do a full system backup before any unrecommended application install, and you should be fine.

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : Hypergrid : Griefer Defense the Easyway for Estate Managers

     Opensim has traditionally been considered by many resident's as being griefer free, or close to it. This is not the case recently, unfortunately one or more bad actors are spreading pain around the Hypergrid. Why they do it is not worth debate, what is worth talking about is how easy it can be to thwart, discourage and prevent it from happening to you. I am assuming that you have estate manager privileges and the land is set to a particular group with by invitation only group membership.

      Once all of these parameters are verified, simply go into your about land settings and select options, in the everyone section turn off the build, object entry and run scripts check box's.

      This is your best and easiest way to implement a solution that I know of.

JayR Cela :_)

 

OpenSim~HyperGrid : Update : New Graphics Card for OpenSim on a $300.00 Budget

By Avatar JayR Cela

     Recently I was talking about my new PNY-Nvidia-Quadro T600 video card and how it works in OpenSim environments. This thing is a monster for my 3rd Generation Intel i7 3770 with 16 Gig of ram computer, it seems to be a good match for the computer a DELL Optiplex 7010 MT, with no discernable bottlenecks between the the 8 year old Intel i7 and the new GPU, it was an easy way to upgrade my HyperGrid user experience,while not emptying my bank account on an overpriced Nvidia RTX or AMD XT based card along with a power supply upgrade too.

    I paid $269.95+tax at NewEgg online and $24 for two Mini Display Port to DVI adaptors, so I was just a bit over my budget, I am very impressed with the results I am getting in OpenSim. In closing I would like to say, depending on your circumstances I would highly recommend the card.  

JayR Cela :_)

        

Upgrading my Graphics Card for OpenSim on a Budget

 By Avatar JayR Cela :

     Wow the words "on a budget" in current video card deals is a bad joke at best. I have purchased a new Nvidia T600 video graphics card recently / it is the same Tensor Core silicon used in the 20xx and 30xx series of cards / it is designed for entry level workstation graphics production and has by current standards a low price tag / it has 640 CUDA cores / 128 bit 4gig GDDR6 memory and 1.709 TFLOPS and 4 MiniDisplay Port outputs / it is state of the art low priced brand new card and is already being sold for prices way above MSRP / I paid $300 US for mine and is currently going for $400 US / was it worth it ? / yes and no / in OpenSim I did gain about 10 to 15 FPS for some situations / others not so much / in other non OpenSim related graphics programs ( retro game emulation ) it is a huge improvement from my previous Nvidia GT730 1 Gig DDR3 card / the thing I like the best about this particular card is that it does not require any additional power besides that supplied by the PCIe slot, and will work in low profile computer cases as well.

I'm just passing this information along/ for opensim use only and at $300 US was a bit expensive, however I feel it was worth it.

JayR Cela :_)