I love building in OpenSim, but I don’t love the process of finding or creating textures. It’s hard to find just the right one, and even harder to figure out its license terms. All those texture packs floating around — are they legitimate? Or are they ripped off from Second Life? For a while, anytime …
How to create seamless tileable textures in Midjourney (plus free alternatives) Read More »
(Image by Maria Korolov via Midjourney.) Last Friday, AltspaceVR announced that will be shutting down its virtual environment in March. AltspaceVR was a consumer-focused immersive space that could be accessed either via the desktop or through a virtual reality headset. Since its launch in 2016, the platform has hosted big names and quickly became the …
(Image by Maria Korolov via Midjourney.) On Nov. 30, OpenAI released a beta of its ChatGPT chatbot to the public — for free. It is currently, hands-down, the best text and code generator out there. Within the first six days, more than a million people signed up to use it. They’re using it to write …
It’s that time of the year again — when we survey our readers about what they think of the OpenSim grid where they spend the most time. With hundreds of grids out there, we limited the built-in choices to the top ten, as of the last stats report, but people can also write in the …
As OpenSim technology continues to improve, prices are dropping. The average 15,000-prim region in OpenSim is now $12.89 a month. The median price is now $10 a month, unchanged from what we had in 2021, but the average has fallen more than $2, from $15.18 last year. And that number is deceptive since some grids …
OpenSim prices drop to lowest average ever, under $13 per month Read More »
(Image courtesy Avacon.) The tenth annual OpenSimulator Community Conference is scheduled for December 10 and 11, and the call for proposals is now open. “We’re interested in your wonderful content, insights, and accomplishments. We hope that you can join us for our tenth year celebrating the current and future use of open source virtual worlds …
Tenth Annual OpenSimulator Community Conference set for December Read More »
A new art installation has its grand opening today, Monday, Sep. 12, at 1 p.m. Pacific time on the Craft World grid, the second contribution to the Ukraine Borderland Art Project. The installation, Ukraine Victory 2025, is by artist Rage Darkstone. The hypergrid address is craft-world.org:8002:Ukraine (Image courtesy Reiner Schneeberger.) The installation is a “lyrical and …
If you want to try high-end consumer virtual reality headset, one that’s not part of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ecosystem, the best options are the headsets that you tether to a PC. One that I haven’t tried yet is the HP Reverb G2 VR headset. And it’s discounted today, from $599 down to $399. It’s compatible …
OSgrid’s OSG15b1 region. (Image courtesy Maria Korolov.) OSgrid, the largest grid in land area and active user numbers, will celebrate its 15th birthday starting on Monday, July 25. The celebration will run through July 31. “We’ll have live music and DJs to entertain us as we celebrate everything that is OSgrid,” grid president Wizard Atazoth. …
(Image courtesy Reiner Schneeberger.) The Metropolis grid will shut down on midnight on June 30. But before one of the oldest OpenSim grids closes for good, it will be the site of the premiere performance of a play by Reiner Schneeberger. The play is titled “The Art Giantess Is The Work: Thea von Harbou,” and …
Last night, Google sent me a message that I could have one of its virtual AI-powered voices record my audiobooks for me. I wrote an article about for MetaStellar here: Google offers free AI-powered audiobook narration. (AI-generated illustration based on image via Pixabay.) You can edit the finished file to fix pronunciation mistakes and then …
Google offers free AI-powered audiobook narration Read More »
Just like Brandon Sanderson, I, too, have been busy during this pandemic. In fact, I’ve written more than ten new books. Take that, Sanderson! Okay, most of them are really short. His books are 400 pages long. My books are shorter. Krim Deeds, for example, is 150 pages. But, on the plus side, you don’t …
(Image courtesy Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education.) The educational play “We Are Going to Lviv” is back for a single performance tonight on the Meta region of the OpenSim Community Conference grid. The trip was originally part of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2022 conference and is an artistic journey that spans …
Ukraine play returns for encore this morning on OSCC Read More »
An OSgrid shop titled “From Ukraine with Love” that sells items in support of Ukraine on OSgrid’s Big Easy region. (Image courtesy The Big Easy.) So I just got a warning in my email inbox from a “touche@1studi.ru.” The domain name is associated with a company that runs a couple of Russia-based OpenSim grids. Apparently, …
“Metaverse” is a word thrown around a lot lately, and its meaning seems to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. Here’s a breakdown of the most common definitions. (Image courtesy Julien Tromeur via Pixabay.) Metaverse as virtual reality The term “metaverse” was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. He …
