.:: අවකාශයක පියසටහන් ::.: Stepping into 3D social networking

Hi Bloggers,

Today I experience you a special peace of 3D world which is innovated over the digital universe for years. Technically we called it as virtual worlds. 3D reproduction of real world has been engaged a lots of research studies in past years but it is commercial and end user stage now. More specialized versions of 3D worlds are famous as same as the well-known social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter. Those social platforms are limited see news updates, voice or textual commutation, etc. Same features are available in virtual worlds but it also allows user to become immersed in a 3D simulated world. That is the major motivation behind3D virtual worlds.

Virtual Seminar in Second Life

There are large growth of 3D virtual worlds for social networking suchas Active World, OsGrid and Second Life.Second Life is the massively growing online virtual among others. It is used as a platform forday today needs of human being.

SL interactive environment

When comparing active user statics of second life, it has over 1 million where Facebook has over 1.8 billion users. One of biggest barrier for having such gap is that users still need more resources and specific software installation to experience virtual social networking. Usually users need a good Graphic card in computer to simulate graphics. And users are required to install 3^rd party viewers like, Second Life client or Hippo OpenSim viewer. 3D scene has much data overhead than viewing a webpage so that good internet connectivity is also required. Second Life is propriety platform so that many features are on demand for payments.

You will have your 3D representation which is called ‘Avatar’ in the simulation. Due to this fascinating interactive environment users can do their imaginary thinking. It is also created a business platform over 3D interactive virtual worlds.

Users can dress up avatars, visiting world famous cities, do adventures, education, shopping, interacting with people from different cultures and make relationships. Therefore users are also called residence in virtual worlds. This is one of the reasons that organizations and business communities tend to recreate their business presence in Second Life.

Fantacy in SL

Usage of virtual worlds as developers

There are open source platforms for creating virtual worlds yourself and populated it online. OpenSim is the best free and open source server platform for hosting virtual worlds.If you are new to OpenSim it is better to understand the simulation process in standalone mode first. When you are using OpenSim as a simulation engine you will have a good community support with strong documentation. Meantime you can reuse huge number of virtual objects and regions which are already created by developers. Here are the steps of configure OpenSim in Windows.

First you have to solve certain dependencies which OpenSim requires. Latest .NET Framework 3.5 is required for windows.

· Download the latest OpenSim simulator distribution.

· Unzip the package and go to /bin.

· In bin folder you will find OpenSim launcher. (32-bit version of Windows: OpenSim.exe and 64-bit version of Windows: OpenSim.32BitLaunch.exe)

· As you are running the OpenSim for first time you have to set up a region and a user account. Give the proper answerer in the command prompt. These settings are written in to /bin/Region/Reagons.ini file.

1. New region name – This is the name for your region.

2. Region UUID – Unique ID of your region. You can keep the default value.

3. Region Location – This is the location of your region in the grid. You can safely leave these as the default (1000, 1000).

4. Internal IP address / Port – IP address and Port to connect to your region.

5. One here onwards you can leave other parameters as default. But if you are using OpenSim 0.7 or later you need to create an estate manager account. In standalone mode you will ask to create an state manage account. Don’t forget the account of the master avatar (in 0.6.9) or the estate manager (in 0.7 and later). These user accounts allow you to configure the in-world settings for your region and you can use the account to perform your initial login test. In addition to that you can create a user with ‘create user’ command other than an estate manager.

There are many 3rd party viewers to connect with OpenSim and view your region. Install one of them on your pc and lunch the viewer program. Before connecting make sure the server ‘OpenSim.exe’ is up and running. Enter first name, last name and password of the user account.