Prince's Passions

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He's Prince Amor, or 'the PrinceofAmor' - his precise name fluctuates, but for simplicity's sake let's just call him Prince - is pretty new to Opensim. He's only been here two or three years, but of course he's got a whole lot of SL experience under his belt from before. Safari goers will be well familiar with his Solar System build on OSgrid which we toured back in September. There's much more Amor on OSgrid, and hopefully over time we will get to explore the trippy Maze of the Mind, or his Star Trek build, and perhaps his automotive sim with over 300 cars, just to mention a handful of his personal sims. Along with these, he is known as the landlord of about 100 sims; his renters are either on OSgrid, or have Dreamgrid sims. It's always informative to get someone's take on the two platforms, especially if they're a fairly recent arrival, and it will be interesting to see if your observations are in tune with his. 

Prince Amor

I asked first of all for him to give us an overview of his experience in Opensim and the Other Place.

Prince Amor: Both experiences for me were about the same. When Second Life first started people there were helpful and kind. I was quite worried over privacy in Second Life at the time and they helped me a good while there. Gifts etc....things were free or close to it. Of course when Second Life first started Osgrid and it were one and the same. So it was the same kind of people. I do believe Second Life is not the same place now as it was, I believe it is because the good kind people came to Osgrid. I wish I had known of Osgrid then, but such was not talked about in the circles I was in.

Earth, on Prince's Solar System region

Back in SL, Prince already had quite a bit of experience with tenants on his land.

Prince Amor:  We did alright with it, though always the residents got a better deal for land than we did. SL charges you to buy Linden $, and then they also charge you money to cash out etc. In my opinion, Premier accounts there killed the chances of any person making money for renting out land. One can offer people things sometimes that make it worth doing, but in general if you are renting land in SL to people you are going to lose money. There are many here in opensim that had those kinds of bad and sad experiences in SL. The only person making money renting the land in Second Life is the one Asian millionaire that bought it all up when around the time the premiere accounts came out.

(He's talking about Anshe Chung, if you're curious.) 

By Jupiter !

Far from a land grabber, and far from the dirty dealings of SL, Prince's idea is to help people to have a place in opensim to call home, but he charges rates for that - you've probably seen signs all around the place about it, and here's his website. He has a very specific philosophy on that subject.

Prince Amor: I charge for land because when I left it free for over a year, but I found people would not build on the gift, and they would often abuse my time. I think it is part of the human condition to do such. Setting a price like I did gave me my life back. I feel all my renters are awesome smart people. I don't see abuse. I see people creating like crazy building beautiful things. I get to help them. It is a privilege.

Prince Amor dressed as a Borg

That big Solar System build is really tricky to navigate if you're not on the tour, and all the Safaristas who visited agreed it must have been mad difficult to build. So - why'd he do it, and how?

Prince Amor: I love science fiction. I love working in blender and scripting. I am most proud of my starship on the terran movie project. I cried a good bit the day the mesh came in. Still I am in awe of how much room there is there. I am also very happy with my Solar system model. Biggest challenge with that was Jupiter is the biggest thing ever and sits in the middle. It literally takes up half the sim. It was a challenge to figure out how to spread them out so that one had to hunt for each. We have more distance going up than the size of the sim, so the challenge was a scripting one to make the planes fly up without turning over. Had to keep it all on a slant. While Osgrid was down for maintenance I made it a 9x9 and it seemed to run alright. 

Pink Ice and Susanne Veil

Undaunted if a just little impatient to see the end of Opensim's maintenance, Pink Ice and Susanne Veil were on Maze of the Mind Dream when I dropped in. I asked them to tell me something about Prince.

Pink Ice: he is a great person always willing to help others and talented

Susanne Veil: he dont look the same 2 days... each day a new avatar or changing big parts, may be he is overloading osgrid asset server with it ! / giggles

Come to think of it, it's true - he never looks the same twice. One of Prince's principal passions is the automotive world, and on his region Maze Dream Car, he demonstrated his supercar - it flies, and runs on land and water too. He spooled up the sim on his Dreamgrid to show how it works. A fantastic track, including two towers with spiral roadways, encircles the sim - and with this car, even if you crash a bit, well voila you can turn a land drive into a flight and nobody will even notice.

Prince Amor: Once one knows Blender nothing is difficult to build any more. I Literally feel like a factory often. Learning blender was a huge challenge for me, a professional pianist. Took over a year. I am an aggressive learner, at worse I emptied the brains of the geniuses I was blessed to meet in opensim and they went insane. I am thankful for Foxx Bode, Dan Banner, Mike Lowrey, Ada Radius, and Kayaker Magic for their patience as I probed them relentlessly. Now I am more quiet, still learn something new every day. AI is going to be quite a thing with mesh it is getting easier daily. Knowing things allows me to help others now which is what makes me happy.

Prince Amor on his Dreamgrid

Prince Amor: I admire Osgrid and believe it is the very foundation of what we have. The blessing of knowledgeable volunteers and residents that are kind and helpful make it just right for me. It is a very utopian feel to me. I consider myself a peaceful anarchist.  I have found that things across the grids is just not conducive to building a community. Friends can't see each other, groups don't float, databases don't talk with each other.  Osgrid is also the most cutting edge. PBR is BEAUTIFUL.  I also run a Dreamgrid. I always have. Dreamgrid does not support that yet. There is also of course the constant dread of database failure. If one runs your own grid, one prays that MySQL runs proper, and that your hard drive does not fill up.

Prince Amor: Osgrid is down as we are speaking, because of such worries. I just believe at the moment it is safer and wiser to contribute to Osgrid the best I can, like all the profits from renting, than to lose sleep over a broken machine.

HG Addresses 

hg:80:Maze ofthe Mind 

hop://maze.outworldz.net:8002/Maze%20Dream%20Cars/588/244/27

 hop://maze.outworldz.net:8002/Maze%20of%20the%20Mind%20Dream/183/74/21