Fair Test

 Today was the OSWF test  and about a dozen or so showed up to see how the gigantic sim - the equivalent of 64 normal size sims, and now pretty much complete with all the exhibits, stages, and decorations -  was able to handle the heat.

If you're wondering why you don't see the sim listed on opensimworld, or find the address pasted all over the place, well there's a good reason for that. The team want to try to keep early bird visitors to a minimum. 

Their idea is that the crowd should get the full impact of the place on opening day, which is Saturday March 1, when they'll be having a vibrant range of 4 musical guests - DJs and a live singer -  doing 30 minute sets on different, themed stages, with a repeat show later, just to get energy levels buzzing. 

For full details of the Fair's schedule, which features at least one party or other gathering on every day of the thirty day duration, go to the OSWF website  and connect with their calendar. And once the event is about to begin, you'll get plenty of publicity about when and where to visit!

The Fair features many distinctive and beautiful venues

Dings Digital: finally another fantastic opportunity to discover the creativity and individuals in opensim, and the team and neighbors are so interesting and friendly.

The OSWF crew are voicey, so rather than be spread out all across the sim and snap bits off the builds, they had us meet up in this super spherical sitting room, that is an art work all to itself. 

The chairs here are comfy and the view spectacular. Somebody mansplained how voice works to me, I always enjoy that, and we also talked a little about the challenge that recent events over on OSGrid have had a knock on effect over here on Wolf Territories Grid.

Lone Wolf: We have had over 100 regions move over to Wolf Territories from OSGrid in the past few days. That has involved a lot of work, and I have been very busy. 

Poor Lone, he coughed a lot - he's recovering from what sounds like the flu also! Lone went on to reassure that even though right now the grid is working overtime to absorb the assets of the new residents, this is just a momentary situation, and there's no reason to think that it won't all be cleared up in good time for the Fair's opening day.

Lone explained that his system involves high availability clusters of servers, with plenty of redundancy built into the system. This allows him to move stuff around dynamically, if a the need arises. He can also increase the amount of processor power to allow for the inevitably large call on resources that the fair makes, due to all the thousands of textures, objects, and scripts. This will of course be even higher when a big crowd is here enjoying all these goodies, but he sounded quietly confident, which is always a boost to everyone's optimism moving forward.

Some of the goodies at the Fair

Lone Wolf: It's been a huge learning experience, and it's a pleasure to have the Fair here on Wolf Territories Grid. The event will supply us with plenty of data that we will be able to study, and see where we can improve moving forward.

Now, I know what you're thinking, that's a photo of Fair organizer Cooper Swizzle, not Lone Wolf, and you're right. Wolf was completely invisible to me on the sim and I was nursing a framerate somewhere between 2 and 4 even with graphics set as mercifully low as I could go. None of us was exactly peaking on performance for this test, but that didn't stop us getting up and doing a bit of a dance, just to get the into the zone - it's all going to be alright on the night!

It's incredible how much this team and all the participants have accomplished in the months leading up to the big day on March 1. Overcoming obstacles, fielding issues of every kind, has given them a unique view of what opensim is and what it can do. 

So, looking back on the experience so far, what has been the most important positive in all this for the other two Fair organizers?

Kimm and Koshari

Koshari Mahana: I would say, making new friends. Also, another interesting thing has been - getting out of my usual comfort zone. My main build is the 19th century themed region Coopersville. It tends to stick to the muted tones of that era, so I have really enjoyed becoming more colorful in my building!

Kimm Starr: This has been crash course in building. We have learnt to be quick at building! Another great thing has been that we have been using chatgpt to convert scripts from x engine into y engine and dot net.  Also, for me, discovering more of opensim, coming to realize just how big it is, has been really interesting. 

Opensim World's Fair begins on March 1, make sure you check their website and join their Discord to keep fully informed.