Last week I was tasked with attempting to create a 'virtual world' for a training environment. Full on PowerPoint Slides, VOIP, etc in a training room type environment. Well, as I have never really played with SecondLife, or any other type of Virtual World, I did some digging.
It looks like VirtualWorld environment's are the next big thing (and they still are 8+ years later since SecondLife came out). More and more I read articles online how big companies such as IBM, Sun and HP are using SecondLife (and their own internal Virtual World Servers) to host conferences, webcasts, and training sessions for their staff and the public.
As a matter of fact, not only are companies using Virtual Worlds to host various public functions; but also creating 'Virtual Data Centers'. Case in point, IBM's Virtual Data Center. IBM has special software that allows System's Administrators to monitor and administer their Data Centers, in a virtual environment.
So, while surfing around the internet for VirtualWorld servers, I came across OpenSimulator. You can create a stand-alone server, or attach it to other virtualworlds through osgrid.org. As the developers do their testing in Ubuntu, I downloaded and installed the latest Ubuntu Server and started up OpenSimulator. The wiki page located on their website is pretty self-explanatory, walking you through step-by-step on setting up your own virtual world.
The one problem that I did come across, was using either the Hippo Viewer or SecondLife Client to connect to the Instance. Both Hippo Viewer and SecondLife Client had my avatar as a 'ghost'. I found that other people had these problems, and the solution was to create hair for your avatar, and the ghost would go away. Strange Quirk, but it worked!
I wouldn't have been able to get this setup and troubleshooted without the excellent help from freenode.net's #opensim channel. They were a big help, even at 2200hrs MST.
Anyway, now that I have my opensim server running in Ubuntu, on a virtualbox; it's time to create some land!
Until next time.....
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