@theregicide What is what?
Yes, I was partly talking about #SecondLife of which many are absolutely certain that it was shut down in late 2008 and 2009 when it'll actually celebrate its 20th birthday this year. And no, it doesn't look anything like the crummy and choppy old video footage from 2007 anymore.
But what I was mostly talking about is something called #OpenSimulator, #OpenSim in brief.
For those who do dare to tap/click on links and let them open in a Web browser: the official OpenSimulator website/wiki; Hypergrid Business: "What is OpenSim?"
For everyone else, I'll explain it right here: OpenSim is a server application that's the basis of a big network of 3-D #VirtualWorlds which are very similar in technology to Second Life. Thus, the name "OpenSimulator" is also used for the whole ecosystem.
OpenSim was developed around the Second Life Viewer API ("viewer" = "client" = the desktop app which you use to visit Second Life and OpenSim worlds) after Linden Labs had made their own viewer open-source in 2006. OpenSim itself was launched in 2007. It is free (BSD license), open-source, non-commercial and not owned by a corporation; instead, it is developed by volunteers in their spare time.
I've already said, "network of 3-D virtual worlds" which implies there isn't only one. There are many. They're called "grids" because they themselves are split into so-called "regions" of 256x256m; it is possible to walk (or drive or ride a scripted vehicle) from one region to another without teleporting, though.
OpenSim is fully decentralised, much like Mastodon and the other Fediverse projects. And in 2008, a feature called the #Hypergrid was introduced. It created the federation between OpenSim grids which made it possible to have an avatar registered on one grid and still teleport into a wholly different grid. It's even possible to pick up content on one grid and take it to another grid; like Second Life, but unlike many modern virtual worlds, OpenSim has an inventory.
While Second Life has only got one grid, the stats on Hypergrid Business count over 420 public grids. The stats recently submitted by the DreamGrid distribution which bundles OpenSim with an easy-to-use Windows point-and-click interface count over 10,000 private and public grids; most public grids aren't based on DreamGrid, though. More than 95% of all grids are connected to the Hypergrid.
In spite of its age and being largely unknown, OpenSim is not only large, but still growing. As for land size (which, by the way, is not measured by actual dry land, but by active regions), in the latest stats, only the 40 largest grids count 108,112 standard regions and thus measure 7,085 square kilometres or 2,737 square miles. 38 of them are connected to the Hypergrid, still counting, 106,175 standard regions and measuring 6,958 square kilometres or 2,688 square miles.
OSgrid, the first OpenSim grid and both the oldest and by far the largest OpenSim grid, counts 26,885 standard regions alone which amount to 1,762 square kilometres or 681 square miles. This is only slightly less than Second Life (27,741 standard regions, 1,818 square kilometres/702 square miles).
One reason why OpenSim is so huge is because it has some of the cheapest land of all 3-D virtual worlds. Especially some crypto-based virtual worlds sell patches of land which are smaller than a Second Life/OpenSim standard region for millions of dollars.
Second Life and OpenSim generally don't sell land, they offer it for rent. In Second Life, a standard region costs from about $250 a month upward.
On the Hypergrid, most grids charge you $10 a month for a standard region, some even less than that.
Better yet: Unlike Second Life, OpenSim has "varregions" which consist of multiple regions behaving like one with no borders between them, always arranged in a square. If you rent these, you get land for even cheaper. @Lone Wolf, owner of the #WolfTerritoriesGrid, the second-largest grid by land area, charges a little under $30 for a 4x4 varregion (that's the equivalent of 16 standard regions or a bit more than one square kilometre). Varregions can grow up to 32x32 AFAIK, and 16x16 have been seen.
Well, and of course, you can always start a grid of your own.
There is no "official" grid, by the way. The core devs don't run their own grid; in fact, the lead dev only owns one personal region on #OSgrid.
It's also worth mentioning that the term #metaverse has been used around OpenSim for much longer than most people have even known it. While I don't have records about it, the Hypergrid may have been referred to as a "metaverse" as early as its own inception in 2008; maybe even OpenSim itself was called that as early as 2007. The Infinite Metaverse Alliance has used that word in its name since it was founded in 2016.
There are even grids with "metaverse" in their names which predate Mark Zuckerberg's "metaverse" announcement by years such as the IMA's own Metaverse Depot or Alternate Metaverse, established in 2019.
Essentially, OpenSim with its Hypergrid is the free, open, decentralised, distributed "metaverse" which several initiatives are currently working on creating from scratch, all believing nothing like this had ever been done before.
And it is all that without a blockchain, without a cryptocurrency and without NFTs.
CC @bdonnelly, in case you can't believe that this exists.
