Once you get your Sims (metavers / Virtual worlds) running, you would like to make it accessible to your friends. Like any websites, you will also want rapidely to open it to a larger community. There are Free Public Grids available to gather several Sims and create large metaverses. Some Public grids are intended to build metaverses using a specific loan modification language (English, Spanish, Italian or French), some support the English language and are targeted to handle worldwide metaverses, other are aimed for MMORPG metaverses, etc.
The list below is neither exhaustive nor a recommendation from QNAP, OpenSim or AdNovea but is provided to help you to know about available grids which can register (attach) your Sims.
NOTE: If you have several Sims on different servers, you can run a Grid yourself to connect the different Sims together and welcome Sims from other servers but this is out of the scope of this section.
This is the most straightforward part of the operation. Fill-in a form and register. Shall you need help, just ask. The people involved in Public grid management are both very skilled and very open to help the beginners. During the registration you will have to define:
All information for your account (username, password, valid e-email, etc.)
Select a location. The [1000,1000] default location will of course not be available. You may sometimes have" first to choose a world and then a location in this world. You will have to browse the grid Map to locate a free location. Most grids won't keep your location if your Sims server is down more than 24 hours in a row.
Create your avatar (You register a Sims, not visitors. Therefore you won't transfer your avatar)
Check the "Terms of use" if you intend to make available through your Sims:
commercial links/information,
mature contents/games,
copyrighted content such as music (some countries require you to pay fees to stream webradio into metavers),
etc...
As soon as you make your metavers public, you must have the same concerns as putting online a website or a blog .
In gridmode, OpenSim uses several servers to handle all operations:
User server to manage the users accounts
Grid server to handle the different grids (regions)
Asset server to support the monetary system
Inventory server to manage your items
Messaging server for chat and communications
These servers are referred as the UGAIM servers. When you connect your Sims to a Grid, the UGAIM servers are run by the grid to enable the navigation through the Sims located on the different servers attached to the grid.
Your Q-Sims configuration will therefore be modified to redirect the UGAIM servers to the Grid servers. During the registration you have receive some information about the Grid as well as a password to connect to the UGAIM servers. Run the QSA in OS-GRID mode and enter this password under Key for OS-GRID.
QSA Step 3
Update your region location
Your Sims regions are located under the /share/xxx_DATA/.qpkg/Q-Sims/bin/Regions By default the first region is defined into the default.xml file at location [1000,1000]. If you have several regions, you have several .xml file in this folder with the location for each region.
You must change the sim_location_x and sim_location_y values of the region to attached to the grid with the location you have registered during the filling process.
When your Sims is linked to a Public Grid, the host server may required the attached Sims to run on a specific version of the OpenSim simulator to ensure proper connections and functioning. The new required version may be incompatible with the previous OpenSim versions such as the OpenSim version installed on your NAS and your Sims may become unreachable.
WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE NOR COMMITTED for providing up-to-date versions.
