June 2010

Thanks

Volunteers welcome youNew World Grid welcomes more and more people every day.

If you wish to participate helping new registred to feel at home quickly, you can at any time join the volunteer program. To do this, simply fill out the form at the following address:

www.newworldgrid.com/lang/en-us/volunteers

Accompaniment will be provided so that you’re comfortable in your new role.

Thanks to the following for their generosity and for the time spent on the welcome region..

Thanks to Jo BERNARD, Eden Cat, Steve Franklin, Kire Laasonen, Marline Laasonen, LeoMaxxSautereau, Claudius Utopy, Pi Wonder.

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Creative people share

The deposit zone on the sandbox is now closed to keep a minimum of performance for building activities and guarantee a fast restart of the region.

Thanks to kaline Fashion and Claudius Utopy from the «Entraide et Partage» group who offered to take the relay. You can now contact them to propose your creations to the community.

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The development of New World Grid content is within everybody’s reach. Everyone can contri-bute according to his/her ability.

Thank to the Freebies donors.

Hermione CagglesDeborah ClarityCatherine PfefferGollum RicardoLeda Sands

News

Update toOpenSim 0.6.9New World Grid has been recently updated to OpenSimulator 0.6.8 which brings better performances and stability and though, still considered in alpha development stage.

We plan a new update to OpenSimulator 0.6.9 saturday 12th of june 2010 starting at 12.30 UTC to take profit of new bug fixes and new features, particularly a more stable version of the Hypergrid protocol.

The last stress tests allowed to determine a maximum limit of about 55 concurrent users simultanés in a simulator managing a unique region. This simulator was running on top of Windows 2003 server® with an Intel Core 2 Quad processor and 8 Go of memory, 3000 primitives and about 300 scripts.

Next scheduled tests

A new stress test is planned the tuesday 22th of june 2010 at 19.30 UTC in order to test out this new OpenSim 0.6.9 version with new optimizations of our server infrastructure.

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Hypergrid Opening to the Metaverse

What is Hypergrid ?

Hypergrid is the technology that permits teleportation between worlds (or grids) based on OpenSim. It has been created and developped by Cristina Videira Lopez, Professor at the University of California, Irvine.www.ics.uci.edu/~lopes

In the same way most people consider OpenSimulator with Apache, we can simply assimilate Hypergrid to the possibility for a classic website user to login to other independant websites to exchange, interact with the users of these sites.

We can consider Hypergid as an opening and a revolution for the 3D internet.

Hypergrid on New World ?

Until now, Hypergrid was a very young technology and was not compatible with some versions because of the important changes made to the OpenSim software structure these last months.

Despite some little bugs, we plan to enable Hypergrid on some regions like NewVue et NewVCE owned by the University of Edinburgh as well as regions having a meeting point and gateway role. If Hypergrid reveals itself stable enough with this new OpenSim 0.6.9 version, we will then consider its adoption on the other public and private regions.

Offering a quality and stable platform for your projects is important to us.

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News

The Virtus non profitPresentation

Who is behind Virtus ?

The association has been co-founded by Olivier Battini, multimedia animator and network administrator in the Cyberbus of the «Conseil Général» at Tarbes, in France, William Simon, specialized technician in electricity diagnosis, Lucie Lefebvre, and Laurence Goergen. It has been registered to the Journal Officiel the 18th of july 2009 at Tarbes, Hautes Pyrénées, in France.

What does Virtus ?

Virtus is the organisation that manages New World Grid. Its aim is to democratize virtual worlds and their uses.

Particularly, it takes action through New World, offering a hosting service for 3D spaces to all, be they individuals, non-profit organizations or professionals, and then offering, thanks to

the benefits generated, free technical support and hosting to projects such as cultural and educational projects like Mount Grace and Physics.

A non profit making benefits ?

Hsoting a 3D space requires, unlike a classical 2D website, much more server resources and more powerful servers. Grants are much less available in these times of economical crisis and the use of 3D is still not popular enough to be considered as serious, particularly in France.

Funds collected through rentals and donations allow us to support directly educative and cultural projects, of public or scientific interrest.

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New official website : association-virtus.org

This website is being developped since some weeks, but despite some delay, it will be soon online.

This website is dedicated to the VIrtus France non profit and principally has an informative role, offering various resources and downloads of our statutes, some official records and useful documents.

Le Conseil d’Administration

William SimonTreasurer

Laurence GoergenAssistant Secretary

Olivier BattiniPresident

Lucie LefebvreSecretary

Some Statistics

Evolution of the number of registered users in 2008 and 2009

Continent & Archipellago

Residents project :Continent & Archipellago

What is it ?

Since the update, and considering the stability of the new OpenSim version, a group of resident has started to form a new independant continent.

The residents who rent regions now have the possibility to gather together in two ways:

• the «Residents Continent», where the various regions are next to one other, allowing to cross region borders by foot or by flying from one region to the other;

• the «Residents Archipellago», where the regions or region parts are contiguous as well, but where the transition from one region to the next one or from one region part to the next one is done exclusively by sea.

On the Continent, each resident continues

paying individually for his/her regions, while in the Archipellago, payment is mutualized and depends on the surface used by everyone.

A point worth noticing is that, unfortunately, OpenSim technology does not allow yet to travel on a vehicle (boat, car, train, plane, balloon...) from one region to another. We hope that this point will get sorted out in a future version.

The regions from the first series of volunteers will be joined very soon. After a testing and settling phase (used to adapt the terraforming and the drawn paths) that will probably last a week or two, the Continent and the Archipellago will be happy to welcome the second series of volunteers.

Of course, those who wish to remain on regions isolated from their neighbours can do so.

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Sea regions

The creation of Continent and of Archipellago has lead to creating two new pricing offers:

• non-buildable and non-sailable sea regions at 10 euros per month, with no installation fees;

• non-buildale but open to sailing regions at 30 euros per month with 1000 prims, but without installation fees.

These offers will in no way be limited to the residents joining the Continent or the Archipellago.

Text by Catherine Pfeffer

About Megaregions

The Megaregion technology has been created by Teravus, an OpenSimulator developper. It is integrated as a module like many other features and allow to unify an unlimited number of regions as if it was a unique region, hence the name of Megaregion.

These are not regions with different dimensions. This feature only permits to bypass the region borders crossing problem which creates latencies when an avatar or an object crosses, scripted vehicules being unable to cross. The advantage of Megaregions are the possibility to use scripted vehicules on larger 3D spaces without latency.

So, it becomes possible to develop large simulations of all kinds having educative, even scientific interrests...

Actually, the Megaregion functionnality is being tested and seems to suffer some bugs.

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The Mount Grace Priory

Mount Grace Priory3D History for everyone

Introduction byChristi Maeterlinck

MOUNT GRACE PRIORYNord YorkshireAngleterre

On 4 adjacent regions in New World, we are building Mount Grace and its immediate environment. This is thanks to the generosity of the French Non Profit Organization ‘Virtus’, whichpromotes arts and educational projects.

The priory was established in 1398 as part of a wide and thriving European network of Carthusian monasteries famed for their austere style of spritual life, their commitment to the preservation of literature at a time when few people could read, and their hospitality to travellers: an interesting mixture!

It was disestablished in 1539 by agents of King Henry VIII of england, as part of his greed, his jealousy, and his quarrel with Rome.

Please note. This venture in educational simulation has no formal links with any of the bodies that care for the RL site, although informal links are being developed. (November 2009).

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News from the Mount Grace Priory...

Work continues on the main cloister. In parallel with the buildings, we are developing a series of 14 information milestones: click on a milestone and you receive information about an aspect of life in and around the Priory in its historical setting.

The Mount Grace Priory12

These are troubled times, in the Year of the Lord 1413.

Half the population of Europe has died. Just think: half! A wise cleric somewhere in Bologna has talked to travellers and estimated that there are now just 350 million people left in the whole world, when 60 years ago there were 450 million!

Most have been killed by the plague, which still rages, although it seems to have lessened since its peak 50 years ago. In the cities, many whom the pestilence has not taken are suffering from poor nutrition, some starving, since there are simply too few people left to till the fields and we can barely feed ourselves, here in the countryside. Sufficient food is not reaching the towns at a cheap enough price. These last 20 years, labour has become expensive, because it is scarce.

And the nobility seem to be more interested in fighting than in governing the people well. Three years ago the Holy Roman Emperor, Wenceslas of Bohemia, was finally deposed for being a drun-ken incompetent. Pope Alexander V, elected to heal the schism between Rome and Avignon, has died, some say of poison, while the assassina-tion of the Duke of Orleans by agents of John the

Fearless has led to civil war between Burgundy and Armagnac.

Civil administration is in trouble. In Paris, the but-chers led by Simon Caboche have seized the city in protest at the inefficiency of government. In London, Henry IV has just died and his son, also Henry, a playboy follower of a fat drunken knight, is talking of leading an army to invade France, breaking the treaty of 1396 created by Charles VI of France.

The Bohemian monk, Jan Hus, excommunicated for questioning the role of the Church in gover-ning the faithful, continues to preach his sedition, supporting the anti-Papal teachings of John Wy-cliffe, recently burn alive at the stake. In Domre-my, a peasant child called Jeanne is just learning to take her first steps...

In the midst of these troubles, the monks of Mount Grace seek to turn their backs on the world, to lead the simple contemplative life, pro-vide support to the local community and suste-nance to travellers. Are they right to do so? What do you think? Is such inaction appropriate? Can one turn one’s back on the world in such times?

Text by Christi Maeterlinck,Virtual Mount Grace Prirory curator

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Dreamstreams, Canadahttp://www.dreamstreams.ca

Le Parc des Arts, France http://www.parcdesarts.com

Crédit Agricole - Parlons Innovation, Francehttp://www.parlons-innovation.com

OpenVCE.net, Great Britainhttp://openvce.net

Copyright Virtus France 2010Association registered to the Journal Officielunder the number W653001494

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