Over the course of the last month, Kitely, the on-demand virtual world service, has continued to refine their megaregion offering introduced at the start of August, improving their OpenSim performance in the process. They’ve also announced an upcoming feature called “Transfer stations”.

Traditionally, working with megaregions is limited in some ways due to the viewer code being geared towards handling regions which are 256×256 metres in size. Editing terrain textures, for example, is something which usually cannot be done when working on a megaregion. While megaregion mode can be disabled to allow work to be carried out on a per-region basis, it can also lead to problems: landmarks can stop working, in-world objects may show at the correct location, etc.

Kitely have solved this problem by introducing an Advanced Megaregion option, which works relatively seamlessly with the viewer. When a world owner / manager using a megaregion attempts to carry out an operation such as changing the terrain settings, a pop-up is displayed advising them that the operation cannot be performed with the world running in Advanced Megaregion mode. A link on the pop-up allows the world owner to switch to their browser and disable the Advanced Megaregion  option via their Manage World webpage. This then allows them to work on the world as if it were a series of individual regions. Once terrain work has finished, the Advanced Megaregion mode can be turned on once more.

The Advanced Megaregion also allows parcel media to be heard right across a megaregion (rather than being limited to the south-west corner region).

“Oren, We Need Warp Speed!”

As well as working on megaregions, Kitely has been optimising the OpenSim code running on their cloud-based servers. In the same blog post announcing the Advanced Megaregions, Oren Hurvitz, Kitely’s co-founder and VP of R&D describes the improvements thus:

We have made numerous improvements to OpenSim to make big worlds work faster on Kitely. These changes reduce OpenSim’s CPU usage up to 80%! This makes the user experience smoother and allows for the use of more complex worlds and more avatars than regular OpenSim. The following chart shows how much we reduced CPU usage compared to regular OpenSim. These tests were done on a world running in its own server, with one avatar in the world.

This optimisation allows Advanced Megaregions on Kitely to run up to 5% faster than regular megaregions.

Transfer Stations

Transfer Stations are an upcoming Kitely feature. They are described as, “Miniature worlds that users wait in while their world is being loaded.” The blog post announcing them goes on:

Kitely is a cloud-based virtual world provider, so when a user tries to enter a world that is currently offline we need to start the world first. This is fairly quick, but not instantaneous. Currently users look at a progress bar on our website while the world is being started, and once the world is ready their viewer is automatically launched. Transfer Stations are going to change this: when a user tries to enter an offline world their viewer will start immediately, but they will enter a Transfer Station instead of the desired world. Once the world is ready the user will be teleported to it automatically.

The Transfer Stations will be located on dedicated worlds specifically set-up for them, and could, in the case where more than one user is logging-in to the same offline world, allow people to meet and chat while awaiting their destination to load (not that the wait should in any way be extensive!).

To encourage the development of Transfer Stations, Kitely are inviting world owners to submit themed Transfer Station designs of their own, which other world owners and managers will then be able to pick from when setting-up a Transfer Station on their world(s).

There are certain requirements which must be met for Transfer Station submissions, and these can be found in the Kitely blog post. Reviews of submissions, which will be performed by the Kitely Mentor’s Group, will commence on October 1st.

New Avatars

On September 21st, Kitely updated their default avatars with a range of seven new avatars, using modified assets based on ones provided by designer Linda Kellie. The avatars are available to new users signing-up to Kitely, and the assets are currently also available at in-world Linda Kellie malls for those who wish to use them as their base model.

Related Links

• Kitely
• Kitey articles in this blog

I’m a little late getting to this, as I’ve been swimming through a lot of SL-related stuff and other bits, so apologies to Oren and Ilan. 

On the 17th August, Kitely announced the addition of high performance big worlds and world pictures to their on-demand service.

Public World Page Images

Taking the second of the new additions first, Kitely users can now add an image of their world(s) to the Public Worlds listing. Previously, the Public Worlds list was just that – a text list of all worlds in Kitely available for public access. The use of images makes the list more visually appealing and gives those browsing the list a glimpse of the world prior to clicking on the image to access the region’s World Page.

Pictures can be set in one of two places – the World Page, and in the Advanced tab of the Manage World dialogue box. Submitted pictures are automatically resized to fit the available space on upload.

The Public Worlds page has been redesigned to support the new images,  with world images being displayed 12 to a page, with the world name below the image with the world owner’s name. Those worlds that have not yet had an image uploaded for the page will show the Kitely logo, and will generally be listed after all those that have an uploaded image available.

Big Worlds

Following-on from the promise in the last update, Kitely have implemented their “big world” feature. This allows large, high-performance worlds to be created which can be up to 16 regions in size (i.e. 4 regions x 4 regions). In addition to the 16-region world, big worlds are also offered in four region (2×2) and nine region (3×3) sizes.

The free worlds offered within the Silver and Gold subscription plans can be used to create  various mixes of big worlds and standard regions, according to the user’s requirements. For example: a Silver plan might be used to create 10 individual regions, or two 2×2 big worlds and two “standard” individual regions or a 3×3 big world and single individual region, etc.

However, the size of a world can only be set when it is created, and cannot be changed afterwards. Therefore, single region worlds already created in Kitely cannot be converted to big worlds, regardless of the remaining quota of free regions in a silver or gold plan (e.g. if a user has 3 regions left in their free quota, they cannot combine them with an existing single-region world to create a 2×2 big world).

Additional worlds beyond a plan’s quota can be purchased using Kitely Credits (KC) at the rate of 10KC per region per day. So a 4-region (2×2) big world would cost 1200KC a month (4 regions x 10KC x 30 days), or as little at $4 a month when purchasing Kitely Credits at the maximum discounted rate. The costs of copying, exporting, and replacing big worlds are also dependent on the number of regions in the world. For example, copying a 4-region world will cost 40 KC (10KC per region).

Additional points of note about big worlds:

• Big worlds have a “root region”, which is always the region in the South-west corner of the world
• Big worlds have a “default region”, which is initially the root region (SW corner region) of the world, where incoming visitors arrive
  • This can be altered through the use of a tele hub, which can be placed in any region in the world, making it the default for incoming visitors
  • Deleting the telehub will not alter the updated default region
  • Moving the default region does not change the location of the root region
• There is a limit of 100,000 prims for a world, regardless of the number of regions it contains.  How the total allocation is distributed among the regions within a big world is up to the world owner, but the total of 100,000 prims cannot be exceeded
• When running in megaregion mode (see below), region crossings are completely eliminated
• Vivox works seamlessly across all regions in a big world.

By default, Kitely’s big worlds use the OpenSim megaregion mode, wherein multiple regions have been merged into one contiguous region. This eliminates region crossings within a big world and all the dependent issues around them for building, vehicle movement, etc., and provides a much smoother overall performance.

However, Megaregions are an experimental feature so some OpenSim features don’t work properly (e.g. parcel audio only works in the root region). Kitely therefore allows big worlds to be run as either megaregions or non-megaregions; a check-box is provided in the Advanced Tab of the Manage World dialogue box to switch any inactive world (i.e. a world not currently running on a Kitely server) between the two modes.

Kitely have also added a new world template to help in the creation of big worlds. This is the Universal Campus, a 2×2 region build created by Michael Emory Cerquoni (a.k.a. Nebadon Izumi), and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence.

To support the safe archiving of big world builds, Kitely have extended to the OpenSim Archive (OAR) file format to support the saving of a multi-region world as a single OAR file. Currently, the file format cannot be used to export builds elsewhere, but the code has been submitted for inclusion in standard OpenSim, and once adopted by OpenSim, will allow the exchange of multi-region OAR files between Kitely and other grids (with limitations to protect 3rd party content), although pre-existing multi-region OAR files may require replacing should the file format change as a result of adoption by OpenSim.

In the meantime, Ilan Tochner, Kitely’s CEO has offered a workaround for people to import their own multi-region builds to Kitely ahead of the new file format being adopted.

Related Links

• Kitely
• Kitely blog post
• Kitey articles in this blog

July 17th. Kitely has today announced extensive pricing restructuring which has come about in part as a result of requests from users asking that they be able to spend more time in-world rather than receiving additional Kitely Credits (KCs).

New Subscription Options

Under the new subscription system, monthly KC awards are abolished and in-world times revised. This means the basic Bronze level subscription now provides 30 hours in-world per month (up from 25 under the old system of combining free minutes and awarded KCs), with the Silver plan now providing 120 hours in-world, up from the 100 hours offered under the old minutes + KCs model. With both Bronze and Silver plans, the number of supplied regions remains unchanged (two and 10 respectively).

The biggest changes are at the top end of the subscription model, with the Platinum plan being completely abolished and the Gold plan reduced in price from $50 a month to $35 a month. Gold does also sees a reduction in the number of offered regions (down from 30 to 20), but Gold plan users now get unlimited time in-world.

The new subscription plan comes into effect for Bronze and Silver subscribers from August 1st, 2012. Gold and Platinum subscribers have the option of continuing with their old plans if they wish, or swapping to the new system.

There is also a small change to the free plan: new users signing-up to this now receive six hours of free in-world time during the month in which they create their account. After this (i,e, at the start of the next month), their free usage reverts to 2 hours a month.

Further pricing Updates

In addition to this:

• The costs for setting-up and/or storing additional regions (over and above the free allocation of regions within each subscription plan) has now been increased. The one-off cost of establishing an additional world increases from 1KC to 10KC, while  the cost of storing a region similarly rises from 1KC to 10KC per day
• Users can now buy up to $500 USD of KCs at any one time (up from a maximum of  $50 USD in a single purchase), options rising in $100 USD increments from $100 onwards
• It is now possible to pay for a subscription plan using Kitely Credits as well as PayPal at the start of each month. Three options are available:
  • Via PayPal: as per the current system
  • Via PayPal, or Kitely Credits whenever possible: providing your account has sufficient Kitely Credits, payment will be made via KCs at a rate of 300 KC per $1. Otherwise, your PayPal account will be billed
  • Using KCs only: this option is only recommended for those who purchase large amounts of Kitely Credits and / or who prefer not to use PayPal for their subscription payments. If there are insufficient KCs in an account when payment is due, the plan risks cancellation (a warning e-mail will be sent out in advance of cancellation).

Setting a Price for Visiting Region

Until now, users have only been able to decide whether they pay Kitely for the time others spend visiting their worlds (effectively making the region “free” for visitors), or whether they pass the charge onto visitors. In either case the rate was 1 KC per minute a visitor spent visiting a region.

These options continue unchanged, but as from July 17th, users are able to charge visitors directly for the time they spend in a region; KCs earned can then be used towards subscription plan payments, for example (subject to the notes above). Further, the new functionality allows region holders to pay others for the time they spend visiting the region.

Pricing can be defined in terms of group access and is calculated on the basis of minutes spent visiting the world.

This approach offers a tremendous flexibility of use, including:

• The ability to charge different amounts on the basis of the group a visitor is in. For example, a RPG region could charge one rate for all members of the associated RPG group and a slightly higher rate for people visiting the region out of curiosity
• The ability to automatically pay others for visiting your world – the blog post uses the example of paying performers for their time performing in a region
• The ability to initially have a region set, for example, to free access ahead of an event (allowing people to come and sample it), and then turn on the additional pricing as the event is about to start; users are then presented with an pop-up dialogue asking them to confirm their willingness to pay or to be disconnected from the region if they do not
• Payment options can be mixed within a single region, so it is possible to charge visitors for their time in the region while also paying performers.

All charges applied to a region are in addition to the basic rate of 1KC per minute. Furthermore, Kitely charge a 10% commission on all Kitely Credits that are earned using these monetization options (i.e. so if you charge 10KC per minute to visitors, you will receive 9KC; if you pay a performer 10KC a minute, they will receive 9KC). This commission  does not apply to any of the other ways users can transfer KC to one another.

Related Links

• Kitely
• Kitely blog post
• Kitey articles in this blog