Most people who’ve traveled the hypergrid have had the experience of not being able to bring stuff back home, or of mysteriously not being able to take content to other grids.
Recently, a number of different OpenSim developers have taken on the fight, and have been reporting progress.
Crista Lopes steps in
Crista Lopes, the woman who invented the hypergrid, stepped in to fix one bug, first reported on the OpenSim “Mantis” bug-tracking page in March.
Dreamscape grid resident “Xantis” reported not being able to bring items home from OSgrid.
Outworldz grid founder Fred Beckhusen, also known as “Ferd Frederix” in-world, confirmed the problem — and the workaround.
“If I wear the item at the foreign grid, and return home, I can detach it and rez it,” he reported. “Otherwise, no rez allowed.”
This was the same work-around recommended by Mal Burns of the Inworld Review.
But it’s too early for the fix to go into mainstream OpenSim, so it’s up to individual grids to install it.
“If grid owners have in-house people to modify their code for them, they could simply grab the code from that submitted revision and merge it into their existing code,” said DigiWorldz grid founder Terry Ford, also known as “Butch Arnold” in-world. In addition to managing the technology for DigiWorldz, Ford also takes care of 3rd Rock Grid and the Great Canadian Grid.
“If they don’t have in house people, they’ll either have to hire someone to do it… or wait until a new release which includes this code becomes available,” he told Hypergrid Business. He did not recommend running the experimental code released after the fix was made.
According to Ford, for a user to bring content from one grid to another without wearing it on the first grid, both grids have to be running the fixed code.
The bug only applies to grids that use the “suitcase” functionality, said Tim Rogers, CEO of the Zetamex OpenSim hosting company, which recently began taking new orders again for grid hosting and region hosting.
The suitcase — a folder inside the avatar inventory that can be accessed while on other grids — was originally designed to help protect hypergrid travelers. Only content inside the folder could be accessed on foreign grids, preventing rogue grid owners from stealing visitors’ inventories. Some users, however, find that the suitcase just gets in their way, and they only spend time on reputable grids, or, if they do visit a grid on the wrong side of the tracks, and that grid wants to steal some stranger’s inventory filled with thousands of items all labeled “primitive,” more power to them.
“Every grid owner that signs up with us, always asks us to disable the suitcase because it complicates things for their customers,” Rogers told Hypergrid Business.
However, Rogers said, Zetamex will be rolling out the patch to its customers.
Dreamland Metaverse, another OpenSim hosting provider, has been testing the new code over the past few days, and is planning to roll it out soon.
“We have finished testing the latest version and already rolled out that version for our regions on OSgrid,” CEO Dierk Brunner told Hypergrid Business.
Another content-related issue, first reported yesterday, is a problem that occurs when content moves between grids that run on Windows and those that don’t. Some grids have figured out how to clean up corrupted content in their databases while they wait for a more permanent fix.
Kitely fixes content export problems
Earlier this week, Kitely fixed its own content problem, where users would home content from other grids — but then would not be able to take that content back out with them while traveling.
The problem would crop up when one user would upload content to the grid, such as a Linda Kellie freebie, without copy and transfer permissions, and another user would bring that same content in from a foreign grid, then it would never be allowed to leave.
“But if the same item first came into Kitely from another grid, then it would be allowed to leave,” said Oren Hurvitz, Kitely‘s co-founder and VP of R&D, in an announcement. “This made no sense. It also didn’t add much to security, since we still couldn’t prevent items from being taken out using Copybots.”
The fix only applies to new items, not to items already in a user’s inventory, he said. And it doesn’t affect the “export” permission set by merchants who sell content in the Kitely Market.
The Kitely Market currently carries about 10,000 different items, 60 percent of which can be delivered from the website directly to avatars on foreign grids.
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