This year’s OpenSim Fest 2022 kicks off at 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, July 8 with pomp and color and goes until Monday, July 25, 9 p.m. Pacific time.
The hypergrid address is grid.opensimfest.com:8022.
For further information check out the fest’s Discord community page or the official event website.
The first day is packed with 12 performances from well-known OpenSim performers and DJs, as well as hypergrid merchant and sponsor exhibitions spanning 167 parcels across 18 regions.
The event has already exceeded its fundraising target but sponsors are still welcome until the last day of the event, said Shelenn Ayres — known in-world as Lisa Laxton — who is OSFest 2022 director and founder of Infinite Metaverse Alliance and Laxton Consulting.
“Enough funds have been pledged by sponsors so that all the costs of setting up the grid are covered, but it is still possible to offer sponsorship for the festival,” she told Hypergrid Business. “It is also possible to make a simple contribution, either by PayPal or Gloebit, and any extra funds will be shared out among the performers.”
Anyone willing to sponsor the festival can either sign up or contact the moderators, admins, and hosts including in-world at OpenSim Fest grid or through website contacts.
“Big sponsor parcels are filled and costs are covered,” said Ayres. “All remaining sponsor parcels are set to Gloebits whose funds go to performers. Free parcels of exhibitor and merchant types are marked with orange claim boxes. Available sponsor parcels are marked with orange claim boxes by sponsor level.”
100 scheduled performances from renowned artists
The event features a total of around 100 scheduled performances. About 95 different musicians, artists, dancers, and DJs have confirmed participation.
“The official performances are set for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,” Snoots Dwagon, the head of greeters, an exhibitor, and performer, told Hypergrid Business.
“However, there will be parcel performances during the week,” he said. “I will be hosting one or two such on my Rascal Flats land where I have a dance platform set up and will be DJing my favorite music for Tinies & Biggies.”
Participating artists, musicians, DJs, and performers are well-known across OpenSim and Second Life. They include Zoree Jupiter, Rami, Karima, RoseDrop, Rogue Galaxy, and Dj Walter Balazic.
OSFest features two main hubs – the primary landing and the hypergrid landing hub, each of which has its own exhibit areas. The performance area is also a separate area consisting of four stages. The Destination Guide will help people to find all the areas and builds they are interested in.
Exhibitions across 167 parcels
This year’s event also spans a total of 18 regions and 167 parcels dedicated to exhibitions, performances, welcome, and other events. Most of them have already been filled up with exhibitor builds and merchant products.
“Building is not yet complete everywhere,” OSFest event promoter and Hypergrid Safari founder and organizer Thirza Ember told Hypergrid Business. “There is lots of last-minute activity going on. The four-sim Events area region is mostly complete and new builds are showing up in the Exhibit area every day.”
However, 23 merchant and 27 exhibitor parcels are still available for free for those willing to set up builds and exhibitions and late entries are welcome to fill them.
“For those who enjoy waiting until the last possible minute to get things organized, there are still lands available for grids, exhibitors, and merchants to display their skills and draw people to their worlds,” said Dwagon. “I would certainly think that the major for-profit grids – who are always talking about needing more members – should want to be officially represented at this festival.”
“If I owned a grid, you can be assured I would have a front-row, best-of-the-best display to draw people to that grid,” he added. “Not only does it advertise the grid but it shows support of the OpenSim community.”
Some of the exhibitions will include Sally Cherry‘s exhibition titled Creative HQ – Integration of NFTs, AI art, and PoS Blockchain in 3D Immersive Virtual Worlds meant to demo how virtual worlds can make use of NFTs. Her NFTs are called Tezpirit.
Volunteer greeters still needed
The festival involves volunteer community efforts, who together are volunteering a total of 1,000 hours for the event. Volunteers include greeters, moderators, hosts/hostesses, and performers in life events. Other participants include exhibitors who set up builds to exhibit their products, services, and events; and merchants selling virtual items and land.
About 402 volunteer greeter hours are needed but just six have been scheduled. The event hosts and admins are still calling out for people interested to serve as greeters and moderators to sign up, said Dwagon.
“It is easy and fun to be a greeter at OSFest,” he said. “We are making use of roving greeters this year – people who wear their Greeter Tag whenever they are at the event so they can help visitors whenever help is needed. These greeters will carry note cards including the events schedule, land marks, and a map of the festival lands, and will give such out to anyone who wonders what they should visit next. It is an ideal position for those who enjoy being friendly and helping people. Wearing their greeter tag makes them accessible anywhere, any time. If they need some time off, they just remove the tag and they can relax a bit.”
Grid resources optimized for a massive attendance
The layout and back-end architecture are already optimized for performance with a focus on user experience for builders, creators, performers, sponsors, and attendees – both local and via the hypergrid. The organizers are calling on participants and attendees to travel from grids that use the suitcase and include only things they have to travel with.
“We are confident we will be able to handle concurrent local and hypergrid avatars in the four-cornered event regions of 60 to 80 per region,” wrote OSFest 2022 director Ayres in a post. “This could be higher or lower depending upon a lot of technical factors associated with avatar inventories, complexity, connection quality, and suitcases.”
“We ran a load test on July 2 and the system performed fine based on the figures we had,” said Dwagon.
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