Press release: 3DLES and virtyou join forces
Scherpenzeel, The Netherlands—Germany’s Virtyou GmbH and 3DLES, an OpenSim design and consulting firm focusing on education, have  join forces to provide a stable 3D environment for education and architecture in Europe.
“In the past, we were working on several grids,” said 3DLES founder Nick Zwart. “Now, we will only work with Virtyou and no other grids. In the past, we were just a client of Virtyou, renting some regions. Now Virtyou’s team and my team will work close together as one. We found that both our companies have skills that are complementary. We are good in education and project management, Virtyou has a great technical staff that knows all about the server side and scripting.”
“We are happy to announce our collaboration with 3DLES,” said Virtyou CTOÂ Michael Steinmetz.
Zwart studied music, ICT and religion at Fontys University, NL. He is a specialist and teacher in the subject new media in religious education and was among Europe’s early adopters of Teen Second Life back in 2005.
When OpenSim became a suitable platform for e-learning, Zwart also became a well known specialist in SLOODLE, a popular 3D e-learning system for Second Life and OpenSim.
With the content creation and support of 3DLES, Virtyou is currently running more than 25 regions dedicated to educational and community content, said Zwart.
Virtyou provides premium OpenSim regions, with discounts available to educators. Regions are regularly 65 Euros (US $90) a month for up to 30,000 prims. Educational discount regions start at 40 Euros (US $55) a month for educators, located on the Cybergrid grid or on Virtyou grid. Private grids and mini-grids are also available.
“We are running servers in two European data centers, and can provide relocation services for previous content, in-house hosting solutions and virtual servers upon request,” said Steinmetz.
Every educational region comes with its own set of SLOODLEÂ tools. A choice of selected freebie and Virtyou-specific objects like buildings, furniture, plants, clothing, translators, media players and full avatars will also be provided with each region order.
“If you haven’t yet, create a free account for the VirtYou grid, explore our grid, meet us at our in-world office hours,” said Steinmetz.
About 3DLES
3DLES — 3D Learning Experiences Services — is a division of Nixward New Media Creations. It focuses on  education in virtual worlds, project management, integration and adaption of social media and other services into virtual worlds, 3D-modeling and programming of buildings and facilities for education.
About VirtYou
Virtyou is a Berlin-based OpenSim hosting company that operates the Virtyou and Cybergrid OpenSim grids. The Virtyou main grid currently has 126 regions, and Cybergrid has five regions. Another 40 or so regions are located outside these two grids, such as on mini-grids and standalones.
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