Create own VR Server with OpenSim
OpenSim is an open source VR (Virtual Reality) server that is similar to Second Life, but the land is hosted on your own computer rather than hosted on the Second Life server. This means that there is no more expensive monthly fee to pay to maintain the SL land. However, if your ISP doesn’t allow you to host your own server on the Internet such as Verizon like me, OpenSim is almost useless except for the testing and education purposes.
I’m running the server with CombineContiguousRegions turned on and setup of 3 X 3 mega-regions. The initial setup was quick and easy with no installation. Before starting up the server, however, you need to first install some components:
sudo apt-get install nant mono-gmcs libmono-microsoft8.0-cil libmono-system-runtime2.0-cil libgdiplus libmono-i18n2.0-cil libmono-oracle2.0-cil
After OpenSim was set up, you have to use either Second Life viewer or other open source viewers to connect to the server. I’m using Imprudence latest beta because I just discovered today that Imprudence has the option on the login screen to add the VR server yourself and the localhost server is already set up in the latest build. When you login to the server first time, the default avatar is female. You can easily change the gender by adding a new shape directly in the inventory. In the beta build, Imprudence would crash if make a new outfit inside the appearance window. The default land is only one small island or many if you setup as a mega-region like me. You can manually edit the land by raise or lower the terrain, or you can export the hightmap of the land to an image file described here and edit it in GIMP. One thing to note is that you first need to logon using a veiwer in order to import the hightmap successfully, otherwise you won’t be able to logon to the server after the import. Here is my land after the modification in GIMP:
3 by 3 mega-regions connected as one big island
Click the image to enlarge
Notice the red arrow in the image. This screenshot is taken 859 feet above the ground. It means that this island is very big. It seems that by enabling the CombineContiguousRegions option, all of the regions’ region names become the first region name according to Regions.ini file.
Overall, OpenSim can be used as an alternate Second Life server unless your ISP doesn’t allow hosting your own server. It is also a good testing and education environment to test and learn the basics of 3D creation and animation.
Kubuntu is better than Fedora after all
I replaced Fedora with Kubuntu on my laptop yesterday. After experiment with the KDE interface on Kubuntu, I think that Kubuntu is better than Fedora for the following reasons:
- Flash is easy to install
According to several online tutorials, x86-64 Fedora users need to first install 32-bit support packages, and then install Flash plugin. After that, the users also need to worry about other Flash player issues, including no sound in the Flash movies. When I was using Fedora, I simply downloaded the incomplete Flash plugin for Linux from Adobe website and copied it to .mozilla/plugins in my home folder. Every time I reinstalled Fedora, I used this method to install Flash plugin. And it worked successfully each time without any issue.
In Kubuntu, I no longer need to download Flash plugin through Adobe website. I simply install it from the KPackage user interface. It installed and also worked without any issue.
- Excellent NVIDIA driver
To install NVIDIA driver in Fedora, I need to add RPMFusion repo. However, after installing the RPMFusion version of the NVIDIA driver, it appeared that Second Life doesn’t support it. I then need to download the appropriate driver from NVIDIA website, exit the X Server, and installed the driver from the command line.
With Kubuntu, all I need to do is install the proprietary NVIDIA driver through Hardware Drivers detection window.
- Second Life is ready to run without installing additional packages.
I needed to install a list of 32-bit packages in Fedora in order to run Second Life that is only available under 32-bit. After the installation, it still missed a lot of features like voice communication through microphone.
After the installation of Kubuntu and NVIDIA driver, Second Life are running smoothly without any problem. Even the voice communication feature is working correctly.
- Dual-monitor support works out-of-box
Thanks to the help of Nouveau, Fedora supports dual-monitor without any issue. But the Nouveau driver does not support 3D grapics yet. Because of that, I disabled Nouveau driver in grub.conf file and installed proprietary NVIDIA driver. However, Fedora didn’t enable the dual-monitor support by default anymore. I need to manually enable the feature through nvidia-settings.
After the installation of Kubuntu, the Hardware Drivers dialog box automatically popped up to remind me that I need to install NVIDIA driver. I installed the driver and restarted the laptop. Kubuntu automatically detects my two monitors and expand the desktop across these monitors.
In the end, I like Kubuntu better than Fedora. However, I’m still getting use to the single click method in KDE. After all, maybe I will stop following Fedora news and completely switch to Kubuntu community.
Still Solving Flash Problem in Second Life
Yesterday I successfully ran Second Life official viewer on Fedora x64. However, I discovered that I cannot view YouTube video and other Flash-enabled websites when testing the new Shared Media feature in SL Viewer 2 Beta. Today I found out there only have one blog post related to the Flash problem over Second Life blog. It talks about Flash and Firefox issues related to SL Viewer 2 Beta. You can view this blog post right here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/111720, and don’t be afraid to start a discussion if you have any problem with SL Viewer 2 Beta on GNU/Linux.
Finally got Second Life Official Viewer Working under Fedora 12 x64 Updated
Second Life viewer 2 beta has been out for a while. It features a web browser like interface and a new feature called Shared Media that makes me to rethink about trying to install SL viewer on my Fedora x64 laptop. The new feature has the ability to bring web applications to the Second Life, even Flash games and YouTube.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, I cannot get the flash to work. neither do the Youtube and HTML 5 ogg forfmat.
Two websites opened on one prime
Top: youtube.com  Front: robbychen.com
Click the image to enlarge
System requirement for the SL Viewer 2 beta is the same as the original viewer. This means that it still doesn’t support 64-bit Linux system. I have to install 32-bit compatibility libraries on the Fedora x64 system. After a little research on Google, I found a blog post about installing 32-bit support onto Fedora 11. I followed its steps to install the 32-bit support libraries. Because of the differences between Fedora 11 and 12, I changed the architecture for the libraries mentioned in the post from i586 to i686. Below is the list of support libraries that I installed:
arts.i686
audiofile.i686
bzip2-libs.i686
cairo.i686
compat-expat1.i686
compat-libstdc++-33.i686
compiz.i686
cyrus-sasl-lib.i686
dbus-libs.i686
directfb.i686
esound-libs.i686
fltk.i686
freeglut.i686
gtk2.i686
hal-libs.i686
imlib.i686
jack-audio-connection-kit.i686
lcms-libs.i686
lesstif.i686
libacl.i686
libaio.i686
libao.i686
libattr.i686
libcap.i686
libdrm.i686
libexif.i686
libgcrypt.i686
libgnomecanvas.i686
libICE.i686
libieee1284.i686
libsigc++20.i686
libSM.i686
libtool-ltdl.i686
libusb.i686
libwmf.i686
libwmf-lite.i686
libX11.i686
libXau.i686
libXaw.i686
libXcomposite.i686
libXdamage.i686
libXdmcp.i686
libXext.i686
libXfixes.i686
libxkbfile.i686
libxml2.i686
libXmu.i686
libXp.i686
libXpm.i686
libXScrnSaver.i686
libxslt.i686
libXt.i686
libXtst.i686
libXv.i686
libXxf86vm.i686
lzo.i686
mesa-libGL.i686
mesa-libGLU.i686
nas-libs.i686
nss_ldap.i686
opencdk.i686
openldap.i686
pam.i686
popt.i686
pulseaudio-libs.i686
sane-backends-libs-gphoto2.i686
sane-backends-libs.i686
SDL.i686
svgalib.i686
unixODBC.i686
zlib.i686
Notice that I removed any of the version number from the original list in order to install the updated libraries, and I also removed three libraries that doesn’t available in the Fedora 12 repositories. It seems that it’s working despite of missing three libraries.
After the installation completed, I launched SL to see if it’s working. Sadly, it displayed an error stated that creating window error. I knew it was the video driver problem since I stuck at this step before and gave up. I thought the problem is that the installed NVIDIA driver through RPM Fusion was outdated. I removed this driver and installed the official proprietary driver from NVIDIA website, restarted my laptop. Finally, I started the new SL viewer and logged into the in-world. I have been used it for 30 minutes. Up until now, the performance and stability of the viewer is great. I suppose I can use the new SL viewer thanks to the proprietary driver after all, although I don’t know why it doesn’t work under the driver in the RPM Fusion repo.
Experimenting with Second Life
I was experimenting with Second Life last week. Sadly, the Linux version of Second Life is still in beta and I couldn’t get it to work on my Fedora 12 x64 laptop. I forced to use the Windows version under Vista. I experimented with it for a while and found out that it requires more CPU and graphic power usage than other GNU/Linux games that I played. Not following these system requirement, I tried to run Second Life under 32-bit Fedora 12 on my Eee PC 1005HA netbook. It run successfully and then crashed to the command line after I logged into the game. Then I tried it under XP on the netbook., it run successfully. However, the game didn’t run as smoothly as on the laptop. I think Linden Lab should lower the system specification for Second Life to make it run on the older hardware like other Linux games in order to attract more Second Life residents.