Opensim (Opensimulator) is a virtual worlds server similar to Linden Lab's Second Life. It can be hosted on your own hardware, or is available on a number of public "Grids" run by others. It is accessed through the open source Second Life Viewer, just by amending the server acessed (via the -loginuri parameter). More details, downloads and documentation are available here
When you first enter Opensim you will apear as the default "Ruth" avatar. The shape, skin, eyes and hair parts, as well as the clothing cannot be changed. Open the Inventory and creat new items for al those parts, and the wear them. You can then change you appearance for the new parts "worn" and save the changes.
This normally only occurs on Opensim "Stand alone" systems. Just wear the save body parts and clothing again. On Opensim in "grid"mode, avatar appearance and what they are wearing, including any attachments, are normally maintaned.
Open Vue is experimental, and may not always be available. It is mainly for research use by Virtual University of Edinburgh members. It is also running on small servers.
Before you ask us for an avatar on this grid, if you wish to try Opensim, our suggestion is to sign up at http://osgrid.org for an avatar and take a look round in that Grid. It's usually the most up to date of the Opensim grids, and freely open to all. You can later add your own region to it running on your own server if you want to.
To get on-line look at the instructions at http://osgrid.org... but basically, just add these entries to the Second Life Viewer shortcut...
-loginuri http://osgrid.org:8002 -loginpage http://osgrid.org/loginscreen.php -helperuri http://osgrid.org/
"Second Inventory" (http://secondinventory.com) may be a useful tool to save results and move material between Second Life and Opensim Grids where you have apropriate permisisons, or the material was created by you. It works very well where you have full copy/mod/trabnsfer permissions on all the objects, textures and scripts involved. A few restrictions:
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