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Welcome to the OpenSimulator Wiki.
What is OpenSimulator?
OpenSimulator is a 3D Application Server. It can be used to create a 3D Virtual World (ala Second Life(tm)), and includes facilities for creating custom avatars, chatting with others in the environment, building 3D content in world, and creating complex 3D applications in world. OpenSimulator can also be extended via loadable modules or web service interfaces to build more custom 3D Applications. OpenSimulator is released under a BSD License, making it both open source, and commercially friendly to embed in products.
Although OpenSimulator is still considered alpha software, many people are doing exciting things with it.
Features
Even though OpenSimulator is realatively young software it already has many useful features
- Supports creating 1 or more 256x256 meter Regions, either on a single machine, or linked between multiple machines in grid mode
- Extensive ability to customize you avatar, both with custom clothing, skins, and attached objects
- The ability to create content real time in the environment using in world building tools
- Real time physics simulation built on top of the ODE physics library
- In world application development using a number of different languages, including LSL, C#, and/or Javascript.
Using OpenSimulator
The fastest way to get started using OpenSimulator is to create an account on OSGrid, then download the Hippo Viewer to connect to OSGrid. This process should take no longer than 10 minutes, and will give you a flavor for what OpenSimulator is like.
You can also easily connect to any one of the many public grids on the internet.
Running your own OpenSimulator
If you are interested in running you own OpenSimulator server, to host your own 3D environments you'll want to check out the following links:
- Getting OpenSimulator
- Building OpenSimulator
- Configuring OpenSimulator
- Frequently Asked Questions in Running OpenSimulator
About OpenSimulator
The OpenSimulator Project is a BSD Licensed Virtual Worlds Server which can be used for creating and deploying 3D Virtual Environments. It has been developed by several developers. Out of the box, the OpenSimulator can be used to create a Second Life(tm) like environment, able to run in a standalone mode or connected to other OpenSimulator instances through built in grid technology. It can also easily be extended to produce more specialized 3D interactive applications. Check out the list of growing features to get an idea of what OpenSimulator is capable of.
OpenSimulator is written in C#, and can run under Mono or the Microsoft .NET runtimes. Due to its clean modular nature it is possible to significantly extend functionality yourself via plug-in modules to suit your application.
OpenSimulator is currently considered to be alpha level code. Please don't expect to run it in production environments without giving it a lot of care and attention. This is especially true if you follow the Subversion trunk or overnight builds, since the OpenSimulator developers are directly adding new features to this code. At the cutting edge, important functionality may stop working for short periods of time. Check out the Roadmap, to see what's currently being worked on.
Contributing to the Project
OpenSimulator is an open source project. This means that anyone who is interested in the project can contribute to it. You don't have to be a developer to help the project, people who can test and provide feedback helps the project tremendously. The best way to learn about and contribute to the project is to log into our IRC channel, located on irc.freenode.net in #opensim (for users) and #opensim-dev (for developers). If you're interested in contributing, please read our Contributions Policy, and learn what OpenSimulator's values are. All kinds of help are welcome, whether it is in the form of code patches, testing, documentation or maintenance of this wiki.
