Hypergrid connections to other grids are not currently authenticating. The grids in question are using the current and/or pre-release versions of OpenSim 0.6.9, which may incorporates new security code. Ocean Grid has not changed its setup, so it is difficult to see otherwise why this has suddenly stopped working and will need to upgrade to 0.6.9 to restore hypergrid functionality.

Published: 16 May 2010

This issue was resolved in the final versions of Emerald and is not an issue in Phoenix.

If you use the current version of the Emerald Viewer to log into Ocean Grid or another OpenSim grid at present, you'll notice that your avatar never rezzes and that you remain a gas cloud. It is optimised for SL rather than OpenSim. Hopefully this will change in a forthcoming version.

Another small issue with Emerald is that its makers have chosen to always show their own splash screen rather than that of the grid that you are logging into. While Ocean Grid is under construction and not always online, this is a particular issue because you have to go to the website to see the online/offline status. While understandable that Emerald want to highlight their own brand, no other viewer does this, and it undermines the purpose of the splash screen in communicating news related to the specific grid. You'll notice that Emerald's splash screen includes both their own (Modular Systems) and Linden Labs' news, but of course none related to any other grid, despite the grid manager feature allowing logins to other grids.

Emerald also overrides the decision of the user to hide their online status from friends, by showing your settings to them. This undermines privacy and it's odd that this is not considered a mild contravention of LL's rules, as far as SL is concerned.

That said, aside from the temporary rezzing issue, Emerald is an excellent viewer and it's a shame not to be using it.

Published: 30 March 2010

Searching for people, classified advertisements and events now works. You will notice that other parts of the search interface appear to search for places in SL rather than Ocean Grid. This is a viewer setting and can be altered to search within OpenSim grids, although Ocean Grid is not listed, so for the time being no instructions will be given. You should be able to create classified advertisements and events (including when logged in on the web site), although on such a small grid this may be rather pointless at present, especially given the lack of working currency.

Searching for people, however, is quite useful. Searching by place may work, but at present it does not return results, perhaps due to a lack of data. Further testing may reveal whether this also works.

Published: 01 April 2010

Linden Labs Viewer 2.0 breaks compatibility with the OpenSim platform and may cause damage to your inventory, so it should not be used at present. It is likely that the hardworking OpenSim developers will solve this problem during the coming months, providing Linden Labs don't break anything else :-/

This includes new viewers based on this codebase, e.g. Kirsten's Viewer 20.

While not all viewer 2.0 functionality is supported in OpenSim, these viewers now work.

Published: 30 March 2010