Virtual World News 

Until today it wasn’t possible to own your own land in Dreamworld. We had many reasons not to permit people owning their personal piece of real estate inside of the virtual world. The major reason for this measure we took was that we were dealing with a system which was in alpha testing stage of development, at many times stability was not present, there was a lack of working inventory, crashes took place during building and so on. Yet as time evolved over the past year the grid became more stable.

So far we have let people build as they please on the Dreamworld continent. We have opened up many simulators so that anyone can come to Dreamworld, log on to the grid and start experimenting with building, uploading textures and construct anything they can imagine. While there are still bugs in the system, the past year has shown to us that Dreamworld made very good progression in terms of being a platform where avatars can come and generate 3D objects and builds with the use of in world tools.

Many residents have asked us where they can purchase land, we had to disappoint them as we didn’t found it wise to sell a product to people if that product was still failing in so many ways, we knew the code wasn’t ready yet to allow residents to enjoy their own virtual land inside of Dreamworld but what we did instead was letting people build on the Dreamworld continent, for many not the ideal place to construct things because of the hilly landscape and desert type of area but many have created there.

Of course we are aware that residents would rather have a place where they can landscape themselves, use their own terrain textures to boost their creativity in developing virtual world items in the Metaverse. Land that they own, where they can stream their own music, video and media applications. Land they can control and share with the people they wish to share with. Now that we have reached the stage where performance is better and the grid has proved itself to us as being effective enough to host simulated environments, we think the time has come to start the next phase in Dreamworld by letting a select amount of residents own their own land in Dreamworld.

With this thread we would like to ask you what you consider to be the ideal environment for your home or your creations in a virtual environment?

One of the pillars of Dreamworld, a major reason why it was founded is to allow people to have an affordable virtual life. We are not going to talk about pricing structures for land yet, before we disclose any information regarding what we have in mind for pricing we would like to receive some input and feedback from you the residents.

-How would you like your virtual land to be like?
-Do you have suggestions on what we should offer you?
-What do you consider to be a fair pricing structure for your virtual land?
-What do you expect that you will be able to do on your own land in Dreamworld?

These are some of the questions that we would appreciate your comments and feedback on and are looking forward to read your reply on this in order to provide you with your virtual real estate. We welcome you to post your feedback on the forums on this topic.

A lot of commotion seems to be going on lately about the aspect of content creation inside of the virtual world. In particular user generated content in 3D environments turns out to be a topic for many to spend huge amounts of time on. Many different people have many different opinions about the content that is present inside of a virtual world. Since Dreamworld is a young new virtual world it doesn’t have huge amounts of content in world yet. Still this is changing as the world is getting more reliable and robust, a major level of improvement was recently achieved when inventory started to work as it is supposed to do. Dreamworld struggled a long time with inventory failing issues as  we wrote about earlier this year. Today the grid performs in a much better way and is becoming more friendly for people to use. Not just the very first inhabitants of Dreamworld who weren’t afraid to crash 5 times when they made an attempt to build are now able to create things in world. Also normal residents who try out building can make all sorts of great 3D objects and experiment with the building tools. When flying around in world today I visited several places where people have been building and noticed that all kinds of constructions are being made, I see houses, furniture, pets, huge structures, towers, landing platforms, stores …. 

I even took some pictures of things that residents have been building in Dreamworld so far. The first photo shows the dog kennel behind the store of resident Max Halifax in the Hera sim. 

The next photo is taken at the Titus sim, resident Neptune Ivanova is building a huge Egyptian piramid build in the sim and even in its early stages it looks to become a spectacular building in the future.

Back in the beginning of this year we posted on how Dreamworld was making progression. At that point we posted a picture on the blog showing the landscape of the first part of Dreamworld. It was completely empty at that point in time, a bare looking virtual landscape without any objects or 3D content. It is rewarding for Dreamworld to see that residents can begin using the world we have been working on for over a year now and that people can do their thing in an environment allowing them to be creative and use their imagination to construct virtual objects in all freedom. We see that more and more people are coming to Dreamworld and more of them are returning as the platform becomes more stable which is a positive sign.

Today Dreamworld reached a new milestone as over 2000 avatars have now became a member of Dreamworld. Since we are still in alpha testing stage at the moment Dreamworld hasn’t made any efforts yet in promoting the virtual world so people who register their account came to Dreamworld by word of mouth. We also see a healthy increase in the numbers of avatars who visit Dreamworld on a regular basis. Several brave alpha testers are also building in Dreamworld as we speak and they are doing fine from what we see. Besides the regular crash of a simulator (we are working on that) and a few bugs the grid platform is bahaving very well. A good example to see what residents can already do in Dreamworld you can see on the picture below. A lady started building her town a while ago in in the region named Thor. At the moment we let residents build just about anywhere in Dreamworld as it helps us to learn and understand the working of the grid platform in a better way. As you can see on the picture some decent building is possible. This lady is working on a huge castle consisting out of a mixture of regular primitives and sculpted prims.

Persistency was needed, certainly in the beginning as the crash ratio was high during that time, yet after some debugging the Thor region is now running stable which allowed faster progress of the building work, at the moment the castle is becoming complete and the Medieval village the lady is building is starting to get its shape.

Anyone can create what he or she wishes. The only thing needed is some creativity and you will be on your way. A lot of technical work is currently done by the programmers to improve the current tools and to move to the next level where more use will be made of professional building tools compared to the basic prims and sculpties used today. So far 2000 people came to take a look at Dreamworld and we are working to fulfill the expectations that people have about their virtual life. Feel free to explore Dreamworld, build, experiment and test things out. The more testing takes place the faster progression will follow and the better the platform will be that is constructed.

It has been well over a month since our last blog post, time for an update about what is currently taking place on the grid. What exactly is happening in this new virtual world you might ask yourself? The answer is a lot, so much activity goes on in world, so much movement went on in the past few weeks as we initiated the placement of the world’s virtual landscape it looks like a typhoon went through. Even our residents (the early alpha testers) were surprised to see all their homes and 3D objects floating around in the air when they logged on. This thoroughly approach was indeed needed to form the landscape. The first stage went smoothly and all the rough work has been completed. One could say the tornado calmed down and the constructions made by the people of Dreamworld are slowly coming down to earth again as they get settled with their belongings on the fantastic looking new landscape.

The unspoiled desert you see pictured above preludes the coming of a new virtual world which will be part of the Metaverse. With the initial work on the landscape completed we now have time to focus on several other urgent issues we are currently facing on the grid. This also reminds ourselves and the residents that we are still in the very early stages of alpha testing. However we must admit that we are satisfied with the procedural process Dreamworld is making.

Before this major work could be started we had to expand the grid with more land mass. The expansion of the landscape is something that took place in january. Before this enlargement of the virtual land mass Dreamworld consisted out of a testing area with a surface of 589824 m² (square metres). At that point we had kept the world to a minimal in land mass for testing purposes. The larger the world the bigger the amount that each update and fix requires. Further delay of the world’s expansion was out of question as more and more people are coming to take a look in world and have the urge to test and explore which is a good thing. In order to satisfy the demand and need for more terrain the grid has been expanded with a massive land mass 3.932.160 m² which is almost 4 million square metres of virtual land. This brings the total land surface area of the virtual world to 4.5 million square metres. We believe that this will be sufficient in a first stage to meet the direct needs of the residents to get acquainted with the world and see what it is all about. Important to note is that this huge land area is not intended to offer directly for sale to residents. The purpose of the landscape is to serve as some sort of virtual park, a place to meet, interact with other avatars, objects and discover what the virtual world has to offer. We will go further into this once the landscape has been completed and place an official announcement regarding this when the landscape is complete. As you see with projects of this size we have to work in different phases until the desired result has been reached. When you will check the map you can now overview the new continuous area of land which forms Dreamworld today. The picture below will go into history on how Dreamworld started and what it looked like during its first half year online.

Our main concern is inventory at the moment but we have good news on this. Thanks to the efforts of our alpha testers who keep reporting what works well for them and what doesn’t we have been able to improve inventory performance in a drastic way. We received many complaints from people regarding the lack of working inventory. Everything in world seemed to be working well, teleports are smooth, so is region border crossing, logins happen fast, textures rez fast and the grid is running stable. But inventory that is something else we noticed. The main reason for this is that inventory in Dreamworld works in a very complex way and forms quite a challenge for the programmers. During each update improvements are made, but in world inventory was failing and kept failing. Until recent rezzing an object was a huge challenge and would fail in plenty of cases. Transferring an object from avatar to avatar also didn’t work properly. One could say that inventory certainly didn’t perform as it should but investigating the issue and the feedback we received from our residents helped to determine the cause of the lack of performance for inventory. We have made several changes and now we can say that inventory performance has increased in a drastic way. We received many positive remarks yesterday regarding this subject when we went in world so we are going to keep working to make inventory accurate and stable as we know this is important. Now we do know and understand on what to work in order to increase performance which is splendid. The first tests we performed so far on the grid indicate a 95% performance boost in rezzing objects and reliability of inventory. The storage of objects also works much smoother so we are very pleased with this as it will allow people to build and enjoy Dreamworld in a better way. We also want to thank the alpha testers for their continuous reporting on the matter.

Another point of importance to mention is that we have commenced to work on several ways to make it more easy for our new virtual colonists who arrive in world to start out. When new people come to Dreamworld they arrive as Ruth, a little lady with brown hair. Of course it’s possible to change and alter your avatar appearance but we noticed that for many this isn’t so obvious so we commenced to make efforts in creating starting packages for both the male and female avatars on the grid. This goes from skins, clothing, hair and objects to make it more easy for people to feel comfortable with their virtual body. A nice example is this release of the first male avatar since our male residents were asking to improve their looks. We will continue to work on the development of starter packages for people in world. There are also several residents who are creating all kinds of items for new people or so called freebies so we wish to thank them for their input.

We welcome you to come and take a look in world and see for yourself what people are doing and experience what Dreamworld is like. Each day we strive to create a world that goes further and advances to become a stable and robust 3D platform for avatars to sojourn in.

Count Dreamworld