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.

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.

When you will go in world you will experience significant changes and the code has been improved this time in a major way. Region border crossing works much smoother again, so are teleports and you will see that your inventory has gotten a lot more responsive compared to how it acted in the past. A major step has been set into the right direction by several of the core programmers who work on the code for Dreamworld which is a good thing. If you encounter bugs during building or any other of your activities in Dreamworld do post them on the forums. We appreciate your input to help and make the grid perform better which is our intended goal to reach.

It has been one year now since the grid was brought online and we began the very early alpha testing for Dreamworld. During this year the grid has grown a lot in size and covers a surface of almost 5 million square metres of land. We see a steady growth while the grid is still in its early days, almost 3500 people have come to Dreamworld to take a first look at this strange new world. We see that many come back at the number of people that logs in keeps rising. Of course we are aware that without proper tools, reliable inventory, decent teleporting, region crossing, objects and activities in world to participate in there is still work needed to provide a good experience for the residents of Dreamworld.

Technology always moves forward, it always improves, better, faster, more features and Dreamworld is no exception. We plan to upgrade and complete the server code update in the next few days. This update has been in the works for several weeks now but we couldn’t complete the update without releasing a new version of the viewer and verify that everything will work in a smooth way. This will be an important grid update as some major work and efforts have been made by the programmers in order to improve the inventory system which lacks performance at the moment.

For this release no special new features have been implemented into the new viewer, the only purpose for this viewer release is to be compatible with future upgrades of the server code for the virtual world of Dreamworld. We strongly recommend to upgrade right away as you will not be able to properly use Dreamworld in the next few days from now when the server code will be upgraded. Your in world experience will not be same, you will no longer be able to properly teleport, see and explore the 3D environment so do upgrade to the latest viewer.

DOWNLOAD DREAMWORLD VIEWER V1.0.3

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.

As the server software keeps evolving and improving so does the viewer and to guarantee you the best possible experience in Dreamworld we have released a new version of the viewer. The most significant change you will notice is that we did further work on the integration of the VEC (Virtual Economy Currency) inside the new viewer release in order to get the platform ready for the in world economy.

After the next server maintenance and upgrade of the grid platform, you will notice a substantial amount of difference in quality again so that makes performing the update definitely worth it in order to have a smooth experience in the virtual world.

DOWNLOAD DREAMWORLD VIEWER V1.0.2

* At the moment the Dreamworld viewer is only released for Windows platforms, we expect to release viewer for both Linux and Mac in the future. This doesn’t prevent both Mac or Linux users from visiting as there are many clients out there for these platforms which can be used to enter the Dreamworld grid.

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

When ending 2008 and looking forward at what the new year of 2009 will bring for Dreamworld it is a good time to take a look back at what has been accomplished in the past calendar year and what lies on the road ahead for the virtual world in the year to come.
We started to work on Dreamworld as it’s own independant virtual world one year ago. The Dreamworld grid went online in june 2008 and since then we have had the pleasure to work with many different talented people to create what you experience today. When you log on to the Dreamworld grid today you find this small but gorgeous looking place and see the very early beginning of a new virtual world. We have intentionally kept Dreamworld small in landscape untill this point for testing purposes but in the new year you will start to notice change in this. This has been a logical step to follow as one doesn’t need volume when performing constant test and updates to improve the system of the virtual world. At this point we can say those early days are now behind us time has come to move to the next phase which will include the placement of more land in world.

Another important point we achieved so far is implementing the in world currency for Dreamworld known as the VEC (Virtual Economy Currency) as Dreamworld will be a place where RMT (Real Money Trading) will take place on a day to day basis. Our next step is to implement the usage of VEC on the website which is going to take place in the beginning of 2009. We have done a great deal of research about the best way to activate the financial monetary system for Dreamworld. As the economical model and structure for Dreamworld is one of our top priorities we are working on we aren’t going over this subject in a light way. There is also the real world currency market which is extremely volatile at the moment to take into consideration as we see huge fluctuation between the most commonly used currencies. Setting up a healthy financial system is of utmost importance in order to guarantee a stable economy in world. We will post more information regarding this aspect soon.

In the past few months people often asked me where they could live in Dreamworld, how they can settle down on the grid and establish their virtual life by becoming the owner of their own virtual land. The reason we haven’t started to offer parcels for sale or islands is because we find it to soon. We do have people who are currenly testing out what it is like to live in Dreamworld. These avatars, these virtual colonists do have their own simulator somewhere secretly hidden on the grid where they already commenced building their houses, stores at the time of writing this post. For the next few months we will look how they are experiencing what it is like to have their own virtual island on the Dreamworld grid. What works for them and what they are able to construct. This is a challenge for them as they don’t have a large amount of content at their disposal and are forced to create. Compare it a bit like Robinson Crusoë who arrived at a tropical island where there was nothing. These early testers are now going to a similar experience, a virtual one but a similar one. It’s fair to say this is also a challenge for Dreamworld to see how well we have done so far, in a few months from now we will talk more about how this experiment went with our early adaptors. As the provider of a virtual world immersive platform we want to let people do their thing on the grid. Provide people with as much freedom as possible so they can create the things they have in mind. A virtual world is a fantastic source of inspiration and can be the perfect outlet for anyone who has the desire to be creative.

When looking ahead we expect that 2009 will become a year of testing for Dreamworld and it will also become the year where Dreamworld will evolve from the early stage of alpha testing and move on to beta stage where the grid will turn into a production environment rather then the testing ground it is as we speak. Further we also expect to see the introduction of meshes this coming year, perhaps not fully supported and integrated but we do hope the first experimentation with real 3D objects will be able to take place on the grid. As taking care of priorities is a must and mesh support is high on our list we will strive to bring industry standard 3D objects to the grid where they belong.

We hope new year 2009 will become a very interesting year for the Metaverse in general, as so much is going on and so many interesting things are taking place. Dreamworld will strive to bring a postive difference on how virtual worlds are experienced by avatars today by providing them with a platform which is created by people who have infatuation for artificial worlds. We are looking forward to see you in world.

Count Dreamworld

One of these factors is a crucial one: “The Virtual World Economy”. Today there are several hundreds of virtual world platforms online and they all have something in common, a currency so that goods and services can be traded between avatars inside of the virtual world. The economical factor is where the virtual world sets itself apart from the classic video games. In classic games the goal is to either complete the game by conquering the final boss at the end of the level, or striving to get the ultimate highscore or reaching a certain level with your character. In the Metaverse this doesn’t apply and that is where it takes a different direction. People often get confused about this which is normal, it looks like a game, you can move around like you can in a game, you can be amused and entertained like in a game, because of this many look at virtual world platforms as normal games. Nevertheless there is a thin line between pure entertainment for some and normal business for others. Today many people and even companies have their real life business inside of the Metaverse and those people aren’t exceptions as virtual worlds are becoming more and more mainstream.

Today everybody is familiar with the term E-Commerce, commonly known as electronic commerce. The term E-commerce got introduced several years back when people commenced trading over computer networks aka the internet. Now that the grid based Metaverse is coming online it is time to introduce a new term to describe electronic trading inside virtual worlds. This new term named V-commerce will perhaps become the successor of E-commerce in the next decade. V-Commerce which stands for Virtual Commerce and describes the trading of virtual goods and services inside a simulated environment is still in it’s infancy today. We think there is no doubt V-commerce will start to become more important as virtual worlds grow more mature in the future. While the above sounds all nice in theory we feel it’s needed to back up our statement regarding V-commerce with some practical examples of actual commercial activities taking place inside artificial worlds today.

1. The crafting of virtual goods

Many platforms offer the inhabitants of a world a way to craft goods/materials into objects which can be used inside the world. The avatar or item creator will offer the object for sale in many cases. Crafted objects can variate from clothing; accessories; furniture; housing; resources and so on. While some do this purely as a hobby or for entertainment purposes there are many professional content creators and 3D designers active who have made a full time job in real life producing high quality 3D objects for the entertainment of others. Content creators and crafters as they are called wouldn’t be able to spend days or even weeks to produce virtual goods if there was no means to get some sort of reimbursement for their work.
This is also the point where real life and the virtual life meet. The factor of “It’s a game” doesn’t apply any longer for many at this point and virtual currency bids the outcome in this case, allowing those who produce and provide entertainment and value for others to get paid for their work.

2. Real Estate

A lot has been said and written about virtual land. Some people have asked: “How can land that isn’t real have value?” On the other hand one could ask himself if the internet is real because you can’t touch that either, but everybody has a computer and they all log on to the net and pay a monthly subscription fee to their ISP for something that isn’t real. Virtual worlds; goods; land; real estate is something new, people
aren’t familiar with it yet. The value of virtual real estate depends on the platform you are on, in one world land might be free but you have to paying a monthly subscription to enter the world, another place might provide you with a free condo or apartment to live in but charge a high fee for virtual items to place in your house. In other worlds land can be very scarce and cost huge amounts of money but can be a very good investment as the owner of the land is able to get a large financial return out of it. Another misconception you often hear about virtual land or real estate is the following: “It’s just hosting space or server space you pay for”. We found out it would be way to simplistic to describe virtual land or real estate as providing a hosting service. While there are certain facts which are in accordance with this statement on a technical level the large factor of properties regarding virtual real estate have nothing to do with hosting services or computer related matters. Just like in the real world, buying property in the virtual world will be the most important purchase they will make. Here again a market of supply and demand exists. People all have different ideas and opinions about virtual property while others set their focus to develop and provide this type of real estate. Just like with virtual goods the trading of virtual real estate takes place with virtual currency.

3. Consulting

The reason that virtual worlds are becoming more and more mainstream is because people find new uses for this technology every single day. The best way to look at it is to compare it with the internet, in the beginning people were intrigued by this medium but it took a while before they figured out what could be done with it, how it could enrich their lives, how it could save them money and what to do with it. The same applies for virtual worlds or the Metaverse as it is often referred to. Once people know they can run around with their avatar, change it’s clothes, talk to others they also discover it’s possible to have meetings with others, collaborate, attend classes or conferences, have training sessions and so on. Each day new practical use is found and we expect this will continue to grow in a healthy way as the Metaverse expands. Again like in the above examples virtual currency is used as a form of payment for provided services.

When people come together and spend a lot of time inside a simulated environment it is inevitable they will start to trade with each other at one point or the other. The human race has been trading for as long as they exist, before money existed there used to barter as a medium of exchange. Since Dreamworld is an advanced platform we have opted for a full scale implementation of a virtual currency system instead of bartering. By setting up a robust and secure currency for Dreamworld the in world economy will become unlocked. This means that soon Dreamworld will become a platform where trade becomes possible and will have an impact on many established virtual world businesses out there today as Dreamworld will offer virtual entrepreneurs a convenient way to expand their current business which will lead to winning solution for everyone.

We expect the full implementation of the economical system to be completed by the end of january 2009. We will posts updates about the progress made on this aspect during the next months. Since the economy is a vital aspect for Dreamworld we are looking forward to the completion of this project.

Count Dreamworld

Besides offering a very easy way to connect to the grid the Dreamworld client also becomes a tool to explore various new ways of building in world with prims. 
If we can offer and support new technology which becomes available thanks to the collaborative efforts of programmers and this technology can contribute to improve the Metaverse as we know it today, Dreamworld will integrate it into it’s grid architecture to create a better virtual world. A first step was taking into this direction with the viewer’s release. The viewer supports large scale prim building this means that you can build inside of Dreamworld with prims beyond the standard limit of 10 metres. It is now possible to scale basic prims such as the cube, sphere, ring, tube, cone, piramid and taurus up to a size of 256 metres. These are no special scripted prims or mega prims, these are completely normal prims supported both by the server and client.
It gets even better, this improved scalability doesn’t only cover regular basic pims but also sculpted prims aka sculpties. If you wondered what a sculpted shoe of 150 metres looks like you can find out. While the sculpted shoe is merely an example we are convinced that people who are into object creation and building will see a great potential here to experiment with the creation of new 3D objects.

We have made a sandbox area on the Hera sim where you can practise with building and object creation and discover the new possibilities supported by the Dreamworld viewer for yourself.

DOWNLOAD DREAMWORLD VIEWER 1.0.2   (Mac and Linux not supported yet)

Once you have downloaded the viewer and installed it on your computer keep in mind that you also need your avatar to log in to the grid. If you haven’t created your avatar yet:

GO HERE TO CREATE YOUR FREE AVATAR TO ENTER DREAMWORLD

We hope you will enjoy this first official release and are looking forward to see you on the grid.

Count Dreamworld