EEP, BoM, EstateV2 --- please read!

Posted By: Vincent Sylvester
Posted On: 2020-08-21 04:33 AM

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Some of you may have heard about the changes that were introduced in the more recent versions of OpenSim. As we are a grid that runs very close to the bleeding-edge of OpenSim technology these changes are already on the grid in many ways. To give a better overview of what they are and what it means for you please read on.

Estate V2

In order to make it easier to see what's what in terms of estate management in recent builds of most viewers the estate management has changed slightly. Under the hood this required some changes on the side of OpenSim. Thankfully they are not too grave so they are have already been integrated. It is not yet clear if these settings will be expanded in the future, but the aim overall is to create a system that's easier to understand and manage.

EEP

EEP stands for environmental enhancement project and aims to bring better and more diverese environments to OpenSim by making the windlight you are all used to more advanced in its capabilities. Providing smoother transitions for environments, better lighting controls and overall a much more refined experience. For the moment the new system is compatible with the windlight script functions as well. On those regions that use windlight, now EEP, the difference from old to new should be pretty apparent, but the system itself is still being refined and may even be expanded in the future.

BoM

I personally do not see much draw for mesh bodies, maybe I am stuck in the past, but many do like mesh bodies for they offer much more detail and customizable options. Unfortunately there is a lack of clothing items, if only all that old system clothing would work. Well, that's where bake on mesh, short BoM, comes in. It offers to bake the textures on the mesh directly and thus allows usage of system clothing on the mesh bodies. This is currently mostly handled by the viewer in order to reduce load on the server-side so depending on the viewer the results may be different.

This actually brings me to the most important part of all this, the viewer. In order to take advantage of all these changes a recent viewer is required and in some cases using an older release may actually cause issues. We are thus looking to in future disable access of older viewer releases outside of the currently supported feature set. This means those using older viewers will no longer be able to use ZetaWorlds. This is to ensure that no damaged is caused by incompatibilities between viewer and OpenSim both on our end and for the residents. We advice to make sure to use the latest stable version of your viewer of choice and to follow the recommendations made on our how to conenct page.