We are happy to announce that we’ve upgraded all Kitely worlds, and they are now up to 50% faster than before! We’ve done this by upgrading to the latest Amazon server technology, the m8i generation, while keeping our existing prices. This upgrade enables your worlds to handle more scripts and avatar activity without experiencing server lag.
We’ve always taken pride in providing great performance to our customers, which we achieve by using powerful servers; placing at most four Kitely worlds on each server; and using our modified version of OpenSim that has proprietary high-performance asset and inventory systems. Our servers also benefit from being hosted in Amazon Web Services, the world’s leading cloud provider. Our servers are automatically moved between 3 different US-based AWS data centers to minimize the chance of a problem in one data center taking down our entire system. To maximize your download speed, all our servers have very high-performance connectivity to the internet. This latest upgrade further bolsters our commitment to providing a premium experience to our OpenSim customers.
Kitely opened its doors to the public in March 2011, making us one of the longest-running OpenSim grids. We have a great reputation for customer support, reliability, and high-performance virtual world hosting. Kitely is also the home of Kitely Market, the premier marketplace for buying and selling virtual items across the Hypergrid.
If you’re looking for a reliable, high-performance grid to host your OpenSim regions then take advantage of our 14-day money back guarantee and try Kitely risk-free now.
We’re happy to announce that Kitely now supports PBR Materials! Materials are supported both in Kitely worlds and in Kitely Market.
PBR materials are a way to create more realistic textures. For example, here are two spheres with PBR materials: mud and metal. The spheres’ surfaces seem like they have raised and lowered areas, and light reflects from them realistically.
You need a recent version of Firestorm in order to use PBR. We recommend using Firestorm 7.1.11 or newer.
Using PBR Materials
Using PBR materials is simple. When you’re creating a prim, instead of setting a Texture on the prim you can set a PBR Material:
Your inventory has a new folder called “Materials”, where you can collect PBR materials.
Creating PBR Materials
Although using materials is easy, creating them is a lot more complicated. We won’t attempt to describe how to do this here. If you want to learn more then a good starting point is the Second Life page about PBR materials (warning: it’s long!).
Support for 2048 x 2048 Textures
Kitely now supports textures as large as 2048 x 2048 pixels.
Please keep in mind, however, that large textures make worlds rez slower because viewers need more time to download the textures. Larger textures also take more graphics card memory, and this reduces the viewer’s FPS. So the question isn’t whether you can use larger textures (you can), but whether you should. Do you actually need the increased resolution?
Kitely Market
We’ve added support for PBR Materials in Kitely Market. We’ve renamed the category “Textures” to “Textures and Materials”, so that’s where you should put products that are primarily Materials. Of course, materials can also be a part of any other product; such products may appear in any category in Kitely Market.
PBR isn’t yet supported in all OpenSim grids. This is a feature that will be part of OpenSim 0.9.3, but that version of OpenSim isn’t finished yet so many grids (including Kitely) are still using the latest stable release, which is OpenSim 0.9.2.2. The reason that Kitely can support PBR now is that we ported the PBR features from OpenSim 0.9.3 into our version of OpenSim.
If your product uses PBR Materials then you should mention this in the product description. That’s because if someone from a grid that doesn’t support PBR buys your product then it won’t look right! You should let people know about this before they buy the product. Alternatively, make sure that your product also uses regular textures as a fallback, so that it will look decent even on grids that don’t support PBR.
PBR Terrains
Although the main use of PBR Materials is in objects, OpenSim also supports using them as terrain textures (instead of the dirt/grass/mountain/rock textures). This feature technically works, but we’ve encountered many problems when testing it. For example: if you enable PBR Terrain in the viewer, and then you disable it, then the viewer forgets your old textures and you have to set them again from scratch. So you can try using PBR terrains, but be ready for problems.
World Maps
World maps correctly show objects that use PBR. For example, if you have a building with a PBR tile roof then you’ll be able to see it in the world map. Only the basic color texture will be used (what’s called the “albedo” texture); not the other PBR textures (normal/roughness/emissive). But that’s good enough for a map.
World maps don’t show PBR terrains at present. This feature is problematic so we decided not to try to display them in world maps, for now.
Support in LSL
A new feature related to PBR Materials is a prim option called “Reflection Probe”. The LSL functions GetPrimParams and SetPrimParams have been extended to support a new parameter for this option: PRIM_REFLECTION_PROBE.
At this time, we don’t think it’s possible to change the Material properties of a prim using LSL. The OpenSim page about PBR says that this should be possible, but we haven’t seen any specific code in OpenSim 0.9.3 that adds that feature. Please let us know if this works for you.
We are happy to announce that we’re making Kitely Mega Worlds available again! Mega Worlds are a type of huge world that we made available for a limited time four years ago. Following our recent performance upgrades that sped up world startup times, we decided it was time to bring them back. Mega Worlds are giant VarRegions that can be up to 64 regions in size, hold up to 150,000 prims, and get a dedicated server of their own whenever they are active. As a special introductory deal, we are offering them at a 25% discount for the first 25 people who order.
Update (Sep 1, 2024): several educators have asked to be able to order after the school year has started. To accommodate their request, we’ve decided to extended the offer until September 15. Only 10 more people will be able to take advantage of this deal, and there will be no more extensions after this.
Mega Worlds vs. Advanced Worlds
If you’re considering getting a large world then you’ll probably want to choose between Kitely’s Advanced Worlds and Mega Worlds. What are the differences?
Most Kitely worlds share a server. We place at most four worlds on each server, to ensure that each world gets sufficient resources. This is important because many other OpenSim providers cram a lot of different worlds (VarRegions) into each server. If your region shares server resources with many other regions then it may run slowly because of what happens in those other regions. By strictly limiting the number of worlds on a server, we reduce the effect that other people’s worlds have on your user experience.
What is unique about Mega Worlds is that Mega Worlds don’t share their server. A Mega World is guaranteed to always get a full server of its own, so it can fully use all of the server’s resources without being impacted by other people’s worlds. This means that Mega Worlds can run bigger worlds, with more scripts and more visitors, than other worlds.
The following table compares Kitely’s most powerful world types: Advanced Worlds and Mega Worlds.
Advanced World
Mega World
Maximum (VarRegion) size
4 x 4 (16 regions)
8 x 8 (64 regions)
Maximum prims
120,000
150,000
Dedicated memory (RAM)
4 GB
8 GB
Guaranteed a Dedicated Server?
No
Yes
Maximum avatar capacity?
80
80
Price
$39.95 / month
$119.95 / month $89.95 / month (Limited Offer)
Here’s how these world types stack up:
Mega Worlds can be up to 4 times bigger than Advanced Worlds.
Mega Worlds can include 25% more prims than Advanced Worlds.
Mega Worlds get 2x more RAM than Advanced Worlds.
An Advanced World might share a server with another world, but a Mega World is guaranteed to get all of its server’s CPU, RAM and Network resources.
Both world types allow up to 80 avatars to visit them at the same time. But Mega Worlds will perform better, because they can use more server resources to support many avatars.
Mega Worlds, like all other Kitely worlds, are started on-demand. This means that worlds are started when someone enters them, and they’re turned off when they aren’t in use.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How long will this offer last?
A: Mega Worlds will remain one of our world options for the foreseeable future, but you’ll only be able to get the 25% discount if you are one of the first 25 people who order one. In any case, the offer will end on August 31 September 15 (see update note above).
Q: Why is this a limited time offer?
A: Mega Worlds get an entire server of their own when they are active, and they’re more expensive to run than other world types. We can therefore only afford to offer a few such worlds at the discounted price.
Q: What happens after the offer ends?
A: You get to keep your existing Mega Worlds at their discounted price for as long as you continue paying for them. But you won’t be able to order new Mega Worlds at the discounted price, nor will you get the discount if you later upgrade a non-Mega World to be a Mega World. To be clear, if you continue paying for your Mega Worlds then you’ll be able to keep them even if we stop offering them. (This is what happened to the Mega Worlds that people ordered four years ago: many of these worlds are still active to this day, years after we stopped offering new Mega Worlds!)
Q: Does ordering a Mega World require a setup fee or a long term commitment?
A: No, there are no setup fees. We bill for worlds on a monthly basis, and you can cancel your subscription at any time.
Q: Can I order multiple Mega Worlds?
A: Yes, if you are one of the first 25 people who order then you can get as many discounted Mega Worlds as you want while this offer lasts.
Q: Does Kitely offer a money back guarantee?
A: Yes, we offer a 100% Money Back Guarantee on new world orders. If you aren’t fully satisfied with your new Kitely world then let us know within 14 days and we’ll refund your order.
Q: Can I upgrade an existing world to be a Mega World?
A: Yes, you can upgrade any Kitely world to be a Mega World. The price you pay for the first month will be the difference between the price of your current world type and the price of a Mega World, adjusted for the number of days remaining in the month and for the deal discount (if you are one of the first 25 people who order).
Q: Can a Mega World be smaller than 64 regions in size?
Q: Is there a benefit to making a small world (smaller than 64 regions) be a Mega World?
A: Yes, because Mega Worlds have a lot more server resources at their disposal than the other world types that we offer. You can use these extra resources to build more complex worlds and support more visitors without lag.
Q: Does Kitely still offer always-on worlds?
A: We used to offer Dedicated Server worlds that were always on. However, as Mega Worlds provide almost all the same benefits at a much lower price, we’ve decided to remove the always-on Dedicated Server option from our order page. If you’re still interested in ordering an always-on Dedicated Server world then contact us for details.
High Performance Worlds
Mega Worlds are our best offer for hosting complex builds or big events. In addition to getting a dedicated server when they are active, Mega Worlds take advantage of the fast performance that every Kitely world enjoys:
Our service runs on the world’s leading cloud computing platform: the Amazon Web Services datacenter in California. We run OpenSim on the latest AWS m7 class servers that have 10 gigabit network connections, and we place no more than 4 worlds on each server to ensure that each world gets plenty of RAM, CPU, and network resources. (Of course, in the case of Mega Worlds, we place only one world on each server.)
We use CloudFront, Amazon’s renowned Content Delivery Network, to quickly deliver content to people’s viewers. CloudFront has practically unlimited bandwidth, and it has servers in many cities around the world (see this map). This ensures that your world’s visitors can quickly download content from Kitely no matter where they’re located or how many other people are currently using our system.
In addition to running excellent hardware in one of the world’s top datacenters, we use a proprietary and highly optimized version of OpenSim 0.9.2.2 which further improves performance. This includes using our own cloud-based Asset and Inventory services, which run on top of high-availability Amazon systems. This enables our services to be much faster than the services that come with regular OpenSim. As a result, Kitely worlds are rendered quickly, and Kitely users don’t have to wait for their inventory to load.
Act Now!
We encourage you to take advantage of this limited-time offer to get a Mega World at this highly discounted price. This offer will not be available after August 31, so if you want these benefits you should order now.
We upgraded Kitely today to an enhanced version of OpenSim 0.9.2.2. Our version of OpenSim includes hundreds of proprietary stability and performance improvements that we’ve developed for OpenSim over the years. This long-awaited update includes many changes and improvements, including ones that speed up world startup times. This is in addition to our system-wide upgrade a few weeks ago that doubled world performance.
The biggest new feature in OpenSim 0.9.2.2 is that the scripting system has changed from XEngine to YEngine. While using YEngine offers many benefits, there are also a few downsides to this change:
YEngine is designed to more closely follow the LSL script syntax. This makes it easier to port scripts that were designed for Second Life into OpenSim. However, this change can also cause some scripts that worked on XEngine to break. If you encounter scripts that have stopped working properly then you’ll need to fix, replace or remove them from your Kitely worlds. You can read more about these script changes here.
In addition, the change from XEngine to YEngine caused all of the scripts to reset to their initial state. That’s because the state files where OpenSim stores script state have changed their format, and YEngine can’t use state files that were created by XEngine. So if you used any scripts that need configuration after they’ve been rezzed then you’ll need to configure them again.
And finally, switching script engines requires our system to recompile all the scripts in your worlds. This happens the first time each world is entered following today’s update. This means that each world will take longer than usual to start the first time anyone enters it after this update. This is just a one-time delay, and the next time anyone enters that world it will start faster because its scripts will already be compiled.
We hope you enjoy this upgrade! If you encounter any problems then please let us know here.
We are happy to announce that we’ve upgraded all Kitely worlds, and they are now up to twice as fast as before! We’ve done this by upgrading to the latest Amazon server technology, the m7i generation, while keeping our existing prices. This upgrade enables your worlds to handle more scripts and avatar activity without experiencing server lag.
We’ve always taken pride in providing great performance to our customers, which we achieve by using powerful servers; placing very few Kitely worlds on each server; and using our modified version of OpenSim that has proprietary high-performance assets and inventory systems. Our servers also benefit from being hosted in one of the world’s top data centers, the Amazon Web Services data center in California, which has very high-performance connectivity to the internet. This latest upgrade further bolsters our commitment to providing a premium experience to our OpenSim customers.
Kitely opened its doors to the public in March 2011, making us one of the longest-running OpenSim grids. We have a great reputation for customer support, reliability, and high-performance virtual world hosting. Kitely is also the home of Kitely Market, the premier marketplace for buying and selling virtual items across the Hypergrid.
If you’re looking for a reliable, high-performance grid to host your OpenSim regions then take advantage of our 14-day money back guarantee and try Kitely risk-free now.
The website Hypergrid Business is now holding its 13th annual OpenSim grid survey, and we need your help to be able to attract additional people to use our grid and marketplace. If you’re willing to spend a few minutes to help spread the word about Kitely then please answer this short multiple choice survey.
This year we celebrated 14 years since Oren and I signed the founders agreement for Kitely Ltd. We would not have outlasted the thousands of virtual-world platforms (OpenSim-based and otherwise) that have come and gone during this time if it weren’t for your help in spreading the word about Kitely. It is your support and promotion of Kitely grid, Kitely Market and Kitely Organizations that has helped us remain in business for all these years.
Please help us by showing your continued support for Kitely by spending a few minutes to complete this survey. Thank you!
The website Hypergrid Business is now holding its twelfth annual OpenSim grid survey, and we need your help to be able to attract additional people to use our grid and marketplace. If you’re willing to spend a few minutes to help spread the word about Kitely then please answer this short multiple choice survey.
Last year many of you participated in the survey and your endorsement helped convince more people to join our community and attract additional content creators to list their items in Kitely Market. Your continued support this year is crucial for our continued growth.
Please take the time to complete this survey. Thank you!
Over the past few months we’ve made some major improvements to our backend and website. And today we’ve updated Kitely with a few usability improvements and bug fixes.
When you upload a mesh, usually the mesh includes some textures, and they are automatically uploaded as well. Previously, the uploaded textures were placed in the top-level Textures folder. Now, they are placed in a subfolder of Textures that has the same name as the uploaded object. This makes it easier to find them, and to keep the Textures folder organized.
We fixed a bug that prevented Estate Managers from making some changes to parcels in the estate. For example: Subdivide parcel, Join parcels, Eject user, etc. (This bug didn’t affect Estate Owners, so it wasn’t very noticeable: it only affected additional Estate Managers that had been added to the estate after the Estate Owner.)
We’ve improved some OpenSim error messages to make them easier to understand.
We’ve made many other improvements in the past few months, which we haven’t mentioned in our blog until now (we only talked about them in the weekly Kitely community meetings). One of the biggest changes is a huge improvement to our mobile website; check it out if you haven’t already! (Visit https://www.kitely.com from your mobile). We also overhauled our desktop website to make it more modern and easier to navigate. There have also been some major backend improvements, such as upgrading to MySQL 8, switching to a different and more modern Linux distribution and improving our internal system monitoring capabilities.
We’ve updated Kitely today with several big improvements. We now support the Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP), which allows changing the world’s environment: its sky, water, etc. We’ve also added the option to sell EEP settings in Kitely Market. And finally, we’ve added support for many new and updated scripting functions, in both LSL and OSSL.
A Note About OpenSim 0.9.2
Kitely runs the latest stable release of OpenSim, which is currently OpenSim 0.9.1.1 (along with over 600 proprietary improvements of our own). Most of the changes in today’s update were taken from OpenSim 0.9.2, which is currently in development and isn’t finished yet. We value stability, so normally we wouldn’t integrate code from an unreleased version of OpenSim. We prefer to wait until OpenSim’s bugs have been ironed out through testing on other grids. However, in this case we had good reasons to integrate some features from OpenSim 0.9.2 even though it hasn’t been released yet.
The reason we added the Environment Enhancements is that the previous environment system (WindLight) doesn’t work with modern viewers anymore, so it was important to provide a replacement.
We added the new and modified scripting functions from OpenSim 0.9.2 for two reasons. First, some of these functions are required in order to work with the Environment Enhancements. Second, some of you have asked us to add the new scripting functions so that you’ll be able to start using them.
We want to take this opportunity to thank Ubit Umarov for his continued work on improving OpenSim: he wrote the vast majority of these features, and he’s working hard on getting OpenSim 0.9.2 finished and released.
Environment Enhancements
You can now use the new Environment system in your worlds. If you look at your Region or Parcel settings, you’ll see that the Environment tab has changed: instead of showing Windlight settings, now it shows EEP settings. The world has an overall environment, and optionally parcels can override that environment. You can also create a private environment just for your avatar.
Another change is that OAR files now include the region and the parcels’ environments. (OAR files did not include Windlight settings, so this is a big improvement.)
Kitely now supports a new type of asset, called Settings (short for “Environment Settings”). This asset has three sub-types: Day Cycle, Sky and Water. You can add items of this type to your inventory, and you can also include them in products that you sell in Kitely Market. If you want to sell standalone Settings assets then we’ve added a new category for this purpose: Landscaping and Plants > Environments.
Migrating from Windlight to EEP
If you have Windlight settings in your regions then they will be converted to EEP automatically.
If you have Windlight settings in your parcels then they will not be converted to EEP automatically. That’s because unlike region settings, the parcel settings aren’t stored on the server. Instead, they are stored in XML files on your PC. In order to migrate them to EEP you will need to do the following:
1. Identify the Presets used in your parcels. For example, suppose that you have a parcel that has the following line in its description:
/*Windlight Sky: "[TOR] BIG SUN - Awwyeah" Water: "[TOR] Watermelon juice"*/
This means that the parcel is using the preset called “[TOR] BIG SUN – Awwyeah” for its Sky, and the preset called “[TOR] Watermelon juice” for its Water.
2. Locate these presets (as XML files) on your PC. There are two directories that can contain Presets: in Firestorm, and in your local settings.
The Firestorm presets are located in the following directory:
In the example above, both of the presets can be found in the Firestorm directory. However, if you don’t find the presets in this directory then look for them in your personal presets directory, which is at:
If you can’t find the Presets in either of these locations then they never worked, because the viewer wouldn’t have found them either.
If you do find the Presets then convert them into the new Settings assets. This requires Firestorm 6.4.13. Select from the menu: World > Environment > Bulk Import, and then select the specific type of asset that you are importing. This adds Settings items to your inventory, in the “Settings” folder. You can then use these items to set the parcels’ environments.
Scripting Changes
This update includes many scripting changes. In some cases these changes are very significant because they don’t affect only the scripting functions (in LSL or OSSL), but also how OpenSim works at a basic level. The next few sections describe these changes.
Most of the new functions may be called by anyone, i.e. they don’t have a Threat Level.
New Environment Functions
The following functions allow working with the Environment, or with related aspects (such as the current time).
The following functions shouldn’t be used anymore.
osSunGetParam / osGetSunParam
osSunSetParam / osSetSunParam
osSetEstateSunSettings
osSetStateEvents
Changed Behavior
The following functions have changed their behavior.
llTarget, llRotTarget – the events at_target and not_at_target used to be sent to every script in every prim in the object, but now they are sent only to the script that called llTarget or llRotTarget.
The items must have Copy permission. They also need Transfer permission if they’re being given to a different avatar.
The destination object must be Moveable.
The destination object must allow receiving incoming items.
Can’t give scripts to other users (but you can give them other types of items).
The script now sleeps a bit whenever this function is used: 3 seconds when giving to a user, or 100 ms when giving to an object.
Changing a prim’s scale (using llSetScale, or one of the functions like llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast) didn’t show the scale change until the object was selected, or manipulated in some way. This has been fixed.
If an LSL or OSSL function encounters an error then the script sleeps for 1 second
llList2Vector, llList2Rot – now they automatically convert string elements into rotation and vector
llList2Json – fixed a bug that occurred if any of the elements in the string was an empty string
llPassCollisions – when used with the parameter “2”, now it doesn’t pass collisions (previously it did)
osInviteToGroup – doesn’t send an invitation if the user is already a member of the group (returns 2 in this case)
osInviteToGroup, osEjectFromGroup – improved the check for whether the user has the necessary group powers (Invite or Eject). Previously only the specific user’s powers were checked, but now we also check the powers that belong to the user’s Roles.
We increased the number of products that are displayed in each Kitely Market page to 24 products (previously we showed 15 products).
We’ve fixed the following bug: put a script in a prim; lock the prim; restart the viewer; unlock the prim; and try to view the script. Previously you couldn’t view the script, but now you’ll be able to.
We’ve updated Kitely with several features and bug fixes that were requested by our users. The biggest improvement is to the Merchants Showcase area in the Kitely Welcome Center, and how it allocates free advertising signs to Kitely Market stores.
Merchants Showcase
Kitely Welcome Center is the most popular entry point to the Kitely grid, and is visited by hundreds of people each week. It contains an area called the “Merchants Showcase”, which provides free advertising for some Kitely Market stores. Each store gets a sign that displays some of its products, and visitors can click on the sign to view these products on the Kitely Market website. Thanks to this world’s popularity, the showcase is a great way to let people learn what’s available in Kitely Market.
The stores that get this advertising are selected by their rank. A store’s rank is determined by the amount of money that the store’s owner pays for their monthly Kitely subscription.
A store’s rank can also be improved when other people who have a Kitely subscription use their rank to promote that store (instead of promoting their own Kitely Market store). For example, this is useful when a group of users share a store. A user that wants to promote a different store can do so by entering that store’s name in their Account Settings:
Each store’s sign displays four of the store’s best-selling products (chosen at random from the store’s top ten best-selling products).
Optionally, the store owner can control which products appear in this sign by creating a Products Group called “Merchants Showcase”, and adding products to it. If this group exists then it will only be used to determine which products appear in the Merchants Showcase; it will not be used for the “Related Products” feature (which is the usual way that Product Groups are used).
There are a few caveats for appearing in the Merchants Showcase. First, only products with a maturity rating of General or Moderate are displayed. Second, only a store that has at least four eligible products can get a sign (since we don’t want empty squares in the signs).
The Merchants Showcase is automatically updated once per day. When that happens the list of stores might change, as well as the products that are displayed in each sign.
Sort Items in a Product
Items and folders that are included in a Kitely Market product are now sorted alphabetically. Previously they appeared in reverse creation order, but alphabetical order makes more sense. (This change only affects products that are created or updated from this point on; it doesn’t affect any existing products.)
