First impressions from OpenSimFest 2025 CW: long (over 3,200 characters)
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So OpenSimFest 2025 has started. But there hasn't been any announcement whatsoever, at least not recently. Even the official OpenSimFest website is dead as OpenSimFest is ongoing. OpenSimFest will span 16 days, but you only learn that in-world, too.
The grid is down to one normal expo sim; the other "expo" sim is the home of the fenced-in zombie zone now. It's a far cry from 2022 and 2023 with their many expo sims, also because several very prolific exhibitors haven't been at OpenSimFest since 2023.
Also, the grid seems to have become painfully slow. It isn't laggy, there's no rubber-banding. But things rez rather slowly. Anything below the lowest mesh LOD only shows when I'm close and even then sometimes only after one or two minutes. Some objects take that long to appear in the first place. I've got my doubts that the recent Firestorm beta is to blame.
At least there are more exhibits on that one expo sim. Last year, OpenSim World's Fair in the Wolf Territories hogged so many resources that about half of the few remaining expo parcels at OSFest remained vacant and had to be used as impromptu Arcadia Asylum showcases upon short notice so that there was at least something on the land. Now we have things like a tiny Venice exhibit built by Cooper Swizzle, complete with a keyframed gondola ride.
Speaking of Kitely, Kimm Starr has brought back the fairground freak show that had to be removed when Coopersville was shrunk prior to being passed to its new owner. (By the way, Coopersville is not named after Cooper Swizzle. That's coincidence.)
Surprisingly little is still a work in progress on the first day. Then again, the sole expo sim is entirely in use.
After last year's break, Remmy Ravenhurst is back with her products, including an assortment of freebies. She even brought something new, namely free boxes with textures from which PBR materials can be made and free boxes with untextured mesh models. Since they are full-perm, it's possible to export the roughness texture and convert it into a specular texture for Blinn-Phong.
In general, the usage of the two Stores sims has improved, and that isn't only because the northern one of the two Stores sims is down to only two big stores. Still, as usual, there isn't a single freebie store; all stores offer payware either mostly or only.
What still makes me wonder are the clothes that are being sold, often for prices that appear to be converted from Linden dollars to Gloebits 1:1, regardless of the Gloebit being more expensive than the Linden dollar.
There are boxes with classic layer and prim clothes that must be well over a decade old, and yet, in real-life currency, they cost more than a comparable fitted mesh outfit with PBR materials and Blinn-Phong fallback textures costs in Second Life. Then there are boxes with mesh clothes that are rigged for mesh bodies of which not a single one is officially being sold in OpenSim. So in order to be able to wear these legally bought clothes, you need a pirated mesh body.
Interestingly, the grid was not reset since last year. I'm still a member of the OSFest Participant group.
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OSFest2025
