PRESS RELEASE
13/10/08
MULTI GRID LIVE EVENT
Live event runs in OpenSim and Second Life simultaneously.
OVERVIEW
On Friday 10th October 2008 The Sine Wave Pub Quiz took place in Second Life and OpenSim at the same time.
Avatars from both grids competed to win a first prize of US $500
The show had participants from both grids submitting answers to film, music and general knowledge questions. The answers were automatically collected, sorted and scored by The Sine Wave Company's robots. The 'quiz master' bots logged into Second Life and OpenSim were all controlled by the Sine Wave Actorbot system.
THE EVENT
The show ran for an hour. Sumax Mighty led from the first round. But victory came down to the last question; "In which country was the decimal system invented?" Kish Kas, lying in second place to Sumax, answered correctly (India) and the show ended with joint winners.
The first prize was US $ 500, split between the two winners. Sumax Mighty commented "The future is today. Welcome to The Sine Wave Company!"
Aubrey Figtree, who attended the event in Second Life, said "The quiz was a blast. I was never in with a chance of winning but it was great fun. Just like a pub quiz in meatspace. It's a great way to meet people."
The show was hosted by Easy Babcock, with live audio broadcasts in both grids.
Rohan Freeman, the CEO of the Sine Wave Company commented;
"It was amazing hosting a live event in two virtual worlds at once. Back in 2006 we did the largest live event in Second Life. In May this year we did the first live show in OpenSim. Now we've done the first event in two virtual worlds at once. It's really exciting and we will be making it a regular event now."
THE TECHNOLOGY
At a technical level, the event served as a scaling test in OpenSim, the open source virtual world.
Adam Frisby, CEO of Deepthink, an OpenSim hosting company commented;
"The test allowed us to fix a number of outstanding issues. We were able to isolate and fix several performance problems with the OpenSim software as a direct consequence. The server has shown a significant improvement in concurrent user performance. During the quiz we didn't come close to using ten percent of the server resources."
The OpenSim grid chosen for the event was OSGrid.org, a not-for-profit grid managed by Charles Krinkle, who said; "It is refreshing to see live events begin happening more on OSGrid. The more our sims and grids are used, the more useful test data we obtain to improve the software. I would like to encourage The Sine Wave Company and others to continue to use OSGrid."
The event was also a test for the Sine Wave Company's robot system. Allen Xiao of Sine Wave Company said "Our bots work in both grids and we can control them with one system. We had to hard code a few things this time because the assets in each grid have different UUIDs but we'll address that going forwards.
NEXT STEPS
The next live show will be on Sunday 26th October at 1.00 pm PST / SLT (4.00 PM EST / 9.00 PM GMT)
The first prize will be USD $500
To attend, go to www.sinewavecompany.com/pubquiz
FURTHER INFORMATION
The Sine Wave Company sells virtual goods and develops robots for virtual worlds. The company has offices in London and Shanghai and employs 20 people.
020 7720 8975