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------------------- March 5, 2025 Newsletter -------------

March 5, 2025 - OSgrid has come to a halt which will last weeks. You are welcome at Swondo World. All OSgrid Swondo landowners now have their regions setup at Swondo World. Swondo world can be visited by Hypergrid teleport or direct login if you received an account. A Swondo World account is currently only possible for Swondo Landoners. If you like to lease land directly at Swondo World, use the landorder page please.

February 27, 2025 - Swondo World (grid) is online and can be visited via Hypergrid and with direct login. Swondo World avatars are currently only handed out to Swondo OSgrid landowners. Swondo World is created to give OSgrid landowners acces to their Swondo hosted regions even when OSgrid falls off-line. This fall-back feature will remain as an extra service to Swondo land owners in OSgrid from now on.

February 18, 2025 - OSgrid is sometimes online and sometimes not. Most likely due to everyone taking IAR's which is heavely burden on their servers. Please note that your Swondo land is in no harms way. Swondo has several backups of your land and creates backups every day. Your inventory is hosted by OSgrid servers and will reset back to zero at march 21, 2025. Every Swondo landowner has received multiple e-mails about what you have to do to prevent your total loss of Inventory. If you still do not know what to do, contact Sylvia. Doing nothing is no option if you do not want to lose your avatar looks and your inventory.

February 15, 2025 - OSgrid seems off-line.. we are waiting for news

January 21, 2025 Europe afternoon - Swondo is off-line for updates. Expected off-line time about 3 hours max. Edit: In the end the off-line time was a little over 2 hours :)

January 17, 2025 - OSgrid still suffers asset problems. Mainly showing for some people as missing inventory and avatar parts. All we can do is be patient. There is nothing Swondo can do. This is OSgrid grid related.

December 6, 2024 - OSgrid is on-line again. pfffff

November 29, 2024 - Osgrid has just gone off-line. Swondo servers are constantly monitoring for the main grid servers to come back online and your land will be accessible from the moment they do. Note that your land and creations in it, are perfectly safe during a grid outage. The official anouncement by OSgrid staf on Nov.28: 'OFFLINE: Sorry folks we need to take the grid offline until some of the conversion completes. No eta just yet'

November 21, 2024 - Although not caused by Swondo.... All Swondo landowners got an extra free month added to their lease as compensation for the 10 days OSgrid interruption of service.

November 16, 2024 - OSgrid has just come back to life. All Swondo estate, sim and landowners have received an e-mail that their land is waiting for them again.

November 6, 2024 - OSgrid main servers seem off-line and also the OSgrid website shows the grid as off-line. We have no further knowledge on the why and how. Let us just hope the grid staff gets things up and running soon again. Swondo landowners always get their lease extended with the number of days the grid is off-line due to Swondo or OSgrid main service. In this case because this was totally unexpected, Swondo doubles the compensation days. So when the grid stays off-line for 10 days, leases will be extended with 20 days.



------------------- December 7, 2024 Newsletter -------------



Swondo Internal talks(Dec.07,2024) because of the outage
Swondo staff is talking ideas about what we could do during an OSgrid outage. We are looking if it would be possible to bring alive a kind of temporary 'shadow-grid' if a longer off-line period of OSgrid should occur in the future. OSgrid is enourmous. And even though the infrastructure of the main services is in way better hands with OSgrid then with us, Swondo is way smaller then the the total of OSgrid. And there lays our advantage in case of an outage. Swondo could bring to life a small Swondo grid within a few hours after OSgrid is off-line. This mini grid would only host all Swondo sims which normally run in OSgrid. We are not planning in leaving OSgrid at all and the grid would only be for the time that OSgrid is off-line. There are more then enough smaller grids already and histroy tells us that most eventually stop. Swondo realizes that maintaining a succesfull grid is a huge amount of work and technical challenges to overcome. Especially when the grid grows. We stick to OSgrid in the current circumstances. Please do remember that OSgrid outages are extremely rare. OSgrid is a very stable grid for already a very long time.

Sylvia LOVES TargetOmega and other 'viewer side generated' movements (Dec.07,2024)
Always aware of server-burden and raised in Second life during the 'pay per prim' times, Sylvia is always seeking to create as "light" as possible. To bring a region to life one needs sound and movement. Birds flying, boats sailing, waves rolling and preferable much more. Swondo public region: Swondo Harbour is dedicated to be a region with a lot going on in it without being a burden to the cpu of the server. The great thing that TargetOmega, Textureanimation, animated mesh without timers and particle emitters have in common is that all movement is generated at the viewer. At Swondo Harbour it is hard to find a place in which you do not see anything moving. Still the region is a very low burden on the server. It has no automatic moving parts that are generated at the server. Everything you see moving is viewer generated. The harbour region has "The Prim Factory". The factory has a lot of moving parts including unloading and loading ships, sawing plywood and many conveyer belts. Around 5 boats are always somewhere moving through the waters and an airplane comes from the high-sky down and flies under the bridge touching the water to fly up again. There also are a few animesh avatars but with adjusted scripts inside.(The demand heavy timers are taken out). Sylvia's biggest wish would be animesh avatars walking around with TargetOmega. This would mean real walking people without any burden to the server. Unfortunattely it seems to be impossible for animesh to be a child prim and then the combination cannot be made. This problem is showed at the harbour next to the store as a 'crime' scene. The only way to be able to have a walking animesh currently is by moving the ground under the avatar. On the deck of the large green turning freightship you can actually see an animesh avatar walk made possible by the "move ground" principle.
Enlarge photo

OSgrid suffered two long outages(Dec.06,2024)
On November 6, 2024 we anounced: OSgrid main servers seem off-line and also the OSgrid website shows the grid as off-line. We have no further knowledge on the why and how. Let us just hope the grid staff gets things up and running soon again. Swondo landowners always get their lease extended with the number of days the grid is off-line due to Swondo or OSgrid main service. In this case because this was totally unexpected, Swondo doubles the compensation days. So when the grid stays off-line for 10 days, leases will be extended with 20 days.

On November 16, 2024 OSgrid came back to life. All Swondo estate, sim and landowners were send an e-mail that their land is waiting for them again.
On November 21, 2024 we send an e-mail to all Swondo land owners: Although not caused by Swondo, all Swondo landowners got an extra free month added to their lease as compensation for the 10 days OSgrid interruption of service.
On November 29, 2024 Osgrid had to go off-line again to complete their maintenance. We again send an e-mail to all Swondo landowners: Swondo servers are constantly monitoring for the main grid servers to come back online and your land will be accessible from the moment they do. Note that your land and creations in it, are perfectly safe during a grid outage. The official anouncement by OSgrid staf on Nov.28: 'OFFLINE: Sorry folks we need to take the grid offline until some of the conversion completes. No eta just yet'

On December 6, 2024 OSgrid came back to life again and this time we can expect the grid remains on-line. We send all Landowners an e-mail after we restarted all sims just in case.


------------------- February 20, 2024 Newsletter -------------

Two new region designs have arrived(Feb.20,2024)
A brand new design inspired by the 256x256 island: 'Swondo Tropical Island' is now vailable. It also has its own webpage with photo's taken with all kinds of different lightings.Beach Life. The tropical island, or more acurate island group, is mostly flat. Two little mountains to break the skyline view and to find some cool rocks at the hottest moments of the day. The islands are meant for people who like to have lots of flat areas to work with while also finding a lot of sandy beaches. The design gives almost endless walks at the beach. The island also has three ships each finding their own ways around and through the narrow island waterways. And this is why we have to call it islands instead of island. In reality a few narrow waterways seperate the land mass into a few island. Because the waterways are shallow, you can walk through and the other side is at some points only a few steps away. So what do you think, is it an island or a group of islands? Please do visit inworld to find out.

Walled Flatland is like it says completely flat. This startup situation is meant for people who like to work with ultra flat land. No slopes towards the water would create an unreal connection to the sea and that is why the whole island is surrounded by a strong stone wall. The size of the square island is 512x512 meters which is the equivalent of 4 traditional regions (or sims for SL refugees). The island is placed at the center of a 768x768 meter region which gives an aditional 5 traditional regions of sea to sail or create land with. The region can be ordered with a landheight of 0,2 or 4 or 10 meters and the height of the wall corresponds with the chosen landheight. A few trees are placed with one larger center tree to give a feel to the enourmous flat space. Stone pillars are placed at the corners of the region to indicate the edges. Of course the whole setup is totally changable by the owner and this design is even more meant to be a startpoint from which to change the landscape as part of the experience. Walled Flatland did already exist as a total land filling region of 256x256 to chose. The change is that it now is available as a VAR(large sized) island in an even larger region. Also the chosable height of the island and a little motor boat sailing around the island are new. Visit Inworld


------------------- February 06, 2023 Newsletter -------------

Abient Ice Room with sounds(Feb.6,2023)
An ambient Ice room inside the high snow mountain top of Swondo Island is the newest adding to Swondo places to visit. Visit Inworld (Be sure to have your viewer already running in OSgrid before you click the inworld-visit-link). Or keep it simple and see a photo of the room here. Of course you have to be there to feel the room :)

Swondo Village minor Changes(Jan.20,2023)
Because our transportation scripter has started working on the mono-rail system again, we made a few minor changes to Swondo Village its sea side border. The grand-cafe now has an open front and the center area of Swondo Village is now visually more connected to the mono-rail station and the ocean. The mono rail is extended a little to the information area at region: Swondo. Visit Inworld (Be sure to have your viewer already running in OSgrid before you click the inworld-visit-link). Or keep it simple and see a photo of the room here.

OSgrid outage of service(Jan.10,2023)
OSgrid grid services were off-line for a day and a half due to infrastructure maintenance which took longer then expected. Swondo always compensates lost time caused by Swondo or OSgrid and all leases got extended with 2 days extra.

Winter fun Region(Dec.8,2022)
North side of the LBSA-Boardwalk has opened the frozen lake region: 'Winter Fun'. It has ice-skates, ice, snow, Hot chocolate you can grab and drink and jumps. Because of the frozen waters, it is currently impossible to sail through these regions. Winter is expected to last until March 2023

Swondo covenant adjusted (Dec.4,2022)
The covenant has been adjusted in regards to unlimited prims usage and other changes. For example clubs and other social gather places are now allowed within the fair-use policy. Sims can be used more heavily then before. Swondo has invested in more and 'stronger' servers and has 2 brand new high speed fiber connections. In addition Swondo its parent company has invested in 40 solar panels providing power also for the Swondo servers.

Did you ever wonder where the standard plywood boxes come from? (Nov.25,2022)
This basic building block which every inworld created object uses as base to start creating with, can be rezzed endlessly within your viewer. This can be done because these 0.5x0.5x0.5 cubes are made constantly 24 hours per day and shipped to your viewer while you are sleeping. The Prim Factory shows how & where the most basic plywood prim is made. The Prim Factory is located in the region: Swondo Harbour. Whole of Swondo Harbour is a project to show how to make a region come to live by lot of automated movement without being a burden to the server. All objects that show movement use functions that create the visible movement in the viewer instead of actually moving prims at the server. For this TargetOmega or TextureAnimation or AniMesh is used.

Swondo its a enormous sail-able ocean(Nov.23,2022)
The public accessible and sail-able and fly-able regions have expanded to an enormous area. Every Swondo landowner, also the ones who have their sim elsewhere on the worldmap, are made member of the 'Swondo-Travels' group. This way they can rezz their boat at harbours and be able to sail their own vestles all around. Technically it means that groupmembers can run scripts and enter regions while sitting on objects (object entry). Watch the sail-able map here

New Mediterranean climate 768x768 Design (Nov.18,2022)
With the name: 'Swondo Island' a New forest and flowers mediterranean climate design is added to the chosable initial-landscapes. Especially made for 768x768 meter regions. The island is almost totally filled with forest and flowers. It has smooth a more more rough terrain and A high snowy mountain. When you climb the mountain you will hear the icy wind and feel the cold. Just like the new tropical designs, this island has its own webpage. with photo's and more info.

------------------- November 16, 2022 Newsletter -------------

Two ways to reduce your monthly invoice (Nov.16,2022)
1. A Bonus system for recommending Swondo to new leasers is implemented and explained. In short you receive a 1 US$ p/m deduction from your invoice per new-leaser per month they are leasing and you are leasing. With 5 people filling in your name at the land-order form, you would pay 10 US$ per month instead of 15 US$ per month for each month they stay around. More information here.
 2. Reduced price of 78US$ (13US$ p/m) when you pay upfront for six months instead of two. More info

Changes for the eye in Public Swondo Regions (Nov.15,2022)
At the region: 'Swondo Harbour' a large cargo ship is now actively turning itself on bow and rear power. Making waves and stirring up the water with its old diesel engine. At the large empty deck one of the crew members is walking to keep warm. A tricky way to implement animated walking mesh without it is actually moving. You have to see it to see the effect :)   Photo At the region: 'Swondo' right at the information area, There now is a hole in the ground where you can see Barbara the Smuggler sail by every 2.5 minute. Barbara is a well knows smuggler in Swondo. You can see here sail at many regions in here little boat. She has hidden routes and passages only Barbara can go but if you look carefully you can see parts of her route. The story tells that she delivers plain plywood cubes of 0.5x0.5x0.5 to everyone who wants them.
Secret Underground Route image"

More of Swondo accessible for sailing (Nov.14,2022)
My dear friend Golpher brought the sailing possibilities back to my attention. Swondo has a huge public area of which a lot is water. Originally created as a non-accessible ocean buffer Swondo has a lot of water at the sides of the 'East of LBSA-Plaza' public regions. Also Swondo owns almost all regions around LBSA-Plaza which are called the LBSA-Plaza ring regions. I went through all of them and changed land a bit when it was needed to make connected sailing possible again. I opened the water regions for access and tagged all Swondo public regions to one group. This means that all Swondo land owners who like can become member of a group (ask Sylvia for an invite) and with that sail their ships for hours to lots of interesting places. I still have to make a few more places to start from(rezz your boat). I also intend to create a few places where any visitor can click for a Swondo owned boat and sail the waters.  This way we can make it possible for anyone to sail Swondo public waters without giving them the (risky) rights to have their own scripts running. The Swondo Public accessible areas map including a route I have sailed you can see or download here:  sailingmap Image

Unlimited- Prims and Region size (Nov.12,2022)
Price based on land-size or prims is history. As of now we handle a fair-use policy based on the actual Megabytes of ram a sim uses. In general it means that the number of normal prims is almost unlimited and well build mesh objects can be used in great numbers. Also one can chose a region size at land-order of 256x256 or 512x512 or 768x768 or 1024x1024 meter. We do not recommend 1024x1024 or larger because of the extra power is asks of the visiting viewer. Lag can occur on a lower end computer and usually the region owner or hosting company gets the blame. So we recommend the best balance of land-size versus no worries is 768x768 :)  If you are currently a 256x256 Swondo landowner you were already offered to change this by moving your current build into a larger region but if you missed that, the offer still stands :)

Three new tropical landscapes for a 768x768m region and new Swondo website style (Oct.15,2022)
Three new tropical landscapes specially made for a 768x768m region are now available at the land-order page and have their own promotion webpages. Slowly new initial designs for 768x768m regions are created.  256x256m designs can now be ordered as initial landscape inside a 512x512m or 768x768m region giving a lot of extra ocean around.  Slowly new and old Swondo webpages will be created in a new more modern website style.
Tropical Mountain Islands XL and XXL:  Tropicalvar webpage     Paradise Islands  Paradise Islands Webpage


Important news while you do not want the newsletter subscription
Important Swondo news is mentioned in the right column at the OSgrid OSgrid Information Page
Important news directly regarding Swondo land and sims for Swondo landowners is always send via e-mail.



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