So that post on Megaregions ended up being a bit more popular than I imagined – resulting in a veritable torrent of ‘How do I enable megaregions?‘ requests both to my personal inbox, the #opensim-dev chatroom and the opensim-dev mailing lists. You can stop now. Here’s instructions.

It’s actually really simple if you are running the latest experimental code, however I need to prefix these instructions with a dire warning: this is very new code. The first prototype was done on August 28th.  It’s been a week and a half since then. Yes MegaRegions are an exciting bit of technology, but no – they are not that well tested, and yes there are bugs. More than usual. It was added to OpenSim as a undocumented feature because Teravus (in his right mind) didnt want to inflict it on the masses until it had at least a modicum of testing among more experienced users.

There are known issues at this stage – do not attempt to convert an existing array of regions into a single Megaregion without taking a full backup first (apparently there are issues there too) – if you still want to go ahead and check this out; you need to be running a relatively recent Git release of OpenSim (warning: there be dragons here already), into your OpenSim.ini add the line “CombineContiguousRegions=true” under the [Startup] section, eg:

[Startup]
CombineContiguousRegions=true
...

The regions need to be contiguous (that is already bordering), and you need to order the regions in your Regions.ini in a Left-to-Right, Top-to-Bottom (Correction: South-to-North, West-to-East) order. Failing to order the regions will cause the combiner to fail (new code. known issues.); it is recommended to make new regions for the purpose of this exercise. Otherwise, this is a fairly simple process to those already aquainted with setting up OpenSim regions. Credit goes to Teravus for the original implementation.

Grid etiquette right now suggests it is best to not connect megaregions neighbouring to non-megaregions for the moment, as they may introduce instabilities into your neighbours. (eg, pick random numbers for your starting coordinates). While you can connect megaregions to grids such as OSgrid, please do so away from the main continents. For loading a terrain across all the regions, I recommend investigating the “terrain load-tile” command, which allows you to import multiple regions worth of terrain from a single image. The above terrain was generated off a 2048×2048 F32 RAW produced by World Machine.

OpenSimulator is experimental software. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.

OSGrid “map tiles” are only reserved for you while your region is online, if your region is offline it risks having it’s location taken by another user. OSGrid Admins may help resolve map position disputes, however it is not our responsibility to keep your location.

- OSGrid.org “How to Connect a Region”

Connecting a region to OSGrid is a rewarding experience – many users however run into the difficulty of instructions being out of date; and while this set too will eventually go stale – they should at least be current for the next few months. Before getting started – you need to decide on a few things; information about your region (what to call it, where to put it on the map), where you will host it (at home, or on a dedicated server)

OSGrid is a free OpenSimulator network – connecting a region and using the central services is done free without charge (however donations to keep the infrastructure running are appreciated.)

First – this guide assumes Windows, and also assumes you are hosting from home. Users running in more professional setups will need to adapt accordingly. You may be able to skip a large portion of this setup procedure, by using the automated ‘OSGrid Region Launcher’ utility, you can download a copy of this experimental tool from the OSGrid Website; however this has not been confirmed to work with all users (nonetheless, I recommend it as a first step).

Preparing your region

Before we undergo the region setup process, you need to know your internet facing IP address, have setup appropriate port forwards. OpenSimulator by default will use Port 9000 on TCP and UDP; if you are behind a router you need to forward these ports to the machine that will be running the simulator instance. If you don’t know how to do this – see experimental tool listed above; or consult instructions for your router. You will also need to configure your router to enable ‘NAT Loopback’ – some support this by default, some don’t. If yours doesn’t, you may be out of luck and will need to host somewhere else (see my article on that topic).

You will need to gather two bits of information about your hosting environment, first is your internet-facing IP address – if you do not know it, visit this page. The second is some spare coordinates on the OSGrid World Map. If you don’t know them (or dont care to work some out), you can use this page here. Record both of these bits of information, because you will need them in a moment.

Download a copy of the OSGrid Package. It’s usually about 40mb, and can be currently found at this address: http://www.osgrid.org/elgg/pg/utilities/software

Unzip this package; and look for ‘OpenSim.32BitLaunch.exe’ – ignore the other files within the directory (regardless of whether you have a 64bit or 32bit system) – right click on it, and hit ‘Run As Administrator’; text will scroll by for a little while, then you will be asked a series of questions, in the format “Question Name [default]: _” – the following is how to answer these questions.

Questions

• New Region Name []:
  This is the name of the region that you want, it should be less than 64 characters long – and cannot conflict with any existing registered region.
• Region UUID[random]:
  You can ignore this, just hit enter.
• Region Location [1000,1000]:
  Enter here the region coordinates you wrote down above – exactly as printed in the ‘autocoord’ web page – that is, two numbers with a comma between them and no spaces. (The first number is the X coordinate, second the Y)
• Internal IP address [0.0.0.0]:
  Hit enter here – 0.0.0.0 means use ‘any availible IP’; this should be your choice unless you know better.
• Internal Port [9000]:
  This should be 9000, hit enter to use the default.
• Allow alternate ports [False]:
  If you are using port forwarding, leave this setting as ‘False’ and just hit enter.
• External Host Name [SYSTEMIP]:
  For this setting you need to put in your internet-facing IP address (or DNS address); you can use the exact output of the page listed above.
• Master Avatar UUID
  Skip this setting – just press enter.
• Master Avatar First Name
  Enter the first name of your avatar name here – my Avatar Name is “Adam Frisby”, so here I would enter “Adam” (no quotes)
• Master Avatar Last Name
  Enter the lastname of your avatar – eg; “Frisby” (again, without quotes)

With a bit of luck, your region should have registered with the grid and is now accessible. Login to the grid, and try teleport to your region via the world map. If it connected successfully; then that is all you need to do – your region is now online.

Chances are however, something went wrong.

Troubleshooting

The following are the common sources of problems when hosting a region from home

• “Remote Destination Timed Out”, or “Remote Destination is not responding”
  This error means that your port forwarding was not done correctly; and that the grid services were not able to connect to your region on the TCP port. Double check your port forwarding, and that your external hostname is correct.
• “Could not connect to region“, or “(done)“, or “Despite our best efforts, something has gone wrong“.
  This is a more insidious error, it means the grid was able to contact your region server on the TCP port, however the client was unable to contact your region server – double check your port forwarding and check that you have NAT Loopback enabled. If it still gives you problems; your router is incompatible with OpenSim – you may want to read this article on the opensim wiki for additional pointers.