Sponsors and Crowdfunders can also contribute branded content for the Shopping Center region!  See the Content Donation page for more information!

Expo Booth Guidelines & Building Access

Thank you for being a Sponsor or Crowdfunder of the OpenSimulator Community Conference!  We are grateful for your generosity and support of the conference!

Based on feedback received from sponsors last year, the following changes have been made for this year’s conference:

• Expo Regions are not connected to improve simulator performance.
• The number of booths per region have been reduced to improve simulator performance.
• Expo region builds have been optimized to improve viewer performance.
• All booths have “equal access” to the landing zone area for improved visibility by visitors.

We hope that these changes will improve the Expo experience for everyone! Please review the information below regarding the Booth Guidelines and how to get access to begin constructing your booth.

SALES & SIGNAGE GUIDELINES

Expo Booths for the OpenSimulator Community Conference must meet the following guidelines:

• No products or services may be sold in the Expo Booth area – no exceptions!

• Product samples and free or freebie items can be distributed in the Expo Booth area.

• Products and services may be listed by photograph, name, or description so long as a price is not included.

• Under no circumstances should any Expo Booth signage or language indicate that the sponsor’s products or services are endorsed by the conference, conference organizers, or the Core Developers of OpenSimulator or AvaCon, Inc.

While we appreciate that these guidelines may require you to design special signage for the event, please understand that we must meet IRS regulations and guidelines regarding the allowable activities of a 501(c)(3) public charity.  Violations of these guidelines may result in tax penalties and other sanctions that could jeopardize our organization’s tax-exempt status and our ability to produce the conference.  Thank you for your understanding!

CONTENT APPROPRIATE FOR AN ALL-AGES, GENERAL AUDIENCE

The OpenSimulator Community Conference is an all-ages, general community event, therefore, sponsor Expo Booths must not contain content that would be inappropriate for children or a general audience.

Building Your Expo Booth On-Site

All construction of conference Expo Booths must take place on the conference grid.

In order to gain access to the conference grid, the primary sponsor or crowdfunder booth contact must register for the conference using the promotional code provided in the confirmation email.  Shortly after you register, you should receive an email with your booth assignment and information about logging into your local account to begin building your booth.

If you need to provide access to members of your building team, please send an email to opensim@avacon.org with the AVATAR NAME and EMAIL ADDRESS of your builders.  Note that we will provide local accounts for members of your building team, but this is not a registration or ticket for the conference, and the builder’s accounts will only have access to the Expo regions.  If the builder wishes to attend the conference, they will need to register for the conference through the normal registration process.

We are unable to accept OAR file uploads for expo booths this year to prevent issues with permissions and objects losing appropriate creator information.

Uploading IAR Content

If you need to upload content to the conference grid, all sponsors, crowdfunder booth builders, and building team members will be given access to upload IAR files through the conference account management website.

You will not be able to upload an IAR file until you receive the email with your local account login information!  Once you have received your login information, follow these steps to upload your IAR content to the grid:

1.  Go to http://cc.opensimulator.org:8005/wifi/and log in.

2.  Click the Inventory link on the right side of the page.

3.  Click the Upload IAR link in the upper right corner of the Inventory page.

4.  Select your IAR file and click Submit.

It may take a significant amount of time before your IAR file is completely loaded depending on how large the file is.  You may want to go grab a cup of coffee while you wait!  Once your IAR file has been uploaded, log out and back into the conference grid to see the contents in your in-world inventory.

SAVING IAR FILES TO PRESERVE CONTENT CREATOR INFORMATION

In order to preserve creator information in the IAR file, please be sure to export your IAR content with the following switches:

Windows

save iar --home=http://grid.avacon.org:8002 --creators [first_name] [last_name] "/content folder name" [password] c:\path\to\save\to\inventory.iar

Linux

save iar --home=http://grid.avacon.org:8002 --creators [first_name] [last_name] "/content folder name" [password] /path/to/save/to/inventory.iar

Parcel Sizes & Prim Limits

Gold & Silver Level Sponsors – Large Display Booth

Exact Square Meters:   48,896 sqm
Prim Limit:  12,000

A large display booth in the Expo Region will roughly correspond to a single region, minus areas reserved for a conference landing zone and common sidewalk areas.

Bronze Level Sponsors – Medium Display Booth

Exact Square Meters:  25,216 sqm
Prim Limit:  6000

A medium display booth in the Expo Region will roughly correspond to a half region, minus areas reserved for a conference landing zone and common sidewalk areas.

Nickel Level Sponsors – Small Display Booth

Exact Square Meters:  12,224 sqm
Prim Limit:  3000

A small display booth in the Expo Region will roughly correspond to a quarter region, minus areas reserved for a conference landing zone and common sidewalk areas.

Community Level Sponsors – Community Display Booth

Exact Square Meters:  2,288 sqm
Prim Limit:  500

A community display booth in the Expo Region will roughly correspond to one-eighth of a region, minus areas reserved for a conference landing zone and common sidewalk areas.

General Building & Script Guidelines

By default, each region will support up to 15,000 prims, but for performance optimization, prim efficiency is paramount. The fewer objects and items that have to be rendered in the viewer, the better performance for the client and end user will be.

At this time, all three types of building objects supported by OpenSimulator can be used in your Expo Booth build:

• Prims
• Sculpted prims
• Mesh objects

Special care should be taken with sculpted and mesh prims to ensure they are optimized for multiple LODs and triangle efficiency to reduce viewer load. Colliders should also be tested for proper function and proportion relative to the sculpted or mesh object.

Texture Optimization

As a general rule the smaller the surface, the smaller the texture size that should be used. The smaller the better, since this results in faster loading time for end users and viewer clients. Recommended texture sizes on small surfaces include 64×64, 128×128, and 256×256, and in certain cases even smaller. For most larger surfaces, a texture size up to 512 x 512 is recommended. 1024 x 1024 sized textures should be reserved for uses where greater resolution is absolutely necessary.

Additional texture guidance includes:

• If one texture is repeated many times throughout the build, it is more resource intensive to have multiple sizes of the same texture for different sized surfaces than it is to just have one size of the texture throughout the entire build.

• Lessening the overall number of textures used in the build will also reduce the load time and optimize viewing for the end user.

• Use of transparent textures or alpha layers must be used judiciously to avoid the appearance of flickering between transparency layers that overlap each other.

• Use texture offsetting to minimize the number of textures used throughout the build.

Script Optimization & Review

Because scripted elements in a build have the most potential to negatively impact server-side simulator performance, all scripted elements of the Expo Booth build must be reviewed and approved by conference organizers prior to use.

In general, the fewer scripts used, and the fewer scripts listening for events, the better. How to best optimize LSL and OSSL scripts is beyond the scope of this document, but many resources for scripters are available on the web, in discussion forums, and on the OpenSimulator and Second Life wikis.