Dear DigiWorldz Community,

We are excited to announce that testing of our new custom version of code is almost complete! This update will bring many new and improved features to enhance your virtual world experience in DigiWorldz.

For region owners, our new web-based control panel will provide you with more control and flexibility over your regions. You will be able to ban other users, send messages, create restore points, raise or lower land, rename your region, move regions to a new estate, rotate content, delete content, change the physics and script engine, change the maptile resolution, issue restarts, change currency type, control HyperGrid visitors and many of these changes will not require a restart of the region.

For all users, you will be able to define instructions for management to follow in case you are “Missing in Action”, or otherwise away for an extended period, define account managers, request backups and uploads of regions, inventory, terrain, and more. You will also be able to remove all attachments and wearables to “fix” any issues an errant attachment or wearable might have caused, delete your avatar’s ghost, choose to delete your account, and even define a secret question and answer for account verification in case the email address you’ve used is no longer available. If you are partnered with another user, either of you can request a “divorce”.

In addition to the new control panel features, we have made changes to our opensim code to support real-time banning, content restrictions, new region commands, environmental changes, and improved inventory loading, teleporting and asset delivery times. You can expect custom random messages during login and other behind-the-scenes changes to enhance your virtual world experience.

Starting now, you can visit the avatar control panel at http://wc.digiworldz.com and there you will see a new link at the top of the page on the right hand side; “Export On/Off”. This link will allow you to allow, or disallow your creations being exportable out of DigiWorldz once our new code has been uploaded. We are going to allow a few weeks for everyone to make this choice, as with the new code, once it’s uploaded, all creations will be allowed out by default, but if you choose to disallow exports, your creations will not be permitted to leave DigiWorldz. This can be changed at any time, and is controlled by you. If you are a creator who is selling or giving your creations to other users, it might be a good idea to let these users know if you allow your creations out of the grid or not, otherwise some users may be upset if they find out something they purchased from you cannot be taken out of the grid. Maybe indicating in advertising if your content is allowed to be exported or not, and including a notecard with your creations indicating if export is allowed or not to curb any potential confusion.
While this new feature helps to further protect your created content, it still will not protect against theft due to someone using a copybot viewer. Due to how viewers work in OpenSim and SL, there is nothing we can do to stop this.

It’s important to note, while we have done our best to control a user’s ability to export content you may create, these controls may be circumvented by future advances in copybot viewers, etc and therefore we cannot guarantee this feature will continue to work. While we have many hours of testing, since this is a new feature and you are encouraged to let us know if you discover problems.

As a creator, it is important for you to realize if an item is allowed to be exported, it can, and probably will be stolen. Once an item has left our grid, it could be taken to a region or grid which allows god permissions to the owner and they can do anything they want with the item, including changing the creator to themselves, or someone else.

We are confident that these changes will greatly benefit all users of DigiWorldz and are looking forward to sharing this exciting update with you soon. Stay tuned for further announcements on the launch of the new code.

Thank you for your continued support of DigiWorldz.

Best regards,
The DigiWorldz Team.