@vrsimility
educational purposes? You are kidding, right?
The only school I know is on AMV where you get lessons for Blender or scripting or such in this way. So you learn there how to create own stuff. But it is all basic knowledge and no one in opensim is developer anymore for the software itself. There is still Dan who is owner of Lbsa in OSgrid but for further development there is no one anymore. Everyone who runs grids uses Dreamgrid and Fred is the developer but this all doesn't really matter anymore. The server side is not really a problem. Everyone can have great working grids on his computer at home. Many have more than one grid running. I know some who run 3 grids at the same time. Of course, they use different alts as owner lol
Jimmy has also Decadence grid on one server and var sims of OSgrid on another server at home. So he runs several different. Of course, the server for decadence Grid is most powerful. It works great.
But there are no developers for Firestorm or other viewer, who really make a game changer. It is all still depending on openGL and you get no more complexity inworld than 16 bit objects.
Some even said that LindenLabs forced Firestorm not to make performance better for it. The Software is anyway 95 % of the SL viewer and just added some cosmetics. If you compare actually SL viewer with Firestorm viewer you see in SL the difference. The SL viewer is better. Although with the last update of Firestorm it has better performance too. I would estimate 30 % better than before. But still less than the SL viewer.
How many Grids are online will change anyway. You can run a grid just for the time you are online by yourself only. So it is hard to estimate how many grids are really there. A friend is just bringing her grid online when she is online with her friend together.
How many real persons are in Opensim? @jupiter_rowland would say now thousands and would show you computer statistics from a journalist.
Some say just 100. I estimate about 200 with each 100 alts lol
I have 7 alts by myself. From different grids but same name and all avis look the same. But I just use 2 or 3 at the same time. When I'm looking on Lbsa I have still my other avi at home. Most do this. And perhaps have other avis in addition at their home for traffic because they have a beacon and to be shown in traffic charts with 2 or 3 people lol
We have no beacon and it doesn't matter because we find it is ridiculous to show off in top 10 charts of traffic just with 3 people. In SL it is nothing.
You have in HBC in Secondlife 24/7 more real people than in whole opensim I would estimate. In HBC (Heavy Bondage Club) there are 24/7 250 people and you have to take a ticket to stay there for an hour. lol
In Opensim you have a good chance to explore all the thousands of sims and won't meet anyone there. And if you meet one then he is AFK lol
About Kitely Market I can't say anything because I was just first there and saw what quality is sold there. First I had no clue how to build things and all was magic for me. Now I know that things there are not really skilled new buildings. If you just change texture and put an AV Sitter 2.2 in a carpet then you should not really call it your own creation and demand real money for it. It is ridiculous what some people think they would be creative builders. If they are really that good then they should go in Secondlife and sell there things. But I bet no one would pay anything for it or want to have it.
The only thing that really matters for new creations is to script things. But in opensim are not really professionals. Last time I was on a sim that advertised on OSW that it has new things. The scripts were from 2014 and 2011. Very new.
When I came to Opensim I was asking for RLV things. Because of Hypergridding many things don't work. Just on own grid but not when you HG. So most people just build their Lego sims and are happy with it to take nice pics of their landscape and that's all. We don't have even great drifting cars or such because our physics doesn't work for it.
So opensim is just a bad copy of second life and won't be developed out of its own further.
I hoped for #thirdroom but the 3 developers take a break now. So there is no alternative right now.