Kitely adds tool to merge OARs into existing worlds

Kitely, the cloud-based OpenSim grid that lets users upload their own region archives, has added a tool that merges OAR files into existing worlds, the company announced today.

The new Merge OAR option appears in the grid’s Manage World dialog, according to the announcement by Kitely co-founder and vice president for research and development Oren Hurvitz. It lets users pick what to copy from an archive, such as objects, terrain, or parcel settings, and where in the world to put it.

Users can drag the archive to a spot on a map of the world or type in exact coordinates, rotate it, and put it in the sky instead of on the ground.

“This is perfect for people who have regions on OSgrid and are looking for a new home grid,” Hurvitz said in the announcement.

OSgrid, the oldest grid in OpenSim, will go offline at the end of the year for a reset and come back in 2027, but residents’ regions and inventories won’t carry over. Grid owners have been telling residents to save their regions as OAR files now.

The merge tool was built with that move in mind, Kitely co-founder and CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business.

“You can use this to create sky platforms that don’t interfere with what you have rezzed on the ground or merge different regions into a single, larger one,” Tochner said. “You can also use this feature to easily import OARs containing your boxed content into Kitely without disrupting your existing Kitely world.”

Boxed content matters on Kitely because the grid doesn’t accept inventory archives, known as IAR files, from anyone. Tochner has recommended that people leaving OSgrid put their inventory items into boxes rezzed on a region, save the region as an OAR, and upload that instead.

Merging archives has been one of the most requested features in the Kitely community, Hurvitz said.

There are a few things to know. When an archive’s objects land on top of existing ones, users can choose whether to delete what was already there. Sky layers don’t get terrain, so a sky build needs a floor under it or visitors and physical objects will fall to the ground, Hurvitz said.

And an archive placed partly outside a world’s borders gets clipped. Only the part that overlaps the world is imported.

An Advanced World with 16 regions costs $39.95 a month, according to the announcement, and that is the size Hurvitz suggests filling up with archives. The grid’s Mega Worlds run 64 regions.

In addition to exporting OARs from OSgrid or other grids, there are also OAR files available for free online that Kitely users can import. For example, Freebie Mall 2.0 is Linda Kellie’s freebie shopping mall, uploaded to Kitely by Kat Lemieux and still open to visitors.

Hypergrid address: grid.kitely.com:8002:Freebie Mall 2.0

Kellie’s regions are free to download from The OAR Shop, and we listed them all in our story on last month’s Linda Kellie tribute at Dismayland.

It’s the third Kitely upgrade in a month. The grid made its worlds start up to three times faster last month, and rolled out its own spatial voice after the Vivox outage.