I've been turning this over in my head for a few days and I just need to throw it out there at this point. Is mapping worlds other than Earth beyond the scope of OSM? Is there much interest in mapping Agni?

First, an explaination for the people who don't know what I'm talking about. Agni is the main grid on the virtual reality environment Second Life. It has a population of 1,440,530 as of this writing, and averages about 540,000 tourists per year (ie, 1.4 million users have logged in within the last 60 days, out of 4.1 million total users ever over 5 years of existence), with about 70,000 people awake (connected to that grid) at any given time. If you don't know what grid you're connecting to and you're over 18, you're on Agni. It has over a dozen continents and about 50 or so established countries (the largest being Lindenland, spanning the 8 continents generally referred to collectively as the mainland) and thousands of islands not associated with any particular continent. If you're not sure what Second Life is in general, it's not far off from Snow Crash if Snow Crash wasn't a dystopia.

Now, some challenges I see in pulling this off: Server, for one. Having attempted processing planet.osm so I could give gosmore a whirl, I realized that Earth is a hefty chunk of data. I imagine that Agni will be a substantially smaller chunk of data due to the impossibility of accurately mapping some regions (I'll explain further below), and the fact that the entire grid is maybe 200 km across tops, including voids. If OSM wanted to host it, I have a hard time seeing the resulting dataset for the whole grid being larger than what a major metro area on Earth takes now.

The geography presents an interesting challenge. I imagine most islands, being disassociated from any country or continent, would be too small, insignificant and in many cases challenging to get to, as most of these single-sim islands are private and inaccessable to the public anyway. Less of a problem would be small countries not associated with any continent, yet still excersize their right to restrict access within it's borders such as Seal Cove and Sunweaver Cove.

Modes of transportation also present a challenge. Highways would be easy, even the smallest islands have footpaths, and larger continents consistently have fully functional road systems, if not numbered highway systems, some even have working railroad, ferry, tram and bus systems easily accessable. Amenities such as rest areas (infohubs/welcome areas), parking lots (highway rez areas), tourist/new resident information (infonodes and infoboards), railway stations, airports, and bus stops are common fixtures, especially in Lindenland. Large, well-developed continents such as Heterocera Atoll are likely to be most challenging due to the local culture (the best example of which can be found along SL-2 spanning Outer Heterocera, Lindenland, which despite having a consistent highway number and official name, has roughly a dozen different names (a different one in each village it crosses), and can change names as frequently as every 300 meters). Teleportation routes, especially from remote areas, tend to be hit or miss: Some are more likely to work consistantly than others. Mapping the best teleportation routes would be difficult, but knowing which ones are usually the best would be like striking gold when the grid's having network problems between datacenters on Earth.

Locating the origin: This might be tricky and would require tracking down a Linden who has been with Second Life when it was still called Lindenworld and not open to the public. The origin (0° lat, 0° long) would be located in the oldest sim on the grid at (0,0) (the origin of that sim, located in the northwest corner of that sim). This is almost gauranteed to fall within Lindenland somewhere, even if it is on some remote island inaccessable to the public; it only needs to serve as a frame of reference. If this proves to be impossible to locate, a second possible location for the origin would be the Cube monument in the center of the mini-roundabout at the end of Waterhead Road at the doorstep of Linden Labs Second Life office and the Hidden Lakes Regional Telehub, located in Waterhead, Hidden Lakes, Lindenland. If all else fails, stay consistant with the WMS layer on slurl.com and use the flowerbox in the middle of Ahern Welcome Area. (I've been told by a few other residents in Second Life that the origin is located at DaBoom 0,0,0: So that would be our map's origin).

Working for us: Area. Even the largest states, such as Snowlands in Lindenland, are about the same size in area as a small American town. Pretty much every country except Lindenland is substantially smaller than that. Rural states such as Snowlands could easily be mapped in a couple good sessions, though areas with major cities such as Western Sansara, Lindenland (home to the Cities of Bay City, Shermerville, Nova Albion, Ahern and Luskwood) could take a few good sessions on their own due to the density).

Voids. There's several oceans, but areas that do not have simulators are completely void and inaccessable, appearing yet render like open ocean. This would just be dead space on the map, no big deal: You can't teleport to them and you bounce off 'em when you hit the edge of the sim facing a void anyway.

The Lindens. I stopped by Anthony Linden's office during his office hours today, and bounced the idea off him. He was quite interested in the idea and said he'd look into what he can make accessable in terms of data and licensing and ping me when he finds out. Given the Tao of Linden, I would hazard to guess that the response will be positive and we'll get a WMS layer of the official aerial photography to help start us off. Especially since it was pitched from their prospective: If people have good maps of the metaverse, they're more likely to play tourist and explore, thus spend money, in Agni. Should this happen, and we have the means to host the project, all that will leave is the fun part: Wandering around, taking notes and creating the map itself.

I see this as a great diversion for OSM mappers that need to get their fix but don't want to hop on a bicycle in the rain, are too ill to go out, don't want to spend the money on gas to go for a drive, or just want to meet other mappers outside the area they can conveniently travel to. Additionally, the project could serve to raise awareness of OSM in real life, introducing a fairly technically minded group of individuals to our cause, as well as help their fellow avatars figure out how to navigate Agni's unique geography.