After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?

[Penny Patton]

Yeah, seems they're looking for a lead artist specifically for new products. I'd imagine being a lead artist for SL by itself would be a full time job for at least a year or two.

[Bone Ashbourne]

Imo, Linden Lab pushed Second Life to soon when they got real life companies to join second life in around 2007. There were only normal prims back then, not even sculpts so everything looks bad like the American Apperal clothes were just basic system layers and cost L$300 for a basic system layer hoodie. Of course it wouldn't work because it doesn't look good and no one wants to buy them. But these days however there might be a chance since we have mesh with normal and spec maps now and things look better.

If Second Life tries to get companies into SL again they should get Converse and Doc Martens to make legit mesh boots and sneakers with their brands on it because people would actually buys these and there are already "knockoff" or "inspired by" versions of Doc Martens boot and Converse sneakers being made and sold by creators in SL and they do sell.

Who knows maybe there will be a second wave when second life goes mainstream again and it actually catches on.

[Suspiria Finucane]

---

0og wrote:

I wasn't that impressed with the avatars when I joined. They're really lagging behind in that department. The content creators are having to make whole mesh avatars or parts of as a work around for improvement. However it's not good when you see three women standing around with the same mesh face or body or even on a daily bases. The whole idea is to be unique and different not look the same. I don't know if the avatars have been improved upon since SL started but really they need to step our avatars up to a whole new level. Skin spikes and skin flaps and skin dips isn't progress. Stagnated.

---

QFT!

[Maryanne Solo]

"A new kind of cloud. We're building a coordination system enabling millions of people to contribute their devices and share them to simulate the virtual world."

If they are suggesting the average "smart phone" user is actually this smart and has the hardware for this to work, they've got it horribly wrong lol.

2 grids, one for people with serious hardware one for people who've purchased the right (rofl) to call themselves "smart". 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Maryanne Solo wrote:

"A new kind of cloud

. We're building a coordination system enabling millions of people to contribute their devices and share them to simulate the virtual world."

If they are suggesting the average "smart phone" user is actually this smart and has the hardware for this to work, they've got it horribly wrong lol.

2 grids, one for people with serious hardware one for people who've purchased the right (rofl) to call themselves "smart". 

---

I really don't think he is referring to 'smart phones.'

If you do a search on the subject "Scalabilty of Virtual Worlds" there has been quite a bit of research and writing on the topic.

One thing that you will find is the experts say that using the current architechture, once you exceed 30 to 40 Avatars on a Simulator, the computational power really necesary simply doesn't exist.  So problems begin to arise Server Side and Client Side as well as Networking issues.  This all translates into something that we call "Lag."  All Virtual Worlds and MMPORGs deal with this and use various approaches to overcome.  But they all have problems and limitations.

Some of the theoretical solutions proposed were to use a distributed computing approach to over come the current limitations.  Hence, utilising a cloud can make sense if the networking issues can be overcome.

[ImaTest1488314069]

---

X3aV wrote:

---

ImaTest wrote:

---

X3aV wrote:

If anyone has a pathetic little machine, they are playing the wrong games.

---

How would you know this?

Rather, what is it you base your opinion on?

Also, why do you get to decide what games are right or wrong for others?

---

I base my opinion on: those who cannot play a game because of thier own limitations have no right to complain about the game. The game works perfectly well for those who have the machines to handle it.

Would we listen to Pinto drivers complaining that they cannot compete in the Indy500? No, we would laugh at them or ignore them as fools.

---

You clearly believe you have every right to complain as you so choose, on whatever topic you so choose. Who are you to decide others cannot, or should not?

[X3aV]

Try again, fourth word in: opinion.

[Pie Serendipity]

---

X3aV wrote:

Try again, fourth word in: opinion.

---

An opinion is worth nothing.

An opinion with a supporting argument is a position.

THAT would be worth discussing.

You have an opinion but no position.

[Maryanne Solo]

Thx Perrie I wasnt aware of scalability research regarding virtual worlds only web stuffs.

Same thing really. I'll read up on it.

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Maryanne Solo wrote:

Thx Perrie I wasnt aware of scalability research regarding virtual worlds only web stuffs.

Same thing really. I'll read up on it.

 

---

We constantly hear people comparing SL performance with WOW.  WOW does something that would not work in SL.  It isolates users from each other.  I've never played WOW but as I understand this, you can't see into the next SIM on WOW.

We all want SIM crossings fixed/improved.  Most people do not understand the complexity.  For SIM crossings to operate seamlessly it really requires that you be present on two servers simultaneously with all the information associated with you.  Like most everyone else I get frustrated with SIM crossings but once I understood what was involved I got a little more patient with it.

"Virtual worlds use simulation to create a fully-immersive 3D space for users to explore, collaborate, and

interact in real time. There are two broad classes of popular virtual worlds: general purpose virtual

worlds, such as Second Life®, and massively multiplayer online games, such as World of Warcraft™.

Scalability, however, is still a great challenge in virtual worlds. For instance, Second Life and World

of Warcraft are limited to below 100 users interacting with each other concurrently (Gupta et al. 2009).

To meet the increasing demand of rich user experiences, high level of realism, and new usages such as

experiencing professional sports games in virtual auditoriums, virtual worlds must scale beyond their current capability in several dimensions.

The first dimension is to scale the number of concurrent users interacting with each other. Current virtual

worlds have to split the user base and restrict interactions to achieve scalability. For instance, Second

Life applies static space partitioning to decompose the space into 256m x 256m regions, each handled by

one server. World of Warcraft uses sharding: a part of the virtual world is replicated into shards and different shards reside on different servers, but users on different shards are isolated from each other. Both approaches degrade the massive multi-user experience: sharding prevents large groups of users from interacting by design and static partitioned regions collapse with too many users (Gupta et al. 2009)."

 

SCALING VIRTUAL WORLDS: SIMULATION REQUIREMENTS AND CHALLENGES

 

And I dont know why but the stupid link wont work here.

[HoppytheWanderer]

Well, putting sims on indicidual servers is one of the major problems with the fundamental design of their system, because it ultimately requires you to get bigger and badder hardware if you want to scale a sim up. Fortunately with advances in cloud design over the last several years we don't have to deal with this anymore. It's not that it was a bad design, it was pretty good in its day but its outdated.

If you think about SL for a moment, every asset is represented by a GUID. It's pretty simple to make a hashing algorithm to divide these GUID into an arbitrary number of relatively even buckets (say 10000) each of which can then be assigned to a server. When you go into an area then it quickly determines the assets it needs and fetches those based on its calculated hash. The result? Instead of having sims per server, you effectviely scale out all sims across all servers and eliminate issues like sim crossing, and having too many AVs in one area since it's the same system load across SL regardless of where the actual avatars are at. The can also more efficiently use their computer resources since there won't be a bunch of idle servers sitting around, while others are pegged out at 100% CPU.

Yeah, there are some design challenges in making systems like this but if they don't do it, someone else will. At some point some firm will come along and do rich, scalabale, virtual worlds like this and do it well, and SL isn't even going to know what hit them. The kicker is that SL already has the hardest part of the scaling problem solved with their asset IDs and now they just need some good network people in there (or put it on something like Amazon cloud)

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

HoppytheWanderer wrote:

The kicker is that SL already has the hardest part of the scaling problem solved with their asset IDs and now they just need some good network people in there (or put it on something like Amazon cloud)

 

---

I believe they have already moved some things to Amazon Cloud.

[Madelaine McMasters]

There are (at least) two different issues at work here. One is the rendering of complex scenes in which the shortcuts of a world like WoW can't be used. Because of the centralized professional design of the WoW world, textures and geometry are heavily optimized and reused. SL is a mess. Maybe sparse voxel octree technology (SVO) helps there, but it seems to have problems with avatar animation and global illumination (I think because that wants to crawl backwards on the octree). There was a thread here a couple years ago about an Australian company that claimed they were gonna take over the world with their SVO technology. I've not heard a word about them since.

The other issue is communication and synchronization of the underlying world information, such as texture/geometry handoff as objects move in-world, animation of objects and avatars, collisions (physics) etc. As Perrie linked, there are numerous ways to skin that cat, none of which scale well with world size and population density.

I'd have a much better feeling about Hi-Fidelity's ability to solve these problems if their website didn't look like yet another Rosedale love fest. nVIDIA probably has more people working on SVO than Rosedale will ever attract. What's his batting average been since LL? To his credit, he has wrestled a little venture capital out of Google, and apparently LL.

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

There are (at least) two different issues at work here. One is the rendering of complex scenes in which the shortcuts of a world like WoW can't be used. Because of the centralized professional design of the WoW world, textures and geometry are heavily optimized and reused. SL is a mess. Maybe sparse voxel octree technology (SVO) helps there, but it seems to have problems with avatar animation and global illumination (I think because that wants to crawl backwards on the octree).

There was a thread here a couple years ago about an Australian company that claimed they were gonna take over the world with their SVO technology. I've not heard a word about them since.

The other issue is communication and synchronization of the underlying world information, such as texture/geometry handoff as objects move in-world, animation of objects and avatars, collisions (physics) etc. As Perrie linked, there are numerous ways to skin that cat, none of which scale well with world size and population density.

I'd have a much better feeling about Hi-Fidelity's ability to solve these problem if their website didn't look like yet another Rosedale love fest. nVIDIA probably has more people working on SVO than Rosedale will ever attract. What's his batting average been since LL? To his credit, he has wrestled a little venture capital out of Google, and apparently LL.

 

---

I remember that company.  They had a "proof of concept" video at the time and the rendering in it was absolutely stunning.  But you are right, silence ever since.

As to the other points, all I can really say is that I am glad there are people working on the issues.

Maybe there is a simple wave the magic wand solution to the problems that everyone is missing.  And while we all know that LL makes mistakes and occasionally they may be doozies, I don't believe that they are intentionally trying to make things harder than they are.  So far none of the experts have found an "easy" solution and that includes many experts who have nothing to do with LL or SL.

If Phillip succeeds we will all benefit.  So for now I am going to cheer him on.

[Perrie Juran]

<threadjack>

 

 

 

I know this really has nothing to do with this thread but after reading a comment in another thread I really needed to get this off my chest.  Thank you all for your patience.

 

</threadjack>

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

There was a thread here a couple years ago about an Australian company that claimed they were gonna take over the world with their SVO technology. I've not heard a word about them since.

---

They are still around, but it doesn't look like they made anything worth mentioning for game platforms or virtual worlds for that matter. The company is called Euclideon. They do have another product that does look interesting, Geoverse.

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

<threadjack>

 

 

 

I know this really has nothing to do with this thread but after reading a comment in another thread I really needed to get this off my chest.  Thank you all for your patience.

 

</threadjack>

---

You're cuter than I imagined, Perrie!

When I was young, I learned how to unzip and eat bananas by watching monkees at the Milwaukee County Zoo. I'm hoping you know how yourself, but if you don't, you won't be the first fella to learn the technique from a gal.

[Ceka Cianci]

didn't they talk about a virtual world they were making called the outback .like maybe around 2008?

i just remember an Aussie compnay around then with a P2P idea for a virtual world..

[Perrie Juran]

---

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

There was a thread here a couple years ago about an Australian company that claimed they were gonna take over the world with their SVO technology. I've not heard a word about them since.

---

They are still around, but it doesn't look like they made anything worth mentioning for game platforms or virtual worlds for that matter. The company is called

Euclideon

. They do have another product that does look interesting,

Geoverse

.

---

That's them.

Now if they can find a way to put an Avatar on the ground and that Avatar could interact with the Environment..................they could potentially put SL out of business in very little time.

[Perrie Juran]

 

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

---

You're cuter than I imagined, Perrie!

When I was young, I learned how to unzip and eat bananas by watching monkees at the Milwaukee County Zoo. I'm hoping you know how yourself, but if you don't, you won't be the first fella to learn the technique from a gal.

 

---

Most Earth People I have observed seemed to have taken their lessons fron snakes.

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

 

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

---

You're cuter than I imagined, Perrie!

When I was young, I learned how to unzip and eat bananas by watching monkees at the Milwaukee County Zoo. I'm hoping you know how yourself, but if you don't, you won't be the first fella to learn the technique from a gal.

 

---

Most Earth People I have observed seemed to have taken their lessons fron snakes.

 

 

---

I call your snake and raise you a centipede...

[Ceka Cianci]

godwin time!!

i give you..

The Honey Badger!! \o/

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

godwin time!!

i give you..

The Honey Badger!! \o/

---

Pfft! Eagles rock!...

 

ETA: Ceka? Do you get the feeling we're actually giving examples of the superiority of RL over SL?

Nature's World, Nature's Imagination?

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

godwin time!!

i give you..

The Honey Badger!! \o/

 

---

Pfft! Eagles rock!...

ETA: Ceka? Do you get the feeling we're actually giving examples of the superiority of RL over SL?

Nature's World, Nature's Imagination?

---

that would be a good direction if we were hehehehe..

it's one of my most favorite areas..and yes eagles do rock =)

which reminds me of another beautiful bird which i had the pleasure of watching in the wild just because i happened to be looking that direction one day the moment just before it went into a dive...

i've never seen anything like it.. 

it just reached it's peak and turned in the air to aim downward..then started off slow in a dive..it looked like a sleek jet with it's wings getting closer to it's body..then all of a sudden it just bolted downward and was gone in the blink of an eye into the tree top horizon..

i never seen anything so fast in my life..it was beautiful..

the thing that amazed me is i didn't know they existed where we were..and it was just so cool that i got to see it and could have missed it if i would have had my head turned a little to the left or right..

i haven't seen one since..

i don't know what type of falcon it was..but there is no mistaking when you see one do that..that is for sure..

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

I'm beginning to regret posting that video.

It was never my intention to start a video competition.

It was really intended for another thread.............

/me returns to the peanut gallery and goes back to munching on my goobers.