Ebbe Linden in-world discussion on the next generation virtual world

[Parhelion Palou]

I don't think this link's been posted here already. It's a lot of reading.

Ebbe Linden at the July 25th Nonprofit Commons Meeting

 

[ChinRey]

Thank you for posting that link! :matte-motes-big-grin:

Very, very interesting and, yes, heavy reading too.

I haven't had time to study the transcript in detail yet but one thing I notice right away is that Ebbe Linden and LL seem to be more focused on content rather than the technology behind. That's very positive sign. It seems up until now, we've been far too concerned about voxels and meshes and script language and so on. All very ipmortant of course but not nearly as important as the actual results.

One detail that struck me right away. Ebbe Linden said:

" For the next generation platform, we think a little bit differently from the beginning.  We more or less think of the creator as the primary customer, as opposed to the consumer, if you will.

... (lots of words omitted)

give the experience creators the tools to attract audiences into their experiences from the outside world."

Yes, that's certainly different from what SL is today but Ebbe is wrong when he says they're thinking differently from the beginning. In fact this looks very much like how the original SL developers thought from the beginning!

If this is how LL want their next virtual world to be, it's important for them to analyze and find out why the first one ended up so different from the original plan.

I can think of two obvious answers.

The first one is lack of encouragement/rewards. Any content creator - professional or amateaur and in the widest possible definition fo the term - will want some sort of reward for their hard work. It can be money, it can be recognition or something else but it has to be something. Sooner or later evert content creator will ask themsevles "what's in ti for me?" and if the answer isn't good enugh, they'll either turn inwards and create only for their own pleasure or even stop creating altogether.

The second is the decline of the shared experience idea. That used to be a big part of Second Life's philosophy but it seems everybody took it for granted and forgot that great ideas need maintenance to survive. Today's SL is very much geared towards the solipsist segment, encouraging people to create their own isolated private dreamworlds rather than interact with each other. That's actually quite nice but it's not how SL was originally itnended to be and if it isn't how LL envision their new VW either, they better figure out why the first one turned out that way.

[Vivienne Schell]

Nothing new, only the well known "better, faster, greater" wishiwashi. Seems as if these people neither have a real clue on what exactly their techie employees are about to develop nor on thei potential  "better, faster, greater" customers.

Reminds me of the "Viewer 2" project, only in a larger scale.

:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

[ChinRey]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Nothing new, only the well known "better, faster, greater" wishiwashi.

---

Oh, there definitely are elements there that are perhaps not exactly new but old and forgotten enough they might as well count as new.

And even if you're right, well I wouldn't complain if they produced soemthing that's identical to today's SL only faster. ("Better" and "greater" are just alternative words for faster right now - the lag issue is serious enough at the moment that any other possible update becomes insignificant compared to a speed increase.)

Now, of course its a different question whether they'll actually deliver or not. Some people seem to have made up their mind about that already but I'd rather wait and see. LL has done so much both of miracles and spectacular faiures in the past, i'ts impossible to predict which way this one will go.

[Vivienne Schell]

I doubt that there can be anything faster than SL as we know it with all the glory of unrestricted, resource killing, entiely  user created content. Average game engines need low poly and resource efficient online game modelling, not these superexcessive high poly, overkill scripted avatar attachments and whatever else. It´s a wonder that LL manages to keep it running on somewhat upper middle class PC´s at all.

I didn´t really read anything specific in the transcript, just more wishiwashi as before. It gives me the overall impression that Mr. Altberg probably wants to turn something inside out in good faith, but without knowing what the inside and outside actually is. Striking quote on market research and knowledge on user preferences:

"...surveys to better understand what users are doing, looking at the data people are actually doing, market analysis ‑‑ I mean there's a ton of things that we can and will do and are doing, so ‑‑ to help make sure we make the right decisions and provide something that makes sense to people. But I wouldn't say we have sort of a machine going for that kind of activity, but it's something we'll work on."

Wow, what a statement. So, basically, he admits that they didn´t care much over the past 11 years. Impressive.

Maybe Mr. Altberg should do his standard corporate homework before starting something based on something which he obviously does not know of what it really is, how it works and what customers expect and do with it.

[ChinRey]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

I doubt that there can be anything faster than SL as we know it with all the glory of unrestricted, resource killing, entiely  user created content.

...

It´s a wonder that LL manages to keep it running on somewhat upper middle class PC´s at all.

---

(I know this is a looong digression. Sorry about that)

You certainly have a point but it's not the whole story.

I haven't been in SL long enough to really know the history of lag but I can't help noticing how much slower it is today than it was only a year or so ago. Many sims that ran perfectly well on my computer last summer are now intolerably laggy. It's the same computer and exactly the same build, so you can't blame thehardware nor the builder there - it's all LL's doing.

Besides, there are actually quite a lot LL can do about lag generated by inexperienced builders. They could stop hiring them for a start. The official LL builds should be great examples for others to learn from and follow but most of them - most of the recent ones at least - are among the most clumsy, amateurish and inefficient builds in the whole of SL.

This problem is also evident in the official tutorial videos. When did you ever see a YouTube clip from LL demonstrating how to build efficient models? There are certainly plenty of the opposite kind.

They could provide better documentation. Yes, many of the poor technical quality builds littering SL were made by builders so full of themselves and their "art" they couldn't be bothered to learn the craft. But most were actually made by builders who really wanted to learn but simply gave up. Finding relevant, exact and understandable info about the topic isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world.

And they could provide better rewards for efficient building. The switch from the old prim count to the new land impact system was a step in teh right direction there but only a small one. And as usual, LL never managed to really explain. Many - perhaps even most - builders simply don't realize the connection between LI and lag. They tend to think the LI restriction is just something LL came up with to be mean. :matte-motes-wink:

Oh well, I said it would be a long digression. Back to topic:

---

Wow, what a statement. So, basically, he admits that they didn´t care much over the past 11 years. Impressive.

---

Yes, he does and yes, it is impressive. :matte-motes-wink:

---

Maybe Mr. Altberg should do his standard corporate homework before starting something based on something which he obviously does not know of what it really is, how it works and what customers expect and do with it.

---

I think you miss the most important point about this meeting: it actually happened!

A few months ago the very idea of an LL representative attending a meeting like this would have been ridiculous. Today LL is actively trying to establish a dialog with their customers - and not just with the loudmouthed "powerusers" over at that other message board (no names mentioned) either. They're genuinely trying to communicate with the people who actually log on to SL every now and then for a little bit of entertainment or escape from the dull and dreary RL.

And they actually do listen. Just look at how Altberg's comments about SL2 has changed. In one of the very first comments he made, he dropped the phrase "better graphics" - or something like that. Standard old style LL rethorics in other words. But now he seems to have realized that although better graphics certainly would be nice, it belongs right at the bottom of a long lists of things that could and should be improved. Now he suddenly startes by talking about functionality. This is a rather drastic change in attitude and it's something he must have picked up by lsitening to the customers.

Then there's that premium membership gift airship last month. It was so spectacularly badly made even by the usual premium gift standards, it triggered a long and heated discussion here on this forum. And amazingly, LL actually did respond. After a while they issued a new alternative version where they attempted to fix some of the worst problems. A failed attempt of course - a build like that is way out of their league after all - but they honestly tried their best as a direct response to customer feedback.

But of course, this doesn't necessarily mean SL2 will succeed. I can't really let go of that phrase Altberg used: "experience creator". And I can't help thinking how well and truly Second Life is designed to discourage exactly that. LL really has a way to go if they want experience creators to be the focus of their new virtual world. I'm not at all convinced they can manage such a drastic change but I'm certainly willing to give them a chance. :matte-motes-smile:

[LillyBeth Filth]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Nothing new, only the well known "better, faster, greater" wishiwashi. Seems as if these people neither have a real clue on what exactly their techie employees are about to develop nor on thei potential  "better, faster, greater" customers.

Reminds me of the "Viewer 2" project, only in a larger scale.

:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

---

They are not going to release specific details on technology or indeed any type of plans for what should be obvious reasons.

Any staff they hire signs NDA's (None disclosure agreements) to keep development plans private and within  the dev team.

For public consumption it will be all very "faster, better, bigger" type wording.

[Vivienne Schell]

"experience creator"

What is that? Judged by LL´s own "experience creations", namely Linden Homes and such it demands a lot of masochism, extended love for boredom or the mentality of a 12ys old to become a next generation Linden darling then.

:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

[ChinRey]

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LillyBeth Filth wrote:

They are not going to release specific details on technology or indeed any type of plans for what should be obvious reasons.

---

Very good point. LL has actually been surprisingly open by any standard with information about SL2.

 

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

"experience creator"

What is that? Judged by LL´s own "experience creations", namely Linden Homes and such it demands a lot of masochism, extended love for boredom or the mentality of a 12ys old to become a next generation Linden darling then.

---

LOL :matte-motes-big-grin:

Actually, the Meadowbrook homes aren't that bad. Outdated by now of course but perfectly OK for the early sculpt age when they were built. Don't really know Elderglen or Tahoe well enough but of course, the Shareta Osumai theme is sheer rubbish.

And in any case, the point you're trying to make is very valid indeed: Linden Labs don't have any content creators. This is painfully obvious when you try to bring up some building related issue with them. They're always very nice and polite and patient but they just don't have the reference frame needed to understand what it's about. (That doesn't mean all official Linden Labs builds are bad. They've had good builders working for them in the past (Eric Linden for example - one of the greatest, perhaps even the greatest, SL builder ever) and over the years many LL employees have contributed lovely little miniature builds all across the grid. But even so, they don't have the expertise in-house to understand modern SL building.)

As for other content creators - well, obviously they have no animators, texture makers, sound artists or game authors at hand.

Apparently they used to have quite a lot of educators (yes, they are content creaotrs too in this context) but I have no idea what happened to them. Were they all lost in the Big Layoff?

Surprisingly, they don't seem to have enough good scripters either. You would have thought that lsl is child's play for a professional programmer but they still can't produce something as simple as a working holding animation script for a teddybear (or teddymole actually).

This lack of in-house creator expertise is going to be a real challenge for LL now that LS2's focus has shifted from technology to content. They seem to be aware of the problem now though and awareness is always the first step to solving a problem. :matte-motes-smile:

[Parhelion Palou]

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ChinRey wrote:

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LillyBeth Filth wrote:

They are not going to release specific details on technology or indeed any type of plans for what should be obvious reasons.

---

Very good point. LL has actually been surprisingly open by any standard with information about SL2.

 

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

"experience creator"

What is that? Judged by LL´s own "experience creations", namely Linden Homes and such it demands a lot of masochism, extended love for boredom or the mentality of a 12ys old to become a next generation Linden darling then.

---

LOL :matte-motes-big-grin:

Actually, the Meadowbrook homes aren't that bad. Outdated by now of course but perfectly OK for the early sculpt age when they were built. Don't really know Elderglen or Tahoe well enough but of course, the Shareta Osumai theme is sheer rubbish.

And in any case, the point you're trying to make is very valid indeed: Linden Labs don't have any content creators. This is painfully obvious when you try to bring up some building related issue with them. They're always very nice and polite and patient but they just don't have the reference frame needed to understand what it's about. (That doesn't mean all official Linden Labs builds are bad. They've had good builders working for them in the past (Eric Linden for example - one of the greatest, perhaps even

the

greatest, SL builder ever) and over the years many LL employees have contributed lovely little miniature builds all across the grid. But even so, they don't have the expertise in-house to understand modern SL building.)

As for other content creators - well, obviously they have no animators, texture makers, sound artists or game authors at hand.

Apparently they used to have quite a lot of educators (yes, they are content creaotrs too in this context) but I have no idea what happened to them. Were they all lost in the Big Layoff?

Surprisingly, they don't seem to have enough good scripters either. You would have thought that lsl is child's play for a professional programmer but they still can't produce something as simple as a working holding animation script for a teddybear (or teddymole actually).

This lack of in-house creator expertise is going to be a real challenge for LL now that LS2's focus has shifted from technology to content. They seem to be aware of the problem now though and awareness is always the first step to solving a problem. :matte-motes-smile:

---

So far as I know, LL never paid educators to create anything. Education/nonprofit organizations got a 50% discount on regions. When that discount was taken away (in the middle of most schools' budget cycles), many of the educational institutions and nonprofits could no longer afford to be in SL. The discount was restored in the last several months, but it'll take time before the organizations that were burned will be willing to come back.

LL's shift in the next generation virtual world (bad idea to call it SL2 because I don't think we'll recognize it as that) is to consider creators to be their customers. The customers will build experiences. Don't think of that as the SL Experience project ... think of it as entire MMO games, virtual worlds, whatever. I think LL is planning on getting into the infrastructure business ... they'll supply the servers, virtual currency, and maybe avatar registration to the experience creators. In the transcript Ebbe said "We still have to think about whether we want to have multiple name spaces.  Like do you have to ‑‑ if you come to different experiences, do you have to register all over again or can you have the same tea across now?" He also said somewhere that perhaps a 3rd party would do registration for an experience. He also said LL doesn't want to attract users ... the experience owners will market their experiences to users.

ETA: That's my speculation anyway. Too bad it'll be several years before I find out if I got anything right.

 

[ChinRey]

This is getting a bit complicated now since Phil Deakins opened another discussion about the same topic yesterday:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Creator-centric/td-p/2798432

A bit impractical, perhaps we should try to merge the two threads if that's possible?

 

Anyway:

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

So far as I know, LL never paid educators to create anything. Education/nonprofit organizations got a 50% discount on regions. When that discount was taken away (in the middle of most schools' budget cycles), many of the educational institutions and nonprofits could no longer afford to be in SL. The discount was restored in the last several months, but it'll take time before the organizations that were burned will be willing to come back.

---

Oh kay. I must have misunderstood that then. Between us, I doubt they'll ever come back. The presentation tools SL has to offer may have been top notch back in 2003 but they're completely outdated by the standards western world schools expect in 2014.

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

LL's shift in the next generation virtual world (bad idea to call it SL2 because I don't think we'll recognize it as that) is to consider creators to be their customers. The customers will build experiences. Don't think of that as the SL Experience project ... think of it as entire MMO games, virtual worlds, whatever. I think LL is planning on getting into the infrastructure business ... they'll supply the servers, virtual currency, and maybe avatar registration to the experience creators. In the transcript Ebbe said "We still have to think about whether we want to have multiple name spaces.  Like do you have to ‑‑ if you come to different experiences, do you have to register all over again or can you have the same tea across now?" He also said somewhere that perhaps a 3rd party would do registration for an experience. He also said LL doesn't want to attract users ... the experience owners will market their experiences to users.

---

But that sounds like they're just openeing a web hosting service for independent game developers! Surely there must be something more to it than that?

[Parhelion Palou]

SL is good for simulations, not so good for teaching in front of a blackboard. Here's one use that supposedly works better than real life:

  I don't expect colleges to come back to SL in a big way. Most of them can do what they need in an OpenSim grid anyway.

I'd expect LL to create some sort of SL-like world based on whatever they build. I'm not certain how that fits in with them not wanting to bring in users. Then again, they don't really do that now.

[Vivienne Schell]

"They seem to be aware of the problem now though and awareness is always the first step to solving a problem."

Are they? :matte-motes-agape:

Anyway, not all is boring. I really love the Bay City idea and theme, but it´s messed up by the speculative parcel pricing. I like the Wilderness, but I miss the challenge there. Where are these bloodthirsty piranhas? Or the Aztec ghosts who mercilessly tp the careless noob home? I mean, as long as these kinda nicely built "experiences" are teethless and more a challenge for the GPU but for the senses...:smileyembarrassed:

Any kind of 2006 mainland mess was by far more bloody shocking interesting than that.

But maybe you are right and they ARE aware of it and that´s why Altberg invented the "experience creator" replacing the "content creator". "Experience" includes more than just content. Classical 3D "content" alone never can attract enough people to justify a million dollar investment for displaying it. Content is absolutely useless until it´s used by people. Social actvities of any kind (or even gameplay) must be provided and must be attractive enough. The ideal would be an experience where people create their own content and their own gameplay and whatsoever in-wold, mainly by tjhemselves and the share this with a community.

Baiscally, that´s the idea and method which made SL big. And Minecraft. It only got kinda lost over the years for various reasons. I still like it and I think that it would be a huge misconception to leave the building of the next generation thingy up to a handful of skilled enough "content" creators.

[Phil Deakins]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

"experience creator"

What is that? Judged by LL´s own "experience creations", namely Linden Homes and such it demands a lot of masochism, extended love for boredom or the mentality of a 12ys old to become a next generation Linden darling then.

:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

---

It looks like you're misreading that phrase. It doesn't say 'experienced creators'. It says 'experience creators', i.e. creators who create experiences for people to have/enjoy. It doesn't mean creators who create objects.

[ChinRey]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Any kind of 2006 mainland mess was by far more bloody shocking interesting than that.

---

I wasn't here at that time but I bet they were.

You know, this discussion has become really depressing. What I've done in SL since it started, is log on, stand a while in the middle of the oak forest I was about to finish then log off again. I jsut can't bring myself to actually do anything there at the moment.

What I really want to do right now is abandon land, close account, and leave SL for good. But I can't. Not yet. I'm just not ready to face the possibility that all those endless hours I've spent buiding and learning to build have been for nothing. Besides, I've got friends in there that I don't want to loose.

[Vivienne Schell]

No, I won´t quit it yet. It still is by far the best VR on the planet, despite the shifted customer interest and the Lab following their very own off track, constantly disasterously failing ideas since years. But even this is some kind of quality entertainment, isn´t it?

What i read so far on this supposed to be "next generation" pre-conception does not make me believe in a success there. And I consider it being one of the dumbest corporate PR decisions I ever witnessed in my life to announce this in such a premature state - in the way Altberg did it.

It only confirms my impression that the ones who have the say at LL right now do not appreciate what they have there. Someone who does not really appreciate all the glory and all the disaster of Second Life cannot do "better". Someone with an attitude like "it´s all old crap, let´s trash it" cannot do "better" elsewhere. There is a basical  lack of understanding the philosophical, psychological and social mechanisms of Second Life, and there´s balant ignorance towards the people who contributed to it´s evolvement and ongoing success (now reduced to survival) over the past ten years. They miss the fact that not shiny technology but people make Second Life. Everyone is "content". And it are the emotional ties to people´s own, personal expression of creativity which primarily made and make Second Life a success, not "experience creators", not "Mesh" or "Prims" or "Particles", not even commerce.

Someone who kicks  people´s teeth by telling them "You´re all old crap, your inventory is all old crap, whatever you have done so far is old crap, let´s trash you" should run some experimental software garage, not Linden Lab.

I do not know why Rod Humble left, but maybe he knew better and was not willing to sell shiny new jackets without substantial content and philosophy which are supposed to attract gazillions of perople only cause they are labeled to be so wonderfully better, faster and bigger as the old ones...

Second Life certainly would need a serious technical haul over and a basical philosophical redirecting. The Lab could certainly do that, and I am sure that there are enough talented people there who would love to contribute to a further evolvement instead of working on a DOA project. Unfortunately the corporate decision is a different one.

Nevertheless, as long as Seond Life will be online, I´ll be here and try to get the best out of it as I ever did. It´s still an amazing place full of amazing people doing amazing things.

[ChinRey]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

No

, I won´t quit it yet.

---

OK, I won't give up yet either. I actually managed to get some work done in-world yesterday! :matte-motes-smile:

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

And I consider it being one of the dumbest corporate PR decisions I ever witnessed in my life to announce this in such a premature state - in the way Altberg did it.

---

What makes you think it was a decision? Looks very much like an accident to me.

Or possible an act of desperation. One thing that is very clear at the moment is that despite their outwards calmness and enthusiasm, the leaders at LL are actually in a difficult situation, they have to update Second Life but they can't. The whole system is so old and loaded with the results of poor strategy decisions, lack-of-strategy decisions, quick emergency pacthes, isolated "brilliant" ideas...

I was planning to add a list of the anti-patterns evident in the SL software but here's a link instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern#Software_design To be fair, not all of those apply to SL but a surprisingly large number do. Even some that should be mutually exclusive. (Like the "Not Invented Here" and "Invented Here" syndromes. How is it possible to create a system that suffer from both at the same time???)

I believe their original intention was to simply make a "Better, Faster and Greater" Second Life. Technically that would have been relatively easy for them to do if it wasn't for backwards compatibility. There's no way people here would accept a new SL that looked just like the old one but didn't have that.

Building a new and better compatible SL should be possible but it will require an enomrous amount of hard, systematic work so LL went for another solution, a new virtual world so different from the existing SL nobody could possibly expect full backwards compatibility anyway. (Well, that wasn't only becuse of that problem of course. I think they LL really wanted to make something brand new rather than spend time patching up the old.)

They may have made a serious miscalculation though. I think they overestimated the value the reputation, customer base and experience they've gained through SL would have. All ths won't be worthless of course and besides, LL has quite a lot of money to invest but even so, essentially this new SL2 will have to enter the vast and fierce multiverse of virtual realities on its own and compete on equal terms with any new virtual world from any new or old company.

On top of that, LL can't just abandon SL and sooner or later they'll have to bite the bullet and start the painstaking work of rebuilding the code.

One of the reasons I can be so sure of that is what Desmond Shang calls the "Rip Van Winkles", old-timers who only visit SL once or twice a year (if ever) but still are happy to pay their premium membership fees and land tier and rent just for those few moments - or just to still be a part of it. They are the most reliable and undemanding customers a business could ever ask for and it's huge - really, really huge. There is absolutely no way LL can just ignore all that easy money and of course no way these guys can ever be convinced to move to another new grid - or even to another sim.

There are other groups in SL who'll never ever move to another grid too of course but the Rip Van Winkles probably form the largest group of unmovable customers. No matter what happens to SL2, LL can not afford to close down the existing SL in foreseeable future and I don't think they can afford to keep it for long without a serious overhaul either.

So, right now LL has come up with a new project that actually looks really interesting. I really hope they succeed and I beleieve they have a reasonably good chance. They haven't done much progress on the problem they originally tried to solve though, and there's alimit to how long they can put it on hold.

[Vivienne Schell]

"So, right now LL has come up with a new project that actually looks really interesting"

I don´t see anything interesting there so far, except the wild speculations made by the audience of that spectacle.I agree with you on the other topics.

If this will be a just another game platform exclusively made for a few Blender hobbyists and Maya/3ds pros for selling their stuff to people who are not creating anything it never ever will succeed in a larger scale, imho. Even Rosedale is on the wrong track there. Unity is already there for this kind of limited moneygoround. Nothing which runs on Unity does even come close to the commercial potential, creative versatility and the social culture of a true VR for a lot of reasons. And the Lab would be just...a lil bit late there, I guess.

Maybe they target the IMVU type crowd, but the IMVU crowd will not really want to drop their place for another one cause they spent too much money, time and emotions on their virtual appearance there to drop it, only for spending again on the same, marginally better working/looking stuff. Nor will the IMVU content creators want to learm another script language, another toolset, another format  and whatsoever.

If it will turn out to be a platform with capable in-world creativity tools (besides a well done software design, a few visual gimmicks and an outstanding UI as you mentioned it), probably a 3D version of these "Build your own homepage" thingies on the web, I´d give it a chance. But I am very sceptical there.

[Medhue Simoni]

Sounds to me like you just despise anyone that has gone beyond pushing some prims together.

It would be impossible for someone that has no idea how to create anything, to understand why the new world is a good idea. From a creator's standpoint, while SL is cool, it is littered with bugs. It's almost impossible to truly create something good with all these bugs and limitations. I'm excited to have something better coming.

As far as Unity, how can you comment on it at all? Have you made anything for Unity? Have you made a game with Unity? Have you even opened the editor? Well, I have, and I've helped to develop some complex games in it. Most of my work, outside of SL, is for Unity products or Unity developers. How would you know if a game you played was created with Unity? You would not know at all. With 1 button, any Unity developer can export their game to work on any game platform possible, except Nintendo. Just this past monday I had to deliver a demo for a small game company, and they wanted me to build it for Windows, Mac, Xbox One, and PS4. I had to click the build button 4 times. OMG, that was tough(sarcasm). Unity has been growing at a rapid rate since it was first launched. It's marketplace is quickly rivaling SL's. The games don't need to be a Commercial success. They only need to make a profit. When your whole develop team is 3 people, you don't need to make much. Even 20k downloads for a $10 game is more than enough for a small team. This same concept works in SL too. I'm 1 guy, so I don't need to make a million dollars to pay for my whole studio. The whole studio is just me.

That said, Unity can't be SL, or anything like the new world that LL is making. They are 2 different animals. Unity is strictly a game engine. Making it into a virtual world would be akin to Blue Mars, which tried to use the CryEngine. The good part tho, is that it sounds like both Unity and the new world will be able to use the same products. So, if I make something for Unity, I'll also be able to sell it in the new world.

Although I feel for the IMVU creators, the platform is crap. Their whole system is crap. IMVU and SL are hardly even comparable. Most of the creators there are somewhat blinded by their devotion to the platform. They don't have experience with any other platform, so they don't know how badly they are being screwed. Everything that is made in IMVU has to be derived from an original IMVU product, and automatically comes with a hefty tax. There is no scripting, as far as I know. Everything fits into categories of products. They can only make a set number of things. There is no innovation, as it isn't possible.

Personally, I think you, like many others, are stuck on the whole Creator-centric notion. I think everyone is a creator. If they don't know it, chances are they just haven't tried yet. Just like how people started new careers in SL, people will do the same in the new world. Things they never thought they'd be doing, will now be their new passion. I don't see Creator-centric as only being Blender and Maya gurus.

Will the new world have this, that, and whatever? Will they have inworld tools? Will there be prims? These are all things that we don't know about, yet you are going to speculate and then use those speculations as the core of your arguments. What is even more funny, is using those speculations against people who do understand creating 3d content, not just for SL, but any platform.

[Drongle McMahon]

I may be too optimistic, but I see the new world as the opportunity for the developers to introduce some of the ideas we discussed in this old thread, parametric meshes. These would provide a whole range of building tools spanning the gap between simple prims and fully formed mesh, so that enhanced opportunities for building would be available to everybody, irrespective of their preferred technical level.

Of course, prims as we know them are already one kind of parametric mesh, that is mesh with fixed underlying (not really, but...) geometry and user interface for manipulation (edit handles, edit dialog and scripts). Their huge advantage is that the underlying structure is built into the viewer so that only small parameter sets have to be downloaded for each instance. The new parametric mesh should be an intermediate between this and general mesh, in which the base geometry and the parameters are downloaded, but separately. This would provide the advantages of instancing without the limitations of legacy prims. Presumably a small simple set would be provided by LL at the outset, but this would then be surpassed by new parametric mesh made by those who can use the appropriate external tools. The scope for providing enhanced building experience for everyone is huge.

There are downsides that would need to be dealt with. It is most likely that the system would be built exploiting the existing code (in whatever engine is chosen) for bones and/or morph targets. I'm not sure that will be all (especially as these do not affect the UV mapping, which limits the utility of some transformations.) However, that means the assets have to include lots of extra data, which would counteract the savings from instancing, more and more as the paramesh become more specialised. I would imagine this could be solved by a "fixation" mechanism - changes to the paramesh would be seen in the local viewer and current session only (like local textures) until a fix function is activated. At that point, the internal geometry transformations would be fixed and the extra data for skeletons, morph targets, etc. would be discarded. It becomes an ordinary fixed mesh. This would lose the instancing advantage though.

The other obvious requirement would be permissions that extend settings beyond a single transfer/copy cycle, so that the basic paramesh can be distributed and used freely by the builder using them, but with prescribed permissions for copies and after the next transfer. This is already a widely recognised need, exposed most clearly by mesh templates. So it is to be hoped that this will be provided whether or not something like the paramesh idea gets implemented.

And for those that doubt the viability of the new world in the face of competition, it is precisely the provision of this new range of building experience, provided at all technical levels, that would be the unique offering of the new world, extending as it does the unique opportunities for creation provided already in the old SL.

Of course, the fact that this opportunity exists does not, unfortunately, ensure that it will be taken up.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

Medhue, doo you really wanna provoke me?

OK! You are way too much part of the problem to be able to offer any reasonable tthought on the topic. Do your homework and stop playing the 3D pro. No one using Blender on your level (which you display in your store) is a pro. And please don´t yell at me again, or I´ll go very nasty.

:matte-motes-evil:

[Vivienne Schell]

"Of course, the fact that this opportunity exists does not, unfortunately, ensure that it will be taken up."

Well, it does not really need to be (and cannot be) a fully equipped 3D suite (like a Maya plug-in, omg), just something basic with an innovative UI which enables people to create and manipulate basical stuff like f.e. buildings in a variety of styles (The Sims enhanced), chairs, trees and whatsoever people will want to have and use, avatar included.

I think of some kind of easy working Lego-like system for object/interactivity there. Basic interactive functionality should be applied easily by selection menus. Same for a sufficient set of basic animations and whatsoever. In fact, I think that LL should think about providing a LOT more initial, free content of high quality and a lot more implemented interactivity tools as now.

This might initially outrage people who sell such basic stuff in SL right now, but LL would be better off by controlling the "state entry" completely. This would still leave enough space for semi-pros and pros who want to either import and sell even more advanced, "special" stuff - or create it in-world, on a less detailed and professional level.

The thought of the "experience creator" surely is a nice one, but creating an experience is a difficult task for someone who only knows a 3D suite, same for the one who only knows about motion capture or, same for the one who only can script, same for the one who only knows how to run a social event. That´s why I think that "advanced as possible" in-world tools and a wide range of initially provided "toys" will be inevitable. It would take too long and cost the customer too much to rebuild the SL typical collaborative effect otherwise.

[Medhue Simoni]

That is a very interesting idea. I'm not sure LL is considering anything like this. It's things like this that make me wonder why we aren't part of the creation process now, or very soon. At the very least, LL should start having meetings with us. Although I am optimistic, I'm also pretty hard on LL, and seen them completely mess up what could have been promising. Bugs are really what drives me crazy, and LL's unwillingness to fix them, especially when they involve creation. If they take the same attitude with the new world, which is likely because of the complexities, then all bets are off.

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Vivienne Schell wrote:

Medhue, doo you really wanna provoke me?

OK! You are way too much part of the problem to be able to offer any reasonable tthought on the topic. Do your homework and stop playing the 3D pro. No one using Blender on your level (which you display in your store) is a pro. And please don´t yell at me again, or I´ll go very nasty.

:matte-motes-evil:

---

I'm part of the problem? No offense, but that's a bit crazy. Do my homework? I think that is all I ever do. As far as Pro or not, I'll let my customers and clients decide on that. I'm not 1 for labels. As it is tho, my clients and customers are generally pretty happy. That's obvious, or they would not keep asking me to do work for them. Even more today, I'm still turning down more jobs than I take on.

See, SL holds a special place in my heart because this is very much where I started. Before SL, I had only played with the CryEngine and made some MODs. Heck, even with mesh, although I knew the basics of creating mesh, I really didn't sit down and start to learn the ins and outs until LL anounced that mesh was coming. I was even lucky enough to have a plot right next to Drongle on the beta grid during mesh development. I'm quite happy to have learned from people like Drongle, Chosen, Gaia and others here in SL.

What I love to see, is SL creators branch out and show the 3D industry that we are as good or better than "Professional" 3D artists. Recently, I got Watch Dogs. Yeah, the animations are decent, and there are tons of them, but none of them have any facial animation at all. You walk around in the game seeing all this great animation, but the people's faces are almost frozen. Is that "Professional"? You'll also see that most of the characters in the game have major rigging issues. Is that "Professional"? Watch Dogs was created by Ubisoft, and they are easily 1 of the best game companies to ever exist.

[Medhue Simoni]

Allow me to tell a quick story about Professionals, which just happened to me recently. My client wants to make a game which takes place in the Grand Canyon. For some reason, I've become the companie's goto guy for advice about finding game assets online. Personally tho, I'd rather they just use the mesh modelers that I've suggested, at least for most items.

The CEO starts sending me links to Grand Canyons on TurboSquid. They all look fairly nice. He likes 1 more than the others, and asks me what I think. I tell him I'm worried about scale. He buys it, and sends it to me. It's fricken huge. When I place a human by the river, you can actually see the pixels in the texturing. So, I find 1 on turbosquid that has closed ups of some of the cliffs and can tell the texturing will work for them. They then ask me if I'll set up a Unity scene so that they can walk around in it and see if it will work. I agree to do this because I figured it would only take me an hour or 2, max.

I bring the Professional approved model into Blender, just to look at it, and OMG. The listing on turbosquid did not show the total polygon count. The model was a mess, with little to know thought process. Just planes with thousands of vertices. Each side of a mountain a different plane. It was ridiculous. It took me more time to correct the models, than it would have taken me to make the models. I never even thought I'd be touching them, let alone correcting them. I sent the CEO what he wanted the next day, but I charged them for a full days work. If they would have just had me, or a more enthusiastic modeler to make it, it would have taken me a few days, and less for others probably, but the company would have gotten something that works a thousands times better and more efficient. The company would have probably ended up paying the same amount too.

My point is, that Professional is not as objective as you would think, especially for 3D assets.