second life ps4 work in progress

[RathDaKrogan]

before people get all huffy and pissed this is a project im working on. anyways its in the works basically its gonna be a client that will work on a console, and yes it is possible i cant test it because its on a jailbroken ps4 anyways so far i can run a pretty script heavy version of a dummed down sl game (opensim) using unreal engine i created the client then formated it to run on ps4... by doing this i tested the power of the ps4 and found it could very well handle it and well i just have to get a bunch of bugs worked out and figure out the next step to get second life to allow a server to even be released and to have playstation look at it other than that its still a ways off but i can say it is absoulteyl possible. as for if it fails than i do plan to write my own game someday. anyways leave your comments below or curse me out if you like i dont care.

[Bree Giffen]

Sounds interesting! Are you able to move around and do anything? How does it look? If you can put up a screenshot that would be nice. I thought the PS4 has a totally different cpu from a PC. 

 If only this would be one of LL's official projects. It's a shame but I think SL's content would keep it from ever being officially put on the PlayStation network. 

 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

LL will never release the server code they use,  The plan years and years ago was for an open source version to be released but  licensing and other issues came about and that plan was dropped.  so never expect that from LL, but IF you have this running with opensim, then good. you are a step closer.   but we are going to need screen shots.

[pleasureboi]

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RathDaKrogan wrote:

i can run a pretty script heavy version of a dummed down sl game (opensim) using unreal engine

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It sounds awesome and I hope you keep us informed of your progress. Seeing the client ported to any CPU or OS other than the standard three is a thing to be welcomed - even if just in text.

[Thunder Skydancer]

would love this

[Diabolik Petrovic]

Ciao...vorrei sapere se un giorno potessi giocare SL su ps4... Grazie

[bigmoe Whitfield]

19 minutes ago, Diabolik Petrovic said:

Ciao...vorrei sapere se un giorno potessi giocare SL su ps4... Grazie

3 years old topic.  

[Waiomao]

I'll reply to this old topic too. I'd LOVE to see a PlayStation version of SL. A PS has enormous processing power compared to most home computers, so paired with an ethernet connection would mean less - maybe even zero - SL lag time, even with quality set highest. Everything could render quickly. Parties, dances, and other crowded events would no longer crash your pc. The photos you could take in SL would be amazing. From a builder perspective, imagine the objects and environments you could create for PS knowing that lag isn't a factor for those residents.

Although PS has internet connectivity, it controls what programs can be downloaded (similarly to iPhone and the app store). This means that until Second Life viewer, Firestorm, Kokua, or your viewer of choice appear in the PS store they cannot be downloaded onto a PS4. An external keyboard can be plugged in for search, shopping, etc - so much cheaper and easier than a controller. And yeah, it would open up SL to an enormous worldwide market of tens of millions. The alternative of course is that I could spend several thousand dollars on a gaming pc. But why do that, when for $399 I can get a PS4 with 8-core processor and 1.84 TFLOPS GPU.

My suspicion is that Linden Labs is a highly dedicated team but a very small one. They have enough to deal with already just building homes, and little time for crazy ideas like this. But yeah, I'd love to see an SL client on PS too. Who knows? Maybe that'll be a surprise on the PS5 this time next year. Fingers crossed...

[cheesecurd]

47 minutes ago, Waiomao said:

A PS has enormous processing power compared to most home computers,

It is quite literally two Athlon 5350 APUs stuck together.

Which isn’t anything bad but it’s completely BTFO by even the entry level Ryzen 3 2200G today, both in cpu and gpu performance.

The ps4 is definitely an impressive “pc-like” console but don’t be expecting any miracles.

 

Also necrobump, why.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Lyssa Greymoon

[Waiomao]

Hey Cheesecurd, thanks for the reminder of the word "necrobump." :-) I bring this up because - unless we're already gamers - SL is more demanding of our pcs than most other tasks. This is especially true as pc sales decline while people use mobile devices for usual distractions like texting, browsing, music streaming, and email. What it boils down to is that how people interact with tech has evolved in the RL, pc sales are declining, but SL is still focused only on desktop software even as pc sales slide. This isn't new, it's been happening for years, and it's death knocking at the door. I love SL, want it to thrive, and even as an outsider recognize that to ensure its survival SL has to make itself available in new ways to an evolving audience.  Harsh reality? Unpopular opinion?

[Waiomao]

On 2/16/2016 at 11:10 AM, Bree Giffen said:

If only this would be one of LL's official projects. It's a shame but I think SL's content would keep it from ever being officially put on the PlayStation network.

I recognize that this is a genuine obstacle. It wasn't as big a problem in 2003, but if you were to take the sexual content out of SL now you'd wipe away a huge chunk of the user base too. Sony is strict about sexual content, so PlayStation's parental controls may not be enough to convince them to allow it. Several options... SL could allow only General, or General and Moderate content to port across to a PS platform (but if SL vendors assign those keywords, then they would have the power to bring down SL on PS). Or... SL could create new continents, on new servers, with strictly General material, for PS, porting over just a few hundred carefully selected sims to make the first experiences interesting. That's likely the way to go.

[Parhelion Palou]

38 minutes ago, Waiomao said:

I recognize that this is a genuine obstacle. It wasn't as big a problem in 2003, but if you were to take the sexual content out of SL now you'd wipe away a huge chunk of the user base too. Sony is strict about sexual content, so PlayStation's parental controls may not be enough to convince them to allow it. Several options... SL could allow only General, or General and Moderate content to port across to a PS platform (but if SL vendors assign those keywords, then they would have the power to bring down SL on PS). Or... SL could create new continents, on new servers, with strictly General material, for PS, porting over just a few hundred carefully selected sims to make the first experiences interesting. That's likely the way to go.

I don't see why Linden Lab would want to spend the resources necessary to create a new client (including rewriting the OpenGL graphics SL uses to the API that the Playstation 4 uses). That's a lot of effort for uncertain financial gain. I suspect LL's learned enough from Sansar to avoid taking unnecessary shots in the dark.

A few hundred G-rated regions that would be interesting to people used to PS games would be hard to come by, and they're scattered all over the grid. Note: Moderate allows nudity and private sex, so M-rated regions are out. Between M and A ratings that's most of SL. Would a PS user be interested in paying SL land prices to be able to build something that's interesting, assuming they could find a G-rated region that rents parcels?

Sony assumes the game developers are responsible for the content of their games. SL's content is user-created. Who would be monitoring everything available for sale to PS users to make sure the items meet whatever standard Sony has set? Maybe LL would have to add a PS rating to the .Marketplace.

And yes, there *is* that little matter of SL being limited to 16-year-olds and up.

[cheesecurd]

2 hours ago, Waiomao said:

Hey Cheesecurd, thanks for the reminder of the word "necrobump." 🙂 I bring this up because - unless we're already gamers - SL is more demanding of our pcs than most other tasks. This is especially true as pc sales decline while people use mobile devices for usual distractions like texting, browsing, music streaming, and email. What it boils down to is that how people interact with tech has evolved in the RL, pc sales are declining, but SL is still focused only on desktop software even as pc sales slide. This isn't new, it's been happening for years, and it's death knocking at the door. I love SL, want it to thrive, and even as an outsider recognize that to ensure its survival SL has to make itself available in new ways to an evolving audience.  Harsh reality? Unpopular opinion?

Well that already happened and it killed several games. Mobile took over and people stopped using PCs for social games. Favoring social media integrated games instead, see zynga Facebook games as an example.

You can chat with friends on SL in a game or you can play FarmVille on your phone and chat with Facebook friends. Over time people preferred the mobile social experience even when the social media games died too.

Within the last few years Habbo lost a bunch of users, smallworlds lost so many they died, club penguin lost a bunch of users and closed..

Want to know who didn’t lose a bunch of users? Roblox and RuneScape.

What do they have in common? Mobile apps. Roblox in particular grew so unbelievably massive that people sometimes don’t believe it, they have 10-15m users online at any given time and 120m-ish active accounts, 1 billion registered though many are presumed dead accounts or bots.
They also have an Xbox version.

If SL had a viable free mobile app it would surge in popularity, people want these social games. But they want them on their phone and tablet. And SL sadly isn’t designed for that, it would have to be entirely rebuilt for mobile devices and consoles. 
It could maybe be done on PlayStation, the hardware is specialized and the viewer for it would have to be specialized, but the game would also have to change a lot. People wouldn’t want a cursor based console experience, UI and movement would have to be designed around the controller. Fine detail would be thrown out the window for character customization because the current way it works is barely keyboard and mouse friendly let alone analog controller friendly.

The hardware is there if the game were better optimized, when I say it’s two Athlon 5350’s stuck together that’s literally what it is, and that will play SL, it’s just a matter of actually being able to use that hardware the way console games do.

If linden labs wanted this game to be multiplatform and get that social audience that is there and wants a game like SL, it would be grid wipe and rebuild time. The current structure of SL, the UI, the engine, the world itself doesn’t work for platforms other than PC.

 

HOWEVER

SL didn’t die when many other games did. Like Habbo the userbase was there to sustain it. Smallworlds died because it’s daily active users peaked at like 6-8K users. That dropped to 500-1k and then the game couldn’t sustain itself. SL lost a lot of users over the same period of time but there’s still a relatively massive player base here who ain’t going anywhere.

 

 

[Waiomao]

Agreed cheesecurd. I assumed immediately that SL would not translate to mobile; the load would be far too intense for most devices. The few handheld devices that could handle the load are gaming devices, so we're back to scrub and rebuild. 

We've enjoyed SL for sixteen years, and I'm hoping that the pc industry allows us to continue to do so for another sixteen. Makes me wonder what the #SL20B, #SL25B, and #SL30B events will look like, and on what devices we will experience them.