Could SL be....

[Penny Patton]

I used to think it would be awesome if I could take my SL avatar into certain videogames. I still think it could be a lot of fun. But I don't think it's feasible, for many of the reasons already given in this thread.

In addition, the fact is most, almost all, SL content is not optimized for realtime 3D rendering. SL content isn't even optimized to run in SL itself that well, and that's the big reason SL is always so  laggy and has such high hardware requirements. Even if you could somehow overcome the technical hurdles in bridging SL to external videogames and get videogame developers to support SL content, chances are your avatar is going to kill your framerates in that game. Or kill everyone's framerates if you're playing something online like Fortnight.

 

On the other hand, adding more features to SL to allow the sort of interactive mechanics you find in games, is possible. I don't know that you could ever pull off any sort of fast paced action type game experience (see again the issue with unoptimized content), but a lot of what the SL community already enjoys (sailing, airplanes and other vehicles, roleplaying, card style games like BARE, even simply socializing at clubs and events) could all be improved for a more engaging, immersive experience filled with unique interactive features comparable to many types of videogames. I hope we get more people playing with SL's already existing experience features once LL adds "gridwide experiences". It's been sadly neglected so far despite the potential it brings to the table.

[Coffee Pancake]

A lot is going to depend on the the procedure for getting a grid wide experience is, my understanding so far is it will require some kind of premium+ account.

[Penny Patton]

True. Though, I think just making experience's grid-wide rather than tied to individual parcels of land will open up a lot of potential. For instance, someone could sell a teleporter you just walk into, using a grid wide experience. The customer could then buy the teleporter, rez it on their land, and have it just work with the only setup being setting up the teleport destinations and accepting the experience.

At least if I understand gridwide experiences correctly.

[Coffee Pancake]

Grid wide would allow experience tools to operate on land that they have not specifically been added to (via about land dialog) and only require participants to have accepted the experience.

[Aethelwine]

8 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

True. Though, I think just making experience's grid-wide rather than tied to individual parcels of land will open up a lot of potential. For instance, someone could sell a teleporter you just walk into, using a grid wide experience. The customer could then buy the teleporter, rez it on their land, and have it just work with the only setup being setting up the teleport destinations and accepting the experience.

At least if I understand gridwide experiences correctly.

Novatech sell experience portals for getting around the grid, although they do need a bit of set up, but nothing too tricky. Using the emdash tool you just walk into a portal to teleport, not even a menu to select a destination required. 

Edited July 12, 2018 by Aethelwine

[animats]

That's what Sansar, HF, and Sinespace are - portals to independent game worlds. They're not one big world, like SL. The OpenSim worlds are even on different servers, but with portable avatars. Objects can be exported from one sim to another there, if the creator allows that. (There's an additional "export" permission checkbox after "mod/copy/trans", and a portable export file format.) There are markeplaces which sell items usable on multiple sims.

All these systems are much less successful than SL, so it does not seem to be a good approach.

[Coffee Pancake]

See Playstation Home.

[Penny Patton]

8 hours ago, animats said:

That's what Sansar, HF, and Sinespace are - portals to independent game worlds. They're not one big world, like SL. The OpenSim worlds are even on different servers, but with portable avatars. Objects can be exported from one sim to another there, if the creator allows that. (There's an additional "export" permission checkbox after "mod/copy/trans", and a portable export file format.) There are markeplaces which sell items usable on multiple sims.

All these systems are much less successful than SL, so it does not seem to be a good approach.

One could argue that the lack of success of these other virtual world platforms has more to do with what they don't offer, than what they do offer. Limited avatar customization options, a focus on VR to the exclusion of non-VR users, little or no ability to dynamically alter the environment, etcetera.

There's also their failure to generate any real marketing hype, which might be a failure on the company's marketing department or just that the boat has sailed on virtual world hype for the time being. (SL may well have poisoned that well for a while, much like how Nintendo's VirtualBoy soured perceptions on VR for a few decades.)

[Maryanne Solo]

Thank you Tari, Phil & everyone for contributing in a knowledgeable and eloquent fashion. I am under no illusion many people here know more than I do, hence the non original proposal.

Edited July 15, 2018 by Maryanne Solo
non of your business :)