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Second Life on Steam?


Bree Giffen
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3 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

I don't think that the old housing area will ever empty, and the Lab can't force them.

Well they could bulldozer any abbandoned house and slowly give them an updo...

Edited by Fionalein
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3 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Well they could bulldozer any abbandoned house and slowly give them an updo...

I guess. Bulldoze them and put in vast shopping malls and car parks too.  :D 

It's possible that some would see the new homes appearing and want one, but the ones who have left this life - there will be some - won't.

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7 minutes ago, animats said:

(I'm not a game developer, by the way; I came at game physics as a sideline from robot simulation.)

Yes I know, "Silicon Valley Overland Robotics Association"...

8 minutes ago, animats said:

I'm trying to figure out how to fix this thing

Here's a PRO tip... Before you can "fix" something, you have to KNOW what it's SUPPOSED to do, HOW it's supposed to do it, and WHY.

10 minutes ago, animats said:

but it's sinking slowly and being left behind by technology. Plus the Sansar money drain on LL threatens SL

Tell us something the rest of us haven't known for the last 4 years...

11 minutes ago, animats said:

Denial and ranting does not help

It's not denial and ranting, it's quite simply that you have ALMOST NO CLUE what SL is supposed to do, or how, let alone WHY. How are you going to fix region crossings when your response to people telling you why they failed was "no you are all wrong, its a simple client side fix to the graphics beautification kludge...", or "no you are all wrong, it's because all the roads are built wrong", or " I cant see why high speed and crossing at corners would be bad".

WE TOLD you the usual reasons for failed crossings, and you called us all liars, then NINE months of "deep research" later, you found that...

"crossing at high speed means the vehicle can move more than 64 m before your avatar actually arrives and thus cannot be resat"

And tus that the danger of corners was "your vehicle LEAVES the region you are tryng to enter before you get there" = AUTO Vehicle Crossing FAIL.

16 minutes ago, animats said:

One thing we have going for us is that the viewer is open source and the content belongs to the users. So we can do a lot from the user side regardless of LL.

Not as much as you might hope, it's still dependant on THEIR infrastructure, and thats 15 years old in it's basic design, and is based on some really dreadful mistakes (like jpeg2000 for example).

19 minutes ago, animats said:

(I'm not a game developer, by the way; I came at game physics as a sideline from robot simulation.)

So maybe, when people who KNOW about 3D rendering, modeling, texturing etc., tell you that "loading mipmaps into vram" will increase vram usage per texture by 45%, and make vram overfil WORSE, and actually produce MORE texture thrashing not less, maybe, just maybe you should climb down of your Robotic High Horse and ACTUALLY LISTEN, in stead of claiming that "the cant do people are not up with current technology".

Or when people who KNOW about SL tell you that...

Banning "bots & alts & skyboxes" isn't going to help "user retention" in the slightest.

Or that putting a bicycle rezzer outside a Zindra InfoHub won't encourage people a third of your age to explore the non-existant "beauties of Kama City".

Or that you can't fit 30 1024 parcels on a single region with "lots of roads and water" and still have them spaced out enough to be described as "lifestyles of the rich and famous" because there isn't room.

...

Truthfully though, your biggest problem with your "Crusade to SAVE  SecondLife" is that you haven't learned how to tell "can't do" from "should not do and only a clueless fool would want to", in response to your less astute suggestions  for "fixes".



 

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3 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

I'm not asking this to be a jerk, I really am interested in knowing why someone like you would take any kind of interest in Second Life? I don't understand the appeal SL would have for someone with the kind of background you say you have. I'm not disputing the background at all. I just want to understand the motivation behind the interest. The tech behind SL, after all, is more than 15 years old.

*crickets*

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8 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

I'm not asking this to be a jerk, I really am interested in knowing why someone like you would take any kind of interest in Second Life? I don't understand the appeal SL would have for someone with the kind of background you say you have. I'm not disputing the background at all. I just want to understand the motivation behind the interest. The tech behind SL, after all, is more than 15 years old.

Second Life is the only really successful big virtual world. It has a sizable user population and vast creative assets. Nothing else comes close. The "game balance" is good enough to work. But it's 15 years old and needs a technology refresh. That's an interesting problem.

The next generation of systems, Sansar, High Fidelity, SineSpace, etc. are not big virtual worlds. They're loaders for collections of little ones. None of them have many users. That market segment appears to be a dud, with or without VR headgear.

The MMO people have made recent progress on systems for big virtual worlds, but are struggling with what to do in there besides kill. Many of them now have some form of building and land ownership, so they're getting closer to the SL model in some ways. The MMO crowd is thus doing some of the heavy lifting for virtual world implementations.

It looks easier to upgrade SL's technology than to get users into a new system. As LL just found out with Sansar.

 

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2 hours ago, animats said:

Second Life is the only really successful big virtual world. It has a sizable user population and vast creative assets. Nothing else comes close. The "game balance" is good enough to work. But it's 15 years old and needs a technology refresh. That's an interesting problem.

The next generation of systems, Sansar, High Fidelity, SineSpace, etc. are not big virtual worlds. They're loaders for collections of little ones. None of them have many users. That market segment appears to be a dud, with or without VR headgear.

The MMO people have made recent progress on systems for big virtual worlds, but are struggling with what to do in there besides kill. Many of them now have some form of building and land ownership, so they're getting closer to the SL model in some ways. The MMO crowd is thus doing some of the heavy lifting for virtual world implementations.

It looks easier to upgrade SL's technology than to get users into a new system. As LL just found out with Sansar.

 

Have you sent your application to LindenLabs? Posting your ideas in this forum wont spark off a single line of code.

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3 hours ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

Have you sent your application to LindenLabs? Posting your ideas in this forum wont spark off a single line of code.

The LL developers have at best limited discretion about what problems they work on. In fact, I'd say that @animatshas had more influence on getting code written to improve region crossings with his external work than he could have hoped for as an employee.

That's not a criticism of Lab management by the way; I've been cat-herder for development teams and you know, mouths must be fed and bills must be paid.

Also, in passing, I think he's right to focus on region crossing. Compared to SL, there are more elegant approaches and easier architectures for getting limitless geographic scalability, but it's a real problem in any virtual world that will have long term viability. The "bigger is big enough" approach of HiFi, Sansar, etc may address the immediate commercial demand (as if there were any such thing), but eventually they'll grow up and hit the permanent barriers to virtual geography designed deep in their core architectures. At least SL can patch and refactor its way to full functionality; they'll have to start from scratch. (The fun part is watching the tech leads of those platforms congratulate themselves on avoiding the difficult region-crossing, shard-spanning problem. And the citizens of Troy were so happy with that new horse.)

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3 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The LL developers have at best limited discretion about what problems they work on. In fact, I'd say that @animatshas had more influence on getting code written to improve region crossings with his external work than he could have hoped for as an employee.

What means "has had"? LL already adapted to SL, what he has suggested?

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Not sure what you're asking. I've attended some Server User Groups where Simon describes things he's done to follow-up on stuff @animats has uncovered by detailed tracing of sim-viewer messaging during crossing events. I'm sure animats would like more to have happened -- and I'm sure it's frustrating for him not being able to get into the sim code to explore how the problem might be fully addressed -- but Simon would not have taken even those incremental steps if it weren't for external pressure that management can also see.

[Edit: Please sprinkle the above liberally with "IMHO"; I'm not privy to Lab decision-making, nor the inner workings of animats' mind.]

Edited by Qie Niangao
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13 hours ago, animats said:

The next generation of systems, Sansar, High Fidelity, SineSpace, etc. are not big virtual worlds. They're loaders for collections of little ones.

But so is Second Life. For most practical purposes it's a number of small unrelated simulations only nominally connected via the grid. That's not what it originally was presented as and I don't think it's how LL envisioned SL. But they never did anything to facilitate connectivity so the inevitible result was the fracturing we see today. Whether SL as a single large virtual world could have worked, is anybodys guess. It might have if SL had evolved in that direction right from the start, but by now most of the people who joined for that reason have either left or adapted and found other uses for it.

I'm not quite sure why the few remaining explorers/travellers are regarded as such a pariah caste in SL. Undoubtetly somebody will chime in here with passionate arguments why the traveller minority is less worthy of an opinion than the minority group they belong to themselves, but that's just the rationalisation, not the explanation. All the old conflicts caused by LL's failure to clarify the distinction between closed private and open public land is of course one reason but I believe there is more to it than that.

Today LL shows no interest in - or even understanding of - the Big World concept and they haven't for years. This is not going to change and it might be just as well since it would require drastic changes at so many different levels in SL. There may or may not still be a viable market for a Big World virtual reality project but any even remotely creidble attempt will have to be made outside Second Life and without Linden Lab being involved.

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7 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The LL developers have at best limited discretion about what problems they work on. In fact, I'd say that @animatshas had more influence on getting code written to improve region crossings with his external work than he could have hoped for as an employee.

I'm impressed, animats! I mean having fun fiddling is cool in itself, just for the challenge. But you have actually made a difference in the SL code :)

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8 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

 
@animatsThe "bigger is big enough" approach of HiFi, Sansar, etc may address the immediate commercial demand (as if there were any such thing), but eventually they'll grow up and hit the permanent barriers to virtual geography designed deep in their core architectures.

I got that feeling in SineSpace. They have a nice desert sim with a racetrack. It looks like it goes on for miles, but if you go off the track, you hit the edge in about a minute. So all you really can do is go around the track. Which is fun for about 10 minutes. Red Dead Redemption 2 it's not.

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42 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

But so is Second Life. For most practical purposes it's a number of small unrelated simulations only nominally connected via the grid. That's not what it originally was presented as and I don't think it's how LL envisioned SL. But they never did anything to facilitate connectivity so the inevitible result was the fracturing we see today. Whether SL as a single large virtual world could have worked, is anybody's guess. It might have if SL had evolved in that direction right from the start, but by now most of the people who joined for that reason have either left or adapted and found other uses for it.

I'm not quite sure why the few remaining explorers/travellers are regarded as such a pariah caste in SL. Undoubtetly somebody will chime in here with passionate arguments why the traveller minority is less worthy of an opinion than the minority group they belong to themselves, but that's just the rationalisation, not the explanation. All the old conflicts caused by LL's failure to clarify the distinction between closed private and open public land is of course one reason but I believe there is more to it than that.

Today LL shows no interest in - or even understanding of - the Big World concept and they haven't for years. This is not going to change and it might be just as well since it would require drastic changes at so many different levels in SL. There may or may not still be a viable market for a Big World virtual reality project but any even remotely creidble attempt will have to be made outside Second Life and without Linden Lab being involved.

I have to think about this. Chin Rey runs Greater Coniston, which is a nice little town in SL. I've been there and looked around. I've driven through it. It's attached to neighboring sims and fits with them. It's part of the big world. A place with a wall at the edge of town is a prison.

Big standalone operations, like New Babbage (13 sims) and Crack Den don't feel cramped. Lionheart has their own continent. Those work. There may be a minimum size for viability. Some of the little-world systems let you have a lot of area, but they would probably choke if you filled them up densely like New Babbage.

In little world systems, who does the building? If you don't have a huge pro team like an AAA game title, who builds up your sim? In SL, the users do. That's why SL has a built-up world. Without a shared world and property rights, users won't do that. Go over to High Fidelity and admire the empty islands with some random objects here and there. Shared space with property rights attracts builders.

The little-world virtual world systems have failed. It's not just Sansar. They all have concurrent user counts in 2 digits. Second Life has about 40,000 users. So, on the evidence, big world wins.

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34 minutes ago, animats said:

The little-world virtual world systems have failed.

VR has applications beyond what you're envisioning. Take a look at this website speaking to educational opportunities, and there are many medical uses too:

http://virtualrealityforeducation.com/

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/9-industries-using-virtual-reality/

 

Edited by Luna Bliss
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21 minutes ago, animats said:

In little world systems, who does the building? If you don't have a huge pro team like an AAA game title, who builds up your sim? In SL, the users do.

The users do in Sansar as well. Right now only one person can build in an Experience, but they do plan on allowing more than one at a time.

I could easily build up a sim even now (the static part, but would need help with scripting). There are over 1200 Experiences in Sansar now, and no doubt many more that haven't been published or made visible.

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3 hours ago, animats said:

The little-world virtual world systems have failed. It's not just Sansar. They all have concurrent user counts in 2 digits. Second Life has about 40,000 users. So, on the evidence, big world wins.

But, are there other factors at play here?

Back in 2006 there was huge press about Anshe making millions. So many people invaded SL with dollar signs in their eyes. It was a gold rush. A lot left from the peak when they worked out that they wouldn't strike it rich, but out of those, a large number stayed, and still remains.

Ask youself this simple question to likely invalidate your "big world" hypothesis: If SL released today, would we be at 40K user concurrency (20K of those being bots)?

There needs to be a critical number of people in a game, or it feels empty. Without the Anshe goldrush SL would have never reached it.

 

The Lab still doesn't have a viable PR team.

Edited by Callum Meriman
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6 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

The users do in Sansar as well. Right now only one person can build in an Experience, but they do plan on allowing more than one at a time.

I could easily build up a sim even now (the static part, but would need help with scripting). There are over 1200 Experiences in Sansar now, and no doubt many more that haven't been published or made visible.

The number of experiences is irrelevant if no one goes there.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there does it make a sound = If an experience is created and no one goes there does it really exist.

I am sure the people making them enjoyed it, the rest of us just went meh and didnt bother visiting

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9 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

I am sure the people making them enjoyed it, the rest of us just went meh and didnt bother visiting

Some of us visit them. Load, look around for 2 minutes, leave. Meh.

A creative person might well be spurred into making their own, but at this point, there isn't much of a compelling purpose for the audience.

From what I know of building clubs in SL, it's no fun if you build it and nobody comes. The novelty wears off. And as much as you say "I am just building it for myself, for my fun" the visitor counter is still a huge dompamine hit.

They just did Project Pewpew which will apparently allow people to make shooting type games. Will these turn into something that gets an audience? That will be an interesting thing to watch in a few months.

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1 minute ago, Callum Meriman said:

 

They just did Project Pewpew which will apparently allow people to make shooting type games. Will these turn into something that gets an audience? That will be an interesting thing to watch in a few months.

I suspect the answer is no. If I want pew pew I start up a game intended for pew pew not some jack of all trades wannabe wordpress that does it all just a bit crapper

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I've been a gamer for years, since before I started SL, and frankly if I want combat, I can just start one of those.  Unless whole teams are working on something, and I mean HUGE teams, no combat storyline in Sansar or even SL is going to compete.  Not enough to get people to stay.  What I do see as a possibility for working in Sansar is amusement parks and haunted houses, if Sansar runs smoothly and the textures load fast.  Both of those, no matter how well done, fall flat in SL.  I've been saying for years now Sansar would be a great Disneyland, and SL is home.

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