Its amazing how strong SL seems to be!?

[Selene Gregoire]

2 minutes ago, animats said:

Huh? There's not much question about what happened to High Fidelity. They shut down their public worlds back in April. Here's Rosedale's blog post on the "pivoting" and layoffs at High Fidelity.  VentureBeat and Variety have coverage. What's left of High Fidelity gave up most of their San Francisco HQ office space. Their staff now meet in High Fidelity itself, says VentureBeat.

I had a High Fidelity account at one point. It's nice graphically, but it was never used much. It's not a big shared world like SL; it's a lot of little private worlds you can teleport between, like Sansar.

Incidentally, Worlds Adrift, the first big-world MMO built on the Improbable SpatialOS engine, is shutting down on July 26th. There will be an End of the World party. (If you follow the technology behind big virtual worlds, this is important. Otherwise not.)

Second Life remains the winner in this business, by a big margin.

 

I know all that. I've been knowing it. Do you think you are the only one that keeps up with what happens with Philip and HiFi? No, you are not.

I signed up for HiFi before they'd even started the project when it was first announced and Philip asked people to start signing up.

[Janet Voxel]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I think it's someone hedging their bets?!?!?!?

It's not just the punctuation: consider the "seems" in there too. It's like an assertion, but with an escape route already secured out the back, in case the thread gets too hot.

Right! That’s why I sometimes read it with the uptalk inflection. Then, sometimes I read it like an amused statement. Every time I see it, I read it differently!? 

See...now I’m doing it.

[Destiny91]

11 hours ago, Fionalein said:

Thankies - shopping trip WHEEEEEE

Well, there wont be much to shop if they drop like flies though

8 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

Businesses are closing all the time in SL. That's been true since people began setting up businesses. New businesses pop up all the time as well. Nobody is indispensable, though losing CasperVend/Let or Anshe's land empire would hurt a lot.

Businesses arent closing all the time, how many people working on SL we had when residents could build and create without being 3d artists and how many now? Plus I just dont think that many people who make their living in SL appreciate the 5% of their income to be given in LLab fees. They dont have motive to be in SL and create. Thats what I am saying.

[Parhelion Palou]

1 hour ago, Destiny91 said:

Well, there wont be much to shop if they drop like flies though

Businesses arent closing all the time, how many people working on SL we had when residents could build and create without being 3d artists and how many now? Plus I just dont think that many people who make their living in SL appreciate the 5% of their income to be given in LLab fees. They dont have motive to be in SL and create. Thats what I am saying.

True - they could go to Sansar or most any other game that allows user-supplied content and pay the company that owns it a lot more. There's always OpenSim grids though.

[Caerolle Llewellyn]

On 7/20/2019 at 10:41 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Am I wrong, @Inara Pey, in thinking that, intentionally or not, you are with these two posts setting up a kind of parallel between LL's situation now, and the way in which things unfolded in 2010?

I think SL itself is pretty strong right now. The same is perhaps not true of its owner, Linden Lab, which, so far from trying (as some rather ridiculously suggest) to push SL users onto the other platform, is probably trying to work out how best to unload Sansar, as part of dealing with the loss of more than 5 years of time, money, and resources devoted to it.

I think SL is entering into a period of what might be fairly dramatic contraction -- not because its user base is (yet) dropping dramatically, but simply because LL needs to consolidate and retrench as part of its recovery from the failure of Sansar. Fees increases and the raising of the cost of Premium are part of that. So is the fact, not that LEA is being dismantled, but that it is not being replaced by anything new. Similarly, people noted that SL16B, while certainly I think a "success," was also more restrained and modest effort (and more directly controlled by LL itself) than SLBs of the past.

I think we're likely going to see the dismantling of Sansar fairly soon (and attempts to sell it, or parts of it, off). Inara's description suggests that, somewhat as in 2010, the partitioning of Sansar from SL means that the former can probably be dismantled in such a way as not to impact too directly upon the latter. But the larger woes of LL are inevitably going to be reflected in the company's approach to Second Life.

What we are seeing right now, in the shifts that LL is making to its business model for SL, is I think an attempt to consolidate, retrench, and further monetize SL in ways that, hopefully, won't cause lasting damage to the platform or its economy. It's going to be a really tough balancing act.

It just makes me wonder what SL would be if LL had not done Sansar. I doubt Sansar pays for itself at all, and would expect that SL has supported all that work, and it has drained resources from SL. OTOH, I think I have seen a statement or two from a Linden or two that people are wrong about Sansar siphoning from SL or being the cause of poor development in SL. Maybe Sansar is being done with venture capital or something, I don't know. I do know that is seemed like a really bad idea at the time they started it, and seems to be an even worse venture now. Of course, I am only one person, but I have gone there every couple of years and tried it, including a couple of months ago, and I found absolutely nothing compelling about it. But the whole project fits with my perception of LL.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

11 hours ago, Caerolle Llewellyn said:

It just makes me wonder what SL would be if LL had not done Sansar. I doubt Sansar pays for itself at all, and would expect that SL has supported all that work, and it has drained resources from SL. OTOH, I think I have seen a statement or two from a Linden or two that people are wrong about Sansar siphoning from SL or being the cause of poor development in SL. Maybe Sansar is being done with venture capital or something, I don't know. I do know that is seemed like a really bad idea at the time they started it, and seems to be an even worse venture now. Of course, I am only one person, but I have gone there every couple of years and tried it, including a couple of months ago, and I found absolutely nothing compelling about it. But the whole project fits with my perception of LL.

Well, the whole VR chat room thing -- whether it's as a sort of social hub, or for business and education -- has seemed to me a not-very-good idea from the time they first announced what we now call Sansar. High Fidelity, frankly, seemed like an even stupider idea. To begin with, I just don't think the technology is anywhere near ready for this; headsets and interfaces are going to have to become a lot better, easier to use, and so on, before they really take off for a mass market. Secondly (and I regret that this is the case), the whole idea of using an "avatar" as a representation of one's self in a VR (or AR) context has, I think, only a niche appeal. Most people don't want to be represented by a cartoon, however expressive and realistic it may eventually become: they want to be represented by a nicer looking version of their RL selves. That's true to a surprising degree even within Second Life. That's why I continue to think that a blend of VR and AR is actually the future of this technology.

And, honestly, the "proof of concept" for this whole idea is SL itself. Sadly, I don't think SL is ever going to get a lot bigger than it is now, and it's more likely to continue to die a slow death by atrophy in the long run. We tried education, art, museums, R&D, RL commercial uses, and business meets here, and they have had, at best, a limited appeal. I honestly thought Sansar was dead in the water when they suggested it, and was sincerely surprised that it was the best idea that they could come up with.

However, Inara, who knows more about Linden Lab, SL, and the VR "big picture" than anyone I know, suggests that it's too early to know that Sansar is a failure, and I'm inclined to believe her, despite my own misgivings and those of pretty much everyone else here, simply because she really does know so much. She's not actually predicting that it will be a success, of course -- just that it hasn't yet reached its final form, and that by the time it does, perhaps the world will be ready for it? It increasingly does seem that LL itself is not ready to abandon it yet.

It would, of course, have been really nice had LL put those resources instead into SL 2.0, or even just improving what we've already got. But I think that we all know, at some level, that even really substantive improvements are never going to boost the user base a great deal beyond what it now is, or what it was at its peak. In that sense, maybe, LL has taken a sensible approach: continue to develop and improve SL so that it retains its existing users, while putting everything else into the next project.

I say this without ever having actually tried Sansar. I suppose I should, one day. While it's still around.

Edited July 23, 2019 by Scylla Rhiadra

[KanryDrago]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, the whole VR chat room thing -- whether it's as a sort of social hub, or for business and education -- has seemed to me a not-very-good idea from the time they first announced what we now call Sansar. High Fidelity, frankly, seemed like an even stupider idea. To begin with, I just don't think the technology is anywhere near ready for this; headsets and interfaces are going to have to become a lot better, easier to use, and so on, before they really take off for a mass market. Secondly (and I regret that this is the case), the whole idea of using an "avatar" as a representation of one's self in a VR (or AR) context has, I think, only a niche appeal. Most people don't want to be represented by a cartoon, however expressive and realistic it may eventually become: they want to be represented by a nicer looking version of their RL selves. That's true to a surprising degree even within Second Life. That's why I continue to think that a blend of VR and AR is actually the future of this technology.

And, honestly, the "proof of concept" for this whole idea is SL itself. Sadly, I don't think SL is ever going to get a lot bigger than it is now, and it's more likely to continue to die a slow death by atrophy in the long run. We tried education, art, museums, R&D, RL commercial uses, and business meets here, and they have had, at best, a limited appeal. I honestly thought Sansara was dead in the water when they suggested it, and was sincerely surprised that it was the best idea that they could come up with.

However, Inara, who knows more about Linden Lab, SL, and the VR "big picture" than anyone I know, suggests that it's too early to know that Sansar is a failure, and I'm inclined to believe her, despite my own misgivings and those of pretty much everyone else here, simply because she really does know so much. She's not actually predicting that it will be a success, of course -- just that it hasn't yet reached its final form, and that by the time it does, perhaps the world will be ready for it? It increasingly does seem that LL itself is not ready to abandon it yet.

It would, of course, have been really nice had LL put those resources instead into SL 2.0, or even just improving what we've already got. But I think that we all know, at some level, that even really substantive improvements are never going to boost the user base a great deal beyond what it now is, or what it was at its peak. In that sense, maybe, LL has taken a sensible approach: continue to develop and improve SL so that it retains its existing users, while putting everything else into the next project.

I say this without ever having actually tried Sansar. I suppose I should, one day. While it's still around.

I have tried Sansar

I am heavily into VR

There is a desire for a vr social platform as evidenced by VR chat

The simple fact is that Sansar cant even manage to get to 1% of VR chats concurrency , this is largely the fault of the Lab who never seemed and still don't seem to have any idea what audience they are aiming for, or what vr users want.

Sansar is already dead in the eyes of VR users. Companies don't want to use it to host their VR projects, why would pancake mode users want it when for them sl is a far better experience. The only reason Sansar is still alive is because someone is to stubborn to drop their pet project.

[Caerolle Llewellyn]

19 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And, honestly, the "proof of concept" for this whole idea is SL itself. Sadly, I don't think SL is ever going to get a lot bigger than it is now, and it's more likely to continue to die a slow death by atrophy in the long run. We tried education, art, museums, R&D, RL commercial uses, and business meets here, and they have had, at best, a limited appeal. I honestly thought Sansar was dead in the water when they suggested it, and was sincerely surprised that it was the best idea that they could come up with.

It would, of course, have been really nice had LL put those resources instead into SL 2.0, or even just improving what we've already got. But I think that we all know, at some level, that even really substantive improvements are never going to boost the user base a great deal beyond what it now is, or what it was at its peak. In that sense, maybe, LL has taken a sensible approach: continue to develop and improve SL so that it retains its existing users, while putting everything else into the next project.

I agree. I think SL already had its day. Back when I felt it was its best, I would actually see coverage. I was always looking for something new, and that is how I found it. Now, what little coverage I see tends to be sneering at SL. I don't it taking off at this point. I have even told people about it, and shown some of them what it is like, and noone I have known IRL was in the least interested.

As you say, improving SL might have helped, but all the other places that did things differently have failed, too. The online non-gaming stuff just doesn't seem to generate much interest. I can see why, really. If I came into SL any time much later than I did, I would not have stayed long. And these days, if I didn't have my experience with SL, I would not even take the trouble to get an account or learn enough to do anything, or try other similar experiences, which I do occasionally just because I know about SL and how these things sort of work.

[Coffee Pancake]

I totally get why Sansar is a thing .. SL's design is lacking in a lot of areas and it's really boxed us in (so long as supporting all content back to day zero remains critical).

18 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

There is a desire for a vr social platform as evidenced by VR chat

VR is still hyper niche .. even if Sansar had VRChats concurrency it would be a flub

Quote

The simple fact is that Sansar cant even manage to get to 1% of VR chats concurrency , this is largely the fault of the Lab who never seemed and still don't seem to have any idea what audience they are aiming for, or what vr users want.

I think the question is more fundamental. Why would anyone choose "Sansar" to do anything. Whatever you're doing there are better focused alternatives.

Right now it seems to be "Sansar is a place to for virtual events" but I can't help think that direction has only been chosen because someone read about fortnite and figured "yeah, sure, we can do that!".

This video of one event has 40 million views and it got massive industry press.

 

[Selene Gregoire]

1 hour ago, Caerolle Llewellyn said:

I agree. I think SL already had its day. Back when I felt it was its best, I would actually see coverage. I was always looking for something new, and that is how I found it. Now, what little coverage I see tends to be sneering at SL. I don't it taking off at this point. I have even told people about it, and shown some of them what it is like, and noone I have known IRL was in the least interested.

As you say, improving SL might have helped, but all the other places that did things differently have failed, too. The online non-gaming stuff just doesn't seem to generate much interest. I can see why, really. If I came into SL any time much later than I did, I would not have stayed long. And these days, if I didn't have my experience with SL, I would not even take the trouble to get an account or learn enough to do anything, or try other similar experiences, which I do occasionally just because I know about SL and how these things sort of work.

I've been hanging out in virtual worlds for about 25 years now. They've never been very heavily populated. They are a niche market. The longest running one, Active Worlds, has had a concurrency of about 300 for the past 2 decades and it is still alive and kicking.

Ryan Schultz did a short piece on it here https://ryanschultz.com/2018/05/11/active-worlds-a-brief-introduction/ 

I left AW for good when I decided to stay in SL. That was 15 years ago.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Alyona Su]

This thread is still alive? With all the doom-and-gloom threads since my first entry in 2006 proclaiming "MASS EXODUS!!!11!!1!!ONE!!", threads like this are not allowed to survive. Because it would mean a large portion of us long-timers will feel all vindicated and legitimized and stuffs. We cannot have that!

[Love Zhaoying]

19 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

This thread is still alive? With all the doom-and-gloom threads since my first entry in 2006 proclaiming "MASS EXODUS!!!11!!1!!ONE!!", threads like this are not allowed to survive. Because it would mean a large portion of us long-timers will feel all vindicated and legitimized and stuffs. We cannot have that!

This thread will continue long after SL is gone, and we are all on Sansar.

[Alyona Su]

29 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

This thread will continue long after SL is gone, and we are all on Sansar.

OH! Yeah... I have access to a new iMac Pro; I can finally run Sansar decently now!

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

OH! Yeah... I have access to a new iMac Pro; I can finally run Sansar decently now!

Not unless you can run Windows on it.

[Alyona Su]

10 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Not unless you can run Windows on it.

You have been able to run Windows on Macs for the last couple decades - both NATIVELY and through emulation.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468

The real question is WHY would I? (And no, Sansar is not a good enough reason.)

Edited July 24, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Inara Pey]

On 7/20/2019 at 6:55 PM, KanryDrago said:

Sansar has been launched 2 years, it has been on steam for 7 months. It still has no userbase.  How long does too early to tell actually last in your mind?

 Sorry Sansar has failed. No one that has tried it and gone meh is ever coming back. Those that haven't tried it yet had even less interest.

Please oh wise one tell us exactly how long we have to wait before we can point at Sansar and legitimately call it a failure, a waste of time , talent and money? 

As I noted in my reply - Sansar was premature in its launch, lacking features, and aimed towards a market (VR) that has itself yet to actually be realised. It's also only on Steam as an Early Access application - again reflecting its "in development" beta status. Ergo, there are a range of factors that, in my view, preclude it being either a "success" or a "failure".

[Fionalein]

30 minutes ago, Inara Pey said:

As I noted in my reply - Sansar was premature in its launch, lacking features, and aimed towards a market (VR) that has itself yet to actually be realised. It's also only on Steam as an Early Access application - again reflecting its "in development" beta status. Ergo, there are a range of factors that, in my view, preclude it being either a "success" or a "failure".

But people are spoiled - they expect more from a public beta these days. The premature release might have burnt it forever for lots of potential users.

[Janet Voxel]

3 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

But people are spoiled - they expect more from a public beta these days. The premature release might have burnt it forever for lots of potential users.

I wouldn’t be too sure of that. People tend to expect half finished products on Steam. The real question is did it leave enough of an impression for people to give it a second chance down the road.

I gave it two tries so far and it left two impressions on me:

The first time, was when it first came out. There was a basketball thing that nobody could interact with. The interactivity just wasn’t what I expected.

The second time was when they put it on steam. The interactivity was better a little bit. But what stuck out to me the second time, was two people arguing....or I should say one person trying to pick a fight about how much of a failure Sansar was and it would never be Secondlife on mic. The other guy was just like “whatever dude, I just like making things and it’s fine to me.” There were about 3 other people online, including me.

I’d be willing to give it a third try, when it’s completely done and we get to see what it is whatever it’s supposed to be.

[Parhelion Palou]

6 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

But what stuck out to me the second time, was two people arguing....or I should say one person trying to pick a fight about how much of a failure Sansar was and it would never be Secondlife on mic.

The first person was right, though being annoying. Sansar will never be Second Life, because Sansar isn't meant to be. It's a different design with different goals. Its target market is the people who want to create experiences for the millions of VR goggle users who will surely appear someday. The experience creators' market is those millions of people. (They shouldn't hold their breath waiting.)

[Janet Voxel]

10 minutes ago, Parhelion Palou said:

The first person was right, though being annoying. Sansar will never be Second Life, because Sansar isn't meant to be. It's a different design with different goals. Its target market is the people who want to create experiences for the millions of VR goggle users who will surely appear someday. The experience creators' market is those millions of people. (They shouldn't hold their breath waiting.)

Wouldn’t that make the second person right?

[Parhelion Palou]

1 minute ago, janetosilio said:

Wouldn’t that make the second person right?

The person claiming Sansar is a failure is likely right. It's not a failure yet, but it's unlikely to succeed.

[Caerolle Llewellyn]

20 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

I've been hanging out in virtual worlds for about 25 years now. They've never been very heavily populated. They are a niche market. The longest running one, Active Worlds, has had a concurrency of about 300 for the past 2 decades and it is still alive and kicking.

Ryan Schultz did a short piece on it here https://ryanschultz.com/2018/05/11/active-worlds-a-brief-introduction/ 

I left AW for good when I decided to stay in SL. That was 15 years ago.

Interesting. I had never heard of AW before a few weeks ago, when someone mentioned it in these forums. I did some research on it, and pulled up something weird from 2016 where some guy who livestreamed exploring games or something (Vinesauce) went there and had a weird experience, lol. Someone else had written an article the same year like 'Who was the last person in AW?" SL is dead enough for me, I don't need to explore something even more poorly developed and dead.

[roseelvira]

i may  be  incorrect n the show the  was second life part of one of the episodes on NCIS ,,,,, also i do know Dwight     omehow involed second  life in the episode so  people who have never heard of it will see it and want to try it ,,,,, just a little thought  ,,,hugs

[Fionalein]

16 minutes ago, roseelvira said:

i may  be  incorrect n the show the  was second life part of one of the episodes on NCIS ,,,,, also i do know Dwight     omehow involed second  life in the episode so  people who have never heard of it will see it and want to try it ,,,,, just a little thought  ,,,hugs

That JAG spinoff? Yes they did.

[Asarapi Masala]

Greetings to all.  In my experience, I've invited many many friends since Jan 2007.  The main problem is with new users who have never played computer or video games, they become totally frustrated just trying to learn the controls.  Also, unless they evolve their neurological circuits, they are sadly stuck as passive (non-interactive, non-creative) media consumers. People in Second Life and other virtual worlds are evolved.  Timothy Leary in his book "The Game of Life"* describes the neurological steps of human evolution, right after the stage of someone totally wired in as a spectator (electronic media consumer), comes the stage of interacting with electronic media, creating music, video, digital 3D objects and worlds.  Much love to all SL creative cybernauts.  Have fun.
*"The Game of Life" PDF https://3white5star2.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/13077663-timothy-leary-with-robert-anton-wilson-the-game-of-life.pdf