2020 is here, the resilience of SL, the fall of others and what they entail

[lucagrabacr]

Happy new year everyone c=

It's a new decade and Second Life is still alive and well. More than anything it's a testament to the values and principles it very ferociously stands for despite all the unwarranted negativity it received over the years.

Second Life is still the most technically sophisticated platform for a 3D virtual world, but what Second Life is in that regard rose from its foundational bedrock values and principles - to be a virtual world where anyone can become and do whatever they want.

It's easy to take all this for granted but for our own sake, remember; no other virtual world offers as much as SL does in term of freedom and being an actual "world". Many of those other worlds easily dispose the idea of creating an actual world in favor of a more technically-feasible "instanced" or "rooms"-based "virtual world" - a very statistical and "most people (who don't really use virtual worlds) don't care" approach that in itself is a testimony to how little many other platforms care about the grand vision of a virtual world, a mockery of its spirit by basically saying "It doesn't matter". And many of them unsurprisingly failed

But most importantly, we know the values and principles the people who built and is building SL stand for, they are ones that align with ours and the spirit of building a true virtual world of unadulterated freedom. Unlike so many others who almost very predictably will bend their knees and throw away our cause the moment the wind gets too strong. And for that Second Life is the holy land of our virtual way of life on which soil we literally build our dreams.

I tend to sound preachy about this but the few of you who know me and what I do beyond my forum posts probably know that already, I wish everyone a happy new year ♥

For reference in case you don't follow social VR news;

• High-Fidelity is basically closed
• Sansar changed direction into being a "VR Platform for Live Events"
• Sinespace doesn't have a clear value preposition compared to competitors
• NeosVR, RecRoom, AltSpaceVR remains very niche
• Facebook's Horizon basically horrifies everyone because Facebook being Facebook
• VRChat has much less active users compared to SL, still doesn't have a way to monetize, and is not really a virtual world
• Many other social VR startups basically don't know what their value preposition is

And for non VR social 3D worlds;

• IMVU is not really a virtual world, they're the literal, actual 3D Chatrooms people tend to say SL is, on different niche from SL
• OpenSim grids remain very niche, some big ones died, many are rife with problems and no actual development

Out of all these other worlds (mentioned and not mentioned), I only see 1 which can be an actual competitor to SL in the future.

[Prokofy Neva]

13 minutes ago, lucagrabacr said:

Happy new year everyone c=

It's a new decade and Second Life is still alive and well. More than anything it's a testament to the values and principles it very ferociously stands for despite all the unwarranted negativity it received over the years.

Second Life is still the most technically sophisticated platform for a 3D virtual world, but what Second Life is in that regard rose from its foundational bedrock values and principles - to be a virtual world where anyone can become and do whatever they want.

It's easy to take all this for granted but for our own sake, remember; no other virtual world offers as much as SL does in term of freedom and being an actual "world". Many of those other worlds easily dispose the idea of creating an actual world in favor of a more technically-feasible "instanced" or "rooms"-based "virtual world" - a very statistical and "most people (who don't really use virtual worlds) don't care" approach that in itself is a testimony to how little many other platforms care about the grand vision of a virtual world, a mockery of its spirit by basically saying "It doesn't matter". And many of them unsurprisingly failed

But most importantly, we know the values and principles the people who built and is building SL stand for, they are ones that align with ours and the spirit of building a true virtual world of unadulterated freedom. Unlike so many others who almost very predictably will bend their knees and throw away our cause the moment the wind gets too strong. And for that Second Life is the holy land of our virtual way of life on which soil we literally build our dreams.

I tend to sound preachy about this but the few of you who know me and what I do beyond my forum posts probably know that already, I wish everyone a happy new year ♥

For reference in case you don't follow social VR news;

• High-Fidelity is basically closed
• Sansar changed direction into being a "VR Platform for Live Events"
• Sinespace doesn't have a clear value preposition compared to competitors
• NeosVR, RecRoom, AltSpaceVR remains very niche
• Facebook's Horizon basically horrifies everyone because Facebook being Facebook
• VRChat has much less active users compared to SL, still doesn't have a way to monetize, and is not really a virtual world
• Many other social VR startups basically don't know what their value preposition is

And for non VR social 3D worlds;

• IMVU is not really a virtual world, they're the literal, actual 3D Chatrooms people tend to say SL is, on different niche from SL
• OpenSim grids remain very niche, some big ones died, many are rife with problems and no actual development

Out of all these other worlds (mentioned and not mentioned), I only see 1 which can be an actual competitor to SL in the future.

The author of Sinespace might disagree with you on this.

I was just reading about the Open Sims and Hypergrid by the journalist (who used to write about Chechnya, actually, if you can imagine). And she seems casually optimistic although she nearly quit reporting on worlds in favour of VR stuff. So read up on that.

After 15 years of this, I've concluded that not everybody avatarizes well, and the learning curve is too steep. And these things aren't changing despite more will to change them. 

 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

Out of all these other worlds (mentioned and not mentioned), I only see 1 which can be an actual competitor to SL in the future.

I don't see any direct competitors to Second Life at the moment. It has found its niche(s) and is well established within it/them. There are plenty of other niches within the field of virtual realities though, some SL has tried and failed to cover, some they've never gotten around to at all. The other virtual realities that seem to be doing ok (Sinespace, the Hypergrid, TAG and VRChat are the most obvious I can think of right now) are all targetting user groups that don't find the current SL appealing anyway. There is some overlap of course but for the most part they are picking up the slack rather than competing directly with SL or each other.

That being said, there are several significant customer categories SL thought it owned but doesn't really offer a good product for and some it still owns only because nobody else is trying to cover them.

 

3 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

no other virtual world offers as much as SL does in term of freedom and being an actual "world". Many of those other worlds easily dispose the idea of creating an actual world in favor of a more technically-feasible "instanced" or "rooms"-based "virtual world"

I think that is one of the niches where SL has failed but still keeps a small foothold in because nobody else is doing it at all. Teleporting between isolated islands in SL is no different from Atlas hopping between experiences in Sansar (although to be fair it's much faster) and much of the continents are also so fragmented you can hardly consider them to be single "worlds".

Even if we did, the total land/sea area of Second Life is nominally about 1650 km2. That's smaller than Mauritius and only slightly bigger than Åland. If we take into account the oversized scale of most of the builds in SL, the effective area is only c. 800 km2 - about the size of Kiribati. That's for the entire Second Life; the largest continuous area is of course much, much smaller. probably with en effective size similar to Jersey or Christmas Island.

This is a bit subjective but to me at least a genuine virtual world would also require a balance between chaos and monotony - a continuity of different themes, each blending well into the neighbour ones. There's no such thing in Second Life.

Edited January 2, 2020 by ChinRey

[Fauve Aeon]

a few non-technical, more social and people-y  things:

1. I think that of the people who were interested in virtual worlds who were old enough to come into SL most already have, and those who ‘took to it’ are already invested...in one or more of several ways, and the majority of them will not switch to a new one unless some major disruptive, cataclysm-level of change happens (or SL closes up shop) and even then, they would not agree in a significant majority WHERE to go, so any larger feeling of the current ‘social world’ within SL will not transcend it.
2. I think the overall interest in the general populace for spending time in virtual worlds (as they currently stand) as a hobby or to start a small business has peaked and until there is a substantially new/different platform, it’s not going to see any kind of big resurgence. SL member numbers don’t seem to be growing that much. I automatically take any ’number of accounts’ figure and divide by 1/3, assuming everyone has at least one alt and many additionally have a CS account, bot or one or more NPC. I rarely see over 50k or under 30k accounts logged in to the world when I look at the Firestorm login screen. 
3. All of the platforms mentioned are behind or lacking in one or more of the major components that current SL residents use, and all are lacking in member numbers. The DAZ avatars coming into Sinespace seems very promising...until you look at the limited clothing and accessory choices in their MP. I’m still going to check it out, but it may be a world where I set my avatar look and don’t ’play Barbie’ as much as I do in SL.
4. The biggest commodity for much of this is simply time. Ultimately we are all each just one person with 24 hours in our day, and if we divide time between more than 2 worlds/spaces,  progress (however you measure it), slows down. 
    

Just my speculation, but I think Philip Rosedale’s new venture will be multi-platform, more focused on AR at the beginning (waiting until 2 and 3rd gen HMD get less bulky) and targeted at enterprise and corporate level businesses, with the ability to white-label and package the product...a bit like Sinespace, but with a few major differences too. 

I think we also forget that the the number of people interested in VR, and virtual worlds for its own sake (outside of playing games) is not the majority of the populace. I think that for a new startup a 2-tier approach,  AR with a more immersive VR option sometimes, is more friendly and more easily integrated into everyone’s lives. A somewhat modular and more seamless fit with AR augmenting our everyday things and then having the option to ‘jump into your avatar’ (with similar and already familiar controls and a light headpiece) when you want or need to do the more immersive things. 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Fauve Aeon

[ChinRey]

23 hours ago, Fauve Aeon said:

a few non-technical, more social and people-y  things:

1. I think that of the people who were interested in virtual worlds who were old enough to come into SL most already have, and those who ‘took to it’ are already invested...in one or more of several ways, and the majority of them will not switch to a new one unless some major disruptive, cataclysm-level of change happens (or SL closes up shop) and even then, they would not agree in a significant majority WHERE to go, so any larger feeling of the current ‘social world’ within SL will not transcend it.
2. I think the overall interest in the general populace for spending time in virtual worlds (as they currently stand) as a hobby or to start a small business has peaked and until there is a substantially new/different platform, it’s not going to see any kind of big resurgence. SL member numbers don’t seem to be growing that much.

I agree but with some reservations.

SL never managed to become the virtual world for everybody.

It was never truly an international platform for a start. Almost half the SL users are from the USA (probably mostly white upper lower middle class but I'll leave that factor out). Less than 5% of the world's population is from the USA and there is no obvious reason why Americans should be more interested in a virtual world than people from other nations. I think it's fairly obvious that a virtual reality with a more itnernational profile would have a lot of potential none of the current ones have.

SL hasn't managed to attract many people from the younger generations and I don't think it ever will. VRChat is far more limited in scope than SL and it still has a steady concurrency of several thousand. There's bound to be serious potential there.

Education is a field SL never got the hang on. They tried but they never figured out how to do it right and even at its peak, there were only about 300 educational insitutions here. There are several million schools all over the world.

So yes, most of the user groups that are relevant for SL are here to stay but there are many others that other virtual reality enterprises can aim for.

And I said most of the user groups, not all. Two examples:

SL used to be a place for hobby builders, for the people looking for something more advanced than Minecraft but less complicated than mesh. I do not believe there is less interest in that than there used to be and there certainly aren't any other virtual world that has attempted to take on SL and "steal" that market. Yet there is less and less of it in SL.

Back when I joined SL there were still a lot of explorers around - people who enjoyed travelling across the grid just to enjoy the view. There aren't many of those around anymore. Some SL'ers may be happy to get rid of them but it's still a significant user group for others to pick up.

Whether it's on purpose or not, over the last decade or so Second Life has focused on a narrower and narrower segment of the market. I do think that's the right way for it to go since it's usually better to do a few things well than a lot of things poorly, but it does open up for vacant fields for others to explore.

 

23 hours ago, Fauve Aeon said:

I automatically take any ’number of accounts’ figure and divide by 1/3.

I generally divide by 10.

 

23 hours ago, Fauve Aeon said:

Just my speculation, but I think Philip Rosedale’s new venture will be multi-platform...

High Fidelity is dead, didn't you know? There will probably be a couple of spin-offs since the software is all open source but I don't think Rosedale is involved in any of them.

Edited January 3, 2020 by ChinRey

[animats]

It's always good to hear from Luca.

9 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

But most importantly, we know the values and principles the people who built and is building SL stand for, they are ones that align with ours and the spirit of building a true virtual world of unadulterated freedom. Unlike so many others who almost very predictably will bend their knees and throw away our cause the moment the wind gets too strong. And for that Second Life is the holy land of our virtual way of life on which soil we literally build our dreams.

Yes. Rosedale's vision of Second Life was of a broad platform, "Internet 3.0", that would go in the direction the users took it. To a considerable extent, that's still the vision. Linden Lab hasn't yet overdone control, and the SL customer base pushes back when they try, as with Tilia. This is the success of SL. In an Internet world where the major players are all about control and customer exploitation, this is refreshing.

[animats]

Good writeup on VR in the New Yorker.

Second Life is mentioned. Rosedale is interviewed. High Fidelity is demoed.

There's also quite a bit of material on high-end research VR. I had no idea Stanford had waterproof underwater VR gear used in a swimming pool.

[Kurshie Muromachi]

36 minutes ago, animats said:

Yes. Rosedale's vision of Second Life was of a broad platform, "Internet 3.0", that would go in the direction the users took it.

There's a talk by Tim Sweeney (CEO of Epic Games) from SIGGRAPH 2019 on his thoughts of a metaverse. Gets a bit technical. Essentially his idea is a W3C of metaverse and it sounds like its own internet in a way. There's some Q&A at the end as well.

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Kurshie Muromachi

[Fauve Aeon]

3 hours ago, ChinRey said:

High Fidelity is dead, didn't you know? There will probably be a couple of spin-offs since the software is all open source but I don't think Rosedale is involved in any of them.

Yes, it’s dead but he’s working on a new venture with a refined team. I’m expecting news later in 2020.
 

Agree on the SL platform not being global or catering to a wider audience, but I think it caught enough people that even now a new, more universal one will need to have significant differences (and as you describe, be useful to the diverse user groups that SL does not, or no longer caters to, and there are lots but enough? Not sure) to see anywhere the same member numbers and success. 
 

I think the SL inworld building tool not evolving was a big shame, but I’m not technical enough to speculate on how that could feasibly happen, nor what the answer for all the old sculpties and the newer dense mesh I’m seeing is. I’m taking classes so I’ll be learning to correctly decimate and make my things lower poly.
 
dividing by 10 for member numbers seems a lot but I can’t say that you are wrong, just that I am wishing there was at least a more accurate count of the people-driven avatars.

very interesting topic and replies to mull over, and I’ll enjoy reading more of what everyone has to say! 

 

[sirhc DeSantis]

Disagree somewhat on the global reach (may just be the people I have met), on the fence over the wider appeal part (as again, may just be my experience) and yeah - bit more work on inworld building tools would be nice (although what SL and the like has is still a lot more intuitive to me than some of the recent attempts). I mean, I still do sketch inworld but as never was in to the sandbox scene I have no idea who else still does.

[ChinRey]

40 minutes ago, sirhc DeSantis said:

Disagree somewhat on the global reach (may just be the people I have met)

I may have misremembered that and it was also old data. But there is no doubt that there is a geographical imbalance in SL's population compared to RL's.

 

40 minutes ago, sirhc DeSantis said:

bit more work on inworld building tools would be nice (although what SL and the like has is still a lot more intuitive to me than some of the recent attempts).

I agree on both counts. I'm convinced an easy to use and load friendly inworld bulding system has to based on procedural building techniques (like prims) rather than polylist meshes as all recent attempts I know of have been.

I don't think prims as they are today is the solution but it's worth noting that Avi Bar-Zeev's original proposal for the system was quite a bit more advanced than what SL eventually ended up adopting. They had to nerf it because computers weren't as powerful in 2003 as they are today but that's not nearly as much of a limitation now of course. I can also think of several easy to implement (at least in theory) additions to the prim system that would increase it flexibiity without making it much harder to work with. On top of that there's also the matter of how many prims we can use. If the assets servers had supported consolidated linksets, we could have 15-25 simple prims for a single LI. It's the load time that is the big limitation for builds with lots of prims and that's all down to the assets servers.

 

40 minutes ago, sirhc DeSantis said:

I still do sketch inworld but as never was in to the sandbox scene I have no idea who else still does.

I do too but ironically I don't usually upload the finished meshes to SL. It's not wrth the bother and I have other uses for them.

Edited January 2, 2020 by ChinRey

[Pussycat Catnap]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I agree but with some reservations.

SL never managed to become the virtual world for everybody. It was never truly an international platform for a start. Almost half the SL users are from the USA (probably mostly white upper middle class but I'll leave that factor out).

But it's highly relevant. And I would say mis-aimed.

https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/what-is-middle-class-14833259

- based on that I would place most SLers in the lower-middle class to lower class.

I have found the people on the lower end tend to place themselves higher than they are, and people on the higher end tend to place themselves lower than they are. I have friend that make north of $1-2 million annually and think they're middle-middle class. I have friends in trailer parks who think they're upper-middle... A lot of this is defined by where they are compared to their peers around them.

That website puts me in the upper class... though I started in not just the low end... I started at what I call 'low class' - below working class. Lower-class is the folks with no money, no education, no job, and no future - the ghetto-class. (I'm only about 3 generations removed from upper class under Imperial China, so maybe that is why I had a notion that I could get out while the people I grew up with are dead or worse).

It's not just income... but for income you're looking at:

Quote

Based on Pew research using 2014 data, households making between $31,000 to $42,000 were considered lower-middle class, while three-person households making between $126,000 to $188,000 were considered upper-middle class. 

A lot of SLers are older, disabled, or on limited incomes.

The other factors for middle class:

Quote

Aspiration

On the slightly more unusual side, President Obama designated a task force to examine another area when defining the middle class in 2010 - that of their aspirations. Aspirations could include anything from home ownership and a car to college education for children and even vacations. 

And while aspirations may seem to be a shoddy method of defining the middle-class (given that aspirations may vary despite the increased standard of living over recent decades), some still take the method into consideration when defining what kind of lifestyle the middle class should support.

Consumption

Yet another logical method of defining the middle class is to look at households' consumption - or, how much individuals spend. Spending may or may not be affected by income, as it is generally used as a metric apart from income to include those who may be living off of a fund, government payments or the like. 

According to the consumption metric, middle class is defined as those who annually spend between $38,200 to $49,900 for a four-person household. 

- I don't see these on the more higher end in SL as much.

 

I do see 'white'. And the fact that I mostly see 'white' is actually another indicator of lower middle class. Not just because Caucasians not on the coasts are falling (because both everyone not on the coasts is falling, and it's not a freefall but a slide) - but because people on the higher end of the middle class tend to have more diverse social circles as a necessity of globalized networking. If you get anything notably mono-ethnic in the world today... it is NOT taking place among the 'educated elites' - the upper middle class to 'lower upper class'. You just cannot be that isolated if you're in that tier of things: the tier that defines and exists withing the benefits of "globalization".

 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[ChinRey]

48 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

based on that I would place most SLers in the lower-middle class to lower class.

On second thought, yes, that seems more likely.

[Desiree Moonwinder]

14 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

• High-Fidelity is basically closed
• Sansar changed direction into being a "VR Platform for Live Events"

Philip was always talking about the latency challenge in two-way interaction as being one of High Fidelity's biggest challenges.  

So, maybe Sansar took a clue from that and decided that live performances with an audience bypass the biggest challenges. 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

16 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

Happy new year everyone c=

It's a new decade and Second Life is still alive and well. More than anything it's a testament to the values and principles it very ferociously stands for despite all the unwarranted negativity it received over the years.

Actually the new decade starts in 2021, according to the Wikipedia.

[Bree Giffen]

I think if someone could make an SL competitor that allows easy in-world building of everything (avatars, clothes, attachments, buildings, vehicles, trees etc) they'd have a chance. Content easily made by residents is what got many into SL.