The metaverse is coming - Forbes

[Ceka Cianci]

Oasis is from the guy that made utherverse/RLC..

It's been like 10 years in the making and still feels like alpha phase as of last summer.. I went in to check it out and it still looked like it did a few years beforehand.. The clothes look like they are from 2000 with textures pulled from google..

 

 

Edited January 15, 2020 by Ceka Cianci

[Whirly Fizzle]

Congrats on the first "Second Life is gonna die" thread of 2020.

💣

[sirhc DeSantis]

So bored waiting for the metaverse so I am going to save up and do this instead (as I get to rp Bob Hoskins although will probably finish meoff)

https://www.designboom.com/technology/super-nintendo-theme-park-japan-mario-kart-01-14-2020/?utm_source=designboom+daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=super+nintendo+world+in+japan+will+be+a+'life-size%2C+living+video+game'

[animats]

2 hours ago, Syo Emerald said:

Who is moving towards SL? Where did you read that anyone or anything is or will move towards SL? ... None of that is actually happening.

See what Tim Sweeney has been saying at game conferences for three years. He wants to build the Metaverse. He sounds like Philip Rosedale in the early days. Sweeney is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company with a good track record, an impressive game engine, many good people, and several hundred million users. Also a personal net worth of about $7 billion. When that's the potential competition, it's a good idea to pay attention.

[Luna Bliss]

This thing is really growing, and is a social network as well as a game.  One part of it (Creative Mode) where you can create your own video game looks interesting. I doubt us oldies would like it unless it morphs into a true metaverse though.

https://fortniteops.com/fortnite-is-becoming-a-social-network-in-front-of-our-eyes/

Edited January 15, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[animats]

3 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Congrats on the first "Second Life is gonna die" thread of 2020.

I don't think this will kill Second Life. It's an opportunity for Linden Lab. Second Life has been ignored by mainstream media for years. Now, after years in the wilderness, virtual worlds are getting attention again. Whether Linden Lab management can seize the opportunity remains to be seen.

Edited January 15, 2020 by animats
Typo

[Luna Bliss]

5 minutes ago, animats said:

Now, after years in the wilderness, virtual worlds are getting attention again.

Yeah, and I wonder if the new Facebook Horizon will end up funneling any people to SL....hopefully the reverse won't happen.

[Drayke Newall]

4 hours ago, animats said:

See what Tim Sweeney has been saying at game conferences for three years. He wants to build the Metaverse. He sounds like Philip Rosedale in the early days. Sweeney is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company with a good track record, an impressive game engine, many good people, and several hundred million users. Also a personal net worth of about $7 billion. When that's the potential competition, it's a good idea to pay attention.

I agree and I find it interesting that almost everyone of the naysayers in this thread are saying fortnite this and fortnite that or no one company can build it due to restrictions blah blah.

Epic Gaming (Tim Sweeny) have been looking into the metaverse for 3-4 years now and have even showcased what can be done with just one game, fortnite, with live music breaking records for that event as well and even making songs (sung at that event) number one on the RL music charts. In other words, for one event it took them less than a year to implement a system into a game not designed to host live music across multiple 'X people regions' (AKA just like second life has specifically being designed to do). Not only was it successful but, it out performed second life, had no issues and did what Second Life hasn't done since 2006 - generated hype and new users playing the game.

Granted this is one game, however people are forgetting what Epic Gaming is. Epic IS NOT fortnite. Epic's core is its gaming engine that just happens to be still the best realistic gaming engine out (has been for years), that is easily scalable and allows games to be run in modern script languages. All they need is a VR hub with all games hosted by them, 5G and they would have close to a Ready Player One scenario.

Even Steam has started this. By using their VR goggles you get your own little room/house which you can decorate and then all in VR, access multiple games through a teleport like interface albeit the games being on your PC. AKA Sansar except once again far better as they have AAA games and isn't just a static look at this museum type thing.

The issue with second life is that it has missed its opportunity, is always slow to implement new systems and can not seem to get its revenue off of land rental. When there were calls for SL2 with updated scalable graphics and using a common script engine as opposed to LSL and rather than building on what SL already is, they made Sansar. A closed system that no one wanted, needed, or asked for and that has sub par graphics. If one looks at SL today and if all the issues as far as graphics and region crossings (i.e. just implement different sized land areas not just 256x256 which OpenSim do it easily with "Varregion") and rez time could be fixed (5G and load screens) you could get the following scenario:

• Mainland is converted into a metropolis of an optimised asset city which would be the landing/starting point of all avatars. Here would be the stores from many companies as well as rentals for the average joe (like the new linden home area).
• From this mainland metropolis you can then TP to various multi region places designed by either random people (using an inbuilt and updated optimised mesh creation system) or AAA companies (using 3rd party mesh created software).
• Experience tools (or something similar and better) would allow you to transport to these multiple gaming worlds seamlessly as your avatar etc. automatically change in seconds during the teleport so that you are in theme with those worlds.
• Standard currency that allows the purchase of items for any world/region or where you can convert them to that specific worlds currency. With even possible subscription fees applied to each gaming region/company if they so desire to keep a subscription model (e.g. update the group join fee system to allow for re-occurring fees/charges).
• A free region/home (just like steam does or sinespacce) that would allow anyone to start as LL would be getting income from other revenue streams such as the Mainland metropolis as well as from other gaming industries.

The above is all possible even in the SL we have now however, there are a few issues with this. Region crossings, the fact that second life is run on LSL which hasn't seen a major update in years and the lack of LL putting restrictions on optimisation. The other major issue's are LL just not updating/implimenting quick enough with people having to request things like animesh and bento for years before LL listen compared to a system where THEY should be the ones thinking about these types of things. The last issue being refusing to add anything better from third party viewers such as better graphic options, in world animation creation etc.

Is Second life going to die? No, as they have their core existing userbase. That said, with more and more of the newer generations not being interested in Second Life, LL will see a downturn in everything due to many more, more favourable systems being implemented.

[Selene Gregoire]

17 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I wonder at this point what LL can do.  

Not a whole lot with 20 year old software.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Not a whole lot with 20 year old software.

It's only 17!

More to the point, Fortnite runs on Unreal Engine which is actually four years older than Second Life!

The difference is that UE has been continuosly and systematically upgraded all the time.

Linden Lab fired their CTO, the only one who really understood how it all worked, in 2007. Since then they've spent six years fumbling around with no direction and five years desperately trying to patch up the worst holes to keep it afloat until their New Marvelous Flagship could be launched. Then of course, the New Marvelous Flagship sank like a stone...

Even so, I can't see how Epic/Fortnite can be a serious competitor to SL. SL'ers didn't flock over to Sansar, did they? They won't to this new one either. And as for a younger generation of gamers, it's not as if they would ever have joined SL anyway.

[Selene Gregoire]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

It's only 17!

Well... if you go back to the beginning of the Lab that would be 1999, the year Philip formed Linden Lab. So yeah, LL has been dinking with the software for 20 years. Pretty damn close to it anyway.

That was LL's biggest mistake, imo, firing Cory.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Selene Gregoire

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Well... if you go back to the beginning of the Lab that would be 1999, the year Philip formed Linden Lab. So yeah, LL has been dinking with the software for 20 years. Pretty damn close to it anyway.

They weren't working on a virtual world at first, they were trying to make a VR headset. Linden World was merely a side product, a fairly simple test environment for the headset. It was only when the headset totally flopped they got the idea maybe Linden World could be developed into something marketable.

  

1 hour ago, Selene Gregoire said:

That was LL's biggest mistake, imo, firing Cory.

Well, if he hadn't been fired, we wouldn't have had Facebook today of course but you can't really blame Linden Lab for that since there was no way for them to know back in 2007.

As for Second Life, there are two sides to that story. For those not familiar with Liden Lab's earliest history, it started in 1999 with two close friends, Philip (Rosedale), the enthusiastic salesman and Andrew (Meadows), the rock-solid reliable programmer. In 2000 they hired Ryan (Downe Karpf) as chief of staff (he also became an eminent content creator) and the mad genius programmer Cory Ondrejka as CTO. Later they added more people to the crew of course, most prominently the brilliant content creator Eric (Call) and anotehr brilliant programmer, Avi (Bar-Zeev).

Think of it as a band:

• Philip: Lead vocals
• Cory: Lead guitar and backing vocals
• Eric: Piano, organ and backing vocals
• Andrew: Bass
• Ryan: Drums, backing vocals and Master of Ceremonies
• Avi: Synthesizers

Cory was the main songwriter but they all contributed there. Avi left soon but that was an amicable split - he's simply not the kind of person who stays long in one job - the others stayed together until 2007.

The band metaphor is deliberate because what happened next seems to be more like how rock bands split up than what you usually see in the corporate world. Disagreements about direction, egos clashing, tension growing, personal conflicts escalating, backers/investors making unrealistic demands - the whole package. Guitarist fired, keyboardist leaving because his best mate was kicked out, singer trying his best to hold it all together but giving up after a few months, taking the drummer with him. The only one left of the core crew, was the solid but mild-mannered and non-assertive bass player. That's when the Six Dark Years started.

Edit:

I forgot the mandatory "Where are they now" part.

Eric got trapped near the center of the fault (those were his last words in his profile). I have no idea what happened to him.

Philip and Ryan founded LoveMachine Inc. (ironically named after one of Cory's SL projects), whatever that was. Philip returned briefly to LL when his successor turned out to be absolutely useless. His heart wasn't in it anymore though and it didn't take long before he left again, founding Coffee and Power, an UpWork clone, with Ryan. The two finally proceeded to High Fidelity.

Cory also started his own company but only ran it for a short while before it was bought up by a medium sized social network called Facebook. At Facebook he proposed and created the first ever dedicated smartphone app for a social network. The moment it was launched, FB jumped up from being one of the many to the only one - and Cory was promoted to Vice President of mobile phones or something like that. He's retired now.

Andrew stayed with LL until 2014 when he joined Philip and Ryan at High Fidelity.

Avi jumped from job to job, creating some absolutely spectacular 3D graphics for Disney, working for just about every top ten IT companies and establishing himself as a kind of virtual reality guru. He was the one who actually fullfilled LL's original vision of a VR headset, co-inventing the hololens that was bought up by Microsoft.

Edited January 16, 2020 by ChinRey

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

7 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It's only 17!

Started little before that, but wasn't open to the masses.

 

17 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Congrats on the first "Second Life is gonna die" thread of 2020.

💣

SL will end when a meteor slams into the planet or at least into the server farms!

[Syo Emerald]

14 hours ago, animats said:

Second Life has been ignored by mainstream media for years.

I'm quite happy they started ignoring SL. It was either uninformed hype or a story about how we are all sexual deviants/pedophiles/weirdos... or simply someone saying "Hey is that thing still online?!" after not personally caring for it past the hype.

15 hours ago, animats said:

See what Tim Sweeney has been saying at game conferences for three years. He wants to build the Metaverse. He sounds like Philip Rosedale in the early days. Sweeney is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company with a good track record, an impressive game engine, many good people, and several hundred million users. Also a personal net worth of about $7 billion. When that's the potential competition, it's a good idea to pay attention.

So he has a lot of money to throw at the wall? Good for him. But I still don't see the connection between what Fortnite is and what SL is and how Sweeney will create anything that is competiton. Because competition would mean, that its aiming at the same userbase and doing a better job at the whole virtual world thing.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I would still love to have more people come in,  and a few franchies come in, since there are star gate and star trek (I love rp) that I would love to be at constantly instead of being at my house all the time (I'm a furball, I'm not very welcome places because of the stigma on furries)

[Selene Gregoire]

10 hours ago, ChinRey said:

They weren't working on a virtual world at first, they were trying to make a VR headset. Linden World was merely a side product, a fairly simple test environment for the headset. It was only when the headset totally flopped they got the idea maybe Linden World could be developed into something marketable.

  

Well, if he hadn't been fired, we wouldn't have had Facebook today of course but you can't really blame Linden Lab for that since there was no way for them to know back in 2007.

As for Second Life, there are two sides to that story. For those not familiar with Liden Lab's earliest history, it started in 1999 with two close friends, Philip (Rosedale), the enthusiastic salesman and Andrew (Meadows), the rock-solid reliable programmer. In 2000 they hired Ryan (Downe Karpf) as chief of staff (he also became an eminent content creator) and the mad genius programmer Cory Ondrejka as CTO. Later they added more people to the crew of course, most prominently the brilliant content creator Eric (Call) and anotehr brilliant programmer, Avi (Bar-Zeev).

Think of it as a band:

• Philip: Lead vocals
• Cory: Lead guitar and backing vocals
• Eric: Piano, organ and backing vocals
• Andrew: Bass
• Ryan: Drums, backing vocals and Master of Ceremonies
• Avi: Synthesizers

Cory was the main songwriter but they all contributed there. Avi left soon but that was an amicable split - he's simply not the kind of person who stays long in one job - the others stayed together until 2007.

The band metaphor is deliberate because what happened next seems to be more like how rock bands split up than what you usually see in the corporate world. Disagreements about direction, egos clashing, tension growing, personal conflicts escalating, backers/investors making unrealistic demands - the whole package. Guitarist fired, keyboardist leaving because his best mate was kicked out, singer trying his best to hold it all together but giving up after a few months, taking the drummer with him. The only one left of the core crew, was the solid but mild-mannered and non-assertive bass player. That's when the Six Dark Years started.

Edit:

I forgot the mandatory "Where are they now" part.

Eric got trapped near the center of the fault (those were his last words in his profile). I have no idea what happened to him.

Philip and Ryan founded LoveMachine Inc. (ironically named after one of Cory's SL projects), whatever that was. Philip returned briefly to LL when his successor turned out to be absolutely useless. His heart wasn't in it anymore though and it didn't take long before he left again, founding Coffee and Power, an UpWork clone, with Ryan. The two finally proceeded to High Fidelity.

Cory also started his own company but only ran it for a short while before it was bought up by a medium sized social network called Facebook. At Facebook he proposed and created the first ever dedicated smartphone app for a social network. The moment it was launched, FB jumped up from being one of the many to the only one - and Cory was promoted to Vice President of mobile phones or something like that. He's retired now.

Andrew stayed with LL until 2014 when he joined Philip and Ryan at High Fidelity.

Avi jumped from job to job, creating some absolutely spectacular 3D graphics for Disney, working for just about every top ten IT companies and establishing himself as a kind of virtual reality guru. He was the one who actually fullfilled LL's original vision of a VR headset, co-inventing the hololens that was bought up by Microsoft.

I hate lectures. Especially ones I've heard 1000 times. They still don't change the facts. Facts I have known for 16 years.

The company is 20 years old but I suppose you'll tell me I'm wrong about that too when we both know I am not.

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

The company is 20 years old but I suppose you'll tell me I'm wrong about that too when we both know I am not.

Then how do you explain this?

 

But seriously and back on track. Fortnite runs on an engine that was launched before Linden Lab even existed so age is not in itself the explanation why it's more "modern". The reason SL fell behind was the firing of Cory and the consecutive departure of most of the original key members of the LL team.

I do agree that it's a shame LL and SL don't recognise how important Cory Ondejka was and one of the reason I wrote that post at all was to make people who've never heard the name aware of his contribution. But even so, I do not for a minute believe the 2007 mayhem was a simple black-and-white "Cory was right, Philip was wrong".

Edited January 16, 2020 by ChinRey

[Selene Gregoire]

35 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Then how do you explain this?

 

But seriously and back on track. Fortnite runs on an engine that was launched before Linden Lab even existed so age is not in itself the explanation why it's more "modern". The reason SL fell behind was the firing of Cory and the consecutive departure of most of the original key members of the LL team.

I do agree that it's a shame LL and SL don't recognise how important Cory Ondejka was and one of the reason I wrote that post at all was to make people who've never heard the name aware of his contribution. But even so, I do not for a minute believe the 2007 mayhem was a simple black-and-white "Cory was right, Philip was wrong".

What is there to explain? Software glitches, has bugs, and the list goes on. Nothing created by humans is ever absolutely perfect. I'm curious though what vwininformation.com has to do with LL or SL.

Other than that, you're not saying anything I wasn't pointing out. And none of it changes the fact that LL was founded by Philip in 1999. Technically (and legally), the company is over 20 years old. All I'm saying is people expect too much from software that is 20 years old (and older).

 

ETA: A prime example would be Active Worlds. Anyone expecting AW to ever have the quality of avatars that can be found in SL are going to be waiting a very long time because it's just not going to happen. Just like you will never be able to build in AW with anything but paper thin walls and floors.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Selene Gregoire

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

What is there to explain? Software glitches, has bugs, and the list goes on. Nothing created by humans is ever absolutely perfect. I'm curious though what vwininformation.com has to do with LL or SL.

It's an online directory of Second Life avatars. There really was a Phoenix Linden account with a rez date of 1412, LL even used it occasionally. It was one of their jokes of course and it's closed now.

[Lindal Kidd]

I think there will never be a "Metaverse", in the sense of a worldwide, unified, virtual world, such as depicted in Snow Crash.  SL comes closest so far, but it is very far from being a universally accepted medium of content and information exchange.

I think that what WILL happen is Augmented Reality (AR).  Something like Microsoft's original vision for HoloLens.  Everyone will have SmartGlassesTM  and these will overlay information on our view of the real world.  That information will augment what we see and hear, and will also be able to substitute for what we see and hear.  So, for instance, instead of walking next to me, you might seem to be walking next to Beyonce, or maybe Jason Momoa.  Your SmartGlasses will let you communicate with others around the world in voice, text, video, or 3D telepresence.  They'll let you see information about shops and restaurants close to you, order from one of them in advance of your arrival.  We'll have virtual workshops, where several people, widely separated in the real world, can appear to work on a shared project, manipulating virtual objects in much the same way we can manipulate prims today in SL.  When something is finished, it will be sent to an additive manufacturing center (3D printer) to be manufactured.

This will all happen soon.  One of the things that will need to happen is for VR/AR glasses to stop looking like a toaster you wear on your face.  At CES, Panasonic showed a prototype of new HD VR glasses that look like a pair of steampunk goggles; I don't know what they will actually DO, but just for the looks, I want a pair.

It won't be Fortnite, and it won't be SL.  It will be an outgrowth and a convergence of today's internet, websites, and streaming media.  If any one company is responsible, it'll be (ugh!) Google; but it's more likely to be a cooperative development by several of the big tech companies...Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and the phone companies.

Not only will it be exciting, it will be necessary.  As more people become aware of climate change, we're going to see not only a changeover to renewable, green energy sources and transportation, we're going to see a lot less actual travel.  Instead of commuting, we'll work with our virtual colleagues from home.  Instead of traveling, we'll meet virtually.  Transportation will become more about moving goods than people, and even that will change as more and more things will be made locally, near their points of use, by small automated factories...you might even have a "BuildOMat" device in your garage to make most of the things you need.  Why ship raw materials from Africa to China to make shoes that will be worn by people in Philadelphia?

There are downsides.  Instead of "traveling to see the world" most people will probably be limited to bringing the virtual world to them, "touring" places virtually instead of physically.  That may fall short of the the "real thing" but it has advantages, too...it'll be available to almost everyone, for a ridiculously low cost (compared to world travel today).  People will complain that everyone just stays at home and "never gets out and interacts with real people" any more.  Doctors will advise us that we're turning into a population of vegetables.  Well, since when did we ever NOT have problems?

Bring it on.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Lindal Kidd

[Seicher Rae]

Personally, I prefer running around my living room shouting Oh. Em. Gee. because I'm reading another thread about how LL/SL/The World As We Know It is coming to an end. Again.

[Lancewae Barrowstone]

I think it's wrong to suggest SL needs to "live up" to some other construct.  Indeed, it could be stated the other way around, "Fortnite needs to live up to Second Life." 

You see, Fortnite moves too fast, it's superficial and thrill oriented, whereas Second Life is slower, deeply textual, and essentially involves more human meaning (yes, even if you play a furry, you know what I mean).  We type out thoughtful text.  Our world moves slower (like real life) and there is time to delve the deeper realms of human meaning and even its rich humor to be expressed, when in our Second Life doings and relations.  This is different, and not just chasing colorful rainbows or pvp combat where you die pretty quickly (Sl already has pvp combat, too).  No, these two "game" experiences will remain distinctively different. Why?

Because, where Fortnite, is a busy, jolly, merry-go-round kid's park, Second Life is a more measured gathering of people drawn together for different meanings of their own devise -- scores of unique constructs, imaginings, social events, story lines, live music and dancing, and prims to mould, morph and build our own cool things and mesh that we can upload to augment our constructs.  These are very different experiences of real consequence between these two "metaverses," if that term applies.   

Oh yes, Fortnite can have all the kids of the world, and they will play as long as the money holds out.  The real question for Fortnite is, ...err... what then?  The onus falls upon Fortnite here: can it really craft deeper meanings into its popular shooter game that might ever hope to approach accomplishing some of with what Second Life does so easily?  I suggest not.  And the direction toward VR is not an answer to anything; it's just another piece of glitter.  The hype of VR became corporate folly several years ago and they are paying for it now.

And finally, there is no competition against the power of literary expression that comes in the form of textual communication.  It is a magic as old as the written word, and our long history is proof of it.  I'm not saying all participants in SL need to be literary genius', but that typing things about ourselves is literary.  So, for all the comparisons of a new Fortnite "metaverse" as opposed to the existing world of Second Life, the main ingredient of strong emphasis on textual communication and all the magic it brings, lies firmly here with Second Life. 

Yes, SL may have been an accidental creation, but Fortnite is not building toward it, and won't be able to displace it. Not unless it can learn how to slow down. 

 

[Lindal Kidd]

Good points, Lancewae.  This also explains why so many of the newbies I try to help get bored with how long it takes to "do anything" and simply leave SL to go do something more fast paced and immediate.

[DarkRavenWolfie]

lets just say that most fortnite kids would get bored of SL in less than 10 minutes of running around.

 

I wonder how much these Forbes "journalists" got paid to write up this hilarious nonsense.

 

 

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by DarkRavenWolfie

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, DarkRavenWolfie said:

lets just say that most fortnite kids would get bored of SL in less than 10 minutes of running around.

I wonder how much these Forbes "journalists" got paid to write up this hilarious nonsense.

You don't have to pay someone to be out of touch.

It also doesn't matter that you're out of touch if your audience is equally out of touch.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator