Lucia Nightfire Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 2 hours ago, animats said: A full fix to visible motion would be really hard. But a partial fix, with some viewer side collision detection during animation, could help. So can systems that do implicit motion based on the situation. That's pretty standard in games, and SL does it with animation overriders. It's easier to fix this for moving avatars than for stationary ones being animated by user animations. In motion, the AO has freedom to do the right thing, and if it did a smarter right thing, like having a clue about foot placement, that would be OK. Here's the next generation of that technology. What SL developer is going to bring anything remotely like that to SL? Have you even heard any SL developer publicly aspire to actually bring such radical change to SL? All you've heard from any SL developer is "would be nice" when anyone brings up such ideas in the user groups. Also, with the current feature development time track record of SL's current multitasking developers, how long do think something like that would take to implement? 5 years? 10 years? Let some of these dragged out feature development times give you an estimate: Animesh: 1 year, 6 months BoM: 2 years, 3 months EEP: 2 years, 10 months 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted September 8, 2020 Author Share Posted September 8, 2020 31 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said: What SL developer is going to bring anything remotely like that to SL? One whose management knows fear. Fear of competitors with more money, more users, more technical know-how, and more sharp teeth. Linden Lab has had an easy ride for a few years. Not much competition in the virtual world space. Then, about a year ago, people started talking more about the "metaverse". Look who I quote in this topic. Not gamers. Business magazines. People with money think there's money to be made in this space. Things are happening this year. See my previous posts, and Brian Schultz's blog. Second Life is not doomed. But it's not safe for Linden Lab to just coast any more. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ardy Lay Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 Be honest. Linden Lab fears change because Second Life residents fear change and throw insanely obnoxious fits when something is changed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryanne Solo Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 (edited) *robot voice - from saying it again.... and again.... and again..... BPM to avatar animation synchroniser. On/off channel switch, increment/decrement by standard midi durations. 5ths? 10ths? of a beat? Whatever floats your quantization boat basically rah rah rah. Someone else will do it if you dont LL? *wags finger @Ebbe Linden Read such classic statements as: "three extra binary group flag bits used for defining the use of the user bits"😮🤭 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_timecode Edited September 8, 2020 by Maryanne Solo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted September 17, 2020 Author Share Posted September 17, 2020 There are some more new virtual worlds. Sandbox just turned on. Imagine Minecraft crossed with blockchain, with lots of land speculation. Land speculation is a big thing with some of the new worlds. In fact, it's sometimes bigger than actually spending time in world. Decentraland and Sominium Space work that way. Voxel based worlds are now a thing. There are standard mesh objects, and you can place them in a 3D grid. Dual Universe and Sandbox work that way. You can't create new mesh objects. Kind of like Lego. If you saw the Lego movie and want to live there, voxel based worlds are for you. All these are getting user counts in the thousands, but not tens or hundreds of thousands. So this generation is doing better than the Sinespace/Sansar/High Fidelity generation, all of which maxed out below 100 concurrent users. The new ones are visually worse but scale better and have easy building. This bears thinking about for SL. Ease of use matters a lot. 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted September 19, 2020 Author Share Posted September 19, 2020 (edited) Facebook Horizons got some press coverage in VentureBeat. Visually, it's low rent. Someone could have done this in Shockwave 3D 10 years ago. They use low-end VR headsets, so the detail is limited. It's like a low-end version of VRchat. This is supposed to be the Trojan horse outside the walls of Troy. Quick build. You can get a big semi-private space and build. There are no land or object charges. They still have legless avatars, like Facebook Spaces. If they have textures, they're not in the promo pictures. So what have they got that's new? Facebook offers a shield-shaped panic button on your virtual wrist. If somebody offends you, you push that, and you're placed in a protective bubble where no one can hurt you, and connected to a "safety specialist". They're really, really worried about making this place being a "safe space". In the early days of Linden Lab, Second Life was envisioned as the social network of the future. Facebook beat them using a much simpler system with better social engineering and good ease of use. SL could use some serious attention in the ease of use area. Edited September 19, 2020 by animats 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted October 8, 2020 Author Share Posted October 8, 2020 (edited) Now, the NVidia Omniverse. This is a collaborative space for designers. It's all cloud-based; the viewer is just a web browser. A demo: This is how good the latest GPU technology can look. The GPU for this costs US$8000. This isn't cost-effective for gaming and social virtual worlds. Not yet. They offer a form of in-world editing. A user using Maya can be putting their objects into a shared scene someone else is editing with a different tool. Collaborative in-world editing The metaverse dream just got closer. Someday there will be something like Second Life that looks this good. The first games that look this good will probably be out in 2021. Edited October 8, 2020 by animats 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted October 15, 2020 Author Share Posted October 15, 2020 Lord of the Metaverse - the Metaverse gets the attention of The Economist. They're writing about Neal Stephenson, author of "Snow Crash", which described something like Second Life before Second Life existed. He got so many details right, down to low-bandwidth connections being seen as inferior, female avatars having excessive breast sizes, and the problems of collision detection for crowds in-world. He was thinking VR with full body tracking, like VRchat. His comment now is simply “Because just having a game engine that works, and that is sustainable as a business, is kind of the table stakes. If you can’t do that, you can’t build a multi-user realistic 3d platform.” Fortnite is mentioned; Second Life is not. Metaverse ideas keep showing up in the financial press. That wasn't happening two years ago. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 ..but why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 Tim Sweeny is a big proponent of the metaverse as a concept, and he's hot potatoes right now. Second Life wont get that kind of media attention unless something spectacular happens, not surprised we didn't even get mentioned as a footnote. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luna Bliss Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 (edited) 28 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said: Tim Sweeny is a big proponent of the metaverse as a concept, and he's hot potatoes right now. Second Life wont get that kind of media attention unless something spectacular happens, not surprised we didn't even get mentioned as a footnote. Well, my new headset just arrived and I can't believe the high resolution now! Heading out to an African safari later.. Waiting for Horizon to open, thinking it just might move the Metaverse along, though the legless avatars in Horizon are very unappealing. I'll be encouraging those in Horizon to check out SL where we have greater customization and even.... legs! lol Edited October 15, 2020 by Luna Bliss 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairreLilette Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 (edited) 16 hours ago, animats said: Lord of the Metaverse - the Metaverse gets the attention of The Economist. They're writing about Neal Stephenson, author of "Snow Crash", which described something like Second Life before Second Life existed. He got so many details right, down to low-bandwidth connections being seen as inferior, female avatars having excessive breast sizes, and the problems of collision detection for crowds in-world. He was thinking VR with full body tracking, like VRchat. His comment now is simply “Because just having a game engine that works, and that is sustainable as a business, is kind of the table stakes. If you can’t do that, you can’t build a multi-user realistic 3d platform.” Fortnite is mentioned; Second Life is not. Metaverse ideas keep showing up in the financial press. That wasn't happening two years ago. It could be all hype though...it's how financial presses work. VR here today, suck people in, gone tomorrow flat broke. VR sounds very expensive for builders if you need to upload nine maps. That ridiculous - nine maps for one item. It's not cost effective for builders. I know people who love to play games on their phone. It's games like trivia and you play against a real other person. Stuff like that. That's pretty big too but the money for those kinds of phone games probably would come through advertising. What would send Second Life through the roof for success is legalized gambling. I think internet gambling should be legalized. What's the difference of gambling in California or Las Vegas or the internet? I think the future of the metaverse is legalized gambling. Edited October 15, 2020 by FairreLilette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted October 15, 2020 Author Share Posted October 15, 2020 12 minutes ago, FairreLilette said: What would send Second Life through the roof for success is legalized gambling. "Skill gaming regions". 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairreLilette Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 1 minute ago, animats said: "Skill gaming regions". What are those? If you could please explain. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted October 15, 2020 Author Share Posted October 15, 2020 1 minute ago, FairreLilette said: What are those? If you could please explain. Oh, you've never found those? Sims full of slot machines. Search SL content for one and visit. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairreLilette Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 1 minute ago, animats said: Oh, you've never found those? Sims full of slot machines. Search SL content for one and visit. Is it really like a slot machine...just a random spin and win? Skill gaming sounds liked it's skilled. Un-skilled gaming sounds like a shot machine. Is internet gambling legal now then? I never heard that it was. You got beautiful buxomly women here to blow on the dice. lol So, let's have legalized unskilled gaming. I'm not sure what you mean...but I will look it up. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairreLilette Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 (edited) 18 hours ago, animats said: His comment now is simply “Because just having a game engine that works, and that is sustainable as a business, is kind of the table stakes. If you can’t do that, you can’t build a multi-user realistic 3d platform. Okay, I just did a Google search for "the future of the metaverse" and came across a picture of a Mother and her two kids looking at a fairly large screen with Fortnight showing on both screens (it's in pasted link below). The photo showed toys hanging on the wall and toys in front of the screens with Fortnight on them. Some of these young age player games are making a lot of money in toys. I said SL could do that if they spin-off a Tinyland - sell toys of the tinies. That could be the future of the metaverse but it's not what you think - it's toys. And fortnight and Roblox and Minecraft are very easy to run and have toys as well, and probably lunch boxes and you name it. The only way Second Life could cash in on this toy metaverse is to spin-off a Tinyland. https://www.pymnts.com/news/omnicommerce/2020/gaming-platforms-betting-on-the-metaverse-as-next-internet/ And , I wanted to add it's the toys and other merchandise of these kinds of young age player games that gets the word around like advertising, five kids see and ask where did you get that, and so on and so on and so on and so on. Second Life has no place in the metaverse because it's for Adults mostly for one and they don't have any kind of great collectible for Second Life. I've seen their t-shirts. I don't want a Second Life t-shirt. A Tinyland t-shirt, sure...that would be cute. Plus, toys can be sold at McDonald's and Taco Bells. Second Life cannot compete with that. A Tinyland could. Edited October 16, 2020 by FairreLilette 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 2 hours ago, FairreLilette said: Is it really like a slot machine...just a random spin and win? Skill gaming sounds liked it's skilled. Un-skilled gaming sounds like a shot machine. Is internet gambling legal now then? I never heard that it was. You got beautiful buxomly women here to blow on the dice. lol So, let's have legalized unskilled gaming. I'm not sure what you mean...but I will look it up. You should go check it out. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucagrabacr Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 (edited) Speaking of other platforms that are getting all the media attention right now because they are made by bigger companies with more resources; many of those platforms cannot compete with SL on some critical fronts due to the nature of their brand images LL know this already of course and they've been good at taking advantage of the fact. Other than that, a lot of what SL is lies in what it means for us, LL is still way ahead compared to all other in term of how they treat SL and its Residents - like how a true metaverse and its people should be treated. Many new and would-be metaverses out there are still pretty naive in this regard, treading the same mistakes LL did and learned from a long time ago, or straight up doing stupid things that anyone who's been a part of a true virtual world for long enough would know to be stupid, they are red flags. Residents enthusiasm of SL and its perceived legitimacy of being a true metaverse are some of of the keys toward ensuring SL's future, genuine enthusiasm brings more people and proportionally more money and perceived legitimacy of being a true virtual world is the core of SL as a brand. One of the only ways to make sure SL remains true to what it's supposed to be is if LL make enough money that the formula and how LL treat SL will never change for the worse, and a lot of that enthusiasm hangs on that sense of legitimacy, that SL is much more than just a 3D social platform. Many of those big companies out there might have an almost endless pit of money and resources, but once each and every person who's been enjoying SL realize how the future of the metaverse as they know it and their enjoyment of it depend on the continued existence of SL, we will have millions of people going way out and beyond to defend their ways of life Edited October 16, 2020 by lucagrabacr typo 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucagrabacr Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 Vultures casting shadows of pigeons preying on our trust 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairreLilette Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 (edited) 6 hours ago, lucagrabacr said: Vultures casting shadows of pigeons preying on our trust ? What? Those other games with real life toys and real life products that kids gobble up are not preying on Second Life's trust. Those General audience "games" and Second Life is like trying to compare day to night. The future of the metaverse to me looks very G-rated as well as simple and it's for kids and the parents want as squeaky clean as possible. Second Life is perhaps PG but still has a bit of a reputation most parents may not want. Plus, those other "games" with toys, that really gets the word around and is kind of like free advertising until you do have 350 million registered users. I can see those toys appearing at McDonald's or Taco Bells - places kids love to eat and get free toys. As far as the future of the metaverse 'for adults', legalized gambling would have SL literally building Casinos overnight, but it would probably have to be regulated somehow. Also, the most likely reason Horizon's avatars have no legs, well they can't be accused of pixel sex that way most likely. It's the nature of the beast of home entertainment - it needs to be G-rated for home entertainment for the vast majority. PG to Adult, well, that's a finer line - a tightrope even. Fortnite even has it's own Monopoly Game. It's Epic Games and Epic toys. However, Fortnite is still PG but it has the "toy power" to advertise and is just easier to "play". Edited October 16, 2020 by FairreLilette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted October 16, 2020 Author Share Posted October 16, 2020 2 hours ago, FairreLilette said: Also, the most likely reason Horizon's avatars have no legs, well they can't be accused of pixel sex that way most likely. It's the nature of the beast of home entertainment - it needs to be G-rated for home entertainment for the vast majority. You have a point. It's a big issue, at least in the US. There's a hard division in entertainment now between "sexless" and "porno". Not much in the middle. The number of R-rated movies is way down. This is a real problem for SL. SL is neutral on sex, and, as a result, livestreams from SL are totally barred from Twitch.tv. The chilling effect is strong here. Now that's being paranoid. It's a group of avatars sitting around a table; developers discussing technical issues. There's no obvious answer on that one. Although LL should lobby Twitch to allow streaming from General regions, as a minimum. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 Twitch and SL will never happen. We (Catznip) tried years ago, added all the required code to stream from the viewer direct to Twitch, applied for an api key .. and got told no because they could not be sure of ownership of everything that might appear on the stream. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janet Voxel Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 3 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said: Twitch and SL will never happen. We (Catznip) tried years ago, added all the required code to stream from the viewer direct to Twitch, applied for an api key .. and got told no because they could not be sure of ownership of everything that might appear on the stream. So it wasn't about sexitimes, it was more about copyright strikes? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 That was their excuse at the time, I'm sure if asked again they would come up with something else. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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