Future of the metaverse, and all that

[Ted McGregor]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

There is no profit in irrelevance.

Que sera, sera. 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Hmm, but won't that lead to a bunch of poorly performing regions when people start hosting them on potatoes?

How would one differentiate that from say poorly-performing regions on AWS servers stuffed full of questionable content?

[Quistess Alpha]

Just now, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

How would one differentiate that from say poorly-performing regions on AWS servers stuffed full of questionable content?

"rubber-banding" vs poor frame-rates.

Maybe I don't get out enough, but a lot of "questionable content" in SL is more nasty for the viewer than it is for the server.

[Coffee Pancake]

There would be nothing to stop an external region connected to LL's grid from setting things up to work anyway they desired, even recoding it to specialist use cases

[Quistess Alpha]

10 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

There would be nothing to stop an external region connected to LL's grid from setting things up to work anyway they desired, even recoding it to specialist use cases

You could say the same for open sim. . . besides variable sized regions, I haven't heard much about "specialist use case" stuff going on there, then again, you could argue it's too small for anyone to want to try.

[Coffee Pancake]

3 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

You could say the same for open sim. . . besides variable sized regions, I haven't heard much about "specialist use case" stuff going on there, then again, you could argue it's too small for anyone to want to try.

Open sim as it stands doesn't have the industry presence or resources LL do. If LL allowed people to host there own regions and allow them to be connected to multiple grids, open sim as it stands would be irrelevant overnight, but it could form the basis of an alternative server much in the same way websites can be delivered from any number of HTTP server implementations.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

8 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

ou could say the same for open sim. . . besides variable sized regions, I haven't heard much about "specialist use case" stuff going on there, then again, you could argue it's too small for anyone to want to try.

Diva Canto set up four regions in a square formation with a stage set up in the central portion of each region as a convention/tuition/performance venue, it allowed the four regions to have plenty of avatars without too much presence-lag, all the regions could see and hear the central stage parcels, ...

One of many such specialised things.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

There was an interoperability project in the previous decade, hosted I believe by IBM? where a SecondLife to Opensim region connection was demonstrated. I can't remember why it went no further after the initial successes.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

37 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

"rubber-banding" vs poor frame-rates.

Maybe I don't get out enough, but a lot of "questionable content" in SL is more nasty for the viewer than it is for the server.

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek   A typical user won't start categorising the type or reason for the unhappy experience, they'll gripe and go.

Regarding the host-on-a-potato issue, the hardware is probably going to be less of a problem than the ISP connection said vegetable employs, based on my own experiments. I've not tried a potato yet, but I have carried out several experiments with Linux on dead badgers.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Ted McGregor]

10 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

 I can't remember why it went no further after the initial successes.

Unsure about the sequence of occurence, but this happened : 

1. IBM pulled out of SL entirely using what they learned from SL internally and applying it to long distance virtual administrator assistance.

2. LL pulling out of the hypergrid. 

Edited October 16, 2021 by TDD123

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Hmm, but won't that lead to a bunch of poorly performing regions when people start hosting them on potatoes?

If you want to give it a try, remember to cook the potato first. This reduces its resistance and improves the performance considerably.

Edited October 16, 2021 by ChinRey

[Arielle Popstar]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Open sim as it stands doesn't have the industry presence or resources LL do. If LL allowed people to host there own regions and allow them to be connected to multiple grids, open sim as it stands would be irrelevant overnight, but it could form the basis of an alternative server much in the same way websites can be delivered from any number of HTTP server implementations.

Given a choice between an Opensim region server and an S/L one, I would opt for the more versatile Opensim one to connect to the Secondlife "robust" servers. Some of the options available to Opensim would take Secondlife 2-3 years of humming and hawing to come up to the same speed.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Going back to the Halfatars FB uses -- I had someone come into my bar the other night and he bought his laptop in.  After he got on he was showing a friend the FB "metaverse" aka Horizon Workplace.  They were doing some oohs and ahhs about that halfatars and showing what they can do. 

Being the devious one I decided to go to the DJ booth and logged onto SL and sent the video to one of our big screens. Our barkeep told them to look at the big screen and their mouths dropped.  She said one of them said "wow, they have whole bodies, that must be new!!"  The Barkeep said no, it was Second Life and it's been around for about 2 decades. The guy with the laptop quietly closed his laptop.

Edited October 17, 2021 by Kimmi Zehetbauer
Senile moment.

[animats]

3 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

A typical user won't start categorizing the type or reason for the unhappy experience, they'll gripe and go.

This.

Most of the people in this discussion are experienced SL users. Many are content creators. Some have been deep inside the viewer code and have made improvements.

The typical new user, who's played modern games,  sees that Second Life is really slow and leaves forever.

That's the problem.

Is there any other commercial 3D entertainment system as sluggish as Second Life?

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Is there any other commercial 3D entertainment system as sluggish as Second Life?

It's really not acceptable and tinkering around the edges with the existing system isn't going to fix the problems and wastes time.

We need a new asset->decode->render pipeline and we needed it yesterday.

Why the lab haven't just blurted out "we're not doing any more work on the existing client, we're putting everyone who can code onto a new vulkan render engine and asset handling subsystem - hold tight, this might take a while" is beyond me.

in practice that's not going to be any worse for us than when everyone was pretending Sansar was the future.

It's really starting to feel like Tilia is the real business and we're just stakeless investors in a brave new world of traditional payment processing.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

3 hours ago, animats said:

Is there any other commercial 3D entertainment system as sluggish as Second Life?

The news? Elections? TV Fishing? Knitting channels?

I'd better stop...

[Ted McGregor]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

We need a new asset->decode->render pipeline and we needed it yesterday.

Why the lab haven't just blurted out "we're not doing any more work on the existing client, we're putting everyone who can code onto a new vulkan render engine and asset handling subsystem - hold tight, this might take a while" is beyond me.

Absolutely not digging up hatchet's here, but can you imagine my surprise when an experienced dev like you rather bickers with (in)experienced users like me about who's doing what for the viewer free of charge to LL yet they fail to do promptly what  you are suggesting and rather not invest in this kind of optimization , milking the cashcow dry meanwhile ? 

We should unite against them and demand this as most urgent. 

Edited October 16, 2021 by TDD123

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Why the lab haven't just blurted out "we're not doing any more work on the existing client, we're putting everyone who can code onto a new vulkan render engine and asset handling subsystem - hold tight, this might take a while" is beyond me.

My guess is because they aren't doing anything of the type.

Let's face it, anything they decide to do, half of us here are going to complain about, so why take the pain for an uncertain gain?

Things here work, sort of. If they're happy to leave scripts struggling to get 40% completed within the time frame, then the slight pause in rendering isn't going to be a sweat-breaker either.

 

[Mr Amore]

The future of Secondlife by 2030 goes in one of three ways:

• Still chugging along, largely the same as today (75%)
• It's over, the company was sliced apart and sold off (20%)
• LL stepped up, modernized the viewer, released new creation tools and revamped regions (5%)

The last is hopeful and by my estimate just a 5% chance of becoming so. It's the minimum SL needs to stay relevant.

 

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

There is no reason why an open grid based on LL's platform couldn't have regions that offered unique features, like procedural landscapes or infinite worlds.

 

No Man's Sky took some 6 years to develop into a playable state. Star Citizen will take longer. The good news for LL is, no one's about to release a procedurally generated metaverse anytime soon.

[Ted McGregor]

37 minutes ago, Mr Amore said:

The last is hopeful and by my estimate just a 5% chance of becoming so. It's the minimum SL needs to stay relevant.

" I think you overestimate their chances." - Wilhuff Tarkin  

Edited October 16, 2021 by TDD123

[animats]

5 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

The good news for LL is, no one's about to release a procedurally generated metaverse anytime soon.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1173815818

TCG World. A procedurally generated metaverse.

It's a big world with procedurally generated terrain. 800 square kilometers of terrain. You can buy plots, and put stuff there.

It's seamless and sharded. Every N users get a new instance of the world, and they all see the same fixed objects, but only the avatars in their shard. So everybody sees 800 square kilometers with maybe 20-100 avatars in their shard.

It's built from standard MMO parts; Unity for the client, Photon for the server. Plus an asset server. Each client generates the same terrain using a pseudo-random number generator in sync with all the other clients, so they don't really store much terrain in the client.

Of course, it's really all about selling land and NFTs. Like Decentraland, the idea is to have just enough low-cost virtual world to convince the Securities and Exchange Commission you're not selling a blue-sky investment.

It is, however, a procedurally generated metaverse, and one that looks reasonably decent visually.

[Mr Amore]

There are a bunch of tech-demo's trying to cash in on the hype. This TCG World has a combination of low and high-poly models, and about 16 minutes in his avatar falls into the terrain. New asset-flip-verses are popping up at a monthly rate with that FOMO factor(fear of missing out (on that NFT goodness)).

There's also Dreamworld, a hideous asset-flip of a procedurally generated metaverse. The only entertainment from this project was the lead developer's ex weighing in on the scandal.

Then there's Earth 2, another procedurally generated metaverse + NFTs, that's been trending for all the wrong reasons.

A random video on the growth of blockchain MMOs.

There will be no shortage of Unity/Unreal projects claiming to be future metaverses, many of them will succeed in seducing sales with that promise of profitable NFTs.

These projects aren't even close to generating diverse biomes, atmospheric lighting, AI navigable terrain and a whole list of gaming-necessities which takes years to properly implement.

Sapiens is by a lone developer, built on his own custom engine. It's been a journey watching his videos these past years, the game hasn't improved much visually, but he goes into detail of every challenge beneath the surface which brings the game together. It's not aiming to be a metaverse, it's just an interesting watch.

Edited October 17, 2021 by Mr Amore

[Mr Amore]

This is from last month (full article at the Washington Post), I don't recall it being posted here.

Quote

Epic Games believes the Internet is broken. This is their blueprint to fix it.

To Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, people are tired of how today’s Internet operates. He says the social media era of the Internet, a charge led by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, has separated commerce from the general audience, herding users together and directing them to targets of the company’s choosing rather than allowing free exploration.

“Now we’re in a closed platform wave, and Apple and Google are surfing that wave too,” Sweeney said. “As we get out of this, everybody is going to realize, ‘Okay we spent the last decade being taken advantage of.'"

For years now, he has eyed a solution: the metaverse. And steadily, over several years, Epic has been acquiring a number of assets and making strategic moves with the goal of making Sweeney’s vision for the metaverse a reality.

Sweeney points to how Facebook has engaged with businesses over the years to illustrate his belief.

“They have all these people follow them, and then at some point, Facebook decided we’re not going to let [businesses] talk to them directly unless you pay us, and then they introduced advertising as this monetization thing,” Sweeney said. “By the time [businesses] figured it out, they were trapped.”

Sweeney believes platforms like Google and Apple have similarly grown in size while contributing to what he sees as a devolution of the Internet. He refers to the economic ecosystems created by the Silicon Valley giants as “walled gardens,” a term that came up frequently during Epic’s mostly unsuccessful antitrust lawsuit against Apple. That suit took aim at Apple’s app store, which Epic argued constituted a monopoly because Apple controls whether apps can appear in its store and receives a 30 percent cut of all financial transactions from those apps.

A federal judge ruled in Apple’s favor on all but one count, leaving that particular walled garden largely intact. In her decision, District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers noted how the actions of Epic against Apple were a calculated move to eliminate a barrier to the creation of the metaverse. Sweeney’s vision for the metaverse would give users the ability to seamlessly hop from one platform to another and not be limited by a company’s virtual ecosystem.

The Washington Post interviewed a variety of executives, developers and stakeholders at Epic Games to discuss its vision for the metaverse. The messaging from Epic Games and its companies is clear: What Sweeney and his colleagues want to create is a marked departure from modern social media platforms. And the company believes it is well suited to realize its metaverse vision through its own technologies and series of acquisitions. But there remain significant obstacles, seemingly outside of Epic’s control, that present formidable barriers to Sweeney’s aspirations.

At the core of Epic’s metaverse vision is a change in how people socialize on the Internet. Sima Sistani, co-founder of the video chat social network Houseparty that was acquired by Epic in 2019, believes interactions will move away from “likes,” comments and posts about people’s personal lives and toward more complex interactions where users share and participate in experiences across various services.

“If the last generation is about sharing, the next generation of social is going to be about participating,” said Sistani, who has held positions at Tumblr and Yahoo before starting Houseparty. “Maybe I didn’t call it the metaverse then, but that’s what it is. It’s people, interactive experiences, coming together and moving from one experience to another, having this shareability to move beyond walled gardens.”

Part of Epic’s strategy for the metaverse will require a continual stream of content creation to keep users engaged. To that end, Epic is making Unreal Engine as accessible as possible to novices.

“We’re trying to turn it into a process that’s very, very straightforward,” Marc Petit, general manager of Unreal Engine, said. “We tried to create this super-sophisticated technology to power the metaverse and try to make it accessible to millions of people.”

Epic sees those creators as another cornerstone in constructing the metaverse. The desire to shift “Fortnite” to a more creator-friendly business model was discussed at length during Epic’s trial with Apple. That pivot would also mirror an ongoing Internet trend.

“You need an entire suite of standards, and the Web is based on several,” said Sweeney, citing such factors like HTML becoming the standard file format for displaying web browser pages. “The metaverse will require a lot of them, file formats for describing a 3-D scene, networking protocols for describing how players are interacting in real time. Every multiplayer game has a networking protocol of some sort. They don’t all agree, but eventually they ought to be lined up and made to communicate.”

And therein lies Sweeney’s biggest challenge in realizing his vision. While Epic could weave a kind of metaverse out of its many creations and others built on Unreal Engine, it would not be “The metaverse” that Sweeney and others envision until the barriers between some of the world’s biggest brands are broken down.

“I think the real force that’s going to shape the metaverse into an open platform is the power of all the brands to participate in it,” Sweeney said.

In that regard, the verdict in Epic’s lawsuit against Apple was a blow, but Epic has already filed an appeal. If it can’t find a legal mechanism to bring down the walled gardens, it may need to follow a similar blueprint to how it successfully pushed for cross-play in “Fortnite,” the biggest example to date of how Epic Games has opened up traditionally closed ecosystems.

Facebook basing their metaverse on VR headsets is shooting themselves in the foot(if they had one). Who wants to wear one regularly.

Epic have the technology, but no one wants a metaverse with Fortnite's cartoony visuals.

Second Life is still the defining example of a metaverse, but it's no longer mentioned with the cool kids.

[Coffee Pancake]

13 minutes ago, Mr Amore said:

Who wants to wear one regularly.

No one now all the VR jocks have switched to NFTs.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Mr Amore said:

This is from last month (full article at the Washington Post), I don't recall it being posted here.

Facebook basing their metaverse on VR headsets is shooting themselves in the foot(if they had one). Who wants to wear one regularly.

Epic have the technology, but no one wants a metaverse with Fortnite's cartoony visuals.

Second Life is still the defining example of a metaverse, but it's no longer mentioned with the cool kids.

Not with the present headsets but as the technology advances and they become lighter and better I can certainly see the advantages. When headset/VR Glasses can be powered by a smart phone with speech commands to manipulate inworld, I certainly would be preferring such a setup rather than constant tethering to a desktop and the real estate required for a decent sized monitor. Lumiya viewer on VR is quite nice to show the mobility inherent in such a setup.

Ps, S/L is really not the prime example of a Metaverse. It is after all a closed garden whose economy is based mostly around land sales. They need that to make their money so I really do not see S/L ever developing into what would be defined as a Metaverse.

Edited October 17, 2021 by Arielle Popstar