Future of the metaverse, and all that

[Merlina21]

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

estimates while waiting for the server to update it .. so if you're walking forward the viewer will assume you continue moving in that direction and keep you moving .. forever sometimes.

Yoyoing happens when the viewers assumptions get corrected by the region. 

Worse. There is nothing a VR headset does more efficiently ! A VR headset is two tiny monitors and a few sensors that you strap to your face and places quite high demands on whatever it's displaying. If the computer can't provide a smooth, responsive and consistent experience, the user can easily end up physically ill, which in turn creates a strong psychological aversion to repeating the experience.

It was not uncommon back when VR was newer for developers to be on prescription anti nausea medication just to get though the day. Most everyone I know who got into VR game dev ended up moving on to other non VR projects.

Thanks - that's interesting to learn about, especially why it creates motion sickness. I remember having a virtual 'ride' on a machine on a pier at the seaside where the seat moved to emulate the movements and the screen showed the shots of riding on a big dipper - which was a flat screen as I recall, certainly not a VR headset. But that was enough to give me motion sickness.

So clearly with VR the challenge is having powerful and fast enough computers and servers in order for to work seamlessly?  What about 'quantum computers' which I've heard about - could they be the solution?

I also once had an experience of VR created from live footage, where I am sitting still and the motion is happening around me in 360 degrees - in the case to simulate being in a car accident in real time, which was quite unnervingly realistic.  Didn't experience any motion sickness with that, however, even though leading up to the accident there was the impression of being in a car moving at speed down a road.

 

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, RunawayBunny said:

How SL different those platforms?

Because game platforms have game-play, whether or not a user wants to play. SL doesn't have any game-play. A few small games can be found in SL, but SL isn't a game.

[RunawayBunny]

Okay. Google lied to me

[Arielle Popstar]

14 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Because game platforms have game-play, whether or not a user wants to play. SL doesn't have any game-play. A few small games can be found in SL, but SL isn't a game.

/me hides my scoreboard on the bedpost 😇

[Sid Nagy]

12 minutes ago, RunawayBunny said:

Okay. Google lied to me

Don't blame us.
Sue Google for spreading fake news.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Phil Deakins]

5 minutes ago, RunawayBunny said:

Okay. Google lied to me

Yes, Google lied to you. As I said, some people think of SL as a game (even though they can't tell you what the game actually is, and how you play it) because it looks a lot like some actual games.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

37 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

but SL isn't a game.

I'm changing my opinion of that now, it IS a game, it's just not one that anybody can win at.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The viewer lies to cover this up. Most of the movement you see on your screen is made up guesswork. This is why you drift off into the sun, or keep walking though walls, snap backs, yoyoing, wading though treacle at events, and why people get upset about vehicles and region crossings.

There is one quite reliable way to avoid much of this. Instead of repeatedly pressing the forward arrow to keep yourself walking forwards, use double-click autopilot to indicate where precisely you want to get to. Less key-presses to be exchanged between client and server, less work for the server to do, and as it knows your intended destination, it can (might?) just plonk you there if it for some reason loses the plot for a few seconds and tries to wake up from a dizzy spell.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Paul Hexem]

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

But you're still stuck in a game. You can idle to the side somewhere or hang out in some staging area but it is not the same as making a home and interacting with people in SL, making, selling, buying things.

Incorrect and uninformed. No one thing SL does is unique or special, and literally everybody does it better.

 

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Yes but no other platform can do everything SL does. Second Life isn't best at anything but it's reasonably good for so much. It's the swiss army knife of virtual reality and there's always room for that.

I said that already. SL does a lot of things terribly. The issue is, at some point, one of these games is going to do all of the same things better, because they're already doing one or more of them right. At that point, what good is SL?

Right now it's a laggy, obsolete mess, where we can say "well, nobody else does all the same things." But when they do- and they will- SL will just be a laggy, obsolete mess with no redeeming qualities at all.

[Prokofy Neva]

6 hours ago, RunawayBunny said:

You need think outside box.. SL might provide a marketplace but many platforms actually provides money if you know how to do.

Here is a new channel creator publishes step by step Valheim creation with everyone: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFM06_FkMzDXpWQtAmIyyzQ and makes some money while doing it..

Making money from YouTubes about a thing that won't let you make money inside it normally is a very, very niche activity. There's only room for a few people doing that, and it's not an entre into any larger economy much less a Metaverse.

Human beings have been great at forming markets over the centuries when various types of tyrants try to stop them or tax them too heavily. Look at the history of the Silk Road.

When my son and his friends were on the Teen Grid, they made content, they rented space in a mall, they had an underground game they called "Sewer Safari," and until the Lindens allowed camping scripts to inflate traffic, which they didn't use as they had organic traffic, they were at the top of the lists for traffic. Among the things they did was enable a little marketplace where people with game loot in games like World of Warcraft could put a token in SL, sell it, and then get Linden dollars in exchange for their WoW cash. Sometimes they would do this in the form of making armour in SL, or a sword, and then enabling people to buy it in SL by paying someone in WoW, which is a hawala type system. 

And there are many such little marketplaces -- I remember even for a time a bit of trade between Sims Online and SL when a whole flock of us came from TSO into SL. So eventually there will be some sort of Metaverse Marketplace that will be like the Star Wars Bar and the Lindens or more specifically Tilia hope to be at the top of that enterprise, perhaps making their currency the main denomination, or perhaps having most of the traffic go to their sites, or however they do it.

I have mentioned before that I don't doubt this goes on with Bellisseria as people always find a way around any market restriction, and sometimes it's better to lift them than suffer those market distortions. So yesterday someone told me about a caper doing this -- and I think the Lindens will have a certain amount of chasing to do here. I also think it's a poor business proposition to buy 10 x $11.99 premium accounts, or even optimized annually, and then try to rent out Belli houses. Why do that when you can get a homestead or abandoned land for far, far less and control it more efficiently.

But you can't pretend that somebody's workaround to some game gods' restrictions is the future of the Metaverse any more than you say that the people selling things out of cardboard boxes on Fifth Avenue until the police chase them away will replace the big box stores there.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

Yes, Google lied to you. As I said, some people think of SL as a game (even though they can't tell you what the game actually is, and how you play it) because it looks a lot like some actual games.

Technically, and by definition, SL is a video game. You're never going to get people to stop calling it that, just because there's no way to win.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Paul Hexem

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

It's a guessing-game. Try to work out whats happening and when, are you on an RC channel or the main, how long is it going to be around, does my bum look big in this mesh?

[Prokofy Neva]

3 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Incorrect and uninformed. No one thing SL does is unique or special, and literally everybody does it better.

 

I said that already. SL does a lot of things terribly. The issue is, at some point, one of these games is going to do all of the same things better, because they're already doing one or more of them right. At that point, what good is SL?

Right now it's a laggy, obsolete mess, where we can say "well, nobody else does all the same things." But when they do- and they will- SL will just be a laggy, obsolete mess with no redeeming qualities at all.

You have to turn this around to the other end to understand it.

Why is it that these games you love, with their fabulous graphics and FPS and wondrous fun things like wars and racing cards don't...become like SL? Have never been like SL. Ever. In their lives. They never have sandboxes or blank spaces or freedom -- and making a gam mod or fitting into a pre-existing and heavily filtrated "make your own game" systems is NOT that.

Why is it that there is no game coming in the other direction, and never has been, and isn't now, and yet you imagine there will be? Because games are different, with a different premise and culture, and they don't wish to take on the overwhelming, governance, economic, engineering and supply challenges and headaches that open-ended worlds do. There is no glory in it. 

Yet it is the games that are losing their population to social media, and it is SL that chugs along and still makes bank.

So if these other entities take a very sharp turn to a different future where they assume all the burdens SL has carried -- let's say a Google or a Microsoft which has the cash to burn and engineers to throw at it -- then we'll see, and the stampede to that will leave SL less laggy : )

Did you ever see Google Lively? Did you see Mozilla Spaces? Google Lively is dead, and no surprise, it was awful. Mozilla is ridiculous. Only by really, really straining can you determined bunch here try to claim there is someone ready to eat SL's lunch.

Sure, you aren't safe just because you have been in business for 20 years, and one thing everyone was waiting for, was for LL to sell itself, because that's what good little Silicon Valley startups do. Usually one VC buys it, then passes it to another, along the way blowing incredible amounts of cash in keeping the staff in booze and drugs and trips to Hawaii. LL hasn't followed that sort of culture but has been very slow, boutique, dedicated, idealistic, etc. and also had not just the huge population of amateur users but it's low-paid Moles to build out the world, since they didn't have Google's budget. And that counts for a lot and I value it. 

[Prokofy Neva]

13 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

.. and that's a 715 word strawman.

I could make it 7000 if that's too short for you.

But you simply cannot come up with an argument against the fact of the Lindens' checking the "Safe" box. They did this because the overwhelming majority of their user population and recurrent log-ons do not want to be in a war game and are not interested in war games. 

[Prokofy Neva]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

That's not quite correct. Sansar was originally intended as a replacement for Second Life and it dates much further back than you may think. Rod Humble mentioned that LL was working on an upgraded Second Life as early as 2012 and Ebbe did eventually - when it became clear it was blame not credit to share - aknowledge that Sansar was a continuation of this. And if you go back to the earliest Sansar discussions and announcements here elsewhere, yu'll see they were still thinking of Sansar as SL replacement during the first months of 2014. Then slowly but surely it evolved into an independent project that had never ever had anything to do with Second Life.

Except of course Sansar was always based on the lessons they had learned from creating and running Second Life - which makes me wonder why they chose to leave out every single feature that still makes Second Life so atractive to so many people despite all tis flaws.

Yes, you're right to point out that Sansar was a discussion long before it actually was announced and this was discovered.

But you have to admit the Lindens bent over backwards trying to convince the user population that their intent was not to replace the Legacy SL. And that's when they began to eventually roll out Bellisseria, which is a real crowd-pleaser. And they left Oz in charge of Legacy SL and that says a lot.

The notion of "replacement" if it really had traction was not about "oh, the old SL is laggy and outdated" but more like "VR is going to be the new driver of virtuality and we need to be there". They would assume that the next shiny thing will simply automatically empty out the old thing, just like Second Life emptied out There and the Sims Online. But then all was not so well with VR.

I didn't get into Sansar very deeply and I figured they did not so much "leave out" things as plan to put them in when it was worth bothering. And it wasn't.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

There is one quite reliable way to avoid much of this. Instead of repeatedly pressing the forward arrow to keep yourself walking forwards, use double-click autopilot to indicate where precisely you want to get to. Less key-presses to be exchanged between client and server, less work for the server to do, and as it knows your intended destination, it can (might?) just plonk you there if it for some reason loses the plot for a few seconds and tries to wake up from a dizzy spell.

I have found from years of doing rentals and watching people review an option and then move int, that there are certain hard-wired behaviours from real-world evolution that you cannot shed when you come online. So males coming into a space always walk briskly around the perimeter and walk up and down sort of claiming the territory. Females sit and nest and zoom out from their seated position.

So the key is not using forward or double click which can be hard also to place but to just hover in the air and zoom from that position. Most people aren't walking into walls or struggling through treacle at events because they are camming around from one position, not struggling to move through the space. Some females do deliberately strut briskly from stall to stall but that's because events aren't about shopping and viewing content but also about displaying outfits and cruising around.

[RunawayBunny]

9 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

But you simply cannot come up with an argument against the fact of the Lindens' checking the "Safe" box. They did this because the overwhelming majority of their user population and recurrent log-ons do not want to be in a war game and are not interested in war games. 

I don't think anyone trying to push a war game they are talking about possibilities:

Is it really bad thing if we had actual waves in SL water instead of static water picture.

Is it bad thing if we had more synchronized user input?

Is it bad thing if we had  SIM wide auto optimization for texture.

Is it bad thing if had some way to encrypt and store SIM (simulation / region or whatever imaginary name it has) assets on to local drive for faster loading time.

Perhaps not all of them doable but some of them doable.

I think problem with SL people afraid of change.. not sure why.

Edited March 23, 2021 by RunawayBunny

[Prokofy Neva]

9 minutes ago, RunawayBunny said:

I don't think anyone trying to push a war game they are talking about possibilities:

Is it really bad thing if we had actual waves in SL water instead of static water picture.

Is it bad thing if we had more synchronized user input?

Is it bad thing if we had  SIM wide auto optimization for texture.

Is it bad thing if had some way to encrypt and store SIM assets on to local drive for faster loading time.

Perhaps not all of them doable but some of them doable.

I think problem with SL people afraid of change.. not sure why.

I think if you get past the rhetorical gimmicks people use to try to win arguments in a thread like this, claiming that I "fear games will be forced on me" or that I'm claiming "someone is trying to push war games" -- there is nothing in anything I or others have said in this regard -- you still have to answer the question of why for the aggressive belittlers in this thread, gaming platforms with primarily war gaming and racing are their gold standard against which SL fades.

And the answers I and others have given is that SL is not just "not a game," it has much more complexity and interactivity and types of user content and behaviour, against which these other more primitive options pale, no matter how pretty they may look graphically.

If you want to do those things you just listed, you can do them in Open Sim, or try to with more likelihood of success. Yet you want to do that here where there are people and sales and freedom. And sooner or later you have to concede that when you have people and sales and freedom, you can't have wargame constrains, and those other platforms are primitive as societies.

Users compensate for the software's limitations or lack of features by creating things like waves as third parties and selling them. 

The people who are afraid of change are not, in fact, those who keep explaining that SL is not a war game and is more complex, etc. -- but those who keep jamming on this idea that SL must change into a war game. THAT is the fear of change -- the unwillingness to part from the heavy constraints of game gods and game routines and oppression of the economy and freedom, where they think they can benefit more and rule more thoroughly.  The idea that the superficiality of pretty graphics and higher speeds are the measuring sticks and there isn't any value in more complex and subtle features of community, market, and culture -- THAT is the fear base. 

I don't subscribe to the "forced migration" theory of software cults, "Patch or GTFO" or "Fork or GTFO" out whatever that "Benevolent Dictator" decides in the IRC channel, bullying others into silence. That's not a solution for societies. So while anyone might rightfully say to you, why don't you just go and develop in Roblox, that's evidently not a solution for you. Because you do at some level value what SL has.

But I do ask you to justify why you bother to stay here and why you harangue on the forums if there are these golden opportunities in these other places you feel are more enlightened. And you know the answer is because you do tacitly admit their limitations and you want to have your cake and eat it, too, you want authoritarianism with the goods that freedom produced.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

5 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

males coming into a space always walk briskly around the perimeter and walk up and down sort of claiming the territory.

If you look closely you can usually tell who's a real male and who's just a pretend one. The real ones mark the boundaries. Like what I had to do recently, the plot of land was such a bizarre conglomeration of little parcels that had gradually accreted themselves like coral on a reef, I had to rezz a prim at each corner, be it inside or outside junction, and loft them up to where the Isle of Frogs do be, so I could see what patch of blue was my small heaven and what was the neighbours'.

[Rowan Amore]

14 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

events aren't about shopping and viewing content but also about displaying outfits and cruising around.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever when the majority of people at crowded event turn on see friends only.  Lordy.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever when the majority of people at crowded event turn on see friends only

I would try that, only, I wouldn't see anybody...

[Rowan Amore]

Just now, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I would try that, only, I wouldn't see anybody...

Me neither.  It's so much more enjoyable shopping solo anyway.  😁

[Prokofy Neva]

4 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

If you look closely you can usually tell who's a real male and who's just a pretend one. The real ones mark the boundaries. Like what I had to do recently, the plot of land was such a bizarre conglomeration of little parcels that had gradually accreted themselves like coral on a reef, I had to rezz a prim at each corner, be it inside or outside junction, and loft them up to where the Isle of Frogs do be, so I could see what patch of blue was my small heaven and what was the neighbours'.

The parcel you are on wasn't a conglomeration of small parcels, as the coast and the little island were always in one parcel

 

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever when the majority of people at crowded event turn on see friends only.  Lordy.

Most people actually do more than that, as they have no need to see the girlfriends they are chatting with in IMs, who may not even be on that sim. They turn off the view of all avatars completely. Go to any event and watch the traffic patterns. There are some that stay in one place and some that walk around. While you may "see friends only" and walk around, a lot of people not only stay in one place, they are AFK even on a sim others are trying desperately to enter.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Just now, Prokofy Neva said:

The parcel you are on wasn't a conglomeration of small parcels, as the coast and the little island were always in one parcel

That's a shame, I had invented a whole backstory of how people moved there, tried to eke out  subsistence from the sea, got gobbled up by Krakens or drifted away to the big city in search of fame and fortune, leaving lots of little bits of land behind that started to band together for protection.

But then, I may be over-romanticising ...

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

3 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

lot of people not only stay in one place, they are AFK

Ah, now that pattern of behaviour does more accurately describe people logging in on a mobile client. I used to query why some of the visitors to my old island would be bobbing gently up and down a few inches above the ground in the same space for ages, and they almost all replied they were on their mobile, and moviing around was just too difficult on the limited connection it offered.