Unreal Engine V is out. This is the future.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

It looks like OpenGL is already dead as far as development goes. 

[Nikkesa]

As far as I know it's basically just automating the process (possibly with some AI help) of creating LOD's for 3d models. Graphics cards still have memory limits, and they haven't magically disappeared. Unreal engine just takes care of it for you. You can do this already, there are intelligent decimations tools out there.

Another thing to note - This doesn't work on non-static mesh objects. Game characters or anything really anything with a skinned mesh/organics does not share this lack of limitation, as far as I know.

[AlexanderD Schumann]

I think this is weird but... I guess I just missed something, in the past year. This thread tells about the launch of Unreal Engine 5 but the release is actually happening now, in early access. I guess Epic moved the launch a bit, probably to fix stuff. Now the improvements must be good enough to proceed. So please, forgive me for reviving this thread but having been in Second Life since 2007 and for reasons to long to explain here right now I just started considering to use the UnReal Engine, something relatively new for me, to develop not exactly a clone of SL, which would make no sense probably, but something the guys at LindenLab might consider a possible evolution for Second Life itself. I dunno if this idea of mine can lead anywhere but I'm visionary, crazy and ambitious enough to not play around and actually embark myself into this adventure.

In my over 30years experience in Design and Communication I learned there's only one way to convince some people to drastically change their mind doing things: just show them wrong by presenting them the option of making it right, just do it in a way they cannot debate and avoid... they're gonna start to follow. 

Just ask AirBnB's founders about the story of the cereals box one of the investors who "kicked'em out" has framed in his own office to remind himself about "that day when I kicked'em out my office". You gonna get what I mean!

[Wulfie Reanimator]

4 hours ago, AlexanderD Schumann said:

I think this is weird but... I guess I just missed something, in the past year. This thread tells about the launch of Unreal Engine 5 but the release is actually happening now, in early access. I guess Epic moved the launch a bit, probably to fix stuff. Now the improvements must be good enough to proceed. So please, forgive me for reviving this thread but having been in Second Life since 2007 and for reasons to long to explain here right now I just started considering to use the UnReal Engine, something relatively new for me, to develop not exactly a clone of SL, which would make no sense probably, but something the guys at LindenLab might consider a possible evolution for Second Life itself. I dunno if this idea of mine can lead anywhere but I'm visionary, crazy and ambitious enough to not play around and actually embark myself into this adventure.

In my over 30years experience in Design and Communication I learned there's only one way to convince some people to drastically change their mind doing things: just show them wrong by presenting them the option of making it right, just do it in a way they cannot debate and avoid... they're gonna start to follow. 

Just ask AirBnB's founders about the story of the cereals box one of the investors who "kicked'em out" has framed in his own office to remind himself about "that day when I kicked'em out my office". You gonna get what I mean!

Alone?

Edited June 2, 2021 by Wulfie Reanimator

[animats]

5 hours ago, AlexanderD Schumann said:

I just started considering to use the UnReal Engine, something relatively new for me, to develop not exactly a clone of SL

Go for it! And report back how it's going.

I loaded up UE5 Early Access and built some of the demos. I'm not a UE expert, though. There are people on SL who are, and I'd like to hear from them.

The special cases in the Nanite demo are a little too special. Huge areas of rocks, and large numbers of instances of the same thing. LOD algorithms do great on rocks. I want to see some buildings. And a thousand instances of the same statue are easy, because you only need it in memory once with Nanite. SL has  little instancing; most objects in a scene are unique.

The UE5 lighting is very nice. Nice bounce lighting.

The new animation system with "full body IK" is interesting. SL really needs an IK system. IK is a lot more interesting if you have info about where the nearby objects are, which would require some physical model in the viewer.

UE5 has machinery for streaming large areas seamlessly. Let us know how that works.

[Chic Aeon]

Impressive walking simulation on STEAM  with LOTS of rocks    Screenshot from preview video,

 

[Cecilia Dallas]

Just to get back to Unreal, don't forget their astonishing MetaHuman project that will be released in tandem with the final UE5.

MetaHuman Creator - Unreal Engine

That's what I want SL's character creation engine to look like.

The purveyors of bodies and heads can go away, simply giving way to shops that sell custom shapes. But I also want a unicorn as well, so there

Edited June 2, 2021 by Tiffany Evergarden

[animats]

9 hours ago, Tiffany Evergarden said:

Just to get back to Unreal, don't forget their astonishing MetaHuman project that will be released in tandem with the final UE5.

MetaHuman Creator - Unreal Engine

That's what I want SL's character creation engine to look like.

The purveyors of bodies and heads can go away, simply giving way to shops that sell custom shapes. But I also want a unicorn as well, so there

Metahuman Creator is out now. I've run it. It's free if the output goes into only Unreal Engine games. In any case, you can play with it.

It's mostly a collection of premade heads and bodies you can tweak. The hair system is kind of nice; when you change hairstyles, the new hair fluffs out, and then the physics system lets it fall into place, not going through the skin. Then, once set, it become part of the head. So, not a full dynamic hair system, but some automation. I think clothing works the same way. One physics run during building, then it's just  rigged mesh.

SL should have that for clothing. As you get dressed, or appear in scene, clothing physics should run once, adjust all the offsets to avoid layers penetrating, and then lock in the rigging for fast running.

[Extrude Ragu]

On 5/14/2020 at 9:30 AM, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Physical copies of games are gonna come in external hard drives at this rate, and people with data caps are going to spend several months just downloading their games. I have a pretty fast connection and no data cap, but even at my 8 MB/s it'd take me 6.5 hours of unusable internet to download the latest Call of Duty (175GB). (I don't play Call of Duty.)

I wouldn't mind games getting so big so long as they have the content to match. A laptop form factor hard drive is smaller than a CD anyway, we could have something akin to a CD drive bay for these things and it would be no different to a game cartridge, or they could come in an enclosure that can be plugged into a fast enough port, actually I think that would be pretty neat

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

I wouldn't mind games getting so big so long as they have the content to match. A laptop form factor hard drive is smaller than a CD anyway, we could have something akin to a CD drive bay for these things and it would be no different to a game cartridge, or they could come in an enclosure that can be plugged into a fast enough port, actually I think that would be pretty neat

If you mean SSD (rather than hard drive), maybe.

But considering how underpriced games are now, I don't think any game devs/publishers would be into the idea of inventing a new storage medium (which we would then have to buy drives for) to make things a little easier for us. Just skipping the R&D and shipping 200GB SSDs that you'd plug in via USB would necessarily increase the base cost of any $60 game to over $100. (The 'Digital Deluxe' edition of COD is already $100.)

Edited June 3, 2021 by Wulfie Reanimator

[MaxCraxster]

On 6/1/2021 at 5:05 PM, AlexanderD Schumann said:

to develop not exactly a clone of SL, which would make no sense probably, but something the guys at LindenLab might consider a possible evolution for Second Life itself. I dunno if this idea of mine can lead anywhere but I'm visionary, crazy and ambitious enough to not play around and actually embark myself into this adventure.

In my over 30years experience in Design and Communication I learned there's only one way to convince some people to drastically change their mind doing things: just show them wrong by presenting them the option of making it right, just do it in a way they cannot debate and avoid... they're gonna start to follow. 

Just ask AirBnB's founders about the story of the cereals box one of the investors who "kicked'em out" has framed in his own office to remind himself about "that day when I kicked'em out my office". You gonna get what I mean!

Your timing of this post is surreal with the CEO's passing 3 days after the post. Second Life with an Unreal engine has always been something to aspire to. The possibilities would be endless and amazing. There was a post not too long ago with Lab members discussing Unity and Unreal engine possibilities but they seemed to not want to pursue them, or put them on the far back burner.  You might consider starting an inworld group called Second Life Unreal V or something like that, or maybe an Official Second Life Unreal V forum thread somewhere to showcase your ideas (or just use this thread). Better yet, if you are that passionate about it, they are looking for a new CEO still I believe. Maybe this timing is no coincidence. Second Life on Unreal V would be spectacular, that much I know.

I'm sure you would have an endless supply of beta testers for this project because there have to be a lot more people out there that want to see this come to fruition. I know I do.

 

Edited July 29, 2021 by MaxCraxster