Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse

[Drayke Newall]

55 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

I didn't see anything in there that wasn't broadly doable in SL. Obviously you can't 1:1 copy everything, but in broad strokes all of that looked doable in SL. What specific effect are you saying can't be replicated?

Are we looking at the same videos?

Take the Fortnite one for instance Mr Amore posted of Travis Scott. Do you seriously think you can make an avatar appear as a comet then land and turn into an avatar of the singer of which upon impact with the ground sends the avatars of those watching flying away in SL? How about having the singers avatar flicker and jumping around a region the size of 5 regions combined in Second Life with no lag? How about how the singers avatar grows to the size of 10 times what mega prim would be able to achieve? How about making the Sky dynamically change based on a time sequence every so often? Or are you suggesting EEP can do that? How about making the watching avatars teleport up in the air at a certain time and make them slide down a holographic ring that is moving to the beat of the music?

None of those effects or anything in that video is possible in Second Life except the static objects. Sure you could have an avatar singing but nothing like what is in that video even if in broad strokes.

The Roblox one is a little easier to replicate in Second Life as far as static objects goes but, have you ever seen an entire sim change all objects on its land to a completely different scene when an avatar jumps in the air and lands  or walks away seamlessly? (the region capacity wouldn't even allow for that many objects). How about a perfectly in sync, background hologram or large 3D avatar mimicking the avatars movements perfectly? How about an avatar that seamlessly changes from one to another without loading the individual items on one at a time? How about actually doing all that in a fully populated region with no lag?

You say most of all that is possible to that scale and seamlessness in Second Life? I am not talking about just a singers avatar moving around a scene either which I assume you mean by Broad Strokes. Even if you were to not have the singer as an avatar but as an animesh npc, the size of those singers and their detail would fill up the land impact limit and not allow anything else on the region to rez.

Tell you what, you mimic one of those two videos in Second Life and run them with even 30 avatars watching with no lag (and all on the default Viewer) and post the reaction video of the viewers being mind blown by the scene and say that it looks like those videos posted above (both in quality, seamlessness, lag free and scale) and let me know. If you do I will say I was wrong. 

:EDIT:

Oh and dont forget to also show how you manage to make that concert stream at the same time on 50+ regions simultaneously with avatars watching at the same time on those different regions.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Drayke Newall

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It's not about me. It's about legions and legions of people who do not play war games and do not like them, and most of the population of SL, who do not play them and like them. The end.

Who are these legions, where can we find them ?

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If you can't make them here, go somewhere else -- please!

Missing the point that we NEED people to come here. And so long as they have their fun far away why do you care what other people enjoy doing?

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't want to hear an argument that says "Let's go to space, along the way we will make Tang and...let's see...what was that other thing". Tang has not made up for destruction of the ozone layer and billions spent that could have gone to better use on earth. The argument that "let us make tech, we'll do these exotic, expensive things and along the way we'll make better dishwashers" just can't be allowed to prevail any more in a world of worsening climate change and poverty in a pandemic.

The Lego people in Roblox are a turn-off and not because I'm hung up, but because they're for kids. And the company's trailer shows you that it is for mainly boys, mainly shooting, mainly chasing. Not for us.

Developing the technologies that took us and depend on space are what enables all of this to happen. We wouldn't even be able to talk about this if going to space didn't happen because "rockets are for boys".

Directly from NASA funding - camera's small enough to put in cell phones, scratch resistant lenses, cat scans, LEDs, Water purification systems, dust busters, ear thermometers, home insulation, wireless headphones, baby formula, the computer mouse, laptops, memory foam, cochlear implants, freeze drying, solar cells and on and on. Not even bothering to list all the technologies created by others specifically to leverage access to space.

Tang (your one bad example) was not, that was developed by General Foods in 1957 & USED on multiple early space missions which gave it brand awareness.

Poverty is not a NASA problem, it's a capitalism problem. Amazon's own Dr Evil has a net worth 8 times greater than NASA's entire annual budget. Musk could fund all of NASA for 7 years and poor little BillyG could carry another 5.

Lets also not forget that funding "rockets for boys" also kick started and funds a staggering amount of climate research.

 

Being able to make a competitive FPS game in SL opens hundreds of new doors. You don't even have to play them to benefit.

 

 

Citations

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-wouldnt-have-without-space-travel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

https://www.philips.com/c-w/malegrooming/philips-space/space/10-space-innovations-that-are-closer-than-you-think

 

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Evah Baxton said:

To anyone who wants SL to be more like Roblox, Minecraft, and whatever nightmare Zuckerberg creates: Why are you here?

We're not here because we have issue with other platforms. We've been here longer than those have existed.

We're still here because we're invested in this platform and the people here.

 

NIMBY brings stagnation and death.

[Quistess Alpha]

7 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

NIMBY

Translation for us non gamerz?

[Coffee Pancake]

3 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Translation for us non gamerz?

NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard (not a gamer thing at all!)

A real world example would be residents of a neighborhood rejecting the decision to build a cell phone tower where they can see it.

Sometimes there are valid reasons why you might not want something built across from where you live, but more often than not complaints are really just a reframed desire to have the thing constructed in view of someone else's backyard whilst still being able to gain whatever benefits might be imparted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2018/01/96557-rise-nimby-movement-and-how-homeowners-came-own-whole-neighborhood

 

in SL terms a good example would be not wanting a club on the same region you have a home. A bad example would be demanding it remain impossible to have the tools & architectural changes required to create a competitive FPS game in SL because the wrong sort of people somewhere faraway might enjoy it.

[animats]

Here's the real problem:

"VRChat is a social platform at its core. You have a virtual body in a virtual space, but you're encouraged to meet new people and hang out with your friends here. You can talk through a microphone, and hear your friends through your computer's speaker, or a headset. ... Not long after logging into a public server, you'll quickly encounter any number of other players — to you, though, they'll look like anime girls, superheroes, Star Wars characters ..."

SL is not that good as a social space. You can have the above experience in Second Life. Just go to Social Island 10. It's awful.

Something is fundamentally wrong with group conversational interaction in SL. Discuss.

(Search for "meeting in VRchat" to see what it's like over there. It's much more lively.)

 

[Mollymews]

a thing about Roblox is that it has yet to make a profit, which it has never done since inception

the SEC filing is here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1315098/000119312520298230/d87104ds1.htm

key points from pages 2 & 3

Quote

 

- As of September 30, 2020, there were over 18 million experiences on Roblox, and in the twelve months ended September 30, 2020, over 12 million of those were experienced by our community.

- Daily active users, or DAUs, on Roblox grew 47%, from 12.0 million DAUs in 2018 to 17.6 million in 2019, and grew 82%, from 17.1 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 to 31.1 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2020.
 
- Hours engaged on Roblox grew 45%, from 9.4 billion in 2018 to 13.7 billion in 2019, and grew 122%, from 10.0 billion in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 to 22.2 billion in the nine months ended September 30, 2020.
     
- Revenue grew 56% from $312.8 million in 2018 to $488.2 million in 2019, and grew 68% from $349.9 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 to $588.7 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2020.

- Bookings grew 39% from $499.0 million in 2018 to $694.3 million in 2019, and grew 171% from $458.0 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 to $1,240.2 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2020.

- Net loss was $97.2 million and $86.0 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively and $46.3 million and $203.2 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 and September 30, 2020, respectively.

- Net cash provided by operating activities was $101.0 million and $99.2 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and $62.6 million and $345.3 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 and September 30, 2020, respectively.

- Free cash flow was $35.0 million and $14.5 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and $6.0 million and $292.6 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 and September 30, 2020, respectively.

 

Reuters report on 2021 first quarter is here:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/roblox-reveals-bookings-jump-first-post-debut-report-2021-05-10/

key points:

Quote

 

- 161% jump in bookings to $652.3 million in the first quarter.

- Quarterly net loss attributable to common stockholders widened to $134.2 million, or 46 cents per share, from $74.4 million, or 44 cents per share, a year earlier.

 

is only the first quarter but I if this is still continuing by years end, then I think there will be an executive shakeup

[Quistess Alpha]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Here's the real problem:

"VRChat is a social platform at its core. You have a virtual body in a virtual space, but you're encouraged to meet new people and hang out with your friends here. You can talk through a microphone, and hear your friends through your computer's speaker, or a headset. ... Not long after logging into a public server, you'll quickly encounter any number of other players — to you, though, they'll look like anime girls, superheroes, Star Wars characters ..."

SL is not that good as a social space. You can have the above experience in Second Life. Just go to Social Island 10. It's awful.

Something is fundamentally wrong with group conversational interaction in SL. Discuss.

(Search for "meeting in VRchat" to see what it's like over there. It's much more lively.)

 

I think it basically boils down to an equivalent of Braess paradox for interactive experiences(games) : More and better features does not necessarily make your experience better.

SL is like a Swiss-army knife and VRchat is a screwdriver. The instanced nature of its world, made possible by the lack of extensive user-content means they can be very effective at segregating people into manageable sized groups, and the area sizes are intentionally small enough to allow you to get to any other spot in the area quickly. SL has no real mechanism for "put me in a smallish lobby with 4-8 strangers" but that's the main mechanic of that style of social game. and to get that mechanic to really work, you'd need to have at least 20~30 small rooms for a newcomer to switch between before they find one that 'clicks'.

You could easily make a system like that inside SL (You'd just need some social-networking a teleporter and a set of skyboxes), but it would (probably) be very unpopular, unless perhaps it was directly backed by LL and placed prominently in the destination guide.

[Solar Legion]

Yeah ... No.

VR Chat has its share of the same griefers, trolls and other types that people have (and still do) seen/griped about.

Don't believe me? Spend a bit of time there - I have.

Do I like the concept? More or less. Is it more "immersive"? More or less - it depends on your set up (HMD increases this and that is not always a good thing).

Same with NEOS VR by the by.

So uh, yeah. Those trying to say it is "better" over there?

Sit. Down.

[animats]

28 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

SL has no real mechanism for "put me in a smallish lobby with 4-8 strangers" but that's the main mechanic of that style of social game. and to get that mechanic to really work, you'd need to have at least 20~30 small rooms for a newcomer to switch between before they find one that 'clicks'.

You could easily make a system like that inside SL (You'd just need some social-networking a teleporter and a set of skyboxes), but it would (probably) be very unpopular, unless perhaps it was directly backed by LL and placed prominently in the destination guide.

SL does. That's what the Linden-run social islands are for.

What I'm getting at is that they don't work very well socially. I'm not sure why.

From the system side, the key is making it so that the most annoying person does not dominate the space.

Better spatial audio might help. Check out High Fidelity's new spatial audio system, which is what Rosedale is doing now. He's trying to make crowded rooms with everybody talking at once work. Breakroom uses that system. SL already has spatial audio with Vivox, although I think it's just volume, not stereo direction.

It might be helpful to exaggerate some audio distance effects to get better social spaces. Suppose there are 5 people in a room, and one of them is yelling a lot. If the other four get closer together, and further from the yeller, the yeller should not just fade out. They should fade out more than distance alone indicates. This is a really hard problem, but if gotten right, meetings and parties in SL would work much better.

This has to be totally automatic. Additional buttons are not the answer.

 

[Quistess Alpha]

20 minutes ago, animats said:

That's what the Linden-run social islands are for.

firstly, only islands 7,8 and 10 seem to be accessible for people over 30 days (and 7,8 are empty). Despite the name, they're not for socializing, they're for on-boarding which is rather clear in the way they're set up.

I would argue they also don't work because they're too big and allow too many agents at once. Everyone crowds into the loading area/room (which just by size I think is about right for 5~10 people) which lags everyone. if they were to have say 4 of those towers in a region and randomly teleport a new arival to one of them on landing that'd be a good start. Unless there's some central focus or organization (a club singer, or a communal game for example) I don't think a group of more than 5 to perhaps 10 people can meaningfully interact with one another.

TL;DR Social Island style places /might/ work better if there were more of them and they were smaller.

[Drayke Newall]

3 hours ago, Mollymews said:

is only the first quarter but I if this is still continuing by years end, then I think there will be an executive shakeup

I dont think there will be. There is this new economic environment within the world in the last few years where money actually doesn't mean anything. A company can go on for years now without making a profit, still have an enormous stock price with money to burn and really not deliver anything. They also dont fail or see a change in leadership.

Look at Tesla, they made their first profit this year of a measly $1.1 billion. Now, you might scoff at me saying $1.1 billion is a measly profit however compared to its share price of $687 Billion, it is absurd. Also keep in mind Tesla haven't had a profit (until 2021 as before mentioned) for 18 years! 18 years no profit and maintained a valuation of over half a trillion dollars on the share market, based solely on hopes and wishes that their cars will sell and made a profit only this year of $1.1b. Also keep in mind many speculate that profit was only made because they invested in Bitcoin and then sold it at its peak which also caused bitcoins price to fall. So was it actually a true profit or not?

I dont think Roblox has any problem and cant see any change in the executive team. Their share market valuation is at $76.98 Billion - though is down from its peak of almost $99 Billion possibly due to the class action lawsuit they have atm. It has seen enormous growth over the past 2 years with its current executive team so cant see any calls from the shareholders to request any of them to stepdown and be replaced.

Whether it can last is still unknown, however they are signing contracts with big mega corps like Sony Entertainment, of which wouldn't have done so without some faith in the companies financial position.

[Adeon Writer]

My understanding was The Zucc wants to help fund the metaverse, but he doesn't want to own it.
I can dig that.

Of course, there is an assumption here that you need to believe what he's saying. But that's a difficult subject.

[Mollymews]

9 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

Tesla

am not sure that comparing Roblox to Tesla is useful

Tesla's growth strategy is based on a real world issue which is compelling for consumers and investors, namely reducing the reliance on fossil fuel. A compelling real world use case

Roblox strategy is to grow its user base beyond its current main demographic of 8-12 year olds into older age groups, while at the same time growing that aged based demographic beyond the USA

To do this the Roblox executive plan is to build The Metaverse - which according to Roblox is a conglomeration of user-generated experiences

a thing with this. Roblox faces the same problem Linden has/had. Nobody has demonstrated a compelling real world need for The Metaverse

an analysis from a person who grew up with Roblox is here: https://www.bcrschroeder.com/p/roblox-growth-strategy

whats interesting is that this person says what residents also say about Second Life. Namely that Roblox is a platform on which games (notionally called ugc experiences) are built and played with, Second Life is a platform on which homes (notionally called ugc experiences) are built and played with

the say from the users/residents, in both, is that they want more quality products to purchase and enjoy. Ergo, product developers need more and better tools

the article writer's view appears to be, concentrate on what Roblox is - a platform for games. And let the metaverse take care of itself. And I think the same could be said for Second Life

a thing about Mr Schroeder (the article writer) is that they mention they signed up to Roblox in 2006 as a teen/tween apparently. A decade and more later they have aged. And as they get older what they write shows that they (as a user) want more of the same but better

the real world aging process is big factor in how our wants (from what is a non-essential sensory experience) don't change as we grow older. That people aging factor (more-of-the-same-but-better) has affected Second Life users as well

for The Metaverse to become a reality then a real world needs case has to made for it. And to date that case hasn't been made.

Tesla for example can make a real world needs case for its product. Facebook too can make a real world case for its main product as well - Facebook essentially being a contacts program, a real world need.

And Mr Zuckerberg's realisation that they could launch an IPO and show a realiseable pathway to profitability no matter what the user/signup numbers were. Basically, stick the Facebook contact program on the mobile phone

Roblox have done this as well, stuck it on the phone. The difference between Roblox and FB is that Roblox has to grow bookings - convert signups into fee-paying users. something which Facebook doesn't have to do - advertorial income being the revenue mainstay

edit add:

this is Linden's probem as well. The problem needing a solution isn't how to get more signups. The problem is how to convert signups to fee-paying customers, for what is basically a non-essential sensory experience

non-essential in the sense that it currently falls within the entertainment category. Entertainment is a big industry but The Metaverse isn't being defined in this way as yet, people are still searching for a non-entertainment use for it. A non-entertainment use which is profitable. This is not to say that there isn't a non-entertainment use which could be profitable, just that there isn't one at this time

Edited August 2, 2021 by Mollymews
typ

[Out Jinx]

So I've been lurking and I've decided to bring up a few points from a content creation perspective:

SL did have an active FPS and combat community back in the day (SLMC/SL Military), but the script language (LSL) is not good. There are a lot of workarounds that need to be made to get something that would have been done easily in a standard script language. Script kiddies in this community are really talented and clever, so they did what they can, but when something better comes up, they will leave because LSL is a pain to work with and you need good scripting for SL to be functional and fun. I will highlight three examples reflecting this: a completed pathfinding system that isn't broken and unusable for NPCs, a decent particle system that isn't outdated, and sounds playing from child prims to reduce script lag. There are a lot more where that come from, but those are three really basic examples LSL doesn't work with.

Let's do a small look into performance: SL is still very outdated in how it runs on computers. It runs on one thread, meaning that a high end computer will still be lagging with SL because it's not utilizing the potential opened up by newer machines. This is a problem because of how much we have to load in SL. Its competitors run on multiple threads. 

Materials and shiny metals are something we don't have, and by default setting SL on low graphics turns off every essential rendering needed to make tiled textures look good. Why is SL laggy? Because the average user can't see shadows or ambient occlusions, so we have to map and bake all our textures in so it looks appealing enough. Texturing metals to look metal requires you to bake in reflections because there are no good reflections to begin with. If SL had Playstation 2 graphics and cube maps, that'd be a big improvement, however, we don't have that. SL materials only covers glossiness (like plastic gloss) and bump maps. 

Animations? We don't have inverse kinematics. It's a standard and it's something that needs to exist for the avatar's foot to interact with bumps on the ground. It's also used for holding objects like a bat too, where both your left and right hand regardless of shape, is actually holding onto the bat instead of one of them just floating offset. An animator has to make multiple animations with guesses on shape to make sure we can have two handed things, or just go MEH and hope people change their shapes.

Creators can't upload or link mesh larger than 64x64. This means custom landscapes can only be frankenstein'd together, and a lot of work needs to be done making each chunk of that mesh work properly between physics. Do you want a seamless, vast, and unique landscape? A fully designed road map of a city that isn't turning in set 45 or 90 degree angles with a road kit? It'll be a lot of extra work to puzzle it together within those limitations, or take extra weeks to get it working with hours of LOD organization.

We don't have flexible mesh. This is such a basic necessity that would have made content creation easier for the creator, and we just don't have it. Capes? Gotta rig it like some weird stiff thing that hopefully won't clip when the arm moves. Bottom of a coat? Gotta move like weird offset floppy pants with weight painting that needs to be trial and error'd as much as it can because it'll clip when the legs pose too far. It was nice just assigning a coat or cape in VRchat to flop around instead of having to balance out weights for 6 hours straight so your coat moves like a stiff pant extension.

We could use better land impact and ARC rewards for lower poly mesh on highest, and balanced LODs for high, low and lowest. Right now as it is, the system punishes professional low poly, low texture memory content harder than a million poly 8+ texture faces mesh uploaded with the exploit to have 0 LODs on distance.

These things are why SL can't be as fun as it potentially could be. What I've mentioned above are all examples that other platforms have. All of the above could have made SL better, perform with better FPS, and have so much content to interact with.

 

 

Now, I know this is a huge block of text, but here's the short summary of it all:

SL has the potential to be fun with roleplay, point and click mysteries, FPS combat, and everything in between, but it's locked behind these outdated limitations that work against content creators harder than it helps when compared to other creation platforms like VRChat or Roblox. We have the community, we have the talent, the market, and the community pays that talent generously to the point where they can make a living off SL. However, I can't express how difficult it is to work with SL and the amount of hoops needed to be jumped to make anything basic look like it works.

 

 

I know we're all looking into market trend and trying to prove why stylized games like Roblox is doing so well, but that's what they are: stylized, and we don't want to judge something for having a style when every technical aspect of it is superior to work with. When it comes to the creation part, they are leagues easier and better to create content for than what SL is currently providing. SL content creation could be a lot more fun if we didn't have to take the time to MacGyver everything we do. Every content creator is a professional MacGyver, and they get no credit for this.

Let's not bash the incredible creators doing what they do on SL. They are doing their best with the old and outdated tools provided to them. Those Fantasy Faire sims are great and not forgetting to mention, they are shopping sims for cancer research so yeah, they're mainly for sightseeing ONLY and had constant high foot traffic of 30-80 users with hundreds of vendor scripts from 20+ shops, so they're not good examples to show how fun SL is. It's inspiring, yeah, but imagine the amazing things these same creators could make if they had modern tools at their finger tips...

TL;DR: SL has outdated tools for content creation and creators can't have fun with SL. SL has a nice market and pays well, but it's not appealing to an audience thriving like Roblox or VRChat because of stifled content interactivity and performance issues from outdated software. If SL updated their core tools, it would be able to compete, but right now, the only advantage SL has is its years of avatar content and its internal market.

I could even say SL is lucky right now because VRChat currently doesn't have an internal market. It's got a competitive userbase but Creators have to sell source files on gumroad, which is...not safe for a content creator at the moment since it's sold on trust that the user isn't going to reuse those source files elsewhere, or worse: sell it.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Out Jinx
proofreading

[Drayke Newall]

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

am not sure that comparing Roblox to Tesla is useful

Tesla's growth strategy is based on a real world issue which is compelling for consumers and investors, namely reducing the reliance on fossil fuel. A compelling real world use case

Roblox strategy is to grow its user base beyond its current main demographic of 8-12 year olds into older age groups, while at the same time growing that aged based demographic beyond the USA

That is somewhat true, however there still is a real world growth strategy to Roblox. Whilst obviously not as large as "Climate Change" Tesla can attach to, it is still there.

Whilst the majority of demographics Roblox has is a younger audience it is not that audience that is producing the vast majority of games or worlds and seems that that whilst young they play the games and as they get older they start making those games. This will also become more evident as they continue to update their engine.

As Roblox updates its graphic's and creation engine of which, now almost equal in terms to unity etc (once they release their new avatar system), they could start to position themselves as a mini indie creation platform.

The other thing with Roblox is that the creation system is taught in many institutions (both school and tertiary) to both young and older people as it uses a common script language as well as modelling. This means that it links to the game creation scene as a person gets older (gives them a base to move into that industry) with the potential to earn an income from their games as they learn ranging from $500 to the highest income of many millions.

Second Life just cannot do this as both its core engine is obsolete as far as modern tech teaching goes and its scripting language is invented and on its own. Even its physics engine just doesn't really compete. It is a closed off environment from the tech industry and why it takes years for LL to update things as opposed to companies like Roblox that do it in 1/4 of the time.

Roblox is more akin to Sansar where it is closed worlds where you need to download them and play. It is because of this however that it makes Roblox separate from Second Life as a whole and also allows it to grow much further as it becomes more and more like a creation engine similar to unity or unreal as opposed to second life of which has never really been a creation engine other than the first 4 years before sculpts.

Compare that to Second Life and it shows how out of step and behind the times SL is to anything else. Roblox you can build a game, a house, a hangout a forest, learn to script with a modern language you can use in your career etc. With Second Life it is limited to Dress-up Barbie, Dream House Barbie and Barbie Shopping Mall and everything created for it generally cant be used outside of SL.

Now if Second Life improved their engine and systems to a modern standard, used C programming instead of LSL and introduced a optimisation system that reduces lag (similar to Unreal 5's system) then LL would have the upper hand as it is still the top streaming virtual world and is more like the metaverse than all others.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 8/1/2021 at 6:21 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

Who are these legions, where can we find them ?

Missing the point that we NEED people to come here. And so long as they have their fun far away why do you care what other people enjoy doing?

Developing the technologies that took us and depend on space are what enables all of this to happen. We wouldn't even be able to talk about this if going to space didn't happen because "rockets are for boys".

Directly from NASA funding - camera's small enough to put in cell phones, scratch resistant lenses, cat scans, LEDs, Water purification systems, dust busters, ear thermometers, home insulation, wireless headphones, baby formula, the computer mouse, laptops, memory foam, cochlear implants, freeze drying, solar cells and on and on. Not even bothering to list all the technologies created by others specifically to leverage access to space.

Tang (your one bad example) was not, that was developed by General Foods in 1957 & USED on multiple early space missions which gave it brand awareness.

Poverty is not a NASA problem, it's a capitalism problem. Amazon's own Dr Evil has a net worth 8 times greater than NASA's entire annual budget. Musk could fund all of NASA for 7 years and poor little BillyG could carry another 5.

Lets also not forget that funding "rockets for boys" also kick started and funds a staggering amount of climate research.

 

Being able to make a competitive FPS game in SL opens hundreds of new doors. You don't even have to play them to benefit.

 

 

Citations

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-wouldnt-have-without-space-travel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

https://www.philips.com/c-w/malegrooming/philips-space/space/10-space-innovations-that-are-closer-than-you-think

 

Tang is not "my bad example" but just "the classic example" from before you were born. General Foods developed it *for the space flight*. It wouldn't have if there wasn't a space flight.

Did you know that every rocket launch destroys part of the ozone layer?

I'm going to to leave aside your natterings about capitalism etc.

Also, explain to me why Japan, which didn't go into space (it has 10 astronauts who take part in international flights but has not developed its own space craft or sent missions into space) has made all these cameras and cars and much better than American manufacturers, displacing them -- and despite being defeated by the US  in past wars -- went on to buy out big companies like Xerox. Without space. 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 8/1/2021 at 12:55 AM, Drayke Newall said:

To be honest I cant be bothered as you just wont listen or change your mind. But here are a few: Delaware Valley University, College of Staten Island, Harford Community College, Randolph College etc.

So professional multi-award winning singers will never be in Roblox or Fortnite or anything like that according to you...

I literally already gave you an example where Lady gaga did, but what about Lil Nas X, or Zara Larson? Those were all in Roblox and stated in the link I gave about Sony Entertainment which clearly you didn't read. Below is a link of his concert which was streamed in Roblox with his own Custom Avatar to over 33million people. I would like to see Second Life try and achieve that. Lil Nas X’s Roblox concert was attended 33 million times - The Verge

As for others how about Epic Games' Fortnite. They have had Dominic Fike, Travis Scott, Marshmello, Kaskade, Dominic Fike, Anderson .Paak and many many others.

I could go on. All these hugely popular Professional Singers that you have quite rightly said will never be in Second Life. Roblox and Fortnite however they have and are and do. Second Life cant even compete with this as the best they can achieve is 70 people in a region and cant stream over multiple regions the same thing over and over.

 

Believe it or not most people dont want sex online. There is a reason why Second Life to this day still has a bad name with people saying "isn't that that game where you can have sex".

Yet millions upon millions of people (and even LL) disagree with you. If LL are telling their staff to play Roblox to find out what they are doing for success as Patch has said, I would take that as Linden Lab are a little worried.

Yes, it does in fact have an inworld economy. Robux is the currency and purchasing it with RL cash allows players to buy in-game items created by other people known as developers. These developers then earn that money of which can be transferred to RL cash. These items include avatar things (yes including bodies and heads, clothes, gestures, emotes etc), games, worlds; all the way down to a simple tree. Just like Second Life. You just cant seem to understand this no mater how many people tell you.

This article explains it and surprise surprise is talking about a creator economy system and like most articles Second Life who has a creator economy system is not even mentioned as a competitor. Roblox and the Creator Economy – Data Data Data (kylascanlon.com)

Sounds like you're trying to persuade yourself, since your answers are so threadbare. A few educators...the hilarious canard that most people don't want sex...the claim that the Roblox economy is "like" SL. Yet any tech news article on this topic will tell you there's a conundrum here. Roblox has 150 million uses, yet paid out only $250 million to developers. SL has only 40,000 concurrency, 500,000 users or whatever (certainly under a million), yet it paid out $450 million plus to those merchants. Hmm, what's wrong with this picture?

I could go on and on but what's the point. If what you say is true in the way you claim, you would have long ago fled SL and become preoccupied with Roblox. Yet you remain dithering on the forums.

I have friends who have left SL in reality, only keeping a bare presence, who moved on to Sinespace, Open Sim, Uplands, whatever for a whole set of reasons and then found those other places to be better according to their criticism, and they put their money where their mouth is -- in those other places. So of course you're free to do the same.

[Out Jinx]

16 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Sounds like you're trying to persuade yourself, since your answers are so threadbare. A few educators...the hilarious canard that most people don't want sex...the claim that the Roblox economy is "like" SL. Yet any tech news article on this topic will tell you there's a conundrum here. Roblox has 150 million uses, yet paid out only $250 million to developers. SL has only 40,000 concurrency, 500,000 users or whatever (certainly under a million), yet it paid out $450 million plus to those merchants. Hmm, what's wrong with this picture?

To be fair, Roblox's UGC program is only reaching two years old and users have to sign up with a portfolio to get approval from it (likely to moderate Intellectual property and making sure the developers will work within technical scopes to keep content from going out of control like SL. To add, it's also not easy, since I have a few friends unable to get approval in 2020).

It won't make a total as high as SL at this moment due to the number of users able to sell content and SL's free market existing over a decade.

[Coffee Pancake]

38 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Tang is not "my bad example" but just "the classic example" from before you were born. General Foods developed it *for the space flight*. It wouldn't have if there wasn't a space flight.

No. Tang was a commercial product used because space water tasted bad. Before it was used by NASA, Tang wasn't popular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink_mix)

https://groovyhistory.com/do-you-remember-tang-the-groovy-drink-mix-of-the-american-astronauts

Source https://web.archive.org/web/20111015014451/http://education.ssc.nasa.gov/fft_halloffame.asp

NASA aren't shy about taking credit for developments that came about due to the space program or from NASA funding.

 

[Mr Amore]

1 hour ago, Out Jinx said:

SL has the potential to be fun with roleplay, point and click mysteries, FPS combat, and everything in between, but it's locked behind these outdated limitations that work against content creators harder than it helps when compared to other creation platforms like VRChat or Roblox. We have the community, we have the talent, the market, and the community pays that talent generously to the point where they can make a living off SL. However, I can't express how difficult it is to work with SL and the amount of hoops needed to be jumped to make anything basic look like it works.

I absolutely agree with this, SL has so much potential to host any genre of gaming and the SL Experience adds incredible functionality... but... it's a ton of work. I know many people, with many ideas, but either they can't script it, or mesh it, or texture it, or animate it. LL provides the toolset, but there's no support or even guidance from a development environment to help them along.

So I'm sorry for bringing up Roblox, it's not a game I'm interested in. I'd just like for LL to look at their(and Core's) Studio for creators and consider something similar for SL, along with 'instanced regions' we can access on demand to rez these creations.

 

I used to game in the 2000s, but nothing compared to SL's combination of Roleplay + Gaming + Community.

The last I actively 'gamed' to the point of regular sparring, was exactly 10 years ago at a Capua themed sim inspired from the Spartacus TV show. The sim hosted a large stadium, with 100 avatars present during the weekly tournaments. Around 60 spectators in the stands and 40 gladiators in the arena. I don't feel these numbers would be possible now as they were in 2011.

And as one of those gladiators in the arena, I can say the combat flowed smoothly enough that I was winning a string of tournaments and holding both the arena's titles. Because when you have a hundred people on sim claiming to be the best swordsmen... there can only be one! The cost was sleeping at 5am, and going to work at 8am, but having this secret online life as a gladiator was always amusing to me.

The point is, those were the last years of real combat activity in SL. Then raiding in Gor died and I think the SLMC scene was withering too. There's probably a cocktail of reasons why they never recovered, but Roleplaying+Gaming was still the pinnacle of immersion for me. It's an experience which should be open to anyone.

[Mr Amore]

17 hours ago, animats said:

SL is not that good as a social space. You can have the above experience in Second Life. Just go to Social Island 10. It's awful.

Something is fundamentally wrong with group conversational interaction in SL. Discuss.

(Search for "meeting in VRchat" to see what it's like over there. It's much more lively.)

 

I think it's how SL has matured with an older demographic, most of anyone I know is 30+ (It's also why I prefer SL to other games.)

Whilst on these recent platforms the younger audience interact differently. From VR Chat's youtube postings it always looks lively and chaotic, far too fun for SL's stuffy residents.

 

In SL, men engage less with other men, as women do with other women. Which I've always found unusual. Don't these people have male friends in RL? And there's the unfortunately prevalent attitude that men must be 'silent, brooding alpha males' at any location which further stifles social interaction.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

14 hours ago, Adeon Writer said:

My understanding was The Zucc wants to help fund the metaverse, but he doesn't want to own it.
I can dig that.

Of course, there is an assumption here that you need to believe what he's saying. But that's a difficult subject.

I rather chuck the Zucc into a large pool of water that has sharks with laser beams attached to them! 🤣

[Drayke Newall]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Sounds like you're trying to persuade yourself, since your answers are so threadbare. A few educators...the hilarious canard that most people don't want sex...the claim that the Roblox economy is "like" SL. Yet any tech news article on this topic will tell you there's a conundrum here. Roblox has 150 million uses, yet paid out only $250 million to developers. SL has only 40,000 concurrency, 500,000 users or whatever (certainly under a million), yet it paid out $450 million plus to those merchants. Hmm, what's wrong with this picture?

Your problem Prokofy is you don't actually do any searching for yourself. I only gave a few examples but you took that to mean they are the only ones 🙄 it seems you don't know what the word etcetera means. It means more examples are out there after those I listed. But seeing as you are inept in looking for yourself: All Educators (roblox.com) if you call that a few educators then you need to go back to primary school. Looking at that list many are for children but there are also many tertiary places as well now they are targeting that demographic. Looking at that number of educators I would have a guess and say it is far, far more than what SL has, they even have some in third world countries like Afghanistan!

As for your pathetic comparison regarding income @Out Jinx posted some of the reason but the other reason is that Roblox has only in the last two years or so actually started to push an adult demographic. That means for the last 15 years their audience has been under 18. Now seeing as you can't use common sense prey tell, in what universe do you know where an under 18 year old the majority being under 16 has a bank account and id that would allow them to cash out their robux cash. You ask why the usd cash out is so low that is you answer. The don't cash out to kids for their creations in the millions.

Additionally, I never said that Roblox's economy was the same as Second Life in regards to the amount paid. I specifically said it was a creator driven economy just like SL. I.e. You make stuff, you sell stuff for inworld currency, then you cash out inworld currency for rl cash. How is that hard to understand and how do you translate that into meaning a dollar amount.

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I could go on and on but what's the point. If what you say is true in the way you claim, you would have long ago fled SL and become preoccupied with Roblox. Yet you remain dithering on the forums.

I have friends who have left SL in reality, only keeping a bare presence, who moved on to Sinespace, Open Sim, Uplands, whatever for a whole set of reasons and then found those other places to be better according to their criticism, and they put their money where their mouth is -- in those other places. So of course you're free to do the same.

I don't want to go over there I prefer SL but want to see it grow. Just because you have no argument against anyone all you ever post is well if you don't like it go elsewhere in some attempt that that gives you brownie points.

Linden Lab themselves have stated that they are looking at Roblox and how SL can compete with them. If LL themselves are closely following them why can't you accept that even LL see Roblox and their way of doing things as competition.

Your arguments never change and is always: "I like sl and am fanboy therefore no improvements other than tweaks are needed therefore said person should play elsewhere". You said you were over 60 I say act your age like the rest of us and admit that sl needs vast improvements to become a metaverse which is what the topic of the thread is about. Like usual I give up talking to you like so many others do. Not because I agree with you but because it is exhausting so consider this my final post in the thread. I'm out.

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

That means for the last 15 years their audience has been under 18.

What, did they just kick people off, upon turning 19?