Facebook's "High Res Version of Second Life"

[Prokofy Neva]

When I first read this, I thought, "uh-oh." But you know, Linden should never be afraid of competition.

It will only validate what they have achieved. And say what you will about SL and its technical issues, I don't think anyone has ever mounted a serious claim that LL has somehow undermined users' privacy. 

Europe! You mean, Eastern Europe, so you can pay programmers and designers less.

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The blog post, which is bylined by head comms guy Nick Clegg and Vice President of Central Products Javier Olivan, also seems intent on blowing some sunshine up the arse of the EU, generally.

"We have long believed that European talent is world-leading, which is why we have invested in it so heavily over the years," the post says. "Beyond emerging tech talent, the EU also has an important role to play in shaping the new rules of the internet. European policymakers are leading the way in helping to embed European values like free expression, privacy, transparency and the rights of individuals into the day-to-day workings of the internet."

 

So how does that work, they say to the EU, "Bend your rules on privacy, we'll create 10,000 jobs?"

Says the author:

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But will anyone ever be satisfied with virtual meetings or virtual "vacations" with family, that are essentially just Zoom calls in Second Life? Some segment of the population may always be more excited about living as an avatar in virtual space, but is this something that most people are ever going to be truly comfortable with? And isn't this just another potential forum for harassment and abuse that Facebook won't be able to adequately combat?

Well, I'll say this. Zoom calls are universely awful, which you have to do for work, and I have to say, there has got to be nothing worse than a Zoom goodbye to a dying friend and a Zoom funeral. Having gone to funerals in SL, I'll take those any day.

It's true, my feeling is that most people do not avatarize well. That is, they don't want to invest their consciousness in a toy, as Will Wright so delicately phrased it (maker of The Sims). And who can blame them? Will Wright once asked me directly if I thought that people who changed their gender in The Sims would have an easier time uploading their brain to the Internet. That is, that's how he thought of things, and frankly, I don't want to be uploading my brain to the Internet any time soon, during or after life. Please. But I do think this could be related to the ability to avatarize. 

I also wonder if Zuck will put legs on the people in this "metaverse" that he couldn't see fit to put on people chained to their desks in the "enterprise" version called "Horizons" for work meetings. You need legs for sure.

I'm not a FB hater as such, but I am a critic. And I just think LL has a lot to teach these people. Even given that one of their own is VP of mobile (Cory Linden).

 

[Lindal Kidd]

I think the decision to eliminate legs was driven by a simple fact: No lower body, no genitals. No genitals, no sexxors.

While this may keep Horizons, etc. squeaky clean PG, Zuck missed out on a huge driver of human behavior. Makes me wonder if he's asexual.

[Prokofy Neva]

50 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I think the decision to eliminate legs was driven by a simple fact: No lower body, no genitals. No genitals, no sexxors.

While this may keep Horizons, etc. squeaky clean PG, Zuck missed out on a huge driver of human behavior. Makes me wonder if he's asexual.

There's that, but this designer got on Twitter to tell me some elaborate thing about how the legs wouldn't fold gracefully so they did away with them. I sent like 6 videos of Second Life avatars doing ballet, etc. but of course they're doing this on Oculus and VR so I guess it's different. I'm not entirely persuaded but I guess it was a challenge.

[Chris Corvinus]

Its a floating cartoon character. Horizons is for kids.

[Walelu Summerwind]

3 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I think the decision to eliminate legs was driven by a simple fact: No lower body, no genitals. No genitals, no sexxors.

While this may keep Horizons, etc. squeaky clean PG, Zuck missed out on a huge driver of human behavior. Makes me wonder if he's asexual.

... or maybe an asexual robot.. 🤪

 

[Coffee Pancake]

Nick Clegg 

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

And don't worry, the EU aren't going to change any rules based on anything a Brit promises for a long time.

[Sammy Huntsman]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There's that, but this designer got on Twitter to tell me some elaborate thing about how the legs wouldn't fold gracefully so they did away with them. I sent like 6 videos of Second Life avatars doing ballet, etc. but of course they're doing this on Oculus and VR so I guess it's different. I'm not entirely persuaded but I guess it was a challenge.

I mean if they can make a Triple A game on VR where the legs and the animations are working. I am looking at Half Life Alyx, they can do it for Horizons. 

Edited October 20, 2021 by Sammy Huntsman

[Richardus Raymaker]

Facebook is far behind secondlife. There better platforms that have avatars with legs in VR. The main reason why facebook look cartoon is that the want to run it on cheap vr hardware that not have the power. Legless cartoon avatars look extreme ugly, especialy in vr where you expect legs.

Anyway, never going to use facebook anyway.

[ChinRey]

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So how does that work, they say to the EU, "Bend your rules on privacy, we'll create 10,000 jobs?"

I can't see that happening. Citizen's right to privacy is a bit of a Holy Grail for EU and besides, drastic reductions there would require consensus from all 31 EU and EFTA nations.

10,000 is just a drop in the ocean compared to the number of employees the three big private info peddlers (Google, Amazon and Facebook) already have within EU anyway.

[Nick0678]

29 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I can't see that happening. Citizen's right to privacy is a bit of a Holy Grail for EU and besides, drastic reductions there would require consensus from all 31 EU and EFTA nations.

10,000 is just a drop in the ocean compared to the number of employees the three big private info peddlers (Google, Amazon and Facebook) already have within EU anyway.

Nah those are just assumptions, like you said 10.000 jobs realistically speaking have no political value due  to EU's total population of 440+ million people.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Nick0678

[Hydra Acer]

What we have to accept is that the "Metaverse" is being born as the Internet was born. All companies in the future will have to adapt their products. I still remember how they criticized the Internet in the past and how they said it would never work. 

When the technology in virtual reality viewers becomes comfortable and cheap, the Metaverse will take off.

[Coffee Pancake]

Even if facebook or Epic fails by it's own standards. We are steamrollered into oblivion. 

Do not underestimate the scale of the juggernaut that is coming. We may have fended off lesser competitors by simply ignoring them. We can't do that with the next batch.

54 minutes ago, Hydra Acer said:

When the technology in virtual reality viewers becomes comfortable and cheap, the Metaverse will take off.

There are fundamental accessibility issues with VR hats that's easy to pretend are just a technology problem, better cheaper lighter VR hats won't change this. Immersion has to come on a scale. By the time they pivot to territory that more squarely overlaps with what SL offers, they will be already be unstoppable monsters.

The moment they deliver access to content creation with the same ease as 💩posting on social media, and they will, only the hardcore SL-hobbyists remain here. The scale of the new market will be staggering. 

Ask any serious creator in SL what they would do if a market 1000 times the size of SL appeared with 1000 times the opportunity, we're done, especially when that 1000x multiplier is just the tip of the desired growth. They can be 1000x bigger than us for free just based on the captive platform userbase they already have. If they are only 1000x bigger than us, they will call that a failure.

FB & Epic & the rest are not starting from zero building a world and hoping people will come and make something of it. 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Adoption-wise, I think VR headsets are going the way of 3D television sets, nuclear fusion and desktop Linux. Unless FB, or any VR-company comes up with a shiny new killer app that everybody needs.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Adoption-wise, I think VR headsets are going the way of 3D television sets, nuclear fusion and desktop Linux. Unless FB, or any VR-company comes up with a shiny new killer app that everybody needs.

They have always been a solution in search of a problem, which is why they have been cited as being "good for everything".

Virtual worlds have had the same problem.

[Madelaine McMasters]

12 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I think the decision to eliminate legs was driven by a simple fact: No lower body, no genitals. No genitals, no sexxors.

While this may keep Horizons, etc. squeaky clean PG, Zuck missed out on a huge driver of human behavior. Makes me wonder if he's asexual.

Prepare for the rise of acrotomophilia.

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Prepare for the rise of acrotomophilia.

And a lot of players who have apotemnophilia!

Edited October 20, 2021 by Lindal Kidd

[Luna Bliss]

What's really weird is that monitors can watch you inworld without even being in the virtual space you're playing in.

Then, if griefing occurs you can press a button and legless monitors will come flying in to fix the problem. Can you imagine doing that in SL and a bunch of legless Lindens would fly in?  lol

I'm just hoping that from the 2 billion or so that use Facebook (after Horizon Worlds is advertised heavily there) a few of them will discover virtual worlds can be fun and  find their way to SL, despite the general lack of headset usage here.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

20 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

What's really weird is that monitors can watch you inworld without even being in the virtual space you're playing in.

Then, if griefing occurs you can press a button and legless monitors will come flying in to fix the problem. Can you imagine doing that in SL and a bunch of legless Lindens would fly in?  lol

Don't give the Lab ideas. I can see at a board meeting --- "Ok, I think if we removed the legs from all the characters, it might save on server resources and dial down our use of the AWS cloud."  Then we'll have a 2000 page thread about that on the board with the Mods working feverishly to keep the "train" from derailing! 🤣

[Sammy Huntsman]

1 minute ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Don't give the Lab ideas. I can see at a board meeting --- "Ok, I think if we removed the legs from all the characters, it might save on server resources and dial down our use of the AWS cloud."  Then we'll have a 2000 page thread about that on the board with the Mods working feverishly to keep the "train" from derailing! 🤣

It wouldn't as creators would just create items that were higher in complexity. Lol. 

[animats]

The "Facebook building a high-rez Second Life" theme is just the article author's speculation.

Facebook is apparently going to announce some naming or rebranding thing today. It will probably involve the name "meta" in some way, because Facebook has been buying up domains with "meta" in them. That may just be a corporate reorganization, much as Google did when they made the parent company "Alphabet".

I'm not sure this is a big threat to Second Life. Facebook has tried three times already to get into virtual worlds. Three duds so far.

Roblox looks like a bigger threat. They have a published roadmap. They're making progress getting past blocks and making their world look and work better. They have growth. They have a few billion dollars. They have a few million users. They have a few hundred developers. They have a "can do" company mindset.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Facebook is apparently going to announce some naming or rebranding thing today. It will probably involve the name "meta" in some way, because Facebook has been buying up domains with "meta" in them.

Get ready for scorched earth.

Making sure there is only ever one "metaverse" will be a decent part of FB's plan. It's in the name "The Metaverse" .. no one wants "A Metaverse", lets all meet up in the third metaverse near starbucks after work, said no one ever.

It doesn't matter what the word metaverse meant before hand, claim it, make it singular, own it.

Start by naming the entire trillion dollar company "Metaverse".

Can't even talk about the concept without talking about the company.

[Mahala Roviana]

I'm picturing legless strippers. 

[Ardy Lay]

3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Can't even talk about the concept without talking about the company.

Fine.  Just coin a new word, trademark it or whatever it takes and give everybody but the sugar mountain man free license to use it.

[Mongrove Goldblatt]

On 10/20/2021 at 1:01 PM, Hydra Acer said:

What we have to accept is that the "Metaverse" is being born as the Internet was born. All companies in the future will have to adapt their products. I still remember how they criticized the Internet in the past and how they said it would never work. 

When the technology in virtual reality viewers becomes comfortable and cheap, the Metaverse will take off.

The Internet was not created by a single big company but by a bunch of people who just did what ever they wanted to.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

7 minutes ago, Mongrove Goldblatt said:

The Internet was not created by a single big company but by a bunch of people who just did what ever they wanted to.

Freakbook don't want that. They want everyone to go through them. I remember Zuck long ago saying something about FB being your connection to anything online.