2 Billion USD funding for a metaverse.

[Sid Nagy]

https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/sony-and-kirkbi-invest-in-epic-games-to-build-the-future-of-digital-entertainment

Quote

Today Epic Games announced a $2 billion round of funding to advance the company’s vision to build the metaverse and support its continued growth. 

This round includes investments from existing investor Sony Group Corporation as well as KIRKBI, the family-owned holding and investment company behind The LEGO Group, with each party investing $1 billion respectively. All three companies highly value both creators and players, and aim to create new social entertainment exploring the connection between digital and physical worlds.

Quote

“This investment will accelerate our work to build the metaverse and create spaces where players can have fun with friends, brands can build creative and immersive experiences and creators can build a community and thrive.” 

Wow, that could be interesting for the future.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[diamond Marchant]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

$2 billion round of funding

I'd settle for half of that in cash!!!

[Ceka Cianci]

Is that one of the ones that doesn't have legs?

You'd tink wiff all dat monies.. \o/

[Sid Nagy]

If there are no legs, it has no future.
If they want to keep it PG not so much either I guess.
Sex sells.

That LEGO is one of the participants isn't a real great sign in that direction to be honest.

 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Coffee Pancake]

The corporate vision of the metaverse isn't a 3d chat like SL or whatever meta has put out, it's a risk avoidance strategy to homogenize media consumption.

It's a single cohesive interconnected environment where you can easily move between brand properties from the same publisher where properties don't stay in their lane.

This is going to be AOL meets playstation home meets steam meets disney meets popcap with a sprinkling of SL on the side so you have somewhere to collect and show off all your virtual treasure.

 

Epic are building the media empire first and bolting on the social side, Meta are trying to build the social first and bolting on the media empire as it grows.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[animats]

They're trying to compete with Roblox, which has a market cap of US$45 billion.

Pay attention to what Roblox R&D is doing. They're working on all the hard technical problems. Seamless big world, making clothing fit automatically, big groups of players in one area. All the weak points in SL that LL can't fix.

Their CEO is a physicist. I met him years ago, when he headed Knowledge Revolution, a tiny startup in San Francisco that sold a physics engine.

Peak concurrent Roblox users: 5.7 million. Yes, average age 14. They still have more adult users than SL does.

[Cali Souther]

9 minutes ago, animats said:

They're trying to compete with Roblox, which has a market cap of US$45 billion.

Pay attention to what Roblox R&D is doing. They're working on all the hard technical problems. Seamless big world, making clothing fit automatically, big groups of players in one area. All the weak points in SL that LL can't fix.

Their CEO is a physicist. I met him years ago, when he headed Knowledge Revolution, a tiny startup in San Francisco that sold a physics engine.

Peak concurrent Roblox users: 5.7 million. Yes, average age 14. They still have more adult users than SL does.

Their avatars (Roblox) are far less complex than those in SL,  correct?    That would make it easier to "fix" things, no?    Just curious.   I looked at Roblox,  very very cartoony...    I'd rather play in Minecraft.      Just me.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Just now, Cali Souther said:

Their avatars (Roblox) are far less complex than those in SL,  correct?    That would make it easier to "fix" things, no?    Just curious.   I looked at Roblox,  very very cartoony...    I'd rather play in Minecraft.      Just me.

From an article about their new 2022 update.

 

Here's a recent 2021 cinematic vid from their official YouTube:

 

[Sid Nagy]

I think that is more than detailed enough for the masses.
For the Barbie and Ken dress up fans, it is by far not enough detailed and too cartoonist.

 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Cali Souther]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

I think that is more than detailed enough for the masses.
For the Barbie and Ken dress up fans, it is by far not enough detailed and too cartoonist.

 

hahaha @ Barbie & Ken......     I agree,  and obviously (by their large user base) so do the masses...    but even the upgraded version is still too cartoony for me.  Not only that,  but while there may be adults there,  it does seem to be an overwhelmingly younger clientele.  I am not putting it down in anyway,  they are doing a lot of things right!    I just prefer the look and feel of SL better, and maybe a more mature crowd.   

I did get addicted to Minecraft for awhile.  First,  because my sons played it and it was a way to spend time with them.  Then,  I found myself playing it on my own, but that's because it's creative and you can get lost in building.   I never did much socializing there as some do,  for the same reason - it felt like a younger user base.

 

Second Life - for the woman who never outgrew decorating her dollhouse. 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

18 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

I think that is more than detailed enough for the masses.
For the Barbie and Ken dress up fans, it is by far not enough detailed and too cartoonist.

It's definitely in line with some of the skins you'll find in Fortnite. And the little LEGO people are...well, like the LEGO games. 

If that's what Epic is going for, it makes sense, considering the Fortnite player base is like...11. Ok ok competitive Fortnite attracts people in their 20s, but I'm just talking about the regular non-competitive players.

[Sid Nagy]

A young audience for a new platform isn't a bad thing IMHO.
They will age. And because they have invested in the platform, they will be willing to stay, just like we stayed over the years in SL, despite some major flaws.
What the youngster platforms have to try to accomplish is to mature with their audience over the years.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Ayashe Ninetails]

2 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

A young audience for a new platform isn't a bad thing IMHO.
They will age. And because they have invested in the platform, they will be willing to stay, just like we in SL, despite some flaws.
What the youngster platforms have to try to accomplish is to mature with their audience over the years.

If you look at Fortnite's evolution, Epic has *kind of* done that, sorta? But not entirely. They still skew very young on there and I know some long-time streamers and players did eventually move away from it. Until they reinvented themselves again with No-Build mode, that is. People came running back for that.

Anyway, for example, Epic has a way of tapping into every new, popular dance and music trend happening on TikTok and capitalizing on it. Whether it's done ethically or not (properly attributing and paying the original choreographers/creators) I do not know (probably not - just a guess, though I assume the songs themselves are licensed). This is on top of making the most clever licensing deals possible for their skins (Marvel, Star Wars, etc.). It sounds silly, but it's kept them really relevant and fresh, I will say that. 

Now, if they can bring that type of "finger always on the pulse of what's going on" style over to their own version of the metaverse, they might be able to keep people around for quite a long time - mayyyybe?

Here's an example of what they do:

[Qie Niangao]

It's not surprising that VR's main interest to Second Life users is gaming as the killer app, but there's renewed investment in AR and VR headsets from the big tech players—not only Meta, and not only gaming. The Economist had an article a couple days ago, "From Apple to Google, big tech is building VR and AR headsets" including:

Quote

The tech giants spy two potentially vast markets. One is the kit itself. Only around 16m headsets will be shipped this year, forecasts IDC, a data firm (see chart). But within a decade sales may rival those of smartphones in mature markets, believes Jitesh Ubrani of IDC. “Some people ask, ‘Do you think this is going to be as big as what smartphones created?’” says Hugo Swart of Qualcomm, which makes chips for both headsets and phones. “I think it’s going to be bigger.”

That points to the second, still more tantalising opportunity: control of the next big platform. [...]

It sounds familiar. Maybe it's interesting that we're hearing it again now.

[Ceka Cianci]

These big companies like this  feel like they are wanting to get to umbrella corp levels..

You know what that means.. There are bound to be zombies at some point..

[Drayke Newall]

7 hours ago, Cali Souther said:

Their avatars (Roblox) are far less complex than those in SL,  correct?    That would make it easier to "fix" things, no?    Just curious.   I looked at Roblox,  very very cartoony...    I'd rather play in Minecraft.      Just me.

It isn't the complexity of the avatars that are the issue, it's the manner in which they are governed and used.

Modern metaverse's run on two avatar systems - a default dressable avatar system and a costume like system. The former is akin to Second Lifes default avatar, with full character customisation options and the latter akin to an all in one package and pre dressed with limited customisation/dressing options.

Linden Lab's removal of the default avatar as the focus avatar has meant that it has become impossible to reign in or build auotfit and/or other tools because there are too many different 'default like' avatars around all with their own shape, builds, creators, etc. In modern metaverses the avatars we use now would be considered costume avatars with clothes made for them selective and the majority of the clothes made for a default avatar. Second Life is the reverse where the default avatar is selective and the 'costume' avatars the majority.

This decision (and refusal to believe its users that mesh would be used as such and update the default body on mesh release) by LL has meant that they have had to reinvent the wheel on many things, wasting development time and money in doing things that they shouldn't have had to. The prime example being BoM. The system already existed for the default avatar however, due to the lack of use of the default mesh body, they had to make BoM compatible with creator mesh bodies.

If LL had made the default body to a high quality mesh standard and as customisable as possible then those 'fixes' companies like Roblox can implement easily LL could do so as well. That lag you get from to many avatars would be reduced etc as now the render engine has to render multiple different mesh objects that are identical in style yet made slightly differently due to one person wearing the same shirt on two different bodies but with a default avatar it would render it once for everyone.

Think about what the avatar creation system in Second Life would be like if the default avatar was just as realistic as the mesh bodies we have now, yet offered far more customisation than mesh bodies do now.

For example, the default avatar system could have been made to allow for both human, animal and mechanical bodies. Click a button and you can switch from human shape to furry shape to all manner of shapes with each having sliders to create whatever shape you needed. They could have added tail options, wing options etc. It would have meant that clothing, accessories, shapes, skins, hair, piercings, etc, all for one main body, no new user confusion (better retention) as to what clothes fit what body, no extra stress on creators to have to make clothes for 5 different bodies or loose business etc. All of that with still all the creativeness still available today and easier management/fixes for LL.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[animats]

8 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

From an article about their new 2022 update.

 

Here's a recent 2021 cinematic vid from their official YouTube:

 

It's clear that Roblox now has the technology to reach SL's level of realism. They've chosen not to use it everywhere, but it's available.

There's an argument for not making avatars fully photorealistic. The Ready Player Me people have a paper on this. They went all the way to photorealistic, then backed off to about the SL classic avatar level. It's a stylistic decision.

[Coffee Pancake]

Cartoonish doesn't drop people into the uncanny valley.

Do you remember how awesome Tron Legacy was .. or how weird CGI Jeff Bridges looked.

SL can be right on the cusp, it wouldn't surprise me if it factored in poor retention.

When you get a demo for a new mesh head and you instantly hate it .. this is why.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

I guess it depends on the overall audience they're aiming for. The games I play range from using 8-bit pixel characters (Stardew Valley), to games with even less detail than that (Rimworld), to overly stylized avatars with big goofy heads (My Time at Portia), all the way up to running around with a painstakingly customized Black Desert Online avatar I spent over an hour making in character creation, complete with body shine, sweat, and rain/water effects when the weather changes. People like all of those looks (they must, as all of those games are fairly popular), but many do have a preference. 

I personally prefer realistic if I'm going to be doing any kind of fashion styling. Honestly, even just running around socializing in a place like SL, I really don't like the look of overly stylized human avatars at all. Furry, fantasy, robot, anime, banana - go nuts on that. But when it comes to plain ole human, I try really hard to get mine decently realistic.

[Akane Nacht]

11 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

A young audience for a new platform isn't a bad thing IMHO.
They will age. And because they have invested in the platform, they will be willing to stay, just like we stayed over the years in SL, despite some major flaws.
What the youngster platforms have to try to accomplish is to mature with their audience over the years.

train em young!

 

but yeah, I don't see bright colour-cartoony look holding its appeal for most of them from their mid 30s and beyond. I didn't discover SL til I was a just a little short of 40. 

[Drayke Newall]

10 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I guess it depends on the overall audience they're aiming for. The games I play range from using 8-bit pixel characters (Stardew Valley), to games with even less detail than that (Rimworld), to overly stylized avatars with big goofy heads (My Time at Portia), all the way up to running around with a painstakingly customized Black Desert Online avatar I spent over an hour making in character creation, complete with body shine, sweat, and rain/water effects when the weather changes. People like all of those looks (they must, as all of those games are fairly popular), but many do have a preference. 

I personally prefer realistic if I'm going to be doing any kind of fashion styling. Honestly, even just running around socializing in a place like SL, I really don't like the look of overly stylized human avatars at all. Furry, fantasy, robot, anime, banana - go nuts on that. But when it comes to plain ole human, I try really hard to get mine decently realistic.

The sad thing is that, if LL played their cards right they could have come to the forefront of all of these new metaverses. To be honest (maybe I am being optimistic), if they move speedily and make relevant and right decisions as far as avatars (better customisable default avatars), scripting (more scripting or better yet restart Babbage Linden's C+ scripting replacement of LSL), viewer (update to vulcan, cache and inworld creation tools to match competitors) and reduce the over all cost of tier dramatically within the next 2 years they could still beat out all other metaverses which are looking to come online in the next 5 years.

As it stands, Second Life is still the most customisable virtual world out there as far as avatars go. You can be literally anything and still have a high form of reality to the avatar even if playing a robot or furry or a stick man with a top hat. No virtual world beats SL in this regard however other virtual worlds do beat second life in world building and inworld tools.

If LL can start doing some major changes in the right direction quickly it may give competitors that get billions of dollars in funding a run for their money.

[Qie Niangao]

16 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Babbage Linden's C+ scripting replacement of LSL

What Babbage proposed was to use C# as an alternate Mono compiler, in addition to the LSL binding to the very same library of built-in functions on the virtual world. People have unrealistic ideas of what that would mean. Although the "syntactic sugar" of that language would be welcome, the ability to use existing C# libraries would be extremely limited by script memory, and script memory limits are pretty important to the idea of letting random users script random objects more or less as they please. In a different hypothetical regime where all scripts running on a sim including all worn attachments must be pre-approved by the region owner, it would be practical to allocate much larger amounts of memory (and runtime) to specific scripts.

That's the kind of trade-off SL would face if it were to compete for gamer acceptance. Either way, it's all about customization; the platform design decisions are what customization primitives can be supported under what constraints.

[Arielle Popstar]

12 hours ago, animats said:

 

There's an argument for not making avatars fully photorealistic. The Ready Player Me people have a paper on this. They went all the way to photorealistic, then backed off to about the SL classic avatar level. It's a stylistic decision.

That is interesting especially as last week I ran into an avatar in SL that looked very real, to the point I almost did a double take that it was not an actual person. It was at an event when I was purchasing a fetish outfit and when I saw her, I had this feeling like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar wash over me. It was rather disconcerting. It begged the question as to whether an avatar can look too real and have a negative emotional impact on others.

[Silent Mistwalker]

21 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

I think that is more than detailed enough for the masses.
For the Barbie and Ken dress up fans, it is by far not enough detailed and too cartoonist.

 

I'm not the Barbie and Ken sort. I still don't care for the cartoony avatars. I'll take a "realistic" looking avatar over a cartoony one any day. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

21 hours ago, Cali Souther said:

Second Life - for the woman who never outgrew decorating her dollhouse. 

And for the women who never had a doll house.