Simulated intimacy in SL vs the world ..

[Nalates Urriah]

How many of you remember the problems the Lab had when they tried to get the avatar's feet to stay on the ground?

The avatar isn't designed for interaction and detailed collision detection. The calculation load for that type of detection is overwhelming. It is why we do not have cloth in SL. Those of us that work in Blender and other 3D modeling programs can see the impact on performance when we start trying to animate cloth.

It isn't the animation system that is the main problem in SL. It is the collision detection system aka the physics engine.

In RL things are a bit elastic. Plus we have eyes that detect where things are. So he can be tall and I know if I need to sand on my tippy toes to kiss him and our lips meet. Plus he is compensating too. There is a lot going on that we just can't duplicate in SL with the computers we have... at least not in real-time.

There are animators and furniture makers that make things fit as well as possible. Some sex HUDs calculate how to position hips so things meet mostly as intended. But we run into a problem when we want avatars to be hooked up and to kiss. It is possible to set cuddles to focus on kissing and the most explicit sexual animations to focus on aligning the hips. But even then it is not perfect and requires some adjustment by the user. So most only ever try to get close and then allow users to adjust things.

I doubt we are going to see our highly flexible SL constrained to the point better avatar positioning is possible.

And there is Henri's point. We cannot adjust animation on the fly.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Nalates Urriah

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 hours ago, sirhc DeSantis said:

Fascinating. Forum denizen tries to warm over a long dead topic. Usual respond (all 60 of you)

https://community.secondlife.com/online/?filter=filter_loggedin

been there, got the tee shirt, gave up on the dead horse

Those who log in invisible don't show up on that list. Just saying.

[Henri Beauchamp]

26 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

It isn't the animation system that is the main problem in SL. It is the collision detection system aka the physics engine.

The Physics engine is not even aware of what animation is played on the avatar (animations are only played on the viewer side): for this engine, the avatar is just a ”bounding box” (centered on the avatar in-world position, which is itself offset by the playing animation on the viewer side), and that's it. The engine therefore cannot know where are the limbs of the avatars, and which limbs are supposed to collide with the ground/floor/objects...

Edited June 17, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Jennifer Boyle]

4 hours ago, gwynchisholm said:

Behold, the solution to that:

https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407282410644-Age-ID-Verification

Done by Roblox of all platforms, a site that hosts mostly children. They use age verification for their developer exchange program, community tester programs and voice chat. Though the primary benefit is for large name players to be validated as the real person, since they have usernames and display names you can just pretend to be someone else, but only the real person can be validated.
It’s by a company called Veriff that does the same thing for a variety of businesses for different reasons.

That would be the way to confirm if people really are adults or not. You don’t go off registered date of birth alone. You only let people into the adult content if they have verified they’re an adult. It’s quite a bit harder to spoof that one than simply changing your birth year on registration.

That looks very similar to what LL was doing for a while. They employed a third party (Aristotle?)  to check credentials submitted by users against external sources. If the credentials checked out, one was verified as an adult. 

I doubt any such system that does not require in-person verification can be effective in keeping minors out. They are resourceful little devils.

[Jennifer Boyle]

There has to be a way for two avatars to communicate 3D coordinates of specific points on their surfaces to scripts.

Now, PCs with 64-core CPUs and 256 GB RAM are possible. Current GPUs are very powerful compared with past ones.

Surely, all of this computing power can be used to ameliorate, at least, the issues we have with animations if a framework for them to use were put into place. Has the animation system improved since 2005, when computers had far less power?

[gwynchisholm]

11 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

There has to be a way for two avatars to communicate 3D coordinates of specific points on their surfaces to scripts.

Now, PCs with 64-core CPUs and 256 GB RAM are possible. Current GPUs are very powerful compared with past ones.

Surely, all of this computing power can be used to ameliorate, at least, the issues we have with animations if a framework for them to use were put into place. Has the animation system improved since 2005, when computers had far less power?

It’s been done, it’s been done a lot and it was done a long time ago. Just from personal knowledge a pornographic game called Rack 2 had this down pretty flawlessly back in at least 2016? And that was just one guy making it in Unity. Real time adaptive animation, collision and material deformation. IE not just two mesh objects clipping through eachother but substantially more “realistic”.

And plenty of other stuff had done it well before that as well, without being super demanding at all. Real time interaction like that isn’t actually that hard on modern systems. Even in 2016 it was doing fine for me on my pc at the time which was a Pentium G3258, an intel haswell dual core and a GTX 750ti.

The problem with that is I’m not sure LL could just drop that into SL’s engine. That was a unity game for reference that was built from the ground up with that in mind. A more contemporary example might be how a lot of virtual reality games are doing collision, in something where your hand should stop on a non physical object, how do you make it stop? Look at Boneworks (I swear it’s not porn, it’s guns) for that, everything collides somewhat realistically. Or Half Life Alyx. They’d be the best reference material to see how they did realistic collision in what’s otherwise a pretty simple 3D creation.

SL might not be able to do that though, this isn’t Unity or Unreal or whatever, something specific to SL would have to be built from scratch and somehow work with all the other systems in play. This game is like a weird hodgepodge of slapped on features on top of other slapped on features, it works… mostly, but has a lot of hard limitations due to the core engine of the game.

Like how ***** it is at using your hardware in 2023 god, it’s so bad. So many people make so many excuses for it but it’s just a harsh reality that this games engine was designed for a Pentium 4 and 6600 GT, not a 13900K and 4090, and nothing will ever make it take full advantage of modern hardware outside of a complete engine revamp.

[AmeliaJ08]

On 6/16/2023 at 8:05 PM, Jennifer Boyle said:

Over the years, I have periodically read comments from people who thought that SL's sexual content and the presumed public perception that it had a lot of sexual content were negatives. They may be for a platform intended for use in the workplace. However, it seems to me that sexual content is inevitable and desirable in a virtual world that is intended for recreational use by adults. It's a feature, not a bug, and not something to be ashamed of.

I'd go as far as to say the reason SL is still with us and still populated to the level it is is because of the adult content.

It's not everything but it is a huge draw and I'm pretty sure LL know it too.

[Katherine Heartsong]

Ignore, misread something.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Dorientje Woller]

9 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Because in some countries, the age of consent is less than 16. Japan just a few days ago raised it from 13 to 16. You read that first number right, btw, it's been 13 since 1907. Even today, the age of consent to have sexual relations is 16 in Britain, 15 in France, and 14 in Germany and China.

Doesn't mean that you can hit the hay stack with a 15 year old in France and not been considered a pedophile. There is the factor of age difference that comes into play. In Belgium is the age of constent at 16 years, but in sexual activities the age difference may not be more then 3 years.

[Kathlen Onyx]

4 hours ago, gwynchisholm said:

I think that drawing a bunch of new users in with a sexual content focus will result in more of a divide between different groups. And it’s up in the air as to how much of a problem that would actually be, but a segmented audience doesn’t stick around long in any platform. You want people to interact and expand as much as possible, right now with sex not being a priority focus most people are coming here for a wide scope of reasons which sometimes involves sexual actions as well. If you advertise sex as a priority, you’re gonna bring in a lot of people who are only going to be here for that, more than already exist anyway. And doing that I think will push a lot of groups away from eachother.

Sex is absolutely the priority focus of the platform. At least in one form or another. Sure, there are lots of people that come just to create but what are they creating? Clothes - Most have a sexual overtone to them. Furniture - It's rare to see furniture without an Adult version. There are other things. Those are just examples.  

I don't know how this would divide groups or affect how people interact anymore than it does now.  In fact I think it would create more opportunities for creators and residents alike.  

Older people stick around for the friendships that they create, which a huge percentage of that demographic, for one reason or another, want it to be possible to engage in sexual activity.  I think improving the adult aminations would only improve retention. Trust me, it's not like people are just logging on for hours and hours and having wild sex the whole time.  *well I'm not, maybe others are* It wouldn't be seen more or overrun the grid as most sexual activity is done in private unless you seek out other avenues. So those that don't want to see it or engage in it have the same chance of running into it as they do now.

As for LL, it would be well worth the money they would invest to improve the system and they would reap the benefits very quickly.

 

 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

On 6/16/2023 at 11:35 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

The top and trending list on STEAM has two titles in the top five containing graphic sexual content, far more detailed than we can ever hope to manage.

Can we stop being ashamed of the massive adult community ?

Can LL start to put some effort into addressing the systemic problems that have undermined such content in SL since say one? (like the simplistic animation system)

I’ve never been ashamed of the adult community in SL.. 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I'd go as far as to say the reason SL is still with us and still populated to the level it is is because of the adult content.

It's not everything but it is a huge draw and I'm pretty sure LL know it too.

That is true. But it’s also being able to build and potentially make money at it. 

[Ceka Cianci]

13 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Because in some countries, the age of consent is less than 16. Japan just a few days ago raised it from 13 to 16. You read that first number right, btw, it's been 13 since 1907. Even today, the age of consent to have sexual relations is 16 in Britain, 15 in France, and 14 in Germany and China.

In the U.S. 31 states are at the age 16 for consent.. I was really surprised the first time I read that.. hehehe

[Bree Giffen]

Making standardized heights to be used by animators would do a lot to create better interaction between residents. Maybe Zindra should have signs like those in amusement parks that say, "You must be this tall to enjoy this ride".

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

7 hours ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

Sex is absolutely the priority focus of the platform.

I think it's easy to assume that whatever you're into is going to be what everyone else is into. I know alot of people who think that pixel sex is lol. And a lot who login to decorate, landscape or explore. But you could also be totally right.

[Janet Voxel]

 My take on this is LL is walking the right path. They don’t advertise adult content on here, but they don’t discourage it either. Lovense  has quietly become pretty significant in SL. So much so that it might pop up in something tangentially related to adult content like a roleplay community. 
 

I used to feel like Coffee in the idea that LL should lean more into adult content. Now I think just not talking about it works best. To her point though, that doesn’t mean animations shouldn’t be improved. If a system is in place that makes that content look better, I’m sure everything else would be a benefit too.

[Love Zhaoying]

Like, maybe advertising adult content would be massively successful.

On the other hand..imagine Second Life being overtaken by horndog noobs.

I'd prefer a lower number of "curious people" who find out about the Adult stuff when they find out. If the Slex is what brings someone to Second Life..there's no "proof" they'll do anything but that here. 

[Luna Bliss]

28 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

horndog noobs

I'm just hoping the new pick-up line from some of them isn't "hey, you wanna simulate some intimacy"?

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I'm just hoping the new pick-up line from some of them isn't "hey, you wanna simulate some intimacy"?

Beats, "Would you help me test some adult animations?"

[Love Zhaoying]

Speaking of "intimacy" - I personally (seriously) object to the use of that word to mean "sex". To me - personally - "intimacy" and "sex" are not the same thing.

[Coffee Pancake]

7 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I think it's easy to assume that whatever you're into is going to be what everyone else is into. I know alot of people who think that pixel sex is lol. And a lot who login to decorate, landscape or explore. But you could also be totally right.

PIxel intimacy covers a huge amount of ground. Humping avatars are broadly hilarious .. but how about cuddles.

SL without the intimacy would be a dead world over night.

2 hours ago, Janet Voxel said:

 My take on this is LL is walking the right path. They don’t advertise adult content on here, but they don’t discourage it either.

Interpersonal relationships is a corner stone of the SL experience and the hook that keeps many of us engaged year after year. Even if you personally aren't here for any of that, it's easy to find many of your friends who are.

LL need to promote SL in a way that appeals to those discovering the platform.

Came for the humping avatars, stayed for emotionally serious and rewarding relationships & friendships.

Advertising "roleplay" doesn't work. People learn roleplay here.

 

We're 20 years in a hole. This place is getting smaller and more expensive. People who used to make an income here with stores are struggling badly.

 

Whatever LL have been doing is broadly wrong.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Speaking of "intimacy" - I personally (seriously) object to the use of that word to mean "sex". To me - personally - "intimacy" and "sex" are not the same thing.

No argument here .. but if this is how we have the discussion in General rather than the secret hidden adult sub forum, then so be it.

[Love Zhaoying]

31 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

No argument here .. but if this is how we have the discussion in General rather than the secret hidden adult sub forum, then so be it.

..I was thinking..if Second Life was REALLY just about Slex, wouldn't the "not secret it's right there" Adult Forum be a lot busier?

Admittedly, I had to open the drop-down list for the Adult "sub" Forum to show, but the same is true for a lot of the other "sub" Forums. Picture is from phone / mobile version of the Forum.

ETA: There are plenty of other issues about the "Adult Forum" (can't tell if you're in it, can't tell if a "general discussion" post is in it), but I assume after reflection that these are actually issues with the Forum software and the way the sub-Forums are named. "General Discussion" is "General Discussion", no matter which sub-Forum you're in.

Edited June 18, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[gwynchisholm]

31 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Whatever LL have been doing is broadly wrong.

Their inaction on some stuff has been the wrong, but the actions they do take are generally pretty good.

The more recent shift of advertising to furries in the last few years has had some benefit for them. I think it’s because they saw the massive third party market space that formed around furries on vrchat and went “oh yeah we already have that” and reminded prospecting social world furries of that.

They could do the same thing with an adult content focus. Though it just does make it difficult for this platform to be considered reasonably for age groups under 18. Just because you can’t go into the back room at blockbuster, doesn’t mean you’re not aware it’s there.

That metaphor ages me.

Social world games in general have died down with the rise of social media. It happened to every big player, a lot of them don’t even exist anymore. The audience overall of people sitting at their computer and playing a 3D chatroom game is much smaller than it was 15/10 years ago. You see these timelines in other games, even ones where the social aspect isn’t the focus, try out a bunch of different things to recover players. Habbo Hotel when it started to die was doing this thing with sponsored events for a long time, after they merged all their regional hotels into one, before they found a core player base again and stabilized. Now they’re fine, not as big, but comfortably stable.

Smallworlds just outright died, they didn’t catch on to mobile fast enough and most of their audience was teenagers using it as a chatroom. If you didn’t start making an android/iOS app by like 2012 when your players are all teenagers you were just screwed. Because sure enough, they all migrated away to mobile oriented social media. 

Edit: other good examples, WoW and RuneScape both brought back classic versions of their games to attract old users who had left. And it worked really well for both of them. Habbo also kinda did this with the classic interface but it wasn’t as popular because user run retro hotels have been a thing for ages. 

SL is sitting on a fairly stable core audience, they needed to act first on cementing that audience so what they have doesn’t slip away. I think that’s what they’ve been doing for a while. It may not be time yet in their eyes to focus on getting more players in. And sadly I think their opportunity passed them by because anyone looking for this type of social world who’s never experienced one before, is going to gravitate to VRchat.

Edited June 18, 2023 by gwynchisholm

[Coffee Pancake]

Not listed on the drop down.

You have to go to https://community.secondlife.com/forums/ and then scroll all the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down and only if you are logged in.

 

Where are the adult locations in the destination guide?

Destination guide hides them down the bottom AND makes you manually click to enable A content. So 2 items that as are far apart on a web page as its possible to get.

 

The category is not shown in the viewer on the destination guide floater at all.

 

Hidden.

Intentionally.

Stop it.