"Philip Rosedale is on the board of m2"

[animats]

OK, so Rosedale probably isn't on their board of directors. They may also have some kind of "advisory board" of outside experts, which is common with startups, or they may be exaggerating some vague connection. All too common with hyped startups. You often see "We, STARTUP, are partnering with BIGNAME." Then you go and look at BIGNAME's press releases and there is no mention of STARTUP.  Usually just means that STARTUP bought some off the shelf service or product from BIGNAME.

I was wondering if this was hinting at an LL-Improbable connection. Improbable offers a back-end engine which does many of the things SL's servers do. It's technically interesting and has worked for years, but so far has been extremely expensive to operate 24/7. Four indy games used it a few years ago, and all went broke due to server costs. Now their strategy is to only turn the system on for special events, where they can sell expensive tickets for a few hours of online time. Virtual concerts with big-name stars, stuff like that. They rent a huge number of cloud servers for a few hours, and presumably turn a profit.

An official comment from Linden Lab would be appreciated.

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, animats said:

Now their strategy is to only turn the system on for special events, where they can sell expensive tickets for a few hours of online time.

Sounds like Sansar Instancing.

The whole thing STILL sounds.."improbable".  But yeah, you'd think we would have heard about it by now, if it really was a lot more than a "startup"!

Thanks for all the research!

[Lysistrata Szapira]

As soon as I see the word "blockchain" my brain shuts down refuses to contemplate anything to do with it. 

[animats]

11 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

The whole thing STILL sounds.."improbable".  But yeah, you'd think we would have heard about it by now, if it really was a lot more than a "startup"!

Improbable is for real. They've been around for years, and games have been built using their middleware. Improbable has at least US$400 million developing the technology. Unless you're into multiplayer game engine technology, you don't hear of them. They used to have a boring dev-oriented site with long technical documents and downloads.

I follow them because they had a nice solution to regions - regions boundaries move automatically as avatars move around. Regions with more avatars are subdivided until there's enough compute power per avatar. Regions with few avatars become very large, freeing up compute resources for crowded regions. This involves a huge amount of inter-server message traffic, which runs up costs and turned out to not be cost-effective.

Last year, they hooked up with the Bored Ape Yacht Club people, and seemed to have picked up the marketing tactics of the Make Money Fast with Crypto crowd. That's why their new web site is all hype and buzzwords.

It makes sense for LL to be following what they're doing. They seem to favor large numbers of low-detail avatars frantically running around, while SL tends to favor small numbers of avatars standing around, not moving. SL could use more motion. Gradually fixing everything that makes SL sluggish helps move in that direction and makes SL less boring.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, animats said:

marketing tactics of the Make Money Fast with Crypto crowd

In case you missed it, actual spammers contact people about this on different social platforms/apps. So, it's hard to tell the 'serious' Crypto crowd from the spammers.

3 minutes ago, animats said:

Improbable is for real.

Gotcha, I was just making the joke again.  

4 minutes ago, animats said:

That's why their new web site is all hype and buzzwords.

I only noticed the Wikipedia entry you sent, that's why I checked a few times when people mentioned "word salad" in case I missed a link. If their own website is WORSE than that Wikipedia article, then WOW.  I see it now on the wikipediate page: https://www.improbable.io/

Interesting, reviewing the Wikipedia summary how their income shot up in 2021 (and changed denominations):

$100m (2021)  £19m (2020)

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

1 hour ago, animats said:

It makes sense for LL to be following what they're doing. They seem to favor large numbers of low-detail avatars frantically running around, while SL tends to favor small numbers of avatars standing around, not moving. SL could use more motion. Gradually fixing everything that makes SL sluggish helps move in that direction and makes SL less boring.

I don't think that's what SL prefers, I think it's what users have to do because of input latency to move your avatar, lag when someone enters a sim/server, etc. Moving around SL simply isn't as fun and enjoyable as it is in other games. I'm sure you know the technical reasons why, but for those that don't they focused on making SL more accurate between clients (i.e. everyone sees the same thing on a screen) as opposed to most games who just update the best they can and guess (like with avatar/character positions). Surely you've seen characters jumping around in other games when it gets laggy, yet when SL is laggy you just can't move.

[StarlanderGoods]

11 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oy.

Dibs on a Bored Ape avatar.

I heard ape holders can use multiple slurp juices on a single ape.

[animats]

57 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Moving around SL simply isn't as fun and enjoyable as it is in other games.

Agreed. That's a separate subject, and one I've been thinking about. There are potential work-arounds viewer side. More on this later in another topic.

[PheebyKatz]

13 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I suppose it's because the defence industry isn't very lucrative at the moment with peace all around the world and everybody cutting down on their military spending.

Yes, this whole world peace thing we have going on is awesome, isn't it?

 

As for the thread topic, I heard Cory Linden will be hosting a Misfits Reunion Tour with Doyle and Jerry Only. Glenn Danzig will be opening for them wirth Dio. Better get your tickets now.

ITT we make up a bunch of dooky.

Edited June 26, 2023 by PheebyKatz

[animats]

On 6/26/2023 at 1:11 PM, Flea Yatsenko said:

On 6/26/2023 at 11:12 AM, animats said:

It makes sense for LL to be following what they're doing.

I don't think that's what SL prefers, I think it's what users have to do because of input latency to move your avatar, lag when someone enters a sim/server, etc.

Right. My main point here is that, once LL sees someone else doing something good in their space, they'll consider doing it too. So the way to get LL to improve the product is to show them that something that needs to be done for SL has already been done successfully by someone else.

Over in metaverse land, there really is some modest progress. The NFT clown car has crashed and the wreck is now in the clearing stages. Facebook/Oculus/Meta has now failed three times and given up. Magic Leap went bust. The people who were making all the noise are now out of the picture. Others continue to soldier on - M2, RP1, Roblox, Unreal Engine - and are getting real work done. The serious development efforts are worth following.

Edited July 1, 2023 by animats

[Coffee Pancake]

24 minutes ago, animats said:

Right. My main point here is that, once LL sees someone else doing something good in their space, they'll consider doing it too. So the way to get LL to improve the product is to show them that something that needs to be done for SL has already been done successfully by someone else.

I don't honestly have any hope that the desire to architecturally shift SL can ever manifest from LL. The weight of long dead junk is far too great and they are spectacularly myopic.

For the love of .. come on. someone, anyone, play some other games !!

[Love Zhaoying]

On 6/26/2023 at 7:50 PM, PheebyKatz said:

wirth Dio

Dio not ded?

[PheebyKatz]

34 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Dio not ded?

Corporeality or incorporeality notwithstanding, I should have added.

[Coffee Pancake]

18 minutes ago, animats said:

?

I have nothing to do with anything in the RLV system. I've done motorcycles, escalators, animesh NPCs, and the Sharpview viewer.

You mentioned putting RLV on a motorbike to reseat the avatar after a failed region crossings (a fine and legit 'not sex' use for RLV!), and prok wrote a 5000 word essay about "BDMS" that no one read. Obviously this puts you 3 good breaths away from Santa themself.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You mentioned putting RLV on a motorbike to reseat the avatar after a failed region crossings (a fine and legit 'not sex' use for RLV!), and prok wrote a 5000 word essay about "BDMS" that no one read. Obviously this puts you 3 good breaths away from Santa themself.

ETA: I follow @animatsbecause I always learn something. I follow some other people to practice my reading comprehension and increase my tolerance levels.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Love Zhaoying