Is Second Life the best metaverse?

[Sid Nagy]

36 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

But I do believe Mobile can be a possible path to the future, so long as onboarding / outfits / scripting / basic building are added at SOME point!

That point should be BEFORE the first release IMHO.
The new users are used to get it all and to get it instantly, not after 5 more years.
The mobile viewer will have to be an instant hit, or all the programming efforts were for nothing.

People these days are used to have more than only a stick to play with.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

I'm not even sure what a metaverse is and really couldn't care less if it was the best or worse. It's not my race.

[Phil Deakins]

19 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

b) Multiple worlds connected

That's what the OpenSim grids are.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

20 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

b) Multiple worlds connected

That's what the OpenSim grids are.

Yes, but literally - "who says" that is the only definition of a "Metaverse", "multiple connected worlds"?

 

[Rat Luv]

Nothing to really add, but agree with everyone who said SL is their only one...I created an account on Inworldz when that was around, but never really got into it...

I remember 2 or 3 years ago, somebody paying $650,000 RL for some blocky yacht on The Sandbox or Decentraland, and thinking, even a complete SL newbie in 2010 could probably have built something better-looking ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited March 29 by Rat Luv

[animats]

23 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I think Ready Player One is shallow, poorly written and derivative. It does however capture the imagination of the general public and feels how people tend to imagine a metaverse would be. As much as you might like to complain about the movie, I think it's actually much better than the book, because it benefits from having Steven Spielberg's input, rather than relying solely on the work of a very mediocre writer.

That's a good review. It's a weak book and a sort of OK movie. It has so many familiar pop culture references that mass-market audiences are comfortable with it. This matters. If Disney does a metaverse, they have all those familiar characters to work with. Disney is more likely to do an MMO than a metaverse. They'll want strong control over story and characters, not a buildable open world like Second Life.

"Snow Crash", as a movie, has been in development hell for years. Touchstone, Amazon, and HBO each started work on a video version, but it was never green-lighted. Snow Crash has a well-described metaverse in it, but that's not the main subject. It's about a media company and a cult masquerading as a branch of Christianity working to take over the world. That would be sensitive politically.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

No. It's a cess pool of misogyny. And full of pedophiles living out their fantasies. 

[HeathcliffMontague]

Ehm yes. Ever tried to spend some time time OpenSim? It's an effing anarchy. Ever tried spending some time in Meta? No? Neither has hardly anybody else. SL it is for me, as long as it lasts...

[Starberry Passion]

Second life is pretty cool, aside from some jerks here and there it is a great meta-verse to live a "second life on."

You're going to run into those people who think it's real life or those who want to run you and your avatar and how they think it should look. You might run into people who hate you for not being as tall as everyone else or as curvy BUT

You're going to meet friendly people, on both sides, that take you as you for you. I don't believe in just hating people with what they chose and go around name calling the platform and thinking everyone around is bad or into certain things just because a small group of people.

I like how people can be creative, If there are toxic people coming to ruin your fun, just ignore them and block them. Example, people give Anime a bunch of crap all the time, I'm not an anime but I love Anime and I have seen really good avatars in the anime community, however; There are a lot of trolls who are anime, over all they are unique.

Same with Furry avatars, they are cool and very unique, people still give them slack but they are creative and don't let people ruin their fun. One of the coolest Lindens was, i haven't seen him in a while, a furry.

You have the freedom to create what you want, the only drawback are actually the people. It's weird that people attack some of the linden in the Linden Lab and blame how the community is on them, example: why are people tall? Wasn't a linden who did that was the community. It all started with "lets see who can be the tallest." save for those who opt out and want to go real life heights. Or Body types, the main body type is usually Hourglass or Pear, hyper sexualization is a community thing. Now not saying that LL don't mess up from time to time.

Nothing wrong with hyper-sexual in itself or being a giant, just wrong when the giant calls you something you're not because you're short to them and their camera angel is more up than yours. But I get that, it's like real life, Have you seen the tit-tok of women putting the camera up to their boyfriend height and seeing how they look in their perspective? It's hilarious, they do look like kids at that height, so no wonders people who don't know how it feels to be tall seeing someone else that isn't tall, thinking the same thing. but You do have Women who do want to be the average woman and men who wish to be average. If you can find those crowds then that's nice, if you just want to be average on Second life.

I found it has always been a small group, not an entire group, who care about how you look, big or small. Like most second life people don't care how others look compared to them and that's the truth, as long as you're adult. So don't be discouraged to be something you like for yourself. 

Over all, no other Meta - Verse is like second life, despite Second Life having a lot of negatives, it has a lot of positives. It does have people who wish to understand and try to work with you and won't call you out your name or frame you as something you're not, especially when you feel at peace and not hurting anyone. I've gone into plenty of sims an average height, average shaped person and didn't get slack most of the time. I usually hang out on mature or adult sims (no not like sexy time sims) but adult sims in general because I don't have a need to go to general sims, personally, unless it's a store.

So, over-all, I think Second life is the best, so far. No other meta-verse allow for creative freedom more so than Second Life.

[Starberry Passion]

On 3/27/2024 at 9:41 AM, Arielle Popstar said:

I don't see that SL is a metaverse in the sense of how a Metaverse is defined. It is a closed garden platform. Opensimulator is the best definition of a metaverse in that there are separated grids but they are interconnected.

Second life is the very definition of a metaverse. It's in the definition itself. Second Life is a connected world, via Sims a.k.a. simulations that are connected and joined, in a 3D space, that you socialize in. Not only does Second Life do this, they are both social and economically driven. Tons of Stores, tones of sims to meet and greet. Open sim is not economically connected.

The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and usually focused on social and economic connection. Avatars socialising in the virtual world Second Life.

[animats]

Matthew Ball VC, (venture capitalist, not Victoria Cross) wrote a good definition of the Metaverse a few years ago.

1. Be persistent – which is to say, it never “resets” or “pauses” or “ends”, it just continues indefinitely

2. Be synchronous and live – even though pre-scheduled and self-contained events will happen, just as they do in “real life”, the Metaverse will be a living experience that exists consistently for everyone and in real-time

3. Be without any cap to concurrent users, while also providing each user with an individual sense of “presence” – everyone can be a part of the Metaverse and participate in a specific event/place/activity together, at the same time and with individual agency

4. Be a fully functioning economy – individuals and businesses will be able to create, own, invest, sell, and be rewarded for an incredibly wide range of “work” that produces “value” that is recognized by others

5. Be an experience that spans both the digital and physical worlds, private and public networks/experiences, and open and closed platforms

6. Offer unprecedented interoperability of data, digital items/assets, content, and so on across each of these experiences – your Counter-Strike gun skin, for example, could also be used to decorate a gun in Fortnite, or be gifted to a friend on/through Facebook. Similarly, a car designed for Rocket League (or even for Porsche’s website) could be brought over to work in Roblox. Today, the digital world basically acts as though it were a mall where every store used its own currency, required proprietary ID cards, had proprietary units of measurement for things like shoes or calories, and different dress codes, etc.

7. Be populated by “content” and “experiences” created and operated by an incredibly wide range of contributors, some of whom are independent individuals, while others might be informally organized groups or commercially-focused enterprises.

SL has 1, 2, 3 (in that if the users came, the system could scale up), 4, and 7. 5 will get better as SL gets mobile support. Technically, you could order things in SL for real-world delivery, with in-world malls, but LL never really got into that business.

6 is the thing everybody talks about but nobody actually does. The NFT crowd talked big about that and never delivered. There's a metaverse interoperability group working on standards for interoperability, though. That group did something intelligent. They have two task groups, one on file format compatibility and one on rights management. The rights management people are going round and round with NFT hype, while the file format compatibility are talking about interoperable subsets of glTF/USD. (glTF specifies meshes and textures in a portable way. SL is already going that way. USD adds support for animation and scripts. glTF is already well defined, but USD is more of a container for lots of stuff which may or may not be portable.)

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Matthew Ball VC, (venture capitalist, not Victoria Cross) wrote a good definition of the Metaverse a few years ago.

1. Be persistent – which is to say, it never “resets” or “pauses” or “ends”, it just continues indefinitely

2. Be synchronous and live – even though pre-scheduled and self-contained events will happen, just as they do in “real life”, the Metaverse will be a living experience that exists consistently for everyone and in real-time

3. Be without any cap to concurrent users, while also providing each user with an individual sense of “presence” – everyone can be a part of the Metaverse and participate in a specific event/place/activity together, at the same time and with individual agency

4. Be a fully functioning economy – individuals and businesses will be able to create, own, invest, sell, and be rewarded for an incredibly wide range of “work” that produces “value” that is recognized by others

5. Be an experience that spans both the digital and physical worlds, private and public networks/experiences, and open and closed platforms

6. Offer unprecedented interoperability of data, digital items/assets, content, and so on across each of these experiences – your Counter-Strike gun skin, for example, could also be used to decorate a gun in Fortnite, or be gifted to a friend on/through Facebook. Similarly, a car designed for Rocket League (or even for Porsche’s website) could be brought over to work in Roblox. Today, the digital world basically acts as though it were a mall where every store used its own currency, required proprietary ID cards, had proprietary units of measurement for things like shoes or calories, and different dress codes, etc.

7. Be populated by “content” and “experiences” created and operated by an incredibly wide range of contributors, some of whom are independent individuals, while others might be informally organized groups or commercially-focused enterprises.

SL has 1, 2, 3 (in that if the users came, the system could scale up), 4, and 7. 5 will get better as SL gets mobile support. Technically, you could order things in SL for real-world delivery, with in-world malls, but LL never really got into that business.

6 is the thing everybody talks about but nobody actually does. The NFT crowd talked big about that and never delivered. There's a metaverse interoperability group working on standards for interoperability, though. That group did something intelligent. They have two task groups, one on file format compatibility and one on rights management. The rights management people are going round and round with NFT hype, while the file format compatibility are talking about interoperable subsets of glTF/USD. (glTF specifies meshes and textures in a portable way. SL is already going that way. USD adds support for animation and scripts. glTF is already well defined, but USD is more of a container for lots of stuff which may or may not be portable.)

Excellent! The Internet itself fits most, if not all of those definitions!

[Arielle Popstar]

5 hours ago, Starberry Passion said:

Second life is the very definition of a metaverse. It's in the definition itself. Second Life is a connected world, via Sims a.k.a. simulations that are connected and joined, in a 3D space, that you socialize in. Not only does Second Life do this, they are both social and economically driven. Tons of Stores, tones of sims to meet and greet. 

The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and usually focused on social and economic connection. Avatars socialising in the virtual world Second Life.

Sorry but I don't see SL as meeting that loose definition as it is one world and one government. The simulators are not independent and require a connection to the rest of SL to be usable. This is unlike Opensimulator where any one grid is independent but still with the potential to interact with the rest of the Hypergrid, which is a type of 3D web. Each grid of Opensim is a universe unto itself but it also aware of of other universes that it can access and communicate with. Opensim is in total a multi-verse and the Hypergrid the metaverse. 

Quote

Open sim is not economically connected.

To a degree it is through the Kitely grid and its marketplace as any hypergrid connected, independent grid can purchase and receive content from there. It may not have the degree and convenience afforded by Tilia but there is no reason why it couldn't to an even greater degree then SL has currently as there are different medium exchanges possible there dependent on what the particular Grid owner/admin has allowed and made available.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

7 hours ago, Starberry Passion said:

One of the coolest Lindens was, i haven't seen him in a while, a furry

I think most of them are at this point. 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

I don't consider SL to be a metaverse at all, no. Too few users (no mass adoption), not all that immersive, you don't access it the way I'd imagine you would, no deep AR or VR, etc. 

I log into SL the same way I log into Guild Wars 2. I'm not saying it's a game, but... 👀