[Please. Can we have more physics.]

 

On 4/29/2018 at 7:56 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

Simulator physics and the number of updates sent to the client is solely responsible for the way Second Life feels. Movement, running, vehicles, combat games, even simply walking are dependent on it, and wholly responsible for Second Life feeling like treacle at best. This feeling is responsible for a large part of the "Second Life Sucks" impression many people have, creating an instant negative impression from the very first session and causing pain every single day for the rest of an avatars life.

It's impossible to create anything avatar-movement-interactive that feels like an actual game, and while we're all busy declaring "SL ISN'T A GAME" .. we're covering up for the fact we wish it could at least feel like we're interacting with one. Gaming in SL could totally be a thing, it's easily possible to get the aesthetic and interactive elements right (even more so with Animesh approaching).. just so long as nobody moves.

Just a little more time for physics would make a huge difference to literally everything we do in SL that isn't standing still chatting .. imagine if we could actually do more than that!

How about some physics on the client with the havok libs we already have on everyone's desktop for navmesh visualization and mesh uploading.

 

At this point the only reason I can think this has persisted for so long is that no one at the Lab has ever played an actual game. Some one set up a minecraft server, get a few staff on and run around for 20 minutes punching each other and then log into SL.

 

imma necromancer D:

I was wondering the same thing, about physics.  I know that this thread is kind of old but it still applies, especially as we haven't gotten any updates regarding this.  I hear that secondlife bleeds new players, and I think this is one of the reasons why.  I'm not sure if its the same thing but, even the physics when jumping, momentum when walking or running, is actually pain.  Like you said, if you've played just about any game before, you would realize how bad the movement in Secondlife is.  Even the worst games released today have better movement than secondlife.  

If I'm not mistaken I hear that there are bones that exist in the SL rig already for some type of additional physics, they just aren't enabled.  

Even though SL is so old, the Mesh update was a huge quality of life improvement, experiences, animesh, all of these things inject new life into SL and its possibilities.  Would love to see some type of physics that change the way avatars interact with each other and the environment.

PS: The whole "walking over waist high obstacles through brute force" is pretty wierd tbh, and while I'm at it walking up inclines or slopes, the avatar can't handle it well and doesn't know where to put their feets.

[Future of the metaverse, and all that]

42 minutes ago, animats said:

A concurrent user count well below 100 happened to it.

High Fidelity belongs to the class of "game level loaders". Someone creates a level offline, uploads it, and then others can visit. Each level is totally isolated, and there's a long loading delay as the next level loads. It's not a single world like SL. Basically, it's a download system for simple indy games.

Sansar and Sinespace are other examples of that category. Interest in those is very low. Concurrent user counts are around 20. If your game was any good, you'd put it on Steam, so this is kind of a bottom-feeder business.

Fortnite Creative Mode, which is somewhat similar, is a modest success, but it's a tiny fraction of the Fortnite empire.

 

I've never had that perspective before.    Secondlife in many ways is also a series of games, but dynamically changing and connected.  The benefit I see in something like High Fidelity  is you can still have your own avatar, your inventory, and then if not play the game in the game world you can just hang out, or watch videos, et cetera.  That aspect is still close to Secondlife. I also thing naming was a huge issue with High Fidelity.  I remember searching it to find the game and every time I do many other unrelated things would come up.

 

I was researching the potential of SL and why its so jank, why it fails at very simple things, and why most of these things don't get updated, then I came across several of your posts.  Gotta admit I'm somewhat of a fan.  One of the things discussed in this thread is a lack of competitors. 

The main thing secondlife is lacking as I've seen you discuss before are the most rudimentary systems that are present in even the worst/oldest of games.  Basic physics ,collision, movement, interactivity, controls.  If something else had that plus a user generated world, economy, currency, I would hop in a second.  There are so many really cool inventions in Secondlife, its a shame to see them held back by primitive software.

[Future of the metaverse, and all that]

8 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

If it were so good though how come you don't know what happened and are back here instead?

There wasn't an established userbase at the time, so not much content existed.  I was going to upload some of my own models eventually, but I'm no scripter. In fact I did login to High fidelity before I came back to SL.  I'm here, shortly, because there isn't anything else like second life, unfortunately.  I'll probably find myself bored like before and leave for another several years at least, eventually.

[Future of the metaverse, and all that]

1 minute ago, Gabriele Graves said:

It was VR only AFAIK or it only really worked with VR so for many SL users that is an instant no-sale.

Actually VR wasn't required.  I've never had vr before when I used it.

[Future of the metaverse, and all that]

On 9/16/2020 at 6:44 PM, animats said:

There are some more new virtual worlds. Sandbox just turned on. Imagine Minecraft crossed with blockchain, with lots of land speculation. Land speculation is a big thing with some of the new worlds. In fact, it's sometimes bigger than actually spending time in world. Decentraland and Sominium Space work that way.

Voxel based worlds are now a thing. There are standard mesh objects, and you can place them in a 3D grid. Dual Universe and Sandbox work that way. You can't create new mesh objects. Kind of like Lego. If you saw the Lego movie and want to live there, voxel based worlds are for you.

All these are getting user counts in the thousands, but not tens or hundreds of thousands. So this generation is doing better than the Sinespace/Sansar/High Fidelity generation, all of which maxed out below 100 concurrent users.  The new ones are visually worse but scale better and have easy building. This bears thinking about for SL. Ease of use matters a lot.

 

 

I actually used to play High Fidelity,  What happened to it? Personally I think that they should have tried their hardest to migrate everyone from Secondlife to High Fidelity.  The scripting is better, interactivity is better, avatar movement, VR integration,  et cetera. Sl has tons of issues with it on a base level.  The problem is its mostly the only thing of its kind where you can go in, upload whatever you want, and script whatever you want.  The foundation of secondlife itself is beyond busted.