Rosedale back as "strategic advisor"

[Khamon]

Wow, look at us, we were copybotting NFTs before it was cool.

Second Life users are proof that there are people who, for a variety of different reasons, have chosen to mostly live in a virtual world and not live in the real world, or who put significantly more of their time and energy into the virtual world...Would I snap my fingers and have there be a billion people doing the same things that they're doing today in Second Life and thus leaving the real world behind?

What? WTF What!?

I think a lot of the other stuff, the NFTs and the digital currency, Second Life actually got pretty right. People can make money, there's a currency that doesn't have an ecological load, and it strikes a balance between centralized and decentralized, trading some centralization for a lot of transparency. It’s an example of how you can achieve some of these things we're all wanting to achieve without going to needing to go full Bitcoin with everybody fighting for the next dollar.

Okay yeah this is true but the entry barriers still exist and there's still no practical use for the software other than entertainment.

 

[Sid]

SL is 20 years old junk.
It never can become the dreamed leader of the metaverse.
For that it has to be designed using the KISS methodology IMHO:

"Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) is a design principle which states that designs and/or systems should be as simple as possible. Wherever possible, complexity should be avoided in a system—as simplicity guarantees the greatest levels of user acceptance and interaction."

Now compare that with SL ....
When you talk about the learning curve for about anything in SL: Steep - steeper - steepest - Second Life.

SL being part of the new metaverse hype?

 

[Free]

SL being part of the new metaverse hype?

Maybe SL can be like the cute used clothing store where all the hipsters shop for retro fashions.

 

[Ashiri]

SL is 20 years old junk.
It never can become the dreamed leader of the metaverse.
For that it has to be designed using the KISS methodology IMHO:

"Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) is a design principle which states that designs and/or systems should be as simple as possible. Wherever possible, complexity should be avoided in a system—as simplicity guarantees the greatest levels of user acceptance and interaction."

Now compare that with SL ....
When you talk about the learning curve for about anything in SL: Steep - steeper - steepest - Second Life.

How simple can you make a virtual world and still have it be useful?
What is the steepest part of the learning curve now, and what was it 10 years ago?
Do you want to choose from a selection of avatars, or create or customise your own?

SL needs serious work in the avatar customisation and building areas, it's a great pity LL dropped the ball there for casual users.

Just don't have any expectation that Meta's offering will be anything but curated junk.

 

[Sid]

It all starts with what expectations one has from a metaverse.
SL in a bigger scale?
Or something that only vaguely reminds of SL, where other and a wider range of usability is sought after.

I personally think that SL only ever can cater a niche market, because the lack of possibilities to use.
So it means one has to think outside the SL concept box to create something new and different.

Maybe something where content is totally made by professionals and is only to be customized a bit by the users with some sliders, colors and choise of textures.
Users can buy the packages they need and ignore what they don't need.
That would open up for a lot of prerendering possibilities and gain of speed. Forget the strict region concept that SL uses.

And there are tons of other things that could be implemented in a metaverse IMHO and that would make it look, feel and work very differently from what SL is and ever can be. Compatibility with other companies software and worlds is crusial to ever come to a metaverse with millions of people online every day. It will have to fit seamlessly and could never be done by one company alone at the moment.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Maybe something where content is totally made by professionals and is only to be customized a bit by the users with some sliders, colors and choise of textures.

This is most MMO games already. Many users will be satisfied with this.

 

[Free]

This is most MMO games already. Many users will be satisfied with this.

Hurts the current creator set. But...........maybe.

 

[Mechanical]

None of this maters until Linden Lab clears the 14-19 years of technical debt. Logical business practice is to take a portion of porfits and reinvest it into the business. How little is LL making that it can't hire a team of coders to maintain and upgrade the viewer to remain in lockstep with modern hardware and rendering practices that take advantage of modern hardware?

 

[Ashiri]

Compatibility with other companies software and worlds is crusial to ever come to a metaverse with millions of people online every day. It will have to fit seamlessly and could never be done by one company alone at the moment.

Well we all know how that turns out... even if there were standards, someone will add extensions to break them.
I'm not sure what Facebook is using as their game engine, but with the number of competing engines, I can't see standardisation being easy or quick.

 

[Ashiri]

This is most MMO games already. Many users will be satisfied with this.

Even for human characters, I've found those MMORPGs I've played to have less comprehensive character modification than the original SL. The overall graphics usually look far nicer but they still seem squarely stuck in Mr & Ms Average as imagined by the developers.

 

[Sid]

Well we all know how that turns out... even if there were standards, someone will add extensions to break them.
I'm not sure what Facebook is using as their game engine, but with the number of competing engines, I can't see standardisation being easy or quick.

I totally agree. That's the main reason why I think that this Metaverse hype at the moment will cool down again and that Facebook will only have created their own world in the end. From which they can collect even more data from their users.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

When you talk about the learning curve for about anything in SL: Steep - steeper - steepest - Second Life.

You think? Check out NeosVR. Which is the most advanced virtual world I've seen, but damn it's hard to use.

None of this maters until Linden Lab clears the 14-19 years of technical debt. Logical business practice is to take a portion of porfits and reinvest it into the business. How little is LL making that it can't hire a team of coders to maintain and upgrade the viewer to remain in lockstep with modern hardware and rendering practices that take advantage of modern hardware?

They've been doing that, there have been multiple upgrades in the rendering engine.

The bottleneck is doing that without breaking content.

 

[Sid]

You think? Check out NeosVR. Which is the most advanced virtual world I've seen, but damn it's hard to use.

Then it will never become mainstream either.
The average (younger) consumer wants simple navigation, fast, inexpensive and a lot of diverse usability. And on tablet or even better on their smartphone.
They don't have the patience like us oldbies who were more or less pioneers in virtual world usage.
We accept a lot more, because we are from the time that we waited for Internet pages with a few gif animations to load for half a minute or so.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Then it will never become mainstream either.
The average (younger) consumer wants simple navigation, fast, inexpensive and a lot of diverse usability. And on tablet or even better on their smartphone.
They don't have the patience like us oldbies who were more or less pioneers in virtual world usage.
We accept a lot more, because we are from the time that we waited for Internet pages with a few gif animations to load for half a minute or so.

This is scripted user-generated content in Neos:

 

[Ashiri]

The average (younger) consumer wants simple navigation, fast, inexpensive and a lot of diverse usability. And on tablet or even better on their smartphone.
They don't have the patience like us oldbies who were more or less pioneers in virtual world usage.

I wouldn't think there's a difference between generations but between segments of generations. I know from experience there are plenty my age whose use of virtual worlds or 3d games is minimal or non-existent, and that it's more likely younger generations have more experience in such environments, even if it is Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, or LoL.