Breast Enhancement: Open Source SL Viewer Adds Avatar Breast Physics, Attracting Controversy, 50K Downloads

Danny Nolan, breast physics coder; inset, the Emerald menu option he pioneered

The rise and fall of a female breast may seem like the most basic thing, but as it turns out, trying to simulate it in a virtual world is not all that easy. So when Danny Nolan and other programmers tried to add realistic physics to avatar breasts as a feature in Emerald, an open source Second Life viewer, they were sometimes stymied in strange ways. In one trial, adjusting the breast physics seemed to create spikes that burst out of a test avatar. Other times, the bouncing motion of the breasts somehow made a giant hole where the chest should be. (A bug the Emerald team is still trying to fix.)

The thing is, when the human breast meets Newtonian mechanics (or a virtual simulation of same), it "involves quite a bit of math," as Emerald lead developer Skills Hak puts it. "We were discussing the math behind it almost daily, and fixed a lot of bugs it created." (Trigonometry was brought to bear.) But Emerald's breast physics worked sufficiently well that they were added last week to the viewer latest build.

How does it work? In actuality, a limited form of breast physics already exists in Second Life, but it's only available in the avatar adjustment menu, as a "buoyancy" option. "I simply did the math in calculating the physics itself... to simply visually show it," Danny Nolan explains.

"It's basically just modifying the breast buoyancy slider in realtime, fully client-side," as Ms. Hak puts it. That means the breast physics are only viewable to someone who's running Second Life with the Emerald viewer, and has enabled that option. From the world's point of view, however, the breasts have not changed. (Which suggests a unique metaverse twist to the old philosophical conundrum: If a virtual bosom heaves in a Second Life forest, but only you see it on your monitor, does it actually make a jiggle?)

Emerald was already the most popular third party SL viewer before the breast augmentation, but since it was added last week, it's been in even higher demand: "Downloads for our latest release are over 50,000 already," Skills Hak tells me. "We switched over to hosting at google-code in the meantime though (because people were literally DDOS-ing our server with download requests) so it might be well even more." With roughly 750,000 active users, that means about 6% of the Second Life population now has access to Mr. Nolan's breast enhancement. Or to put it another way, if you have a female avatar, and you're at a Second Life event with 16 other Residents, chances are that one of them is able to watch your bosom bounce in a way you may not have intended.

Which suggests a problem that often happens with the social contract of Second Life, when technical ability crashes up against user consent. In this case, what if you have a female avatar, and you don't particularly like people watching your virtual breasts moving in a way you didn't choose?

"I heard it caused some controversy," Ms. Hak acknowledges, pointing me to a wiki page the Emerald team created to document that fallout. (And while the Lindens just announced they'll suspend the use of third party viewers which violate the company's Community Standards or Terms of Service, the Emerald viewer's breast physics don't seem to break any of those restrictions, at least not in any obvious way.)

For Danny Nolan's part, he mentions no salacious intent for making breasts look more physical: "One day I thought, "With SL being open source, how come nobody's written proper breast physics?'... after a while it just sorta became a personal quest, to see if I could actually manage to code it." (For those wondering, Mr. Nolan describes himself as male in real life, though his avatar is decidedly female. "Not particularly cause and effect, but it definitely made it easier to test while developing [breast physics].")

Still, his innovation has attracted critics.

"I did expect it," he tells me. "It really just started off as just me messing around with code, and then the Emerald teach contacted me and wanted me to add it in to their client, so suddenly what started off as a quiet little project ended up going to several thousands of people. And, with the 'subject matter' of the physics, I definitely expected some people to not want it. But that's why we gave the option of turning it off, or increasing/decreasing the effect. Totally optional."

"Well," I say, "women avatars don't have a choice if Emerald users are looking at their breasts becoming bouncier, right?"

"That's true actually," Nolan says. He says the Emerald team is working on adding an opt-out option, so female avatars can designate their breasts to remain in the state their owners intended them. "For those who want their privacy." Trouble then, Nolan adds, is other Emerald owners will complain about not being able to see breasts as they want them seen. (That is, to seem more realistic.)

"So, it's hard to find settings that'll please everyone," Danny Nolan says. "But we are definitely looking into other options to try and please as many people as we can."

Comments

[Alicia Chenaux]

This whole "Omg, don't watch my boobs BOUNCE in SL!" just proves to me that people will find anything to complain about, no matter how small.

[Tristin Mikazuki]

OMG thats so sexist.. where the crotch physics? ;-)

*someone had to say it* snickers

[Gahum Riptide]

WOW, people get offended over comically bouncing tits in SL? Really?

[Buckaroo Mu]

Vote vote vote! http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-15866 - import this feature to the standard LL viewers.

[Impalah Shenzhou]

In two words: in-credible.

I take my hat off to Danny... this is one of the most interesting improvements I saw on viewers :-)

Congratulations.

PS - The wankers club is still celebrating the news.

[Impalah Shenzhou (again)]

More info: installed and tested right now.

It's like the video, and more.

Congrats again.

PS - is this the first step to a full muscle simulation? amazing, really amazing

[AnnOtooleInSL]

jigglers released, massive sucking sound as residents change to emerald. followed immediately by third party viewer policy. hmmm

[Nalates Urriah]

Breast physics was one of the most discussed features in the viewer policy discussion.

...leave it to geeks to make breasts a math problem ...

[Jennnnna Jameson]

Seriously people, relax.

The fact that over 50,000 people downloaded it in one week says people wanted this.

Don't let a few self righteous nuts take it away!!

PS I played around with the settings. To make things extra jiggly, check out the settings and instructions on my blog:

http://jennnnnajameson.blogspot.com/

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

If realism is the concern, then surely any dampening factor should be an attribute of the undershirt, so it could set to values ranging from being the ultimate sports bra to being nonconstrained.

I must await flexible sculpted prims, alas--there was a test Imprudence client with that enabled, and the results were quite impressive.

This does make me wonder, though. If avatar shape parameters are sent to the client so they can be rendered locally, surely it won't be long before someone writes an SL client that lets you specify a transformation to be done on the fly to suit one's preferences, e.g. if the avatar shape is female, then set leg length to 100, set breast size to 100, set waist size to... etc. Or even "If this is DonaFulana DeTal, set..."

[melponeme_k]

There is no sexism in SL!

None! We are all enlightened individuals who don't play those other stupid kinds of games. In fact SL is NOT a game.

Right.

LOL

[melponeme_k]

By the way, is there a viewer where I can fix everyone's microencephaly problems?

That would be most helpful.

[Doreen Garrigus]

melponeme, if you find that, will you let me know? That's a particular pet peeve of mine.

Just to let everyone know, these are not comically bouncing breasts. Emerald did it right. This is subtle and quite human looking.

[Nexus Burbclave]

Comically bouncing or not, I predict that there will be a machinima chase scene featuring this new functionality and Yakety Sax within the next two weeks.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

"...I predict that there will be a machinima chase scene featuring this new functionality and Yakety Sax within the next two weeks."

And somewhere, Benny Hill will be smiling.

[Faerie]

I think the effect is not comical at all but reasonably realistic (at least with the settings I have) - they aren't "comically bouncing" at all.
This is harmless, amusing and if anything, more natural than the rigid things we have had until now.

I'm constantly impressed by the skill the Emerald people have in bringing improvements and fixes into their viewer.

[DagnyT Dagger]

It is beyond me that people would complain that their avatar's breasts move. Uhm...if you don't want large jiggling boobies...don't make your avatar have them. Simple, problem solved.

The question now is, can they make an ass jiggle when it is slapped?

[Arcadia Codesmith]

While I think the drama over the jiggle viewer is overblown (and the coding is clever, regardless of the triviality of the application), it does point out a broader issue -- when you give the end user greater control over how they perceive aspects of the virtual world, does that weaken the consensual basis of vituality?

Consider the environment settings in the official client. I can set my viewer to override local settings and bathe me in perpetual sunlight. If I visit a vampire sim with my personal daylight cranked up to full, then I'm going to experience the world of pasty-faced children of the night much differently than the builder intended, to the point that my settings actually contradict the fundamentals of the mileau ("why isn't everybody crumbling into dust?")

Or what if I show up at a romantic ballroom and start shouting out "yeeeeee-haw!" at random intervals because I'm listening to Miranda Lambert instead of Billie Holiday?

Those are crude examples, but even subtle differences may mean that the shared experience of the virtual environment is a little less shared. My ability to control what I see and hear negates any assumptions you have (consciously or subconsciously) of what we're experiencing together.

So while I rather like the idea of a bit of a bounce in my step, if I see myself bouncing around on the dance floor and you don't, that's one very subtle, thin wedge between our perceptions of the world.

Maybe it's silly, but I can't help but wonder what happens to the whole concept of reality (even virtual reality) when each individual can mold it to their liking.

[Christine Svenska]

"Hundreds of avies crushed in run on virtual trampoline store....."

[Kimberly Rufer-Bach]

Doesn't look realistic to me. But I'm sure it's a boon to the large "Porky's" roleplay community.

[Doreen Garrigus]

Hey Emerald coders----I just thought of something. If you can modify sliders in real time to give us bouncing breasts, could you find a way to modify sliders in real time to give us subtle human facial expressions? The existing facial animations are cartoon-ish and better expressions can be made by tweaking the sliders slightly.

[camilla]

Should I begin to think about making a bra that acts as a real bra ?

[Oliver]

i think the ban hammer is on the way :D

[Oliver]

i think the ban hammer is on the way :D

[Maya Paris]

Need your own Jiggly Yolks? The FunkyEggFembots at Burning life invite you to Assimilate and BOUNCE like you never bounced before.

Video here http://tinyurl.com/yfq97yt

+ SLURL http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Tungsten/6/245/24