Second Life in Shadowdraft Seems Visually Superior To Sony Home (And On Par In Other Ways)

Compare and contrast: Sony Home, versus SL in Shadowdraft (pic by Kean Kelly)

I recently read this preview of Sony Home, the upcoming Playstation 3-based virtual world which the Ars Technica writer deemed "shows potential, still needs work".  Second Life users aggravated by their world's frequent downtimes will love this part:  "First and foremost," he notes, "[Home] disconnections are frequent—startlingly so—even though there are rarely more than a few people online at any given time."

Then I noticed something striking about the post's accompanying images.  Home development began in 2005, and was publicly announced in March 2007.  When it was, the screenshots the company published suggested a world far more graphically rich and nuanced than Second Life.  Since then, however, with the addition of WindLight and sculpted primitives, and Residents' ever-greater facility with the SL building tools, and the viewer's open source code, I'd have to say they're now about on par-- in fact, Second Life is now arguably superior, especially when seen in the Shadowdraft viewer created by KirstenLee Cinquetti.  Take a look at the above screenshots, and judge for yourself.

Marvel at that:

Second Life's viewer is being developed by a handful of programmers in a company that's still relatively small, in tandem with open source developers like Ms. Cinquetti, and perhaps a thousand or so Residents now working on a professional level of content creation, usually unpaid or underpaid for their efforts.  Sony Home, by contrast, is a product from one of the world's largest media corporations, posting billions in annual revenue.  Yet somehow, three years into development, it still disconnects frequently, "the interface looks sloppy and poorly designed" (Ars again), and is choked over with corporate advertising, "as there are posters, banners, and trailers virtually everywhere."

People often threaten to abandon Second Life, sometimes for entirely understandable reasons.  But before the leap is made, best get a glimpse at the alternatives.

Comments

[Anonymous SL fan in Home Beta]

Home's avatar mesh seems more detailed. Default Home hair is equivalent to prim hair in SL. SL has a LOT more customization options, no skin with winged eyeliner in Home, or custom eyes, or ETD hair, but Home's clothing looks a lot better than most SL clothing. Home enviroments are pre-rendered, it runs a LOT faster and smoother than SL, but you didn't hear me say that. Home has it's own equivalent to the "cloud" or "Ruth" it's a smoky transparent av. You can play simple games within home without leaving it. Home has both text and voice chat which work VERY similarly to how they work in SL. It is possible for SCEfoo to stream video and music on billboards or in specific areas. I personally have never lost connection to Home, most PS3 disconnections I have read about are due to a plug n play problem with the router. Shopping is a LOT different than shopping in SL, you enter the shop door and then are presented with the items/menu. You don't actually "walk around" the shop ( which I think it something people will miss and that SCEfoo should put in home)

[Ann Otoole]

Why do we care? Home users will be using a playstation to access a virtual world right?

Video game controllers? Texting will be so spontaneous. (Granted I don't know a thing about playstions. There is an old one I use to play DVDs on the TV but that is the extent of my desire to use one of those ridiculous 2 handed controller things.)

It will be nothing but children, pedos, and cops.

Similar to most other virtual worlds catering to kids that seem to specialize in hentai looking childish avatars.

I bet you will be able to walk about and enjoy the rich product placement stylized scenery and have ample merchandising opportunities for Sony and Sony Partner products.

*yawn*

[Arcadian Vanalten]

Not interested. Gaming consoles in general are just too limited in functionality in relation to what they charge, at least for my tastes. Gaming consoles are gonna have to get a LOT cheaper for me to consider them decent bang for the buck.

On my PC, I can (and do) play games, but I can also draft anything from a home budget to an exam for the college class I teach. I might check out other PC-based virtual worlds, but at this time, anything that requires a one-trick pony gaming console is not gonna be a consideration.

I will confess that I'm not familiar with the latest iterations of game consoles, but I wonder how on earth one is supposed to do chat unless they have keyboards now?

If it runs off the same system that cell phones use for texting, spare me. I find it endlessly funny that SL now has voice to do audio chat, while my phone touts its ability to do text stuff now so you don't have to use your phone for any of that pesky talking stuff.

Ever get the feeling we're running around in circles...?

[Raul Crimson]

Personally i think there is no possible comparation. First, SL is totally dynamic and resident created, no prerendered backgrounds and with an almost total freedom of creation. Are totally different kinds of stuff. At the same time that is a "club" for PS3 users, not "anybody" can access.

[Veeyawn Spoonhammer]

Hamlet, you're suggesting that building a virtual world is difficult but I know, from reading the comments on official Linden blog posts, that anybody can do and do it better than Linden Lab.

You must really hate Sony.

V

p.s. I hope that came across without the tags.

[Hamlet Au]

ROFLcopter, Veeyawn!

[Kevin Aires]

Hi there, remember me :) . Thanks for the tip. Just created this test video using Shadowdraft. Take a look.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Ann Otoole wrote:Video game controllers? Texting will be so spontaneous. (Granted I don't know a thing about playstions. There is an old one I use to play DVDs on the TV but that is the extent of my desire to use one of those ridiculous 2 handed controller things.)

Didn't you notice the USB ports on it? It has two. If you were to play online games with it you'd want to have a keyboard attached for text chat. And that controller is IMHO the best compromise in game controller design.

It will be nothing but children, pedos, and cops.

Similar to most other virtual worlds catering to kids that seem to specialize in hentai looking childish avatars.

The average gamer these days tends to be a bit older. Sony says the average is in the early 30's. Games aren't just for kids anymore. You can't make a childish avatar in Home anyway as far as I can tell from the screenshots I've seen. The PS3 has parental controls so access to Home can be restricted.

Arcadian VanAlten wrote: Not interested. Gaming consoles in general are just too limited in functionality in relation to what they charge, at least for my tastes.

On my PC, I can (and do) play games, but I can also draft anything from a home budget to an exam for the college class I teach. I might check out other PC-based virtual worlds, but at this time, anything that requires a one-trick pony gaming console is not gonna be a consideration.

The PS3 isn't a one trick pony, it's got multimedia functionality up the wazoo, and it can do this:

[CronoCloud@mideel ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Yellow Dog Linux release 6.0 (Pyxis)

[CronoCloud@mideel ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
cpu : Cell Broadband Engine, altivec supported
clock : 3192.000000MHz
revision : 5.1 (pvr 0070 0501)

processor : 1
cpu : Cell Broadband Engine, altivec supported
clock : 3192.000000MHz
revision : 5.1 (pvr 0070 0501)

timebase : 79800000
platform : PS3

That's right, I have Linux on mine, so it has all sorts of additional functionality. I can run gnucash on it, or OpenOffice. I usually edit my SL screenshots on it, using the GIMP and before I got it, I did the same on my PS2 which also had a Linux install.

I will confess that I'm not familiar with the latest iterations of game consoles, but I wonder how on earth one is supposed to do chat unless they have keyboards now?

USB ports. As I said above, the PS2 has two of them, and the PS3 has either 2 or 4 depending on the specific model. Mine has 4 and a keyboard is always plugged into it (and a mouse plugged into one of the keyboard's own USB ports.

[Arcadian Vanalten]

LOL, well, I suppose you CAN drive a tractor on the highway and say it's as good as a car, but I still think the console is too limited to be interesting to me.