There's a great NWN reader comment thread about Cloud Party, the new 3D virtual world backed by Cory Ondrejka from a dream team of MMO devs -- here's some important/interesting updates largely based on that:
- You can click here to log into Cloud Party anonymously from the web (at its.cloudpartytime.com), without having to use your Facebook name (or even have one), though your functionality will be limited. (Thanks, Ezra!)
- You can build 3D content in-world already -- just click the mobile phone icon for that option (top right corner).
- As the screenshot above suggests, while you can drop 3D blocks into Cloud Party, you can't drop the F-bomb there -- Cloud Party automatically elides your potty mouth.
I'm in contact with Cloud Party's CEO, Sam Thompson, and should have more updates soon!
Wow, 3rd person with 1st person wasd controls and point-n-click, only an ex-Liden would think of that.
The navigation is pretty bad, but somehow still a lot better than Viewer2/3. >_>
Ugh, I want to delete my Facebook account, but that would require me actually logging in.
Posted by: Kadah Coba | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 12:03 PM
The profanity filter can be turned off in the settings "app".
Anonymous logins are really just temporary guest accounts. There is no persistence whatsoever, no proper display name, and many functions (e.g. building) are disabled.
Posted by: Masami Kuramoto | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 12:04 PM
So I wasn't even going to try this because I've been so disappointed with similar attempts, but after only five minutes inworld I'm pretty impressed. You can enable advanced rendering under graphics settings with shadows and specularity that are much better than SL. Additionally the world is filled with people, and their building things, importing models from Blender all over the place and the framerate is excellent! It's true the WASD navigation assigns strafing to A and D, not pivot as expected, and the only way to pivot is with the arrow keys, but that's not a big deal once you realize what's going on.
Posted by: Ehrman Digfoot | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 12:21 PM
"Wow, 3rd person with 1st person wasd controls and point-n-click, only an ex-Liden would think of that."
That's MMO standard.
Posted by: Pussycat Catnap | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 12:48 PM
I get "Server not responding" when I try to log into it from Facebook or from their website. Any suggestions on how to get around this?
Posted by: Vivienne Daguerre | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 02:21 PM
Needs SL camera. Badly. Advanced in-world building will be a real pain - although I suppose they expect you to do it externally.
Other than that, as soon as Facebook isn't needed, I will be ALL OVER THIS.
Normalmaps?
Specularmaps?
#Yes
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 03:20 PM
I was there today, said hi to Sam, who hung around and answered questions from me and others. He says there will be a marketplace shortly but he does not know if the credits you receive for selling something will be convertible to cash. He said he was working on a FAQ he wanted to post today but I forgot to ask where he would post it.
I uploaded a mesh candle easily, but each time I uploaded my (10 LI) skybox I "lost server connection". I was never able to log in to the anonymous site.
Lots of missing functionality compared to SL, of course, but the little tutorial was well done; someone has learned some lessons from the SL experience.
Posted by: Pamela | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 03:20 PM
For being a beta, it is quite impressive. I am hoping this is the good kick in the butt LL needs to get their act together.
I just hope LL doesn't try to buy it because we all know what happens when they do that.
Like some others, I am not thrilled about the Facebook integration required to build, but am hoping they introduce other options for using it soon.
I tried to use it from my iPhone without success. I am hoping that will be possible eventually. Building on tiny screens would suck, but being able to still look around and socialize while sipping a latte at Starbucks would be awesome.
Cloud Party is definitely not something to quickly dismiss.
Posted by: Seven Overdrive | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 04:26 PM
I could use a RL profanity filter.
IOS devices do not yet support WebGL, nor does Internet Exploder. Brains at NWN might know of workarounds. It works well on firefox so I am all set.
Posted by: Iggy | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 07:09 PM
Really? Lets all get excited over something that we have been doing in SL for a decade just because it's not SL? Do we hate LL that much!
Maybe we do, but we hate FB more. Sheesh, a virtual word where you can't swear and the next avie could be your boss, sister, mother or worse. Lets let our hair down while my timeline rats me out "bobs playing cloud party, do you want to join him?!" .. "bob just liked sexy gay world on cloud party" .. "bob just got fired from his job because his boss is on FB and a bigot"
It runs in a browser, that actually means the hardware requirements are HIGHER than SL. Try CP on a netbook. SL runs faster and renders a more complicated scene.
This seems all fast now, but that might have a lot to do with trying it out in a sandbox with 3 other avatars and a few cubes. Put a like for like scene in this and SL will fly past.
I really don't get the obsession with running everything in a web browser, for my money, disney got it right 15 years back with their MMO. Install and launch the client from the browser, but don't use it to build your world.
Posted by: James Kelberry | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 07:34 PM
Here's a quick youtube tutorial on how to apply a texture to a mesh you've uploaded.
http://youtu.be/DQKbq1aAsmQ
Posted by: Brookston Holiday | Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 08:15 PM
The EPIC FAIL of this whole idea (aside from the dopey name) is building this on top of Facebook which has a very pronounced and overtly stated anti-avatar stance.
Pseudonyms are not just frowned upon, they are grounds for dismissal and in many cases total account termination. It is also awkward not being able to friend someone in-world but instead having to pull up their Facebook profile and friending their RL user. I find it contrived because my Facebook graph is not and never will be my avatar graph. So even if Facebook ever saw the light and reconciled that, the waters are already muddied by trying to lop all of my relationships into one organism.
I'm reminded of the Seinfeld/George Costanza "worlds colliding" speech.
Even if you login anonymously, you will quickly find you're a second-class citizen unless you link your avatar identity to Facebook and allow Zuckerberg and company to spy over your every action. If you don't comply with that, you can't build (tools are awkward anyway) and you can't claim land.
All of that reflects a fundamental disconnect on UX and the culture of virtual identity. And even though Cory might be involved, he is now very much a Facebook employee who has to tow Facebook's company line. That line is very clearly stated and is absolutely resolutely anti-avatar in nature. They want your real identity so they can sell display ads and soon mobile ads that are precisely targeted to you... or the Frankensteinian mutation of you that Facebook will cobble together as the inputs of your physical life and virtual life are forcibly melded into one and the same thing.
Posted by: Max March | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 04:04 AM
The Facebook dependency is fair criticism and is something hopefully they'll address, but since that criticism is turning to anger/questions of character and motive its worth noting that:
1. This is a beta, and the CEO Sam said they were totally not expecting Hamlet's blog post and subsequent sudden traffic of Second Life users it brought. This wasn't a managed reveal to Second Life users so don't take it that way. They were caught off guard on a number of things.
2. Facebook authentication solves problems for them they haven't solved on their own yet, if ever. Sam the CEO mentioned a few times that they'd like to have other login options in the future, but who knows to what extent Facebook can be completely avoided.
Hopefully Hamlet can get more answers about that in his interview, or the FAQ they're preparing addresses the Facebook requirement. Ahead of any concrete stances however I wouldn't take Facebook authentication personally.
Posted by: Ezra | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 04:59 AM
I think we are fighting because we either hate LL, FB, or both. I'm not fond of either, but as I have a FB account, I gave CP a try.
I'd argue that any virtual world or game that wants a non-gamer audience will want to run said application without a specialized client. Will they show up? My students, likely not. They live avatarian lives with rich social connections and "gaming" means "lower grades and fewer internships." Welcome to Social Darwinist America in 2012. Fun is for weekends IRL and for losers.
As for lag in Cloud Party, it remains to be seen. We had about 15 on the island where I've logged on both times, w/o a bit of lag. As the builds get complex, we'll see what happens.
As an educator, yeah, I've never forgiven LL for jacking up our prices in the midst of an academic and fiscal year, then trying to make good by offering a two-year lockin of old prices when most academic budgeting does not work that way.
So the competition is welcome. SL offers a lot more than does OpenSim or this new virtual world (so far), but SL is too expensive and has lots of baggage about what Pussycat calls "identity exploration." These factors make it anathema to Millennial students ("that's creepy and for losers") and college admins ("that's creepy and did you say THREE HUNDRED BUCKS PER MONTH? And they won't return customer-service requests?).
Hence what I call the academic "SLexodus" to OpenSim and interest in alternatives. That will continue, if our edu group is any valid sample. We have many more members waiting for their contracts with LL to end, so they can leave SL, than we do newcomers renting real estate.
Posted by: Iggy | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 05:17 AM
I set up a fan page in Facebook for one of my alts with no hassle. It lets me post as my avi with no link back to my main account that I can see. I'll have to see if I can use that identity to access CP.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 06:05 AM
There is a big difference between LL and FB though.
At the very worst LL can be accused of being out of touch with the userbase, inept or just generally getting it spectacular wrong from time to time. The do on the other hand run a pretty solid service and can hardly be called evil.
FB on the other hand. Big red flashing light, overtly stated, in your face, on purpose EVIL.
Posted by: James Kelberry | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 07:25 AM
Hey LL! A question if I may...
Do you see the responses of all your devoted, faithful customers to the very first glimmer of a potential replacement for SL? Do you see how quickly people ran to this BETA which operates at 2003 quality levels and has no money system yet? Does this not worry you, not even a little bit? Do you think that the good money fairy will forever pay when your most devoted and well heeled customers are gone? Because frankly it doesn't look like the fairy is doing her job, looking at your sim count nowdays.
No, it's not because "it's on Facebook". Gah, I can't even begin to explain how wrong the whole "make SL into Facebook" approach was. People are excited that someone else is about to go online because then you will finally have some competition. That some other place will exist to take their money and their time to. Not that they hate Second Life, as they are longtime customers and spend fortunes there. They don't hate SL at all.
What they hate is you, Linden Labs, and your incompetence in management of the grid. Your micromanagement of what we can and can't do and bait and switch tactics have made you so loathed that people are looking forward to ANY competing company that might pop up. And that is not just a serious customer service problem -- it is a fatal customer service problem.
Doesn't this loathing from your best customers worry you any?
Posted by: shockwave yareach | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 08:04 AM
It was pretty surreal seeing a few Lindens, former and current, stop in yesterday. I think I saw Charlar, maybe Kelly, and most definitely Philip himself poking around and asking questions.
I hope that current Lindens and those on Linden Lab's board like Philip welcome competition. It's free R&D and research when competition crops up. The same way Cloud Party seems to have been built on a lot of Second Life mistakes, half-implementations and missed opportunities, Linden Lab can learn from competitors if ever it gains a viable one.
I'd say the majority of Linden Lab's "best customers" don't hate Linden Lab. On the contrary, most are probably like me and love Linden Lab and Second Life despite fierce dislike of aforementioned mistakes, half-implementations and missed opportunities.
More than Linden Lab and Second Life though, I love the category of virtual worlds that they invented. It's a category deserving of being bigger than just Second Life. It's no different than Coca Cola needing Pepsi, or successful companies in any category of any product or service ever where there's always a frontrunner but more importantly always a lot of viable options resulting from good competition.
Way too early to know if this will become a viable competitor to Second Life, but I'm at least very glad there's people out there that realize this brand of virtual worlds Linden Lab invented is worthwhile to jump into. I hope there's 2-3 more competitors we don't even know about yet waiting to be revealed.
Posted by: Ezra | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 08:51 AM
Ezra: Funny you should mention Coke and Pepsi. Do you remember the cola wars of the early 90s? When Coke had 95% of the marketplace and Pepsi only had 5%? And Coke's solution to getting at that last 5% of the market was "Make Coke taste like Pepsi!"
It's that sort of stupidity that we are fed up with at LL. We bought Coke, not Pepsi. We believed LL when it said we would own our Coke. So when LL unilaterally told customers that they aren't going to own anything after all and they aren't getting the Coke invested into anymore, but they'll get Pepsi instead, it tends to make lots of us very mad indeed. If we WANTED Pepsi, we wouldn't have bought COKE!
Posted by: shockwave yareach | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 09:19 AM
the future of virtual worlds is not on the web. Yeah I got an idea lets embed 3d internet within the 2d internet that makes much more sense then a 3d internet with 2d embedded within. Its like embedding call of duty within super mario brothers. Why? because its Facebook, and that's where the lack of imagination begins.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 09:49 AM
You can turn the swearing filter off in the settings.
Posted by: Botgirl Questi | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 12:15 PM
Clearly the Lindens knew little about this being developed as they are only turning up at Cloud Party now, and it has been in Open Beta since May 16th. Looks like they wouldn't have known if Hamlet hadn't published his blog entry.
In other stats FB 'Likes' have risen from just 5 in May to 211 now, and monthly app users rose from 90 to 400 in just two days!
Posted by: Hitomi Tiponi | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 12:15 PM
shockwave, as usual, speaking for no one...
Posted by: MrBungle | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 01:50 PM
shockwave, for a change, speaking for me and many educators screwed by LL's mid-year tier increases.
I am liking this whole situation...I hope they have dropped their nerfballs and spilled their lattes in LL HQ as this unfolds.
Posted by: Iggy | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 02:14 PM
The sad part of this is while others are moving forward with virtual world development, LL is focusing on text based apps for mobile phones. *sighs*
The things I saw in CP should have already been done in SL, like the clean and simple control panel interface, and the well done tutorial with goals and rewards for completing it which included a free home. And being able to instantly load the world without a big clunky download was really nice too.
I really want SL to succeed.
Posted by: Seven Overdrive | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 02:37 PM
Too bad Cory didn't have the resources to launch this on his own independently. Cory's obviously the irreplaceable brains behind Linden Lab as the place got steadily dumber & dumber & falling apart ever since his departure.
This Cloud Party thing could have been very cool & a big success, but because of its facebook dependency, I see it as a nonstarter.
The fact Cory is employee of facebook & this new world exists inside facebook will be the cause of its demise. Facebook's big weakness is nobody spends money on facebook!
If Cloud Party survives it will be warped in the most vile ways to align with facebook's disgusting agenda. In the end Cloud Party dies either way as facebook is already trending down (predictable pattern of myspace, friendster, etc). Analysts predict facebook will go bust in a couple years or less.
The upside is it makes Second Life much much cooler, as by default SL become the anti-facebook version of Cloud Party. I'm liking Second Life more already =^ _ ^=
Posted by: WADE1 Jya | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 04:01 PM
Don't worry guys, I hear Linden Lab is working on the next killer app. Its called a BBS Bulletin Board System and you call into it on your phone line.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 04:42 PM
@Metacam, I actually miss playing Geopolitics on the local BBS...not joking!
I feel the pain of those who wish to avoid FB. Educators, however, tend to have FB accounts and thus Cloud Party is a natural for us to explore. I'm not sure that anything with "party" in the name is going to woo admins and funders, when it comes time to rent entire islands in CP.
But it's early. If Cory and the other funders want professional and educational users, I'd hope they'd find a better name that captures the excitement of virtual worlds w/o the creepy baggage of "Second Life" or the frat-boy sound of "Cloud Party."
"New World," anyone? I'm not pandering to Hamlet when I say I just flat-out like that name.
Posted by: Iggy | Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 05:02 AM
@Metacam
Sounds like you're being sarcastic, but the irony is Linden Lab really is betting on a text game while something like Cloud Party is being developed.
"The future of virtual worlds isn't on the web", I assume you meant not in browsers. Why not? The browser is native software just like the Second Life viewer is native software; except browsers tend to be built by the likes of Google and Mozilla.
WebGL is OpenGL ES 2 in a browser. Cloud Party accesses your GPU the exact same way Second Life's Viewer does in all the ways that matter.
Yes there's implications to essentially scripting a browser's implementation of only a subset of OpenGL vs. Second Life's Viewer use of C++ and full OpenGL (amongst other things like Havok), but all of that matters much much less than execution.
If the final result of Cloud Party runs as fast and smoothly as it does now once 99% of what's on the screen is customer made like Second Life, then who cares where and how it runs. Someone nitpicking C++ vs. Javascript, desktop vs. browser can't really care too much about the future of virtual worlds anyway.
Posted by: Ezra | Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 05:04 AM
As a content creator, I see Cloud Party as another potential market for my mesh products.
I also see an advantage to having a virtual world for my real self, a place I can meet up and chat with sisters, friends, cousins, aunts, and take part in fun activities with my grandson. My personna there would be the very real, matronly, and grandmotherly me.
It would not replace Second Life for me. There I can go and live as my 23 year old avatar with the hot body and gorgeous fashions that I would just look silly wearing in real life at my age and with my real body. I can play around with some fantasies, perhaps a bit naughty, or just do some frivolous things like role play in a medieval sim. I can do things in SL that are private to me and that I would not want generally or publicly displayed to family members, or employers (if I were not retired).
To sum it up, Cloud Party could be the virtual world for the real me. Second Life would remain the virtual world I go to for recreation, fun, exploration, and excitement.
Posted by: Vivienne Daguerre | Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 05:21 AM
I would add to my comment one point.
If Cloud Party were to disconnect from Facebook and allow avatar creation that does not connect to our real life information (at least publicly), then Second Life could be in trouble. If land prices were significantly lower than what Second Life charges, and anonymous avatars were permitted, it could spell the end for Second Life.
Posted by: Vivienne Daguerre | Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 05:25 AM
i like to think that there is room for both. reals worlds and nym worlds and some worlds where can be both
some people are most happy in the reals. others most in the nyms
now that CF has shown whats possible 3D on webgl then others will start to make similar
i think we going to see an explosion of them over the next few years now
what that will mean for SL and linden am not sure. but for 3D apps altogether and for us as customers/users of them then i think will be good
Posted by: elizabeth (16) | Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 07:16 AM
Hum. Impressed by my first visit. Got my own house after tuto completed and directly start to build by importing a DAE mesh. Works well despite probs with textures. It seems that "one-texture-only" colladas work. And scripting in a kind-of JS is more easy than with that ugly LSL :-)
Is that new world useful ? Guess yes for a lot of people who never been in immersive worlds before. As initiation a browser-based world is really nice. But for me as developer of hybrid solutions between 'real' and 'virtual' worlds I havent found any good reason to enjoy because the lack of possible connexion with 'outside world' servers. So, what is that useful for if it remains a closed world ? The absence of web-on-prim or XML-RPC connexion between CP and the rest of the world is 'the' big prob.
Posted by: Wolden Avro | Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 10:55 AM
Gee Wolden. So many things we have asked and asked for on bended knees, and you are finding them in Cloud Party?
Well, we can't be too critical of LL, since they only had 9 years to work on giving us what we asked for. No time at all on the internet, right?
Posted by: shockwave yareach | Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 12:10 PM
For anyone having the "Server not responding" issue, JimB found the solution that worked for me today. The issue may be different for you, but for me my browser did not want to connect using an unsecured connection, so he asked me to try this secure URL: https://its.cloudpartytime.com/
Note the s on the https. It made the difference for me and I was finally able to connect and get in to look around.
Thank you JimB! Now so far that is great service, and that in itself is impressive.
Posted by: Vivienne Daguerre | Friday, June 22, 2012 at 12:22 PM