Space: New Unity-Powered Virtual World Federation from SL Pioneer Launches Developer Program With 70-30 Revenue Split, Unlimited Land, VR Compatibility

Space is the name of a new virtual world project I hinted at last month -- a "federation" of virtual worlds, really, developed on Unity 3D, and built to work with VR. Here's the official teaser:

Now launching its pilot program for creators, which offers an App Store-style 70-30 revenue split, Space is actually the relaunch of an existing virtual world, GoJiyo, which reports 1.7 million users, within the broader Space platform. Both are developed by Sine Wave, whose CEO Adam Frisby is a longtime successful virtual world entrepreneur. (Second Life users will remember him as early pioneer Adam Zaius. As you may have guessed, Sine Wave is also the name of his SL animation brand.)

In contrast to Second Life, Adam tells me, "“I think we're a lot more focused on what users do, rather than trying to force everyone into being a creator. So we've made specific functionalities for handling room editing, pets, clothing design, etc. Along with things like quests, activities and rewards - which we're aiming to solve the boredom problem with.”

And yes, it'll be compatible with Oculus Rift, with official support coming in a few weeks. "Realistically," he adds, "I think VR is probably at least 3 years away from prime time - the gear right now is great, but it's very much in enthusiast territory. It looks a bit dorky, you need a very expensive computer, and so forth. But our goal is to be ready for it when it does take off." 

For developers, there's a lot more robust tools than Second Life offers developers now -- here's a breakdown:

"[Creators] have a whole bunch of new tools that they've never had before; we've got the ability to add NPCs, Quests, and a whole bunch of 'rich content' to their regions. There's no land size constraints either - all our constraints on creators are bound by technical limits (such as polygon counts), and even then those limits are soft, not firm. (Really as long as it passes our own manual review.)

"We've looked at common features people want; and common types of virtual goods, and built very specific tools for handling those tools better. So, we've got built-in support for vehicles. We've pre-tuned and built a bunch of core template vehicles you can derive from, and that way when you make a vehicle, you know it'll be responsive; and as we improve the underlying framework, they'll all get better.

"We've got similar support for furniture, we've looked at common things - like playing an animation, and indicating that an item can be sat on, and those just have simple slots you can drag-and-drop in the editor to fill, and they do what you need, quickly.

"Pets were something we were experimenting with last year, so we built a whole genetic model, breeding, etc. all built-in. Creators can use these though too - so you can submit to us pets, and they work like all the others. It's a function commonly used - but we've built-it-in."

"Animations - we've gone a bit crazy on animations - have similar tools; we've got a timeline editor, you can indicate which animations start on which players, at what time, what time certain props are spawned, particle effects triggered, and so forth.

"[W]e're really listening to early feedback too on everything we have; so it's a chance for creators to be fairly influential with the direction we take in the future."

That said, I've asked Adam to hang out in the Comments below, and answer questions as they come!

Update, 10:15pm: After follow-up conversation with Adam, revised original "Space is actually the relaunch/re-branding of an existing virtual world, GoJiyo" passage for accuracy's sake.

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Comments

[Cube Republic]

This is interesting. Few technical questions to follow.

How is land handled, is it a case of uploading a mesh terrain? Same for the sky.

Can mesh be animated? (swaying trees etc)

Which file format is used for importing.

[Adam Frisby]

Land can be either/both/none - there's no fixed requirement for a terrain object. (Outer-space region? No problem.)

If you do use a terrain object, you can use either a stock-standard heightmap, or you can use a mesh. We've been doing some experiments with smoothed voxel terrain, so that might show up in a future update (although not one coming any time soon).

Meshes can be animated - in multiple ways, either property animation (position/scale/rotation/etc.), or skinned animation (weighting, bones & animation files). Alternatively, you can use vertex animation from a shader (the banners, the hanging cloth & trees in our 'Promenade' region uses vertex animation following a sine wave over time ;) )

We generally recommend FBX for file imports - it tends to be the most reliable at getting your data from your editor, to in-world with no conversion loss. COLLADA, OBJ and a couple of others work too.

[LittleWing]

With 1.7 million users it's surprising the general section of the forums only has 150 comments! all stating how much they love being in GoJiyo 'posted as far back as 45 days ago.wow.this must be an amazing place were no one has questions to ask.

Signing up now to throw all my money at this new popular destination..after all it looks legit + what could possibly go wrong?.

[Desmond Shang]

Very glad to see Adam and Rohan involved in this!

The right people running the show can make a major difference. While I've got too much going with my own ventures these days to get involved, I'd do business with these guys at any time. Class acts.

It will be verrrry interesting to see how their platform + business model stacks up against others coming out soon.

Best of luck with this, I wish you guys all the success in the world(s)!

[Adam Frisby]

Hey LittleWing,

We actually only recently set-up the forums & haven't posted them anywhere (so most of that's actually spambots!).

We've got a bit more history on Facebook (check the GoJiyo page there)

[Glam]

Doesn't work on Linux/Ubuntu
Just logged in through windows system - didn't find anyone online. So those 1.7 millions must be sleeping?

[Patchouli Woollahra]

Well, as much as this all looks wonderful even in its initial Gojiyo form, there's just one little niggle!

Chrome deprecated NSAPI in its most recent builds, and has removed it totally moving forward from Sept 2015, due to what they perceive as its cruftiness and obsolence in terms of security provision.

This means that at some point Gojiyo (and by extension Sinewave.Space) will have to switch from the Unity Web Player to its WebGL version as the UWP relies on a browser supporting NSAPI in order to properly hook into it seamlessly.

Unity has acknowleged that they will not code another API-specific webplayer to service Chrome users, pointing out WebGL publishing and trusting in each web browser's handling of this API as the way forward.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/05/28/web-publishing-following-chrome-npapi-deprecation/

It is however still not as robust and efficient as WebPlayer was, but they're working on it!

In short, Gojiyo/Space is threatened by the inability or laziness of users to switch over to a NSAPI-compliant browser such as Firefox. Unity needs to work fast on getting WebGL publishing to the same standards as its plugin, and Sine Wave must look into whether it is feasible to host Gojiyo/Space in browsers as native WebGL.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

... I think I can see a few other more immediate concerns. I think I need to fix something in my browser, but so far Gojiyo looks oddly off...

https://gyazo.com/1a57ec73d498152e102782fc8f330130

[Adam Frisby]

Hey Patchouli,

You are indeed correct - WebGL is actually something we've been working on for a few months. The good news is we're actually nearly done. We're expecting to put up our WebGL build this month, but likely in the next few days.

Also, that hairball does indeed look odd - I'll get someone to look into it. We just did a big update on Friday last week, and I have no doubt there's a couple of nasty surprises left lurking. Does it persist if you change your graphics settings (there's a slider if you click the 'gear' icon)

Thanks!

[Glam]

Oh, webgl? that's great news! That means it will also run on linux/ubuntu? Cloudparty did, and if i remember correctly they used webgl.

[Adam Frisby]

@Glam: Yes, WebGL is happening - we've also got desktop clients for Linux & OSX happening as well (this weekend infact.)

[Steven Losco]

well this sounds promising and Mr. Frisby certainly has his head on straight about mass VR somewhere in the distance. I like that I could make a MMO out of the box, obviously one would need the programming and creation skills to set it up (yes, even still I would give a go just for fun even though I am not talented in the creative computing). Going to post this on my Twitter for my academic peeps and see how it networks there.

Steven

[Steven Losco]

PS. I LOVE your animations, I still pull out "hola" when I go to listen to music. ;)

[Glam]

Adam, this is wonderful news, really looking forward! :)

[LittleWing]

@ Adam Frisby "Quotes"
"We actually only recently set-up the forums & haven't posted them anywhere (so most of that's actually spambots!)."

Strange how a service that's been around 6 years
verified thru youtube why you recently only set up forums after 6 years or you deleted the old forums that had some less then flattering comments?

Some might wonder why the forum history was wiped clean? it would seem a disservice to any community that a shared personal history that forums are was replaced with 45 days of bot chat.

I also find this who article disingenuous in how it was presented, while what was left out considering it's really a 6 year old company re-branding. + as another poster pointed out will need a serious tech overhaul in the coming future.
(the overhaul might be part of the re-branding)

[Adam Frisby]

Hey LittleWing,

We actually only recently set-up the forums as I said - the reason why is actually because we used to have a social network on the website itself behind the login screen (there was the 3D world, plus the Web social network linked together).

We've changed that about lately, moving that into the 'inworld application' as part of our big 'user profiles' update & dropping the website bit.

We've added forums with that change to make it a bit easier for people who still wanted to communicate on the web, versus in the app. That said, we haven't actually officially opened the forums, besides putting a link in the footer recently -- if anyone does want to use them now though, we will be checking them.

As for rebrand - this is actually a new product - up until now, the only worlds we've operated have been really closed shops (the only people able to play with our toys has been us), what we're launching is the ability for others to make their own like ours, using our tools, linked to the same user accounts & networks, or extend the worlds we've already operated with their own content.

The new product part is the linked platforms & the letting people make their own worlds linked to everything.

What we're inheriting from the worlds we've operated in the past has been some legacy content (being replaced), and our user accounts (why wouldn't we?). We actually think it's a good thing - we've had a bit of experience running big worlds in the past - and we've got a lot of feedback and data from our users about what works and what doesn't.

However, all the code, interface and other bits and pieces (even the avatars) have been rebuilt. If the worlds in question aren't "new", they're certainly worthy of a "sequel/reboot" label; but I think that's splitting hairs.

The big news - and the news I want to focus on - is this: we've got a new technology base (which blows our old ones out of the water), we've got a bunch of linked worlds operating under one label ("sinewave.space"), and for the first time - creators can start making interesting, rich content using it.

And some of the content you can make is potentially pretty cool, and if you're interested in testing it all out - I'd love to hear from you. :) I'm responding to everyone who contacts us individually at the moment, so if you've got concerns or queries, I am happy to answer them.

[Glam]

Adam, i am purely interested in 3d content creation business, which requires not only tech platform but also a user base to sell to. What's your vision/plans/timescale to reach the audience and convert them to regular and active users? What would be your realistic estimate let's say for the end of the year? Thanks

[Adam Frisby]

Hey Glam,

Shoot us a message through our contact form on http://sinewave.space -- I can fill you in a bit on our marketing & distribution plans for the next 6-12 months; but we do have estimates, along with our historical data to back those up.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

Adam: I worked out sometime ago that the issue occurs only when the visual settings are slammed all the way to the left (aka 'drop everything and just focus on keeping the resident inworld even in a crowd'), if it's even one notch to the right from that limit, the viewer will eventually start rendering avatars properly. it goes without saying that slamming it all the way to the right will even put shimmery realtime reflections on some parts of the world (the three ladies who offer user gender/namechange/etc services at the Promenade Fountain are a very obvious example of this), but then framerates take a dive on a notebook GPU.

So far, the smoothness is impressive. There is a bit of lag, but as the servers are hosted far from Singapore it's only natural - just don't count on seeing me ride any of the vehicles.

Haven't seen any breedables yet. I look forward to seeing the potential of that system as well as learning what it takes to define components, behaviors and animation. I would love a venus flycatcher that sings and comes in colors.

Customisation - is a bit of a mixed bag. I've bought a shirt, and I have a set of 'icons' to splash on, but I can't find an 'edit' button anywhere for putting those icons on. I can appreciate limiting the possibilities of what can go on apparel in order to encourage submission of designs as well as reduce copyright theft/posting of shirt art that is potentially unacceptable, but at the least, maybe items that can be customised in some way should have a 'customise' option in their dropdown menu in inventory.

Personal Spaces: way smaller than the average SL sim, but a very acceptable compromise given the cost of owning and holding one. alteration of the building and its environments trades off flexibility for ease of use and speed - it's essentially like putting furniture in a dollhouse rather than building everything from scratch. Lack of options to purchase with ingame Mio understandable given the need to make architecture pay well for competent architects, but perhaps some exclusive buildings that cost a lot and are available only in ingame currency might be a sweetener for rewarding stalwarts of .space, as well as perhaps time-limited releases for special occasions.

Pathfinding: the system has the ability to generate particle trails to denote an obvious walking path when walking on the Noom. This has been done with "Dead Space" and it has its benefits in orienteering residents of .space. I'm not sure if this is a toggle, or if creators are expected to supply a network of pathing nodes to generate paths along. I would have given a arm and a leg to have something like this in SL.

Avatar Navigation: pedestrian. it's got a map. the keys are the classic WSAD/arrow or joypad navigation, there's flight and jumping... .space/Gojiyo DOES have the ability to auto-nav to a point in world by clicking on the ground there. Presumably the toolset is better at figuring out where the ground is, as this is something that never worked properly in SL outside of walking on the terrainmesh, and was eventually removed from the mainviewer. As for the lack of shine - eh, it's walking, what do you want, flowers shooting out everything you walk on?

Instancing: I didn't get a chance to test this, but the public areas seem to be configured to host up to 99 other people. I assume on a really busy night I might have to tweak visuals down to keep a proper frame rate, but I'm looking forward to seeing it hold its own when .space becomes more popular to the intended crowd.

That's all about the size of it. I dropped my name into the content creation list for .space, but as I'm mostly a customs creator and have only four years of experience with building stuff for realtime, I don't expect to go on at this time.