New World Notes

Linden Lab's Sansar Should Follow Cloud Party Model for Optimized 3D UGC (Comment of the Day)

Last week's post on Linden Lab's challenge with "sub-optimal" 3D user-generated content in Sansar brought up this interesting point from reader Ezra:

Cloud Party had this issue sorted, and Lindens like Philip and Kelly came around to experience it. If Linden Lab was smart, they'd use it.

The system was basically:

1. Have a real material system where normal maps were first class and always on for everyone (as opposed to SL where anyone can, and a lot of people do turn off Basic Shader), and then creators wouldn't be compelled to use vertices for small details.

2. Give the default and any custom avatar skeletons a resource budget, analog to regions in Second Life having a resource budget in the form of Land Impact.

With Cloud Party, creators of skeletons could create "attachment points" and budget out how many triangles could occupy the point.

Combined with similar budgeting for the island/sim itself, and control of how many avatars could be in the island/sim, there was a hard cap on how many triangles would ever be in the scene, not unlike a single player game.

A proper material and rendering system along with resource capping at avatar and sim level is all that's necessary.

Cloud Party was purchased by Yahoo! last year, which brings up another interesting possibility:

Yahoo! Launching Virtual World With Cloud Party Tech?

Yahoo! just acqui-hired the developers of Cloud Party, the web-based virtual world NWN has blogged about a lot, given its backing by Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka, and its general coolness as an immersive, easy-to-use, user-generated world with its own econony. Marisa Mayer and her crew at Yahoo! apparently agrees with this assement, because not only did they buy the company and hire the staff, but when I asked Cloud Party CEO Sam Thompson for a comment, a Yahoo! spokesperson replied for him, sending along this boilerplate reply:

Yahoo has acquired Cloud Party, a company that has created a virtual 3D experience, directly in users’ browser. With Cloud Party, users can build and create a world, customize an avatar, and share easily on the web without any downloads or plug-ins. The Cloud Party team is extremely committed to user experience and to the creativity that their product released in people. We’re excited to merge their unique perspective and experience with a team that is just as passionate about gaming.

Reading between the lines, I think this means it's very likely Yahoo! is getting into the user-generated virtual world business. Here's what I mean:

Cloud Party's Cyn Skyberg Contrasts Its Terms of Service with Second Life's ToS: "Cloud Party Does Not Claim Any Ownership Right in Any Member Content”

A new blog post by Cyn Skyberg of Cloud Party, the web-based virtual world, explicitly contrasts Cloud Party's Terms of Service with that of Second Life, which now claims rights over "all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever in all formats". Unlike Second Life, notes Skyberg, here's Cloud Party's policy:

In short, our TOS states “Cloud Party does not claim any ownership right in any Member content”.

Her post is rich in Metaversal irony. For one thing, Cloud Party counts Cory Ondrejka as an investor and adviser, a co-founder of Second Life, and during Ondrejka time as Linden Lab's CTO, the company asserted no ownership rights over its users' content. Even more keenly, Skyberg is formerly Linden Lab's VP of Community. And Cyn tells me she is now emphasizing this part of Cloud Partly's Terms of Service to assure its own user community:

Cloud Party Becomes First Virtual World to Officially Support the Oculus Rift; Ex-Linden Cyn Skyberg: "We Are Getting Very Close to the Original Concept of VR"

Cloud Party, the web-based virtual world, now officially supports the Oculus Rift via a plug-in -- read about it here on the company blog, and if you have a dev kit, follow the instructions for connecting Cloud Party to your Rift headset.

As such, Cloud Party becomes the first virtual world to officially support the Oculus Rift. Second Life developer Linden Lab was expected to unveil its support for the Rift last Summer, but so far, only this unofficial third party viewer for SL is currently available. However, Cloud Party is backed and advised by SL co-creator Cory Ondrejka, and ex-Linden Lab VP Cyn Skyberg now heads up Cloud Party's community management.

Speaking of which, here's what Cyn Skyberg says about the experience of using Cloud Party through the Rift (that's her pictured above):

"My personal description is 'Crap! That is way more impressive than I ever thought it would be!' The level of detail is amazing." Some users may experience a feeling of seasickness at times -- a sensation common to every platform running the Rift -- but even then, she goes on, "It is very, very compelling."

For her, Rift integration with Cloud Party gets us closer to virtual reality as we originally conceived it -- and platforms like Second Life were originally built for:

Cloud Party Adds Free Customizable Spaces, Social Sharing

Cloud Party has a bunch of new updates, as I just learned from Cyn Skyberg, the former Linden Lab VP who's now Community Director at the web-based 3D world co-funded by SL co-founder Cory Ondrejka. In brief, the major updates are free customizable spaces, and social sharing features that make it easier to find and promote cool Cloud Party places. Here's Cyn's breakdown:

"In a nutshell, we've made small space free to use - we're going for fast to load, lightweight experiences that anyone can use easily. You can upload templates (we have a few starter ones, more to come) to create a quick meeting or chat space, have a party or just hang out with friends without a lot of work. The free small spaces are totally customizable, just as any part of Cloud Party is, and allow you to have a full and rich experience with very little setup."

Cloud Party's updated homepage displays a bunch of user-made builds listed according to most "Likes", which is part of the social sharing action. More about Cloud-berg from Skyberg:

Cloud Party Marks 1 Year Anniversary With $1K Art Contest

Cloud Party is marking its first year of operation with a 3D virtual art contest, which is being judged by the editor of Artinfo magazine, with the winner taking a cash prize of $1000. Read all the details here. With that kind of money, the winner could rent a 500 meter x 500 meter Cloud Party island for almost an entire year. (Or alternately, they could spend that $1000 to cover about three months rent of a Second Life sim.)

Cloud Party Needs Community Tools to Grow (Comment of the Week)

Responding to news that ex-Linden VP Cyn Skyberg has joined Cloud Party's development team, reader Ezra made a compelling argument on what the company needs to do next:

"The social and community tools are still very much lacking. There's no radius based chat (whisper, say, shout). There's no groups and so no sub-communities with specific interests and purposes, collective ownership of land, isolated chat, notices and hierarchies. The few social tools Cloud Party does have like friend lists leave a lot to be desired; like more prominent and fleshed out profiles connected to things like people search.

"The tools for developers have been above and beyond great from the start and have only gotten better. Things like island prices have satisfied and been little complained about, and while they're far from getting Cloud Coin as fluid as L$, progress continues to be made there as well. I'll bet though absolutely no one is heaping praise on how good socializing and community building is in Cloud Party. It's almost non-existent.

Cloud Party Picks Former Top Linden Cyn Skyberg to Become World's Community Director

This is big news for Cloud Party, the web-based virtual world backed by Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka: Cyn Skyberg, who was Linden Lab's Vice President of Customer Relations for many years, has become the company's Director of Community and Communications. "Essentially I'll be handling all community interactions and experiences, new user experience, and internal and external communications," Cyn tells me. "I'm the first non-technical hire, so we're still figuring out where I can be most helpful. Luckily I have some experiences to draw on!"

That's an understatement, because Cyn ran Second Life's community and support organization for five years. After being laid off by Linden Lab in the bloodbath of 2010, she had a stint with the Wikimedia Foundation, and with that impressive resume, probably could have worked anywhere. So it's notable she's chosen to return to virtual worlds. Here's why she did it, and joined Cloud Party:

"A few things really," she tells me. "The tech is awesome, really amazing. So that's one. Secondly, I liked the emphasis on simplifying the way you build and create your own objects; the new build tools completely change the playing field."

But Cyn tells me she had an even more important motivation:

Cloud Party Adds Mesh-Based, Collaborative Building Blocks Which Sound Super Superior to SL's Prim-Based System

Cloud Party has just released simplified, collaborative, mesh-based block-building tools to its web-based user-generated virtual world backed/advised by Second Life co-creator Cory Ondrejka. The tools, Cloud Party CEO Sam Thompson tells me, "are designed to be incredibly easy to learn and use, yet still very powerful." To promote those tools, the company is holding a house-building contest with 1000 Cloud Coins (worth $50) to the winner.

Block-building tools sound similar to Second Life's original prim-building tools, but Thompson tells me there's some key differences, which to make me, make this new system sound quite more kickass:

"One of the biggest differences is that you are actually generating a mesh itself, not a collection of prims," he explains, "which means a large improvement in performance. By default, objects are on a simple grid (like LEGOS) which means collaborative builders can start in different areas and their builds will merge nicely. We also support multi-resolution editing, meaning you can combine blocks at a much smaller grid size to add details, while still getting the benefits of the default grid size."

More features:

Cloud Party Can Run on Mobile (With Some Geeky Nudging)

Some enterprising Cloud Party users are playing around with hacks that get the web-based virtual world to run in a smartphone or tablet, and getting some pretty good results. Like this screencapture from Jesse, who ran Cloud Party on his Nexus 4, and got about 8-10 frames per second, which is not great, but not totally terrible. This is possible because Cloud Party is driven by WebGL, so you can run it on many mobile/tablet browsers: