New World Notes

Well-Optimized Alternatives to Resource-Heavy Mesh Bodies for SL

Last week's post on the leading mesh bodies for Second Life causing major performance issues has provoked a pretty heated conversation in comments, with some blaming users (get a better computer!), others blaming Linden Lab (if high poly mesh is a problem, the Lindens shouldn't have allowed it!), to blaming big brands like Maitreya, Belleza and SLINK* (they have a monopoly on the market!),. Others helpfully pointed out some mesh body alternatives that are much better optimized than the market leaders. For instance, writes Fred Beckhusen:

We now have the free Bento Ruth [pictured above] and Roth avatars. They have far fewer polys, and are very good looking, with body, nail and skin HUDSs. Both are free and Open Source with extremely permissive AGPL licensing. Avatars use only two levels of details. For Ruth, these are:
Level of Detail Settings (LOD)
High - Triangles: 11444 Vertices: 8442
Medium - Triangles: 5563 Vertices: 4960

For more details, see this Github page.

SL Marketpage listings here.

Reader Sarali has a whole hosts of suggestions:

Watch: Augmented Reality App Created for Virtual Reality Headset

Last week we were speculating on Philip Rosedale's comment that VR is preferable to AR, since after all, you can use the video camera capabilities of many virtual reality headsets to create an augmented reality experience within VR. And then a guy named TonyVT Skarredghost came by to comment that he'd done exactly that: 

I already do AR with the Focus. (At the link you can also find an opensource plugin for that that I made for Unity) and also mixed reality.  And I can guarantee you that is pretty awesome. And it has the potential of showing a modified view of the world... so not only virtual objects added to the world.

Read about it on his blog post cleverly entitled, "How to create an Augmented Reality app for the Vive Focus in Unity". Tony gets pretty deep into the technical weeds of making AR possible on a VR platform. For instance, it involves hacking the Vive Focus' camera streams:

How Linden Lab Could Create a Minecraft-Style Game Mode in Second Life

Last week's Comment of the Week included the toss-off line "Second Life cannot be changed to be like Minecraft," but reader Will Burns has this week's Comment of the Week arguing just the opposite:

I have to disagree that SL cannot be evolved closer to the Minecraft model. You already have object materials. You already have the damage indicator. There's just no compelling reason to use them. This is because they were never fully fleshed out and implemented as their own options.

That is where LL dropped the ball. Evolving those already existing attributes and giving them purpose baked into the very nature of SL experience itself and not an arbitrary or superficial addition.

By creating the need for it, it makes the experience compelling long term.

Effectively, you'll end up with a Game Mode sim option where items have durability, people have various stats like and RPG, materials can be harvested and used for items to determine durability and so on.

This wouldn't be a foreign concept either, because you'd just be building the mechanics of Life2 HUD and its various components into the grid itself native.

For those who want to set their sim to God Mode, then those game rules are suspended in such spaces and SL operates in those zones like it does now. Leave those zones and the mortality may resume.

Then you start new users out in the mortality mode in an area that can help cater to those needs. They will figure it out from there. Just like in Minecraft where nobody specifically tells you to punch trees. It's emergent behavior.

Yes. In Second Life's early days, the damage-enabled Outlands had much of this spirit and consequently, had a vibrant culture of its own. It really wouldn't take much effort or cost for Linden Lab to experiment with creating a whole new Gamer continent, and see if it gets any traction. And there's already numerous Second Life users building Minecraft-type content. One or two developers could do this in a year or two, so what's the downside?

Philip Rosedale: Why Virtual Reality Offers a Better Consumer Experience Over AR Devices Like HoloLens & Magic Leap

Interesting NWN comment from Second Life/High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale, responding to Magic Leap's just announced, no frillys avatar chat app:

It seems possible that VR headsets like the Quest or Focus, with pass-through video capabilities and wide field of view at a consumer price point ($400) will provide a better experience than can be delivered with AR. You can't see a person's eyes when they are wearing the HoloLens or Magic Leap, so why not just wear a VR headset?

If I'm reading this right, Phillip is arguing that you can use the Quest and Focus' video capabilities to create augmented reality-type experiences within VR. (Whereas you wouldn't be able to do virtual reality-type experiences from within most augmented reality HMDs.) Which is a very valid point. I'm also intrigued by his acknowledgement that lack of eye contact is a problem for both AR and VR:

Since Second Life is So Difficult to Use, Linden Lab Should Pay New Users to Learn How to Use It (Comment of the Week)

Minecraft's simple building interface

Great long comment from Will Clip, who's developed popular games for both Second Life users and for other platforms, responding to the point that understanding Second Life's complexity has become a kind of game in itself:

In my opinion Linden Lab could do so much more helping to ease the 1st steps for new users to improve the user retention rate.

I am a content provider in SL myself. Whenever I find some time to create something new I try to come at it with understanding that for most of the people facing something new, something they are not used to is scary and frustrating.

Creators goal should be to make 1st steps for people when they are trying the new product as easy and fun as possible. Good user interface experience makes distinction between a good and bad product.

Often to the point that even if the product looks better looking, most users will prefer to use the product that is easier to use because using something that is easy to operate is already rewarding by itself.

In my opinion Linden Lab should maybe employ or temporary hire an user interface specialists that would look at SL as a whole and come out with some pointers about how to make SL more easy to use. LL should use the new knowledge to organize content developers, give materials (invest, market) and provide new and better tools for content creation in Second Life.

Will says he's seeing similar complexity in Sansar. But unlike most other virtual worlds and social VR platform, Linden Lab has a key advantage. Which leads Will to propose a novel idea: Pay Linden Dollars to new users to learn how to use Second Life. As he writes:

Second Life's Open-Ended User Interface as an MMO is So Complicated, Mastering the UI is How to Level Up

Pictured: Cassie demonstrating Lelutka's Axis HUD for customizing highly detailed SL Avatar expressions

Great conversation about the difficulty of customizing Second Life avatars, which now include countless user-made systems (like the one above) built on top of the default system, with reader "Scott" making this point:

While I don't disagree that creating a beautiful avi can be complex and difficult for new users, I don't agree with the implication this is a problem for Second Life. I remember the difficulties and frustrations of learning how some of this works. I still don't understand all of it, but it was (and still is) enjoyable to learn. I get a sense of accomplishment. The subtleties of second life avi construction become an "inside joke" with others who have had the same struggles. Not only do you get a sense of accomplishment, but you get the feeling of becoming a member of the "club" who have leveled-up and made a kick-ass avi.

This is very true -- while Second Life is not a traditional MMO, the very complexity of its user-experience has turned avatar customization into a kind of leveling mechanic. (Which is not too different from many traditional MMOs where you can immediately identify veteran players by the special details and features of their avatar.)

Seen this way, buying customization options from other users becomes a short-cut for leveling up:

Creative User Hacks to Second Life Appearance Make Avatar Customization Incredibly Difficult for New Users (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: User-Made Mesh Head Heads-Up Display (reviewed by Cassie here)

Commenting on the appearance of professional makeover agencies in Second Life, reader "Pulsar" points out this is partly the outcome of innovation among the user community, as users came up with creative ways to improve avatar appearance options beyond what the default viewer offered:

And to think that once you could create your own hair style straight from the viewer sliders, as well as everything else (you still can, but it's outdated).

Creative users took advantage of each update and new feature to improve their avatar looks, sometimes even with hacks like the "invisiprim". Avatars became prettier and prettier, even incomparably better, but on the other hand fashion became more and more complex.

Instead of sliders, you had to edit your prim or sculpt attachments, then you had to use alpha layers, then merchants would sell their rigged mesh without setting the attachment point, so you have to carefully "add" it (or add to another attachment point) instead of "wearing" it, in order to not end up naked, just because you grabbed an ice cream. Then appliers, various HUDs, then you have a bunch of products from different brands and that aren't compatible with each other, as well as legacy content, so you have to know what's compatible with.

In other words, with every creative workaround the Second Life community added, avatars became more and more difficult to customize -- and became near impossible for new users:

Sansar User Growth Slowed by Massive Experience Downloads Up to TWENTY-FOUR Gigabytes (Comment of the Week)

A virtual hangout as huge as Skyrim?

"I can give you another reason why Sansar interest is starting to tail off, from my own perspective," writes reader Mondy, commenting on the social VR world's slow user growth:

6 months ago I was pretty much enjoying being able to log in and enjoy pretty much the whole of Sansar in desktop mode, I don't have a VR setup. I could join in with the activities, engage with people on voice or via text. They even set it up so that people in VR could view text chat while using VR. At one time they couldn't even do that, so unless you used voice things were pretty much one sided. Several updates later, despite the minimum requirements not changing a lot of experiences can no longer be reached, places like Draxtor's 114 Harvest experience which so many activities seem to revolve around take up to 24 gigabytes to download.

To put that 24 gigs in context, the file size for the classic game Skyrim -- the entire virtual world and everything in it -- is less than 15 gigs. I confirmed this with a Sansar developer, who also noted that 24 gigs is on the high side, because most Sansar experiences are relatively smaller... 5-8 gigabytes. Which is also still quite massive: Even people with extremely high-end broadband would need 15-30 minutes to download 5-8 gigs, an aeon for a casual social VR experience.

Mondy says some in Sansar's user community have been pretty dismissive of these technical hurdles when they're raised:

Sansar & High Fidelity Not Growing Users Because They Miss the Point of Social Virtual Worlds, Says Expert -- But He May Miss the Point Too

Despite multiple partnerships with major eSports brands and an official tie-in experience for Spielberg's Ready Player One, Sansar's actual usage by actual users hasn't significantly grown. Will Burns, Vice-Chair for IEEE's Virtual Worlds Standard Group, believes the reason for that is obvious, and spells out why in a rather passionate rant:

This isn't a mystery at all.

Sansar misses the point of social virtual worlds, and flies in the face of open world persistent spaces like Second Life in favor of localized spaces that focus on form over function. The overarching mechanic of this approach has been done to death and constantly flopped:

BlueMars
Worlds Inc
Cybertown
and many others

There is an underlying set of "givens" when dealing with this stuff, mostly derived from even the moderate and persistent successes of predecessors. Historically speaking there is plenty of precedent for this stagnation, but nobody wants to acknowledge it; instead plowing ahead and constantly trying to dictate to the market what it wants so long as it's whatever it is these projects are offering while wholesale ignoring both history and precedent in the industry for what actually worked. Ultimately, it is entirely a tone deaf approach to virtual worlds on the whole.

He also addresses a recent conversation I had with him, in which I played devil's advocate and asked, "Where's the evidence there's actual market demand for a metaverse?" Will's take:

Sociologist Meets a Second Life Fairy in the Virtual Woods -- And the Disabled Woman Behind the Keyboard

Powerful comment by Alejandro Salazar, a sociologist reflecting on Tom Boellstorff's US government-funded study Of how virtual worlds affect disabled users. While exploring a forest in Second Life, and came across a fairy, who owned the woods. Then he saw her RL photo in her SL profile: 

[S]he lost two legs, one arm, one eye and can only speak with a voice device. She is a fairy in a forest designed to delve into the history she has created in her forest. It is a beautiful place where you can feel peace. When I started chatting with her, we immediately made a connection and after some time of conversation, she told me her story, that it is difficult for her to leave the house. She only goes to the doctor, some shopping, and occasionally goes to a park.

 

As a sociologist I did a mental exercise made by Max Weber, where we divest our values, thoughts and perspective that every human being makes of ourselves with our own life experience, and I entered in her perspective. Imagine having a life where you can not frequently see someone, without talking to anyone... thanks to Second Life, these people can have human contact, socialize, smile, create, fascinate others and touch our lives. 

He was so moved, he e-mailed Linden Lab's CEO about it: