New World Notes

Tech Exec Argues It's Possible to Launch a New Second Life That's Teleportable from the Current One (Comment of the Week)

Interesting comment from Luther Weymann, a veteran tech exec who plays and thinks a lot about Second Life, apparently responding to Katharine Berry (former teen SLer who's now an engineer at Google) and her observation: "Second Life feels to me like it has stagnated, and I do not know whether you could fix that without losing a lot of what Second Life is and why it remains popular among its users." In contrast to that, Luther argues that a new SL is relatively easy to launch:

The code that provides for a single login into multiple secure applications and databases across multiple disparate operating systems has long been established in the mainframe world. The 3M company in St Paul solved that in the early 1980s. Their problem was how to get consolidated business reporting across so many custom applications and multiple unrelated operating systems. During this early 1980's project, 3M also solved the passing of database tables from one database application to another database application across multiple operating systems. Today, that is how the mainframe world does its consolidated business reporting.

With the financial resources, the right people, the vision, and desire, Second Life could have a new grid, a new Second Life world. And in that new world, your current avatar could seamlessly teleport into that new Second Life world from our current SL and then teleport back. What assets it can go back and forth with is the real issue.

The mainframe business has been solving highly complex database problems like this for the past 35 years and making it work. I've seen it myself. I remain totally convinced this is attainable for Second Life.

This sounds roughly right, and I'm not sure asset transfer is that much of a real issue:

SL Mesh Demos Demonstrating More Triangles Doesn't Mean More Detail

Quick: Before pressing Play on the video above, which set of SL mesh shoes and shirts are more detailed, and which have more triangles? The answer, as they say, May Just Surprise You. 

This video demo via reader Nadeja, who posted them as a response to last week's post, "Does The SL Community Care Enough To Clamor For Well-Optimized Mesh?" It's a perfect way of refuting the commonly held assumption that with mesh, more triangles means more detail. Not at all, not at all.

"Adding triangles helps only to some extent, but then it becomes wasted resources," as Nadeja writes in Comments. "Optimization means to find the right trade between visual and resources, to get the best look at the smallest cost."

Look closer at this comparison of tops:

The top on the left, she notes, has "[l]ess than half of the triangles and it even has wrinkles. You optimize for the platform you have. You did that in the 90s and early '00s as well. Better shaders would allow more for sure, but that doesn't mean that you can't do a better job... The evidence with similar models shows otherwise."

But surely this doesn't apply to full mesh avatars, some skeptics may say.  Nadeja has you covered there too - watch below:

Does the SL Community Care Enough to Clamor for Well-Optimized Mesh?

Pictured: Slink Redux body bundle, a rare example of popular SL mesh avatar content that's also well-optimized

Last Friday I wrote about the new Black Dragon viewer update which checks whether a mesh avatar is well-optimized or not. Reader "Down With Underboob" (LOL) tried it out in SL over the weekend, to see how much mesh content was poorly optimized, and came away shocked:

So I took Black Dragon out for a spin at a fairly busy club. There's only one avatar in the place who is "decently optimized" per the report. This guy is wearing a system avi and system clothes... I like what BD offers, but please get real. Nobody wants to go back to looking like an avatar from 2008. Photographers like to use BD's capabilities, but again, they're not going to use system avatars to pass these complexity tests.

Show me some mesh bodies, heads, and clothes that pass these tests and don't look like they're from 2008, and I'll consider trying them. Does he think we're all going to run around bald? I don't want Warcraft hair in SL. Until then, I'll stick with what I have. I'm satisfied with the 15-20 fps I get at this club and I can get upwards of 100 FPS when I'm hanging out on my platform at home in Bellisseria.

I'd also point out that he's tilting at windmills if he thinks designers are going to start posting complexity/triangle counts in their vendor ads.

I'd say it's the responsibility of the many SL bloggers and YouTubers to report on the complexity/triangle counts of the content they feature, warning them that high poly items will likely cause lag. Failing to do so would be like a real life fashion reporter failing to mention the clothing items they're recommending are made of toxic materials.

As to her request for optimized mesh to try out, Slink is among the few mesh body creators well-known for optimization.

But is there a market for good optimization in general? Reader "Seph" thinks not so:

How Virtual Worlds Can Benefit Senior Citizens (Comment of the Week)

My "How avatars change who we are" article for Samsung EDGE's Components mentioned a study suggesting that being Einstein in VR seems to improve a user's IQ, and longtime reader Luther Weymnn notes that this phenomenon also seems to happen in non-VR virtual worlds:

Over the past decade, I've chatted with dozens of SL content creators who are between the ages of 65-85. Previously, I thought that I was in a tiny group of senior citizens using SL, but I was wrong. In my 70's having SL as a hobby and creating content a little bit every day has been a powerful method to keep my retired from business brain sharper than most other activities. And this is what all of the senior citizen's content creators I've chatted with agreed upon. Having to creatively think our way through SL product content creation is a terrific way to keep old brains thinking creatively and staying sharp. I attempted to tell my neighbor about the benefits of building in SL. He is also my doctor for the past 35 years. But, all I could get out of him was, "uh-huh, ok, now let's talk about getting you to exercise more." Oh well.

Pulsar concurs, suggesting a reason why the Einstein experiment works, and how it might translate to non-VR worlds:

If Games Are Art, And Second Life is a Game, Then Second Life is a Work of Collective Art (Comment of the Week)

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Great comment from reader madeline blackbart bringing much needed nuance to the eternal "Is Second Life a game" conversation:

The whole "SL is not a game" or getting mad at that comparison always bothered me. It's rooted in the outdated concept that video games are toys and not the legitimate form of art that it is.

I mean I know how the concept arose. Namely that after the video game market crash (in the US specifically I believe it wasn't as bad in europe?) Nintendo more or less revived it by marketing video games as a high end toy for kids. I think for many people (not just in SL) who are not gamers the association with games as toys still exists which is a genuine shame.

In my opinion video games are definitely on par with movies in artistic merit. Look at games like Gris and exploration of the stages of grief through color and gameplay. Or Spec Ops The Line which explores PTSD in a way that puts you the player in the place of the sufferer, or Cuphead that utilizes hand drawn animation (a dying art sadly). These are things that require very talented artists and programmers to create who deserve far more credit then they get.

I'd add multi-player games as some examples here, such as the acclaimed game Journey, where the interaction of two or more players creates something profound.

Here's the problem with denying Second Life is a game, Ms. Blackheart goes on:

Gumroad Online Marketplace "Another Peg in Place for the Metaverse"

I mentioned how there's a growing real cash economy for VRChat-based content on Gumroad, an online marketplace for digital content, and reader Joey1058 explored the site deeper, then came back with this brief report:

I took a look at Gumroad. This site is awesome. It's not tied specifically to a particular VR world. This means that somewhere up the road, creators can expand their line for any world they see fit to sell to. One more peg in place for the metaverse!

Quite possibly! In all honesty I didn't know much about the site before this, but it claims that nearly 72,000 creators are selling content on the platform; according to SimilarWeb, Gumroad gets over 12 million monthly visits in recent months, which is quite decent. My pal Leigh Alexander sells her fiction on Gumroad and has this endorsement on the homepage, which is good enough for me.

Also to Joey's point, the content for sale on Gumroad isn't locked to any specific virtual world. (It even has some Second Life-related items for sale.) I don't know if Gumroad will ultimately become the main commerce site for the Metaverse (single or plural), but I think he's right that some kind of independent marketplace like this will be key to making it viable.

Saying "Second Life is not a game" is an excuse for not demanding a better & more fun virtual world (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: A nightclub experience... in Grand Theft Auto V Online

While the "Is Second Life a game?" argument has basically gone since SL launched, reader "0xc0ffea" (who also co-hosts the largest SL community on Reddit) posts a fresh perspective: Whatever SL is on an ontological level, not treating it as a game has contributed to its lack of evolution:

 SL users and, more importantly, its developers need to play more games.

There is a shocking disconnect when switching between SL and modern games (even 7 year old games like GTA5). By comparison, SL barely runs, fundamentally fails to operate as a social platform the moment you get a few people in the same location (or try to converse in group IM), lags to hell and back, and it's users have been conditioned to blame each other for the overall poor experience.

A little gaming makes it very apparent that SL's technical woes are not caused by that one person who dared to wear those shoes with that hair, happened to have a scripted attachment, or had the audacity to load slowly.

"SL is not a game" has been a handy excuse to gloss over it being architecturally stuck in the days of single core processors.

Here's why, she goes on:

Does the Metaverse Require Real World Money?

Last week reader " irihapeti " argued that an essential facet of the metaverse is "[the] ability to deposit and withdraw my money safely and securely, so that I can buy stuff/experiences for any particular world/game/viewport of the metaverse and/or get paid for stuff/experiences that I provide in any of the different offerings/views."

Some other readers pushed back on this notion, and  so irihapeti expanded further:

Money is quite important to stimulate User Generated Content. That people can make stuff/experiences for use by other people like themselves within the various views and get paid to do so.

I think that most people would quite like a single wallet (as Joey mentions) to connect their RL payment method too. And from the wallet buy the different tokens (in whatever form they are for each of the views) to buy the stuff within the different views

Buying different tokens is no different to buying USD, Euro, Pound, AUD, etc to buy stuff in each countries local shops

And as I mentioned, the way I think to do is this is with a Tilia-like facility. [The Linden Lab spinoff company] It manages the trading of tokens between the users, and their conversion to to/from RL fiat currencies. We need only connect our RL payment method to this one point.

When we don't have a wallet then we are stuck with connecting our RL payment method to each and every world/view.

I seriously suspect irihapeti is right that Linden Lab very much hopes Tilia becomes the payment manager for the metaverse (or metaverses). But lately I've been thinking about the first point quite a bit.

Is it really important to have a real world money exchange feature in a metaverse to encourage user-generated content?

Black Dragon Creator Praises Optimization of Slink Mesh Bodies -- And Challenges Creators Like Maitreya to Follow Slink's Example

Black Dragon viewer creator NiranV, who has been ranting about the utter environmental disaster that most SL mesh bodies are, has rare words of praise (along with some advice) for the Slink mesh bodies created by Siddean Munro:

The body being 15k triangles is pretty good. That's really good optimized, although the hands and feets weighting in at 63k alone is quite heavy, there's still some work to do there.

I'd start by not bundling hands and feet together and rather making them a "pick-one" scenario where you attach/detach only the one you like. That alone would save a tremendous amount of triangles. Further she could make use of Bento to offer the "styles" of feet as animation override, given that the styles are things like normal, standing on tip toes etc. Anything else would fall under the pick-one scenario anyway.

To summarize this, there's still a bit to go but this is definitely the right way to go and other creators like Maitreya should definitely have a look at this example how to do it.

Alicia responds by adding more background on Slink feet -- and problems Slink faces when trying to compete against market leader (and leader in poor optimization) Maitreya:

The Metaverse We Want Isn't About Bridging 3D Content, But People

Really great comment from " irihapeti", responding to Jim Purbrick's thoughts on making a metaverse that operates like a system of links between different 3D platforms and experiences:

I think that we have to get away from stuff (rendered objects) as the driver of how we think about the metaverse. As while we do this then is a circular conversation about this render engine, that render engine, some other render engine, and how they can all be reconciled so that we can take our stuff with us where ever we go.

I don't think it is about this, because it is endlessly circular. New technologies come and old technologies go. Stuff gets obsoleted as new stuff is created/made.

So what remains constant in all of this ?

We do, the people.

Here's what irihapeti means: