The future of SL: Why not help make it happen!

Hullo! Back from the holidays I see?

All right, I'm not responding to any specific person, but let's think on this:

We have no idea if SL will become the next standard in a 3D platform that can be used over the web (not to replace, but in addition!), or if it will go the way of betamax. Or video disks, or anything else. What we DO know is this:

People do want a 3d interface, or we would still have MUDs and MUSHes as opposed to Dungeons & Dragons online and World of Warcraft. It's a given now. It's going to happen, since it IS happening.

What I think we are needing though, is a standard! Think on this, what if your avatar could login to a news site, debate at a round table with dozens of others on the price of gas, and then later allow you to login to a fantasy world that allows you to gear up and fight the dark horde? What if the way our avatar looked in the fantasy world was our favorite avatar with a elf or orc template over it that modded it slightly to look more like it should?

Heck, we already do that NOW. How many forums are you on that you tend to use the closest variation to your favorite online handle?

Uh huh. Gotcha!

What i want to see SL become is a platform that has all the tools needed to be whatever we need from it. Want to make an online version of Valley of Frozen Tears, where fey creatures hold sway and humans think they're a myth? Load up some servers with the proper landscapes and link them together. Have some friends create the avatar templates and script the combat rules and devices visitors might need. Create NPC avatars scripted to react in certain ways, and setup sp staff can override them as needed.

Then make a small Sim on the side for an art show. Build a museum floating on a cloud with golden gates and fill it with 3d scans of statues and high-res replicas of paintings. Add the auto-comment function where the artist can leave a recording about his work...

And so on.

People LOVE 3D. It's a proven technology! Saying people don't want a 3D web is fine, but they DO want a 3D interface added to it. I just think SL is the technology to help make that happen!

<looks back and covers his face>
I just waved a fanboi flag... Didn't I?

Sorry.

Anyway. The point is, as SL is debugged, cleaned, improved, and rebuilt, we could have a multi-function tool to build all kinds of communities! We could wander worlds made by thousands of creatives, instead of just a few worlds made by companies that funded them...

I'm not worried about the meta-verse, I want the MULTI-VERSE!

<notices the flag is out again, and gives up>

Ok. So I'm a fanboi. At least I'm enjoying myself!

You know, I have a question for you.

Do you think that a person can be hired on by a company for full-time work through SL?

Do you think that companies are interested in hiring creatives in SL? Do you think they are interested in having employees that telecommute through SL? Do you think they would be paid in RL cash or $L? What are your overall thoughts on it?

Not really a side-track as much as another aspect of the same discussion...

No argument here!! ;0 <3 2d


That is always a factor in any business decsion, but if the audience is there, someone will make the attempt. The focus now should be twoards making the aquisition of that audience as easy as possible and making commerce and businesslike interaction more possible. Open standards and open source are what I believe will give us the best tools for the job.



Flash is great for a lot of things... But I see Second Life or rather the open standards developed as Second Life becomes the 3d web as THE platform for 3D aplcations of all types... Develop one fully standard compliant in .Net / Mono and compile for Systems from SGI to Windows x86. Now every system you can think of can display and interact with 3d content. No need to develop a Linux version of your 3d aplication much less Solaris OS or BeOS.

Hey guys, just a friendly note, don't let my posts come off one-sided. I am certainly all for these ideas cause I love 3D myself. Absolutely love it. I just have this difference in vision comparing the Web now (and the evolving potential it still has) to a 3D Web when looking at it from the business aspect. I agree on your thoughts about the business aspect, Foolish, but there is more to it that I can just only make theories about. As I was saying, we will have to see how society evolves into this.

...

Foolish, in regards to your questions. Yes, I could see companies doing that. But initially there has to be some business decisions about whether they should. Mainly so for finding effective ways to market their product, service or vision. Very unlikely they will just hire you for the hell of it.

Telecommuting already happens in Second Life and in most of our world. Now, how that 3D Web tool can used to do telecommuting is something to consider. If you're going to do scripting, design or modeling then sure. Though, if you're doing it to remote into a backend server so that you can quickly troublshoot an issue cause a client is about to have a cow, more than likely not cause I certainly would not want my bandwidth and time consumed from having to work through a 3D immersion. I think we can all can pretty much see the pros and cons a particular tool can have when comparing them to one another (pretty much what I hinted in my business aspect).

RL currency to L$? Well, people do business using Paypal so I don't see much difference. Gives us options, right? Sounds good to me. Let's say we are evolved into the 3D Web realm. I think by then there will be a way doing cash flow without having to deal with Second Life being in the middle. It will be more like Paypal plugged into the 3D Web.

Well I think I am going to weigh in on this. As far as the whole 3d web goes I don't think that is in the forseable future. It's inefficent. The way people interface with a computer is a 2 dementional imput (mouse and keyboard) and the way it is output is a 2 or3 demensional image approximated 2 dementional display (crt, lcd, magic eye poster). Thusly it is most time efficient to operate in a 2 dementional web. The moment a 3d input and output (in my opinion input is more a priority), as 3 demensions can be approximated on a display) a web built like SL will become desirable as the norm. All that asside I think its time to think about the now issues.

I believe alot of the current problems root issues is trust and credibility, which is hard to establish at a glance. Thats what the ratings system was for, but that sure didn't work out well. The current idea seems to be your account status to establish a baseline credibility,which I think is someone ineffective. I think it would be an interesting to apply the base concept of a web of trust to Second Life. As I conceptualize it you could mutually form 'trust' with someone or independantly 'distrust' someone and some sort score could be calcualted on a random individual based on who has mutual trust them and whom you distrust. The decentralized nature of a web of trust lends it well to sl, as it would be harder to corrupt (see mass negitive rating someone), and could manifest its self other than they way I invision it being applied. In theory this score could be tied into land tools. Thats where my train of thought has been going recently. Not sure if anything will come of it though.

It would not be proper to let such a great topic die ;0 Some essays on open standards ;0

Open Standards: Principles and Practice
-Bruce Perens
http://perens.com/OpenStandards/

Open Standards, Open Formats, and Open Source
-Davide Cerri and Alfonso Fuggetta
http://www.davidecerri.org/en/doc/openness.pdf

The Principles of Open Standards
-Ken Krechmer
http://www.csrstds.com/openstds.html


Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard

Speaking from the position of toolbuilder for a moment, I agree. However, there has been little more than lukewarm response from LL for said tools.

In light of the success of the Prim Mirror (which Starax deserves more credit for than I), many people swarmed the feature suggestions forum asking for that to be added to the client. Very simple addition, already written for them, and... well. We don't have it.

Build an offline builder, send off an email seeing what they think and... barely a response. If any.


It's not that these things aren't happening -- it's that Linden Lab's priorities are their shareholders and income. Customer service ranks below these two by design. So frankly, I think they're just too busy holding down the fort and making money than planning for proper growth of the platform. =|


That said, I personally think the architectural flaws of SL (prims being one of them) warrant a complete rewrite of the way these things are done. "SL 2.0" should be a right and proper new application, but in terms of short-term shareholder value, that brings next to nil. It probably won't happen.



And if it doesn't get made here, someone else will.

I think they're just a small company working on a big project and are unable to respond or impliment every feature request.


OPEN SOURCE
OPEN STANDARDS


My dream is that Linden Lab decides one day soon to package up their source and drop it on the website with the note "Yeah, so this is what we got so far.. have at it"

Well, to be fair, we don't know how many programmers they hav and how big the source tree has gotten.

Something DID occure to me, but it's just a wild thought that ran through my head:

What if LL was currently developing their 2.0 version of Second Life, and using the 1.X version to test the reaction to certain features? I believe that they have already pointed out that upgrading the current source code was problematic, which is why we have not only had a delay of it happening, but they pointed out it probably would NOT happen anytime soon.

Well, as a programmer, I can say beyond any doubt that when a program becomes impossible to program, you normally build a whole new version of it and copy the useful parts of the old into the new framework. This allows for faster development than 'building from scratch', and helps to keep compatability when being worked on.

Just thoughts. Possibilities. Probably NOT correct. But it came to me in a fever induced haze and thought it was worth discussing...

*coughs* https://gna.org/projects/libsecondlife/ *coughs*

Uhh. We still have lots of MUDs/MUCKs/MUSHes along with DDO, WoW, etc. They are still quite popular.



I use a different avatar/name/persona on most forums for one simple reason: Context. It doesn't make any sense to put my fantasy personas into a business venue in the same way I am sure my Dragon avatars would not be welcome in a business meeting. Hell, that happens as it is now in SL. I have been invited to weddings and parties but told that I have to "humanize". I refuse (I don't think I even have my starting form anymore, either), so I get told not to come because the folks that invited me don't want to get in trouble with the hosts. Goreans (for example) would ban me from their sims on sight.

I think the same concept holds true in the mystical, magical (and quite ridiculous) 3D Web Platform world. It's all about Context, and that is not something which can be solved with techno glitz and glamour.



I don't understand; we don't have this capability now?



Again, what part of this cannot be done now (or in the past, even)? Why do we need to make SL the ubiquitous "3D Web" platform to do that?



People love a lot of things, in the context of what it can do for them. Sure, 3D is a proven technology, but is it a proven solution for most problems? I don't think so. Personally, I don't necessarily want a 3D interface added to the web. Maybe some elements of one, but I don't want to "real-ize" sitting down, opening a newspaper, having to zoom in on the words and pictures (let alone loading up a client to do so and then waiting longer to stream-load the data). I simply want to read the news. A 2D web works FAR better for that.



I don't see any limits to that happening as SL is today. There are already a bunch of "worlds" out on the Grid that have all manner of communities in and around them. Most of them made by individuals or small, private groups with little commercial interest.

You just gave away an incredible business idea. How generous of you.

It takes full advantage of the number #1 rule: Find a niche in the market, an opening, something that people need but don't have.


Troy

Not really. Are there any MUDs with several million accounts?

Not many.

Pretty big.

You can quote me on that!

Well. To be fair, the largest obstacles to effective community building at present are:


* Lack of proper land transfer procedures, such that a customer is double-billed on tier if they wish to move to a new (mainland) location. Many ideas were cited to fix this, but none went in last I checked.

* Prohibitively high startup costs; $1,250 is a bit much for just one sim, plus $200 per month. SL would never be able to compete with colos or private boxes at this cost of hardware.

* Inability to "shard" the experience ("sign up for SL, log in here" instead of "sign up for my community"

* Highly limiting norms of the software (ie. no space sims)

* And, overall, the fact that nothing in SL is truly owned


So really, forming a community in Second Life is frighteningly like running a franchise. While not impossible, these are key things that need to be addressed.

Seeing how much virtual land needs in terms of server capacity and bandwith I tend to think that perhaps something a bit more peer-to-peer is needed to get the cost down. $1250 and $200 per month is way too much for a sim, at least with the small area and prim limits that they have.

No, but there are probably close to a million MUDs out there.

My point is that a lot of people still play MUDs. No one MUD is huge, but that doesn't make them any less popular. They are, in a way, kinda like private islands in SL. Not a lot of people hang around any one private island, but there are a lot of them and, all together, make SL a pretty popular place.

Hard numbers at last.

I can only speak for the community I have been in since my day 1 in SL, and I think it is quite well-built, and is quickly becoming well-organized: the Isle of Wyrms. They are a wonderful group of people, much like the best communities I have been in other worlds.

That said, I agree that SL still needs some better community tools, and that there are some limits to the types and kinds of communities that can be built here. On that latter point, I would argue that such will be the case for a while to come yet.



I would have to disagree with you there. Those prices are very much in line with average low-end equipment and colo costs (I've been an ISP since 1999, and paid quite a bit more than that for my equipment and colo fees). $1250 is damn cheap for a decent server (and I am talking about a real server, not your average consumer box). $195 a month is also within a very reasonable range of low-end colo rates, especially for a managed system.



Well, single sign-on has been a holy grail for the online segment of the IT industry for many years, so I wouldn't put that down as a bad thing so quickly. Now, having the ability to tie permissions, rights, roles, and other customized metadata to a centralized login is also very desirable, and I agree that SL probably falls short here as well.



I think that will probably be the case in the majority of MMO-esque situations. Maybe if you can truly get a distributed DB to work, it might be remedied, but that is going to take some serious magic to accomplish.

One must remember, however, that when you purchase a sim you don't get a full colo or server. You get a half, a quarter, or in the "low-density" category being kicked around, a tenth of one. A shared box.

Now, I don't know the exact specs of the hardware they use, but personal experience says colos and private boxes could effectively "win" in this category, just by virtue of shell access.

Which, come to think of it, is something that was asked for some time ago.

Actually, as far as I have been told by the owner of the Isle sims, a single private island is placed on a dedicated server. The Large islands are put on up to 4 servers, and the OpenSpaces are put 4 to a box.

I have yet to confirm this myself, but she indicated it came from her Linden Isle Liaison, so I would tend to think it is correct.

Now that doesn't necessarily apply to mainland areas, but that is not what we are talking about here.

For the purposes of SL, there is no need for shell access, since the servers are fully-managed. So, that is not a negative at all; it is a positive for the vast majority of people who wouldn't know what shell access is, let alone how to use it.

As I understand it from various things that have been said by the Lindens:

* each sim is run on one CPU in a multi-CPU box. Currently, all of the servers are four cpus or more (there used to be single and dual CPU boxes too, but they've all been upgraded)

* There are no "large islands", at least not in the sense of a larger than normal sim. There might be four sims that happen to be arranged into one landmass, but it's exactly the same as any other four individual sims.

* OpenSpaces run 16 to a box, 4 per CPU, I believe. They are the same hardware and the same software, just with lower performance and limits due to quadrupling their number on the server.

Well, Overall, we know that SL could use several things then:

A decentralized system for storing data, so that a group of sims might have one asset server.

A seamless way to intigrate multiple sim regions owned by differing people. Not visually, par-se, but by having scripted objects work from one sim to another, if allowed.

A way to easily mod an avatar so that is can be made to llok like it belongs in any environment. Making an avi slightly thinner and giving pointed ears in an elven set of sims, a TRON outfit and look in a sci-fi region. Perhaps even furry mods if in a furry sim. All of these mods would try and keep the basic features of the original avatar, but overlay slight modifications on based on the sim settings.

We already have a lot of features that can be fun:

We can build drones that wander sims and collect information for us. We can build devices that work even when we are not there. All of this allows for very advanced usage of a 3D environment that borders on the sci-fi. How many fictions have to seen that mentioned such things?

It could even be profitable. Charge pennies for CPU cycles for offline devices to do things while the user is offline, anyone?

;0 I'm once again reposting from another thread.. My apologies to Yiffy Yaffle for movng his comments out of original context.
Original thread: /13/98/113908/1.html
Yiffy's post: /13/98/113908/2.html#post1126509


Open sourcing the client would give us far more than just little gui changes. Well, let us just say that there would probaly be a total GUI overhaul. And like you say special features.. Hopefully not as entire new client releases, but through a plugin interface.. command line clients.. text based clients... 2d clients.. Imagine that ;0 a 2d client that uses your profile picture as your in world representation.. Truth is though, things like that are already starting to happen through libsecondlife...


Why does it matter if they own the server? If they are not the kind of people you want to associate with, why worry about what they want to do with their land/servers?

Also, not an issue. I could host my website with the some guy running a webserver off a coke machine, but why would I do that? There are services that guarentee 99% uptime and have quality tech support already.. Dedicated servers cost like $100 a month and up. Imagine if a respected hosting company set up a grid of shared server hosting where they sell sims by the parcel.. Just like Linden Lab ;0 Now imagine if they signed a contract with LL to get their servers connected to the main grid.. or at least as an island.. Before that happens, you will probably have people hosting sims off their breadbox... You're not going to live there, I'm not going to live there, but I doubt anyone running a server on their breadbox is doing it to sell real estate.


What exactly is the L$ worth and where does it come from?

Your L$ balance is worth what some other guy who also uses Second Life is willing to pay for it. It's really just a note in some database at Linden Lab that says. "Joe has L$500 / Joe paid Jack L$100 / Jack Has L$100 / Joe Has L$400." The fact that Jack gave Joe 48 Yen for that L$ is irelevant.

Maybe Joe bought a Furry av for his L$100, and then Jack sold his L$100 to Jill for virtual sex. And Jill sold her L$50,000 in virtual whoring profits to Clark for $250US.

Clark used his newly aquired L$50,000 to rent land from Penny's virtual estates.

Penny pays WeHost4U $150 a month for the use of a server which is connected to the grid. Penny collects L$50,000 a month from Clark and sells it back into the market to pay for her value added land rental business.

It's possible that Clark did not even need L$ though Penny accepts them just like she accepts credit card or paypal... whatever works.


If the user has an issue with his or her land. They contact their provider. I hope would know who you purcased your land from...

If Penny owns the land your rent or purchased.. Penny is your support contact.

If you own a server, contact your hosting provider.

If you purcahsed land from Linden Lab, contact them...

If you don't know who you bought it from maybe you shoudn't have purcahsed it.. None the less support of some kind should be available to contact in the land menus if that were the case.

If your client screws up contact whoever made it, or ask in some forum......

Edit: This is just like using any website service or browser...



I don't see how this equals griefing... Sure as the system is now... the client has far too much trust, but if the project were to be open sourced, all the vectors for such grief and exploitation would be in the purblic view.. And when your bugs are public, you better fix them fast right?

The fact that John Public doesn't program or compile his own client is not even an issue either... There is no reason why he should have to compile anything at all. Any project worth John Public's time is going to offer binaries for his operating system that install the client automaticly.

John will open his client and rez into the world(or rez in invisable mode) at whatever predefined location is set by that client.. Perhaps he has an account at Yahoo.com and he wanted to be there in stead.. He just pops open his handy dandy adresss bar and types in "yahoo.com" the client knows to prepend secondlife:// to his URL because he's using a SL client which teleports him directly to the public yahoo world.

From there he is presented with yahoo's destination menu/hud. With the yahoo hud he may search SL or the Web, read his email, link his client to yahoo's inventory system and retrive his objects and bookmarks... It all works because it's part of an open standard. John Public is happy; he just downloaded the latest version of SLIExplorer from Microsoft, and while his computer may now be acting as a spam zombie for some evil internet marketing firm, that's nothing new to John.

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