Blue Mars beta

Money quote.

Again, just because relatively few of us choose to build on the fly doesn't mean that anything else is not a virtual world. And the number that is relatively few is extremely small, even when compared to the active user base.

No.

You and Yumi are making the assumption that the people you're referring to who never build are looking for a virtual world. All you're really saying is that there are many people in SL who would be equally happy in a pure 3d chat system like IMVU or Lively. And you may be right right... but that doesn't mean that IMVU or Lively are "virtual worlds".

The fact that in the real world most people don't write novels or act in plays or make their own clothes doesn't mean that it would be OK to require a license before you were allowed to create anything. There's been a number of novels about that kind of future, and they're rarely depicted as utopias.

A virtual world allows, within the technical limitations of the medium, at least as much of the same range of activities as the real world does, to everyone in that world, whether they take advantage of the facilities or not.

You're being, as Prok would call it, a "tekkie literalist" about the term virtual world. If the place substantially allows everything to be done inworld there except for building, it's good enough for the vast, vast majority of people who will actually use it.

I think there is supposed to be something to do in the Mars cities - games to play. It's a game platform, I think. So it doesn't need to be a virtual world, it just needs to be a good game platform.

I'm disappointed you can't fly (in a vehicle) around the entire planet and fly up into space and such. The videos that show the planet from space are just advertising puffery.

Is Google Earth a virtual world? It has user generated content, doesn't it, and it's persistent.

Well, if that's the case, whether someone is looking for a virtual world or not is determined early on beacuse a person's SL experience has a lot of effect on whether they end up deciding to build or not.



No, when you control the entire world it isn't as simple as that - if they don't take advantage it's something you could have changed. (If SL displayed, "open the build tool now or your hard disk will be low-level formatted", then everyone would build. I wish it had done that for me! )

I like BM's implementation for importing your build using industry-standard 3D models. That way, you can import your build to any compatible virtual world or game platform or even just creating your own 3D animation movie independent of any of these VWs. Your creation is not really stuck to a BM if you decided to go somewhere else and take your creation with it.

There is something to be said about using an industry-standard 3D model to import and export your build model because your creation can be re-use anywhere else, and not become a throw-away creation like SL.

It really sucks to have all your creation in SL limited to LL, and not ble to re-use them in other VW, such as BM, except for SL clones, like OpenSims. When you migrate to BM, you have to re-build all your creation from scratch, unless someone come up with a way to convert them.

I would rather spend my time and effort to create a build that I can take it with me to any VW I choose to, rather than investing in one VW.

Same thing for using Lua scripts too. It's an industry-standard scripting language for gaming, so all your scripts created for BM can be re-used in other platforms, so your time will not be wasted if you migrate to other VM, or even create your own game-engine.

SL makes you tied to LSL, and can only be re-usable on SL clones

It's gonna mean long download times though. and the slightest change to a city will probably mean having to download the whole thing again.

Still, I think I'd rather have long download times over slow streaming content that causes stuttering frame rates as it's all uncompressed.

If they can manage it like Sony's Home then that would be great. In Home you can download an area in the background while continuing to explore your current area.

SL isn't "a world" either probably.

That's OK, I already think Prok's an ass, so giving me more evidence doesn't change anything.
You're still arguing against something I haven't said, you're demanding I defend a claim I haven't made. I haven't said that people "need" a virtual world, or that millions of people won't be happy with a virtual theme park. That doesn't mean a virtual theme park is a world.

Building is what distinguishes SL from everything else I've looked at in the 3d realm. Building is what makes SL a "virtual world".

I'm not demanding anything. You're the one saying that BM is not a virtual world based on one single criterion, and I simply offer in return that your criterion isn't all that important in the definition of a virtual world.

Have you ever tried to port a program written in C, or C++, or even something like Perl, between Windows and UNIX? Unless the code was written to be portable in the first place AND you were already familiar with the two environments when you wrote the framework of the code... it has to be something incredible to make it worthwhile to do the port. And Windows and UNIX are a lot closer to each other than any VR is likely to be, given the massive influence of UNIX on Microsoft in the early '80s.

But you haven't said one word about the definition of a world, you've simply argued that 3d VR environments that don't behave like worlds are popular. I agree, they are.

A world is something that you can "live in", no matter who you are, you can create, change, modify, build, expand, influence it. A world's limitations are a matter of technology and your ability, not god-level policy imposed from outside the world.

There's no inside to Google Earth. No avatars, no objects, no people, no residents.

You can't segregate those two, is the problem. LL could design the SL building tools to require no ability at all to use, or to be even harder to use than they are now. Either way, it's going to be equivalent to god-level policy imposed from outside. And there are all kinds of technologies that might be in SL by now if LL had devoted a division to inventing them.

Plus, of course, the vast majority of people in the _real_ world can't modify, build, expand or influence it!

If you want to be an extreme literalist, there is no such thing as a virtual world. We are not required to eat, sleep, excrete, etc. - all the normal functionings of life. Avatars can't reproduce, although you can script an object to replicate itself.

The point is that this environment in which we engage in many similar activities to real life doesn't necessarily require building in order to be a virtual world for all practical purposes.

I'm not being any kind of literalist. I'm being practical.

Without building, you can talk, and move, and that's it. Humans are a tool using species, without tools we don't have a human world, we just have a chat system.

Is cheese nice?

Arguing over the defintion of 'virtual world' is pointless.

Since the dawn of time humans have argued over whether SL is a platform or a game. I'm happy to say that there's no absolute answer to these types of questions.

Get over it.

Being practical is acknowledging the fact that in RL we do not grow our own food, build our own furniture, build our own house or car. In our RL there is extremely limited creation and what creation there is costs money.

Speak for yourself. I haven't built my own car, but I've repaired and customized it, and I've built my own furniture and grown quite a variety of my own food... I even managed to grow some peppers that even you would appreciate.

Yes, I agree, Virtual Worlds allow whole new avenues of creativity.

In fact is real life a game or a platform?
I think I've just asked one of the silliest and most unanswerable questions ever on this forum.

It is neither - it is a recreational environment.

Matthew

Fixed.