Our world - their platform - the metagame

In the forums, we get caught up in second life, the MMORPG. But LL is playing a different game - one where the big prize is becoming the 3D platform for the internet. In that metagame, Second Life - with the tier fees and the blog and the shopping and the RP sims -will be only one deployment of the LL platform. Amiright? If you're tired of reading, here's my question: what other types of grids do you see being created with this platform? Or do you think it is *only* useful for Second Life?

More musings follow.

Eventually, more LL-based grids have to exist or LL has lost their metagame. So we see the baby steps toward that now, with the Secondlifegrid.net website.

I've thought of three other grids that you could build using LL's platform.

1. IBM, as an example of a corporate grid. You could see corporate grids requiring different tools and rules. For example, a corporation would definitely want bots capable of setting up all the inworld aspects of new sims. Why not? There would be no competition with inworld content providers. Also, a corporate grid would have fewer rules about account control - I could see emailing a new employee their avatar (based on their corporate ID picture) in their "Welcome to IBM" message, and also having generic avatars for departments. Boeing strikes me as another great candidate for a 3D grid, and would want a much more sophisticated privileges system, because they work with a LOT of subcontractors.

2. Worldwide education grid. Education is already quite active in SL, with their own Orientation Island and an active meeting schedule, and some nice library and classsroom builds. Education has a tradition of deploying their own worldwide networks ... seems like a natural to build their own grid.

3. Physicists? Would they be interested in writing their own physics engines to model subatomic particles, or galactic dynamics? Dunno, maybe they have better tools already.

If you could build an LL-based grid, what would it be? Would you build other games on this platform? Do you see other types of RL-extension grids than what I give above? What different things would they need than what SL now provides?

(And no, before you ask, i am not any sort of LL shill. They already have their answer to this question, lol! It should be in their corporate introduction slideset ... but you/we know the actual platform best. What could you use it for?)

I imagine the upcoming HBO special shot in SL will give a few young turks in the entertainment industry some food for thought. Machinima continues to be a growing field in terms of cinematographic expression, and animation/cgsfx applications continue to grow by leaps and bounds. If we like DVD's with added content such as camera-angle changes, imagine what an improved graphics capability could offer someone in terms of enjoying "live" content. The ability to reposition your camera at will, while watching a piece of "theatre" could be very cool.

The Defense Department is naturally going to take a massive interest - for stunningly obvious reasons. Simulated war games and emergency excersizes could be run on a very detailed level.

City planning agencies could run their own grids, opening them up for land developers to piece together prospective builds for review. And, of course, law enforcement and emergency services such as fire and EMS could benefit from interactive 3D maps of an environment.

The potential is almost limitless, and LL sees that. Now, as long as they don't shoot their own foot off in a rush to please the corporate sector...well, that remains to be seen.

80 use limit on mainland. then like 120 on an empty private sim.

need not say much more for why SL will never be the 3d internet platform.

Hadn't heard about this one - details?

Levah: /278/78/208470/1.html

You hit the nail right on the head, this has been the goal since day one, LL has made no secret of it, none of this is new. To answer your question, nearly everything you see on the web, or at least the major things. Retail, business, news, etc, will be taken over by a 3D environment. Will it be the SLGrid?? Who knows, but I believe that's the ultimate goal in the end. The recent separation of the 'game' from the 'grid' is just the next step in that direction. If I had to guess, I'd say LL has the heads up on it because honestly, who besides LL is currently developing a 3D networking environment?

People like LL hope anyway.

That doesnt mean it will be so anytime in the near (5-10 years) or even midterm (10-20 years) future.

Hmmm then let's shorten the horizon. What are the next 10 or so different types of grids that you could see being made on this platform, oh say within 3 years? (Let's count all corporate intranets as 1 type of grid).

Actually I thought lot about this but I don't have the finical or experience to do this.
I have studied several different virtual worlds for last 10 years or more.
All of them face some type of problem, limitation or repeativeness.
The best one's were had something allowed you to be creative, content wise, even better if tools were easy to use, and also had some type of challenge or fun activity you could do with others or by yourself.
If I had trillions of usd dollars I would create system that is intergreted in private form of the internet that would show public worlds, interactive virtual world cam home pages of user created worlds and other commericial or residential services.
I would develope very easy to use intutive content creation tools of various types to animating objects to avatars, texure and object creation tools.
I would make sure that possiblities to create anything was possible by anyone who had even ounce of creativity.
I would create software that was very secure and unhackable so anyone with extra hard drive and certain amount of power and memory could turn that extra hard drive into their own virtual world server and literally be able to build anything, have total control over who comes to visit them with ablity to show images on virtual cam on their own personal blog page to whomever would like to visit but without letting them inside their world if they choose to do so.
I would intergrate real life services and create ways people could if they choose too hold down real life cash jobs with real life banking and personal services.
Yet I am not able to do any of that so I am focusing on building my own rpg virtual world called "third life" within second life.

My list, although by no means definative.

1) Toursim, imagine being able to visit VR representations of a holiday spot before you book?
2) Shopping Malls/Appartment Stores... much the same that SL has now, but they will be RL branded and possibly based on RL examples. Much cheaper to place a WorldWide VR mall, that build lots of 'local ones'.
3) Churches... whereby those unable, either for personal or locational reasons, can join a congregation in a VR Environment.
4) History, recreations of events and or places whereby you can recreate the actual living conditions/environments, see castles, towns/ cities, rez from their humble beginings, to further developments, right through to their current state.
5) Re-creation of world events, whereby the likes of the UN, Congress, Houses of Parliment/Lords, European Parliment could become a VR environment, that you can 'attend' and become part of a live broadcast through the environment.
6) Developers, even lower level scale developers, can produce relatively cheaply their intended developments and produce a sense of realism not found with carboard representations or artists impressions.
7) Ship Builders, can now repoduce full scale models, that have a real sense of perspective for the 'users' travelling the rat runs of corridors. How the mechanics and physics of the build will interface with both staff and passengers alike.
Concerts of all genures, can be broadcast through many copy recreations, of your favourite venue.
9) Childrens programmes and stories recreated through a medium that is cheaper to produce than cartoons and animated puppeteering. Even adult versions of 'soap opeas' and series like Star Trek etc....
10) Architects using the platform to reproduce a fire or other hazzard situation, so they can perhaps see actual human reactions when trying to deal with escaping crowds and densities from buildings, instead of AI simulations.

The World is your imagination, so it is application.

1. Architecture..where I live most young architects now use SL to model designs

2. AI..interaction with a physical environment

3. Modeling effects for preproduction for film (Marvin the Robot for Hitchhiker).

4. Biz meetings that don't require polluting expensive air flight but work better than video conferencing

5. Education..streaming content to residents to their own sims for online courses (no need to have on one sim..being "physically present" is a RL concept.)

These are all happening now and will expand. The ability to work in world wide virtual teams is very valuable.

The separate grids will by by country/nation I believe rather than by biz. I think biz will create inhouse grids for confidentiality reasons but I think the main grid will just expand and will appear seamless but there will just be different requirements for entry into the different regions and they could be hosted in different ways..like the web is now. For some web pages, you have to sign up; some pages you can't access cause they are inhouse and most are public but they are hosted in a variety of places.

Isolated or semi-isolated grids for performing different economic and social experiments.
Change the rules, you change the results...and you can use real people, making real decisions that add up to a collective result.

Governments could run experiments on the effects of proposed laws or policies. Economists could preview the results of changes in money supply or interest rates or market restrictions.

Ecological simulation.

Science Fiction roleplay...set up a series of interlinked grids, each one representing a different planet, linked by a network of starships, wormholes, or what have you. Establish a multiplanet empire!

...but before the boffins get too much further, I want my VR goggles and immersive experience bodysuit. We need better I/O!!!!

Sooo many great ideas, wow. Makes me itch to see the platform spun off. Just a couple of comments while I'm on this con call at work:
I could really see 3D becoming a complete replacement for video conferencing, which is a weak technology. Nothing will ever replace the audio concall for convenience, but if you need visuals, I think SL-like environments, with integrated media sharing, will be far superior. And I easily could see this technology being used routiinely for real-time participation by non-major players in huge meetings like those you list. Someday I could see town councils holding their meetings in an SL platform instead of on cable, to enable Q&A sessions more easily.

Really! I was aware of MIT's design contest for SL, didn't know use of the tool had spread that far.

I'm surprised...since SL architecture tends to be built on a larger scale than RL architecture, for various technical reasons.

Dnali, can you point us to any existing builds that architecture students are playing with?

I'm sorry - but I really don't think that 3D platforms have that much of a place in the future!



This is possible and sounds quite neat, but..



I don't think this is, though. Regular shopping websites are convenient in many ways that RL shopping isn't. And the most valuable properties of RL shopping - that you can see the product right there, touch it, try it on, and leave the store with it in your hands - can't be duplicated by a 3D shopping site. I really can't imagine trying to buy an RL product in an SL-style 3D store.



The religions probably won't accept that just because it's 3D.



The extra trouble and distributed hosting, etc, involved in making these in Second Life compared to just using CGI software (which, yes, is more expensive - but most production companies have already paid for it) and making a film to post on the internet makes these unlikely.



These are neat ideas though!



Difficult because people will not react to a fire in SL the same way they do in RL. The instincts that activate when your real life is in danger can't be simulated in any way.

I don't really see separate grids proliferating by subject matter; there's no obvious reason to me that an architecture grid should be separate from an educational grid, for example.

Rather, I see separation according to applicable RL laws and regulations... which means national grids conforming in content and payment policies to the laws of each nation. That, in addition to corporate grids where the rules are those of the (possibly multinational) company.

Something like this will be necessary if for no other reason than because a "3D Internet" will have to give up any pretense that the e-commerce "currency" is play-money, so jurisdiction of enforcement will have to be clear. But it also applies to non-financial rules of content and conduct that unacceptably abridge any one nation's freedoms if the union of all nation's restrictions are applied as a "lowest common denominator." (For example, to be acceptable to Thailand, one must not speak ill of the royal family. Now, I've nothing against them or anything, but that's quite a sacrifice of First Amendment rights in the US.)

Well... hope that's not too depressing.

That's actually the most likely grid to be kept separate from the main grid, IMHO...if it's being used for metropolitan planning and zoning purposes. A city or county could set up a grid, run by its development department - and offer limited acccess to developers and contractors in a bidding process. They could each throw down their best builds/landscaping ideas on designated plots - and the grid could be opened for limited public viewing during a comment period.



I see that as the most likely scenario - but stepped down quite a bit to the municipal level (at least in places like the US)

As far as disaster-related response simulations are concerned - the RL counterparts to that are all populated with volunteers/actors. The same thing could be done in SL - with each participant/victim given a card with details instructions for reacting/interacting with the people around them. I have fond memories of playing a horribly-burned child, dragged from the "wreckage" of a 727 crash at the airport where my dad worked back in the late 70's.

Sorry, just realised I hadn't been in this thread yet!

I suggested some time ago an LL spinoff that could be called something like 'First Life Plus'. This would use SL graphics and interface but would be tailored to groups of people who know each other in RL coming into world as themselves.

So pubs, clubs, sports teams etc. could have a virtual extension of their real-world facilities for members to use when they can't attend the real thing. Also dispered families could have a virtual space to meet up as themselves.

OK, this can all be done in SL already, but a tailored stand-alone sim purchased and downloaded from LL where people could use their real names in the knowledge that they are only meeting with known others might have a future.

I'm not quite with you there Conifer. I have three RL friends in SL. Are you suggesting for instance a sim where we four would be the total populace or a registration system akin to Friends Reunited?

As well as virtual reality one can have virtual unreality - one sees a lot of that in SL. To me SL is all about credibility. A nicely built hovership is convincing until we start asking awkward questions about how it hovers. But a badly built house that sits half a metre above the ground with a sports car spinning above the chimney is bad virtual unreality - it spoils the dream and reminds us the whole thing is make-believe.

SL's current population is an endless lure to marketeers and other social research folks. The big impediment is reaching the players - one of SL's charms is that there are no effective ways to advertise to the entire populace. Plus, the population is not only anonymous, but one person is not limited to one avatar. Which is fabulous, for the game.

To really do social experiements suitable for publishing, you would need a different grid - one where people are anonymous but limited to one avatar. For some research, you would not even want anonymity. I could really see a major research institution putting together a grid shared by the entire set of studies they are conducting, with different projects on different sims. It would have methods of communicating with subjects en masse both inworld and in RL. And, it would be instrumented so that avatar's reactions to test scenarios were automatically tabulated. As a matter of fact, I could see putting together a template for such a grid, and sellling the template with its associated tools to firms that do clinical studies and suchlike.