Is this good or bad news for SL?

tomorrow's smartphone ... shiny graphics ...physics).

we have on the GPU side of things.
As NV pushes Cuda and PhysX we are hearing that Tegra 2 will have Dual GPUs (GeForce 9 based). This will either be for “SLI-Like” performance or as PPU to allow for a mobile PhysX library to be utilized.

Be specific. Name names. Where is everyone?

Probably somewhere avoiding help-rejecting complainers.

Thanks, Argent, for tossing out some names. See, Egil, his friends aren't invisible

I toss out names every time you go on about this stuff.

But if you're expecting people from "social networks" to perk things up, look at the timestamps on Twitter or Facebook. You'll see something like:

Monday, 11:00: Man, these are good breakfast burritos.
Monday, 11:47: Where are you?
Monday, 14:15: I was at Cafe Burrito.
Monday, 17:32: Cool, I'll try that tomorrow.
Tuesday, 06:41: You're right, these are great. Where are you?
Wednesday, 06:08: Sorry, had to skip breakfast yesterday. Cat flossing accident.
Wednesday, 06:19: I hate it when that happens. I'm over in the corner.
Wednesday, 06:32: Under the giant chalupa? I think I see you. *wave*
Thursday, 17:41: *wave*

People in SL can be like 20 times as active and STILL miss Anya bopping by asking "hey! Anyone alive here!"

FB and twitter and the rest are not real-time conversation.

And there is live chat, (icon at bottom right of screen) where you can IM with any of your friends, in real time, that are currently online.

What kind of stupid argument is this? Second Life IS a Social Platform among other things. END OF ARGUMENT.

James???????

Scylla??????????

I played BM for the first time today. I found it unbearable.

The navigation sucks and doesn't really make any sense. Pointing and clicking over and over again just to walk is annoying. I realize that Blue Mars isn't trying to be Second Life. But there's no need to reinvent the wheel either. The graphics are nice but they should take some pointers from Linden Labs on how to make navigation in a virtual world easy and convenient.

Scylla??????????

I played BM for the first time today. I found it unbearable.

The navigation sucks and doesn't really make any sense. Pointing and clicking over and over again just to walk is annoying. I realize that Blue Mars isn't trying to be Second Life. But there's no need to reinvent the wheel either. The graphics are nice but they should take some pointers from Linden Labs on how to make navigation in a virtual world easy and convenient.

Scylla??????????

I played BM for the first time today. I found it unbearable.

The navigation sucks and doesn't really make any sense. Pointing and clicking over and over again just to walk is annoying. I realize that Blue Mars isn't trying to be Second Life. But there's no need to reinvent the wheel either. The graphics are nice but they should take some pointers from Linden Labs on how to make navigation in a virtual world easy and convenient.

But will they have griffons?

Contact and communication and interaction. Global partnering and intimacy.
SL owns that I think.

I rarely use SL as a social platform anymore but still feel it is vastly superior to Twitter or Facebook which are basically just self-advertisements. There is no other application available ANYWHERE that has given me the depths of conversation that I have experienced in SL with people from all over the world. Discussions that go on for hours upon hours and a connection that is hard to replicate with any other technology including the telephone. The ability to step outside yourself and disconnect from your RL existence gives you the ability to open yourself to possibilities that you could not elsewhere.

How many people on Facebook or Twitter that you know actually list their deepest, darkest fantasies for example?

Misinformation.

And there is live chat, (icon at bottom right of screen) where you can IM with any of your friends, in real time, that are currently online.

Rock

Argument for the sake of argument is lame.

Oh, I agree--for the moment. But with cloud computing pulling stuff off our disks, and mobile devices pulling eyeballs off those desktop screens, a virtual world able to deliver some plausible "VR lite" experience on tomorrow's smartphone will enjoy a game-changing first-mover advantage, especially for a world based on user content and microtransactions (and much less so for those whose mindshare depends on shiny graphics and spine-tingling physics).

I downloaded "There", the other night, just for a peek.

It was very easy to walk around! But that's probably because the graphics are not as complex. A very friendly and perky gal met me at the welcome area, immediately! And got me all fixed up, with a free outfit. What a novel approach!

I toured a model home, and it seemed that to develop your own home, you must upgrade to an account, and purchase some currency. The model home was very well supplied, with a link to the shopping site, with every click. Good marketing.

From the conversations, that I listened in on....it seemed that most were probably teenagers. And there were quite a few milling about.....maybe 50, in that one spot. No lag. At the moment, I can't visit a spot in SL that has 50 people.

I was in Newb clothing.....and most were quite decked out! So I assumed that all those teenagers got a paid account, and started spending. Now, if only we could get adults to do that!

It certainly wasn't as impressive as SL, and probably not intriguing to adults.....but it seemed to be intriguing to the kids....they were having a blast.

Mobile phones will probably end up being used mostly for augmented reality. You yourself will be the avatar, and your phone will use the camera to view your surroundings on the phone's screen, and software will use GPS and compass orientation information and exchange information with other phones to identify buildings and people and paint SL-like name tags on them. Sort of like the already existing technology that paints first-down lines on the field on TV for (American) football games, only more sophisticated. Eventually you'll see people walking down the street wearing goggles, talking out loud and making weird Minority Report gestures with their hands.

,


......as it does look like many SL residents are actively looking for an alternative, for whatever reason, and the more choice there is, the more likely they will find an alternative that matches their needs.

Rock

Mobile phones will probably end up being used mostly for augmented reality. You yourself will be the avatar, and your phone will use the camera to view your surroundings on the phone's screen, and software will use GPS and compass orientation information and exchange information with other phones to identify buildings and people and paint SL-like name tags on them. Sort of like the already existing technology that paints first-down lines on the field on TV for (American) football games, only more sophisticated. Eventually you'll see people walking down the street wearing goggles, talking out loud and making weird Minority Report gestures with their hands. Downside: RL Bloodlines...