Threat to SL: Letting Multiverse Beat Us

I don't really see this is direct competition - they're two different types of tools. Multiverse is damn cool, but it is a platform for game development. While SL can be used to make games, its strength is in having everything streamed and a common experience in a real-time, fluidly changing world. I don't see that happening with Multiverse; it seems geared towards created the kind of game that require 8 gigabyte downloads, versus SL's strength, which is a 20-meg client with everything streamed. That's the pro side of primitives. I think most businesses would consider an 8-gigabyte download a show-stopper, unless they were to distribute via DVD.

Regards,

-Flip

A certain egg-shaped personage known to frequent these parts had often claimed that the asset server used Apache. As I expected he knew more about the internal implementation than I did and I had no evidence to the contrary I assumed it so no matter how wretched a design decision that seemed to me.

Much to my surprise, a Linden recently confirmed the worst of my fears regarding SL's construction. It appears that the parallels to the early web are not so far fetched.

Assets are sent around SL via HTTP! Soylent Green is PEOPLE!

Yes, I agree with Flipper, I think the point of MultiVerse is so that it'd be cheap to write another MMO like WoW.

This is actually good for SL, because as these platforms become commoditized and common, people will be looking for something more unique and compelling.

Right now the big competition for SL is There.com and ActiveWorlds.

I have also heard rumours of other companies moving into dynamic real time streaming virtual shared spaces ... which will be a threat.

Yes, I agree with Flipper, I think the point of MultiVerse is so that it'd be cheap to write another MMO like WoW. You can basically already do this with the Quake engine and what not if you were so inclined.

Anyhow, I think this is actually good for SL, because as these platforms become commoditized and common, people will be looking for something more unique and compelling.

Right now the big competition for SL is There.com, ActiveWorlds and Croquet.

I have heard rumours of other companies moving into dynamic real time streaming virtual shared spaces ... which will be a threat.

*takes all the change on the table and runs with a whole dollar in pennies*

Slightly off here, Flip.

Multiverse is an MMOG tool - guarantee you that there are businesses calling him asking them to crank down the combat aspect and crank up the social experience.

While I'm a firm believer that SL is a platform, the architecture of it, however, is very, very game-like. So consequently something like Multiverse that has another game-like engine has very, very similar technology.

Where it differs is that it does not provide its creating tools to end-users, only developers. However, there are tons of SLrs who don't build, as well, and as far as they are concerned, the tools might as well be non-existant to them. Multiverse only needs to get one good offer from a company to do a social experience and it becomes a direct competitor to SL.

The presentation was horrible. As a banker, if this pitch was made to me I would have laughed my ass off. I hope for their sake they have a lot more hard data to show and someone that can do a better job of presenting.

Agreed there. The guy was clearly nervous, when he should have been excited.

I laughed out loud when he broke "business man mold" after his pal got killed on the demo screen. And then he just petered out at the end. I think his sugar high wore off.

"What the hell? I thought you were a gamer!"

Yeah, clutch moment!

...

Additional musings on this subject on my blog:
http://secondtense.blogspot.com/2006/02/evolve-or-be-extinct.html

While I look forward to any competition to SL, I don't think this is it.

There are two ways of making things, as far as I can tell:

1. Meshes and whatnot y'all talk about that are used by professional people, I take it, to make entire games and whatnot.

2. Stuff that puts the tools in the players' hands, so that anybody who can learn it can do it.

(1) is of little interest to me, while (2) is why I'm here.

Also, I wouldn't be much interested in any "platform" where I could make things, but couldn't sell them. Not saying that what you are talking about here is one of them - since apparently you could make a game on it and charge subscriptions for it.

I'm saying that the appeal of SL is the fact that anyone can make things - even people like myself with zero prior experience at 3D modeling or whatever this is called - and anyone can sell them.

So this Multiverse would seem to me a whole different thing.

coco

True, however don't you feel that there is a large portion of SLrs who just want to "drag and drop" items from inventory onto their plots, go out and socialize, etc?

SL, to expand to a broader, less-tech-savvy market, will need to continue to improve its tools and interface. I think they have their eye on this, and are tackling more pressing issues at the moment like scalability. Still, my own opinion is that UI redesign / API as what should be LL's top priority following scalability issues and HTML. I imagine UI redesign is somewhat tied to HTML as well.

Ah, this I know. However, I also know that nothing of rich-content value created with multiverse is going to be available for a tiny, 20 meg download; that was the point I was driving at. Most single object meshes I've seen, with even limited detail, exceed a meg each pre-texture.

Regards,

-Flip

Excellent point, Flip. And there certainly isn't the "teleport on a whim" factor... but who knows, we just got a peak at the product, and I'd bet good money that they are looking at advantages and usability of SL and other MMOVWs in their design.

Philip also has much better hair.

That's like saying FarCry is a threat to SL because it has a 'sandbox editor'. Which is pretty damn cool and I can see some ideas for mods )now that alot of people are capable of running it. (I'm thinking, tropical vacation.... with mercs).

But it's not SL.

this is a development engine. This is competition for Quake and Unreal, not SL.

SL is considered a "social virtual world" by most people who think really hard about the subject. To casual people it's a "game", but it's a "game" much like WoW and basketball are "games"; very broad term there.

Most companies balk at the prospect of letting users make their own content, because they inevitably run into the problems we face every day: assholes using the tools for their own ill-gain, or otherwise just to be dicks about it (hey, tubgirl! Again. In the WA. Ha ha ha.). Impeach Bush is another good example.

SL is a rapid prototyping tool, but otherwise its applications for "serious" development, academic or business, is limited, and probably will be for several years. It's strength lies in the mutual world we all share and the easy-to-access development process for small-scale stuff (a lamp, rather than a lighting engine).

The main competition to SL remains There and TSO. the OSMP and Croquet are purely academic, and/or dead in the water.

You'll see competitors to the throne once we hit 250,000 "real" subscribers or so.

LF

I disagree. Farcry is a game, not a game engine like Multiverse. I don't think the analogy is ... analogous.

Then it's got nothing to do with SL.

The folks who are looking for a professional-looking environment without in-game building tools have dozens of systems to work in. You can go to WoW, EQ, and so on and get nicer looking avatars and more realistic dungeons and chat with people. Lots of people do that already, they don't NEED to wait for Multiverse to find something they like better than SL.

SL is the first 3d system to allow user content creation, and any system that doesn't do that is just a shinier multiuser videogame platform... and it's not like we don't know there's shinier videogame platforms coming.

Very, VERY large portion of SLrs like that, Hiro, and thank God for them. Else who would we sell our stuff to?

I find that most who have been here for any period of time, though, do pick up the basic ability to make some things when they want to, even if they are primarily interested in social things, like Slingo or clubs or whatever. Kind of like even I manage to pick up some scripting. At the same time, though, they are not averse to buying stuff, such as something that looks better than they could do, or would want to their waste time doing. They just aren't that interested or fascinated by making things as some of us are.

But I think they, too, enjoy the idea that they can make things, if they want to, so even they would probably mark that as an important plus for SL. It's just that they enjoy it to lesser degree than some of us, and are perfectly happy to buy things they like. In other words, they aren't obsessed with it, like I am.

I don't know what UI or API are.

coco

UI is an acronym for "User Interface" - the buttons and dialog boxes and such that make up the application you're using, in this case, Second Life.

API is an acronym for "application program interface", which is a fancy way of saying a toolbox for programmers. A more formal description is here:

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/API.html

Regards,

-Flip

My thinking is that the real competition isn't going to be software at all, but two sets of three letters (which I just made up, before anyone asks):

mtp:// (that's "Metaverse Transfer Protocol" folks)

.pem (and this one's "Progressivly Encoded Mesh"

Allthough it feels good to see so many loyal SL residents here it seems a little cursorly to me, to just dismiss Multiverse just as "Bleh, just another XYZ!" Multiverse in itself is no competition to SL - and is not intended as such. The primary focus of Multiverse is exactly like many participants in this discussion said: the development of "games" with all the typical MMORPG elements. There are other tools for this purpose available. I am not qualified to judge how good or bad Multiverse is in comparison.

That said ... the architecture of Multiverse is a very interesting one. This is not apparent by watching the DEMO presentation or just reading their news page. If you dig in a little deeper, you might discover a kind of flexibility and an architecture for interconnecting "games" (virtual worlds) that I have not seen in other "game production engine" (but I am no expert here). And, as I mentioned elsewhere, it quite feasible to add user created content and scripting to the engine in a modular fashion.

I am not sure if someone is interested in building a true competitor to Second Life. The target group is a small one; a muich smaller one than for the typical MMORPG. But if this someone exists, it would be much easier (cheaper and faster), to build this based on Multiverse than starting from scratch or with one of the other engines I checked out.

I also first heard about this last year. The day after I spoke with someone about what I want and what I don't see here.

I don't consider mesh support cutting edge and tbh this doesn't seem all that different from some of the tools already available (though to be fair, I've not sufficiently researched them).

Personally, I consider a new underlying 3D format that can move from manufacturing to videogame to be the real future of this stuff. Feature-based parametric 3D models that have tiny footprints and regenerate to amazing levels of detail on the fly (similar to how it's done in CAD). They can be tesselated as necessary for online application and exported to other formats like .stl for offline fabrication - if necessary.

To create these models there would be an open source application that allowed developers to add new features to the 3D modeling toolset via a standardized, modular plug-in system (e.g. feature: Revolve or feature: Swept Blend). This would allow for both freely-available and proprietary features.

You then take this tool and merge it with, for example, Croquet to leverage it's networking capabilities to create a new kind of SL-like client.

How this could work. Example: Company X contributes code to the core application which allows people to "connect" parts easily (ala "Spore". Company X uses that capability to create a unique range of Human features plug-ins (feature: Hand or feature: Lower Arm aso). That company then develops their own virtual world similar to SL. The basis for that world are the proprietary modeling features (you might see in-world vendors selling customized "Hands" and "Feet" and other body parts created using the proprietary tools to which they have access, and "body shops" might assemble those parts to create their own "style" of body which they then sell - think "Blade Runner" and the "eye" store).

Players who sign up for their world are also using the password to connect to all the other residents via a P2P system. So when Company X adds a new set of features, instead of downloading a new client, those features are spread virally; no central server. The 3D part of the application becomes more capable specific to the needs of Company X's virtual world (i.e. a "Hand" in Company X's world wouldn't be the same as a "Hand" in some other world). When someone connects to the network using their client, it automatically receives the plug-in features via a BitTorrent-style system. It would install not just Company X's new features, but Company Y, Company Z and whoever else has a proprietary "world" that is accessed via password (the application might have an algorithm that determines which world should have it's associated features updated first, and prioritize the installation for you).

Anyway, that's the basic idea. When I spoke with the programmer last Fall, he wanted to create an open source offline modeler; perhaps using SubD's. That didn't make sense to me (understandably since most of my interest is in bridging virtual and real). Apparently he'd never spoken with anyone who'd taken a polygon mesh and converted it to a "solid" CAD model. After I told him the hassle it was to convert and told why it's a nice capability, in addition to the above, he seemed to like the idea. And, it turns out he might be able to pull something like that off (I actually learned how likely after we spoke). Anyway, I don't know if or when something like this will be released. But that's what I want.

That already happened... it's called vrml and vrtp, and it's pretty much stalled.