Yoicks! It's another virtual world

Would you play "Linden World"?

It's always nice to have variety in the options available as people have different tastes and requirements. Also, it just means the idea of spending time in virtual reality is considered a normal thing. As one has a choice of different types of music to listen to, clothes to wear, books to read, so there will be different types of virtual reality to enjoy.

Something I didn't see mentioned:

Don't ISP's seriously throttle upload speeds, precisely to discourage and prevent their average customers from running "servers?"

In my case, and to handle streaming audio/video satisfactorily, I found it necessary to upgrade to a commercial account just to raise my upload bandwidth.

Considering these things, I think the "Yoicks" concept may be more than a wee ahead of its time for the average user--at best.

I think about that deformable water a lot. LL should charge for tours through the old program - heh.

Probably not. I guess because I'm involved in domain names, I see the quality of the name as a major indicator of the quality of the business. If you're too cheap to buy (or think up if that's still possible) a half decent dotcom, it really speaks to your business...

Or terraforming with bombs. Or the ecosystems that was developed. I would pay for access to the "old" world.

*goes to beg at her Andrew shrine for access to the old world*

It would be very cool if there were several different sim types (supposing such a thing were possible), such as a terraforming-with-bombs-deformable-water-snakes-and-birds world, a sim with no gravity and no land (space in other words), etc.

I love Second Life.

once upon a time when i was younger and the internet was just forming and i walked up hill with barefeet in winter..

There was a very popular free service called 24link.net. It came with server software made for anyone to be able to install on a home computer. Instead of building our websites and paying for hosting a lot of us "geek types" hosted our websites on this 24link.net service it was very widely used. Now the bandwidth requirements are different but a lot of uh people hosted uh Pr0n and other graphics heavy applications ISP's didn't complain. Not sure how much they would not but they didn't then

Also a lot of us have wierd high bandwidth packages with huge upload allowances those "extreme speed" thingies which is like well I could not live without mine hehe

I'm not sure the quality of "sim" I could run but I know I could run one even if i had to put it on a seperate computer I think the sim would rock to a halt before my ISP complained because I have paid extra for large bandwidth allowances.

Not saying everyone has access to this but with the growing internet reaching all corners of the planet its possible and has been done in applications over time for other things.

My biggest issue is security for me I would likely put it on its own computer or possibly hard drive or something to avoid having peering eyes on my main hard drive but that to me is my main concern and the fact that I am going to be running something similar to a sim but peer to peer (which means we all share bandwidth with each other to speed each other up...) which could get bogged down..

I think my isp would be the last concern for me anyhow

This is obviously still in its "development stage" and wont see the light of day for a long time if it every does depends on how much money they have to burn through to make it a reality .. lots of people go bankrupt before actualy getting a useable product and it will be interesting to watch how these guys do and if they manage to pull it off

uh yea hype and BS lets see some screenshots and a website

ps:
rain and sunsets = smoke and mirrors &
WOW doesnt even look all that great compared to newer MMO's, already setting the bar low are we?

call me when your metaverse looks like this heh

/me hosts a club on dialup

How the hell can you call a company Yoick. Forecasts hiccupping service? A strong competitor for LL would be nice, but they dont seem to be good at naming and for now there is nothing else to see.

Had to lol a lot at this article written by a aussie about this "Outback" name:
Outback Online... WTF?

short quote:

Let me share a secret with anyone who has never visited the interior of Australia, which is the real reason why “Outback Australia” can and will be far superior to Second Life.

The outback consists of red dirt and scrub…did I mention red dirt already? According to Wikipedia, red dirt is iron-rich soil, which the “outback” shares with Hawaii, Africa and Afghanistan. Short version: there is hardly anything to render, so of course Outback Online will work a whole lot better. Compare and contrast the extremely rich environment of Second Life to red dirt and scrub. There is no comparison.

I wonder a bit about a few things - some problems already mentioned in the article about this p2p 3d virtual world.

What about lag? Network management in p2p scenarios can be a lot mroe tricky - especially if you want to make it secure. I wouldn't be too thrilled about a p2p network, that can be easily sniffed from outside.

If the protocol is not secure (it can be open, allright, I'd like THAT - but that's probably not gonna happen), malign code could be inserted into it and it would spread over the p2p net. It would be hard to get rid of.
Transaction security would be another thing.

What about network traffic, how much transfer would you need up and down, which ports to do you need?

What worries me even more: What about a scenario, where someone creates some kind of content (for example a location) and doesn't want it to be around anymore? Would it vanish from the network, when you wanted it? Or would other peers still hold copies of that content?

These issues are all not unsovable. I just think a client-server approach is better controllable, easier to handle, and not really weaker.

Well, I don't even use p2p for dowloading files/music etc so I wouldnt even consider using it to "play" in an online world. Not only is the data-transfer a total nightmare but the potential threat to my security i.e. my personal security by allowing others acces to my PC is way too big a threat. I'll stick to what he calls our "village" and leave him to his "Rome".

Just to remind him... There was a time when Rome burned....

Oh well... P2P and security must not be exclusive to one another. There is the freenet project after all.
http://freenetproject.org/
But what can I say about this?
It's:
- slow
- not very userfriendly
- slow
- hard to use
- slow
and secure.
Oh and it's slow and hard to use.

Oh well.
it also doesn't have to render or supply 3d information in a low-lag environment...

I can see allot of issues with security that will need to be addressed before they can reliably launch a platform like this. In the eyes of the corporate world P2P does not have a good reputation and there will be issues with ISP’s allowing connections as allot just try and restrict all P2P ports as do modem and router manufacturers. However these issues can be overcome with understanding and configurability of hardware, however for the average user and ISP there will be issues. Based on previous forum threads some ISP's already consider SL to be P2P software due to the amount of data that is constantly being sent and received and thus have blocked ports to stop customers connecting. I am also interested in a more detailed explanation of exactly how this world will work. If you create a business it will be hosted on your own computer, so what happens when you go offline? Does it disappear? The great thing about SL is that you can sell 24 hrs a day regardless of your online status. Can the same be said for any land you own in world and any objects you have created? I think they will have great difficulty creating something that rivals SL and its economy and even more trouble creating an interesting and navagatable world when 80% is constantly disappearing and reappearing as people (servers) come and go. Dunno, maybe I am missing something here?

All that aside, I am excited about this project and will be one of the first to participate. Just the fact that companies are trying to compete with SL is a very good thing and it is inevitable that virtual 3D worlds will revolutionise the internet and the way we use it.

Hipihi, Kaneva, Yoicks, .... there's another potential 3D world, http://www.areae.net/, anyone know of other potential 3D worlds in the news?

How about TSO and Active Worlds? Oh wait that's Second life...

Something that's really relevent to the idea that it's necessary to have many options in virtual worlds is this: it's artwork, and we have different tastes in art. I wouldn't care HOW smoothly a world ran or what things I was able to do if the place was like being trapped in a Thomas Kincade painting or some other bad art. Another person might like that... uh... style.

All I can say is good luck attracting an international audience calling it "Outback Online." P2P is not ready yet, SL will go there in due time. Yes there are advantages to P2P, but this Outback game better offer some SIGNIFICANT improvements over SL if it wishes to steal market share from SL. I know all you guys are pretty attached to your Second Lives.

By the time Yoiks Outback hits the net we'll all be using Second Life version 2:3:14 anyway! With real shadows, hopefully.

SL2? Doesn't that come out about the same time as Havok 2 and MONO?

Anyways, I would be interested to see what others can come up with. No matter what happens, we don't need another Microsoft controlling the world.

Variety is the spice of life.