This week we discuss materials and the effect they will have on Second Life, SL on Steam, the future of the metaverse, the SL mesh clothing deformer and more!
This week’s topics include:
- Linden Lab Announces the Materials Project
- What are normal and specular maps? How will they add to Second Life?
- Will these additions add more lag or increase the minimum graphic requirements?
- Second Life is Expanding to Steam
- How Will Steam Change Second Life?
- Valve Developments
- Valve’s Source Engine Used in “Deep”
- Why Anyone Who Cares About the Metaverse Needs to Move Beyond Second Life
- Botgirl’s take on the future of the Metaverse: If there has been a failure, it is ours
- More thoughts on the present and future Metaverse
- SL Still Change the World?
- Cloud Party Update
- Mesh Deformer Updates
Guests:
Bernhard Drax (Draxtor Despres) is a musician, new media producer, and machinima journalist.
Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden) is visual effects artist, software developer, and interactive designer extraordinaire.
Thank you to our sponsors, Botgirl’s Identity Circus and Pretty Feet!
Pingback: MetaReality Podcast Week 37
WB!!
*Materials are cool. Doesn’t cause lag when compared to actually making the real geometry, and things like bump maps can be pretty tiny files. This won’t change SL much tho.
*I have a Steam account. It can only be good for SL, but I don’t think it will change things too much.
*Metaverse stuff – Well, first you need a platform that is sustainable. Meaning it can fund itself. A big part of that is content for that Metaverse. Right now, SL is the only place that has those 2 things. I don’t understand where this is even an issue.
*As far as Games in SL, I don’t see why this is even remotely talked about in a bad way. If nothing else, it just gives the creative people in SL more features to play around with. I very much agree with Draxtor. Why do 95+% of people leave right away and never come back, cause they are looking for something to play with and they don’t like building or they don’t know they like creating. To me this is just plainly obvious. If we give them something exciting to do and play with easily and quickly, eventually, they will be creating their own game to play.
*Cloud Party, well, it’s just a baby right now. Last that I checked, they were still redoing the avatar and rig. The initial launch was really just to get feedback from people already used to virtual worlds, and from the potential merchants. When I first tried to make animations for CP, it was basically a nightmare. Maya was the only program you could really use to create animations for CP. I even downloaded the trial version of Maya, just to see if I could export the rig in a format that my motion capture program could import. I saw all kinds of issues, and I’ve created animations for IMVU, Blue Mars, Kaneva, DazStudio, Hipihi(chinese VW), and all the SL based worlds. I informed CP, on their forums, about some of the issues that I came across. They sounded iffy about changing the avatar rigging, but since then, a bunch of other people have come out and said similar things. So, redoing the avatar and rig from scratch is no small ordeal, and CP is not going to get any real users until the new avatar system is done.
Hello! Great points!
I think a lot people would agree with your stance on the Metaverse.
Interesting thoughts on Cloud Party. I haven’t discounted them, but don’t find them relevant at this time. I’ll continue to keep my eye on them and I’ll be interested to see any new avatar systems they come up with.
Welcome back everyone!
Imagine if Disney Land was ran like Second Life. There would be no employees running the rides just animatronic robots. You only see a few other people walking around so it feels like a ghost town. If you did find the few places that had people in them if there were more than 10 people there all of a sudden you can barely move. No one there to help you find or do anything and even when you know how to do something like open a door half the time it doesn’t work. This is what second life is like to new people.
SL needs real live human beings to welcome and show new residents how SL works. Think of it all cruise ships have cruise directors to help people find interesting things to do on the cruise. Only a live person can do that.
Another huge problem with SL is LAG. Lag will kill a new person’s whole opinion of SL and only cause frustration and anger. If they do something right like rezzing an object and because of lag it doesn’t happen because of lag they don’t know if they did it right or wrong. Imagine trying to learn math but the teacher never tells you if you solved the problem correctly. Lag is the number one enemy of SL. New users compare SL to other online experiences or games on gaming consoles and they don’t have lag. Something could look super cool but if there is a lot of lag forget it.
Lastly there isn’t any goals for new people to achieve and no rewards. Even if LL would just give out small amounts of L$ for doing the most basic of things such as flying or opening a box or teleporting or searching for something or buying a free object off the Marketplace people would discover things and reasons to log back on.
One idea I had was to allow people to save their favorite sims onto their hard dives like Blue Mars does. This would cut down the lag big time. Yes this probably make it a bit easier to steal content but you can steal content pretty easy now anyway.
On Cloud Party I wouldn’t discount them yet. It is still very early in Beta. Right now everything on the Beta Market can only be sold for free. Once money can be made the ball will really start to roll. One thing I super like about Cloud Party is that once a sim or island have 25 avatars on it another instance of that sim is created and any more avatars that want to go to that sim will arrive at the new exact duplicate of the original. Thousands of avatars can all be experiencing the same sim at the same time just only in groups of 25.
Anyway, welcome back! Wonderful show as always!
Thanks for the greetings!
Great thoughts, as always!
Love the comparison to an empty Disney Land!
What can be done to improve the first user experience? Many of the lag issues are due to outdated hardware. How can Linden Lab balance this with other goals?
OK it is 4AM here and I just had an idea. I am super tired so I don’t know if it is any good. Kinda like when you are stoned and you just realized that Dog is God spelled backwards. LOL
Anyway here is the idea. What if LL allowed Java to run in third party viewers. With Java or some other programming language you could create games that can be played in SL but not be rezzed in SL. Think of it like HUD games or a virtual game inside SL. Meaning that only the person logged on with that viewer will experience it no other avatars around them would see it. You could then play Angry Birds in your viewer as you walk around SL.
Just a crazy notion from a super tired person. PS I have never done pot.
LOL!!!
Interesting thought.. sounds like a mashup between SL and the newly announced LL products?
The idea of a non-profit Metaverse is one I have thought about a lot. SL is probably the template, but actually transitioning it to non-profit would be hideously expensive, at least while the current investors are still making a handsome return.
And then comes a huge amount of standardizing and compatibility work. Much of SL runs on licensed software (most notably physics). Standardizing to an open source physics engine of comparable quality or better would be a challenge.
OpenSim and several others are trying, but they trail SL pretty much across the board. I believe a Metaverse will come, but it is way out near the horizon now —- getting closer all the time though.
Hi Shug! Thank you for your thoughts!
Do you think licensed software is what is holding the open grids back the most? What do you think they could do to attract a larger number of users?
Welcome back, guys, glad the team is back together, Gianna, Drax and Qarl.
I cannot emphasize ths enough, people make virtual worlds, that is the key. Events, yes. Games, yes. Building, yes. All this and much more is needed to reduce the number of people dropping out of SL. But Cathy nailed it, SL needs people to welcome and help new residents, to be their primary contact until they feel comfortable enough to go about their business. No one to ask the questions we have often heard — “so… now what?” or “what is this all about?” or “is this a game?” or “what can I do in SL?”– means frustration, and we all know what frustration leads to… byebye Second Life.
Great show and lots of food for thought!
Thanks for the nice welcome back!
I’d like to hear more about how you think we need to get people over the hump! You said “SL needs people to welcome and help new residents.” Do you mean just regular residents trying to help out? Most residents are taken to areas that are closed off to the general public. Or do you think SL should bring back the mentors? The mentors came with their own set of problems.
P.S. I love your photos!