Second Life Founder Returns To Revamp His Original Metaverse (cnet.com) 39
An anonymous reader shares a report: The metaverse isn't a new concept. Not only did Neal Stephenson coin the idea in 1992, but some of us were literally living in virtual spaces with virtual currency and virtual storefronts nearly 20 years ago. The virtual place many people went back then was Second Life. Philip Rosedale, Second Life's founder, has decided to task a core team to work on evolving Second Life now that the metaverse has become a buzzword yet again. His hopes are that developing community-focused worlds like Second Life will solve some metaverse problems that aren't necessarily being solved in VR headsets... yet. After Second Life, Rosedale became focused on VR technology in 2013, co-founding a company called High Fidelity that promised high-end, low-latency VR. But High Fidelity started to pivot from VR to other technologies over the last few years, focusing on spatial audio most recently.
In 2019, Rosedale published a goodbye of sorts to VR, stating that VR hadn't reached a form that was good enough for most people to want to use. Talking with him over Google Meet in 2022, he still feels that way, calling VR headsets a blindfold to the real world that only some people feel comfortable enough to use. Rosedale thinks VR headsets could hit an iPhone moment, but maybe not for another few years. In the meantime, he's shifting focus to a metaverse platform that doesn't require headsets: namely, Second Life. He isn't the only person to feel this way: Even VR/AR software companies like Spatial have recently pivoted away from VR headsets as a way to reach more people.
In 2019, Rosedale published a goodbye of sorts to VR, stating that VR hadn't reached a form that was good enough for most people to want to use. Talking with him over Google Meet in 2022, he still feels that way, calling VR headsets a blindfold to the real world that only some people feel comfortable enough to use. Rosedale thinks VR headsets could hit an iPhone moment, but maybe not for another few years. In the meantime, he's shifting focus to a metaverse platform that doesn't require headsets: namely, Second Life. He isn't the only person to feel this way: Even VR/AR software companies like Spatial have recently pivoted away from VR headsets as a way to reach more people.
It really needs revamped (Score:4, Insightful)
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but it was turning into a wasteland.
Oh so then they've already achieved what Meta et al are trying to achieve. Not sure Meta can catch up at this point, they'll just have to acquire SecondLife.
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Second Life largely "failed" for a number of reasons, most that Facebook is now repeating.
1. User consent for all actions. This is not a "game", you can't go around PvP'ing or Raping anyone. SL people will tell you how they will get drawn into ERP encounters without any consent at all.
2. SL didn't have "Walled off" worlds that are operated without any oversight. If you wanted a place in SL, you needed to pay for it, perpetually (and no different from Roblox or Minecraft in that regard), what made SL more of
So.... Third Life? (Score:4, Funny)
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He's not wrong (Score:3)
The biggest thing in my mind for making VR a pleasant experience, is to allow people to focus naturally. Retraining your brain to let the game focus for you can be very uncomfortable.
Current VR headsets aren't much of an improvement on the Rift CV1 from six years ago. Better resolution, FOV, etc. but it's still too annoying for most people to bother with.
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I take it you're talking about actual lens focus? Takes a few short sessions for most people to learn the new physical skill.
On the line of 'annoying for most people to bother with', Second Life was also too annoying for most people to bother with, and even video game consoles are not of interest to a lot of people. A market is rarely 'most people'. It just needs to be big enough to sustain the businesses in it.
Re:He's not wrong (Score:4, Informative)
The technology is there [youtu.be], just not at commodity prices. We have the current metaverse because it's all cheap.
Neal Stephenson (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only did Neal Stephenson coin the idea in 1992...
Neal Stephenson didn't "coin the idea" of the metaverse, virtual reality internet existed in fiction well before Snow Crash. Stephenson merely coined the term metaverse.
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True Names - Vernor Vinge '81
Beats William Gibson's Neuromancer by a couple of years ('84)
Re:Neal Stephenson (Score:4, Informative)
Even that wasn't the first. Think of "The Eden Cycle". Or if you don't need novel length, try E.M.Forester "The Machine Stops" https://archive.org/details/e.... [archive.org]
Or in movies you might consider "The Forbidden Planet". (I think "monsters from the id" count as virtual.) Or Arthur Clarke "The City and the Stars". Several variations of things there. Clarke gave virtual objects physical properties and vice versa in a tight interlock.
Or E.E. Smith "Skylark Three" et seq. where he called virtual images projections. Though he usually tied them tightly to something actually physical happening somewhere else until near the end of "The Skylark of Valeron". I'm sure I've missed lots of instances.
"Exit Program" v Neal Stephenson (Score:2)
Star Trek had immersive virtual reality: the Holodeck. Most people know it from The Next Generation. But it actually featured in The Animated Series, in the episode The Practical Joker [wikipedia.org] back in 1974.
Would not surprise me if virtual reality existed before that. I remember reading scientific articles in the 70s about "virtual telepresence", where a person in a VR simulation (wearing a helmet and gloves) would be able to control a real-world robot arm, hundreds of miles away, to for example perform a medical op
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Pete Townshend's Lifehouse in 1971 was set in a polluted world where people lived in what he termed Gridlife,
and wore Lifesuits that were all connected to a mainframe called The Grid.
There was a bunch of other elements, but people just couldn't get it and it was chopped up to make Who's Next.
But in 1971, it was very much a metaverse story.
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Not only did he not coin it; you could control your own avatar (yes, they were called avatars) in an online community by Lucasfilm called Habitat in 1985, accessing it with your C64. It was too costly at the time, but has survived in several iterations. In 1995, it operated on CompuServe, under the name Dreamscape.
This was the first graphical metaverse. Stephenson allegedly had no idea it existed.
Why VR never hit critical mass. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many reasons VR never hit critical mass:
* No one wants to wear a toaster on their face. Headsets are bulky. Only recently is wireless even an option.
* Price. While there are cheap headsets good ones cost money.
* Nausea. Some people are way more susceptible to nausea in VR. You need a minimum 90 FPS for good VR which means expensive VR.
* No Killer App. You need software to sell hardware as every console manufacturer knows.
* Hard to give demos. When you experience a good VR headset you are impressed but someone new it is hard to convey how good the experience is.
* UI suck in VR. There is a reason the mouse+keyboard has been around for ages -- it is highly efficient.
Like any new technology it has its niche uses but it remains a fad. I'm sure it will come back again in 20 years with the promise "This time will be different!"
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Only recently is wireless even an option.
Well, it's been almost three years since Quest came out, which is a decent standalone device.
Price
Similarly, those devices are more available and affordable than a current-gen game console
Nausea. Some people are way more susceptible to nausea in VR. You need a minimum 90 FPS for good VR which means expensive VR.
I don't personally have this problem what soever, but again, 90fps is supported by current quest. However motion sickness has more to do with disconnect between in-game and real world, which leads to mainstream experiences frequently limiting to 1:1 with only teleportation as movement through the environment.
* No Killer App. You need software to sell hardware as every console manufacturer knows.
Admittedly the big
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I find VR very compelling personally and hope that it doesn't wash out as a fad
... "again".
I get the impression that most commenters were not around for the massive hype surrounding Second Life back in 2006. The hype went on for years, and included just about every Fortune 50 company having a presence there.
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I was here for that, and I didn't give a rats ass about it. I tried it out to see if I was missing something and came away satisfied that I could happily ignore it. I'm saying I actually like VR, and hope it is sustainable. Similarly, 3D TV was a fad that was underwhelming to me. The Wii controller fad made for some interesting party games, and I enjoyed the first person shooting experience to some extent, but I wasn't particularly disappointed to see it go when Nintendo walked away from it. One could
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Someone needs to make a physical keyboard and mouse that have position sensors on them so that a virtual representation of them can be placed in VR accurately, along with already existing tech that shows your hand positions in VR. Then you could just use your regular keyboard and mouse, with all the tactile feedback that comes with them, while being able to use hand gestures or whatever to pull up different virtual screens etc.
Sour grapes? (Score:3)
Sounds like they may be fretting about falling behind on the idea of XR and so are making excuses for it. VRChat users often observe that Desktop Mode VRChat is a gateway drug to VR.
"VR Optional" will catch them up to VRChat, and tech-wise and usage-wise they are somewhat akin to Neos in complexity and freedom. But then also has transactions with a currency that translates to and from legal currency. It'll be interesting to see what ends up working and what doesn't. What worries me is all the energy and time investment into places that may or may not survive. But that becomes a chicken and egg issue as well.
Dwight (Score:4, Funny)
A related classic (Score:1)
Second Life is still alive (Score:3)
A lot of the riff-raff element is gone now and those users that remain are now 10 or 15 "years old".
SL contains countless hours of 3D work, perhaps the largest collection ever assembled,
and it would be a shame to see it disappear in favor of Meta's Disney/cartoon/children's world.
Not surprised that Rosedale is worming his way back in, but he's the reason that it turned into kind
of a sewer back when. Anything for a buck. What's troubling is if they bring in blockchain, unnecessarily.
And Rosedale really didn't "build" squat. CTO Cory Ondrejka was the chief architect, and a genius.
I hope that they can lure him back. He knows what the difficult issues really are and has insight to solve them.
He was at Facebook for a while, but Zuck is too dim to understand what Cory was telling him.
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I tried SL about 5 years ago maybe.
Call me strange but I just didn't get the whole point. I certainly didn't understand why anyone would waste any time in there, let alone pay actual money for anything in it.
It truly melts my brain that people and even more amazing, corporations have spent thousands of dollars for virtual land which is essentially an infinite and imaginary resource.
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That's because Rosedale wanted it that way.
Base, expensive, and if you stopped paying, poof! No backups, no pause.
The people that understood the potential, the artists and creatives, are still around.
It doesn't have to have Ready Player One level visuals to impart meaning and connection.
Strange, but true.
Roblox (Score:3)
I'm curious to hear the Slashdot profile on Roblox -- an actually successful metaverse that has captured so much of America's youth.
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Roblox exploits [youtube.com] developers. [youtube.com].
Who is really looking forward to using this? (Score:2)
I remember checking out Second Life when it was new - largely due to the hype about it in such publications as Wired magazine (which I read religiously back then, when it was still a big, thick magazine on high quality paper and with at least one really good article per issue).
It was interesting at the time, especially because of the parallels with the cyberpunk novels of the time and so forth.
I remember in actual use? Second Life was painfully slow for me. I mean, I was still on 56K dial-up modem at that p
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I have a 200 Mbit connection and great 3d hardware.
I tried Second Life again for the first time in about 15 years or so - my old account still even existed - and it sucks hard.
Graphics are dated - but I can live with that. the biggest problem is the UI controls.
Mouse input doesn't work at all as expected in most 3rd person games, and my character seems to be perpetually stuck flying - can't get on the ground and stay there, even after mashing the on-screen "walk" button as well as the "c" (move down) button
What About Linden Dollars? (Score:3)
From Wikipedia:
Residents may purchase L$ directly through the Second Life viewer, or by logging into the website and using the Lindex Exchange. The ratio of USD to L$ is a floating exchange rate depending on supply and demand; As of June 2017, exchange rates average approximately L$252/US$1. Linden Dollars can be purchased and sold on the Lindex at the current market rate, or residents can set their own limit to get a better exchange rate. However, limit orders may take longer to be fulfilled than market rates. Between June 2008 and June 2017, the rate has remained stable with a high of L$270/US$1 and a low of L$240/US$1.
Linden dollars seem to have one characteristic essential in a real currency that all cryptocurrencies lack -- stability of value. Maybe there is an opportunity here for Second Life.
OTOH, they could just jump into the crypto swamp and issue LindenCoin.
Second Life is a dinosaur (Score:2)
I worked at IBM back in the late 2000's and the company was very interested in Second Life. Partnered with Linden Labs on a number of projects and even had servers that would run SL. Owned quite a bit of property there and paid employees to do extensive builds. I attended many company meetings as an avatar. There was a vision that this would be the new way to work.
But the basic graphics display implementation had apparently been botched from the start, it was done by people who didn't know what they were do
Both yes and no. (Score:2)
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Isn't "more" true of every game?
The big problem is one of caching. You're always having to download yet-unseen content.
That's the bottleneck that holds the rest back.