I would just like to know that when I rez an object from my inventory, that it actually will reliably appear. That when I teleport somewhere, there’s a half-decent chance of making it. That if 50 people are in that region, I’ll still be able to move. That when I log back in, my inventory will actually at least contain the things it did when I logged out. That when I buy something, I’ll get it. Basics. Still absent from Second Life.

I’d also like to know that if I take the time to build something in Second Life, two things will remain true: that it will still be there a year from now so it’s worth investing more time, and second, that I will be able to take my creations elsewhere.

I miss the days when my biggest worry was if I would have a hairy butt after a TP. It was almost working back then. It seems to have degraded over the years, rather than improved, and more and more unwanted, poorly-planned, buggy and annoying new “features” are being layered on top of that unreliable base.

Sorry if meshes, media sharing and social network integration seem irrelevant to me at best, or totally unwanted at worst.

Now excuse me while I go log in with a 1.1 viewer; I have a butt to shave (detach hair from), and a crowded region to TP to.

It is no mistake that the favourite prim for hair designers is the Cone, this sits, graphical cost speaking, between the Cube and the Torus.
Now start adding the costs: Each attachment point on an Avatar can support one linked group of prims up to 150(ish), given there are around 20 attachment points, each Avatar can walk around with around 3,000 prims on them. Assuming each Prim has a minimum of 6 faces, each able to have its own texture applied at up to 1024×1024 in size, thats 18,000 textures that can weigh in at around, lets say an average of 1mb each……. now you can see how out of control everything is…. add to that physics (flexi), Alpha layering and glow on each texture and a single Avatar has the potential to bring a Sim to its knees.
Sculpties are basically textures that use offset diffusion to make their shape, otherwise known as Volumetric Pixels, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel ). They cannot be programmed using shaders, or vertex referencing etc and refresh like a movie at 12.5fps, requiring their own rendering pass.

If LL now add the ability to import Meshes into SL, consider the additional network and database strains this will impose, especially in the first few months. Consider, normally a mesh can have a texture per polygon and can have multiple layers, what cost will this add to a graphics engine that is dealing with Prims, Sculpties and now Meshes. How will they control the loads? Meshes are not prims, and can have around 65,000 polygons per mesh, each referencing their own texture!

They are also contemplating enabling Dynamic shadowing.

In my opinion, they (LL) are simply desperate to try and keep up with technology, but it’s akin to trying to turn your model T Ford into a drag racer.” makes one wonder. Thanks Andrew at least you seem to have a grasp on reality.

inyaface….the belief of a generation;)

and yes..community managers are the true mediators in communities..be them physical or digitally constructed.

another reason SL died of LL this last 3 years.:)

Here are a few other points . . .

The URL was botched because I made an attempt to genericize it as an example, including a character or spacing the comments section didn’t parse correctly. An important discussion shouldn’t turn on a typo.

You wrote, “I never alleged Second Life or other virtual worlds that take a walled garden approach are ‘unusable’.” But what you actually did write before that was, “It’s the walled-garden approach to virtual worlds that has kept them unusable.” If I’d posted that, you would have questioned it, too, but I would have admitted my wording hadn’t been quite right instead of blaming you for putting words in my mouth.

“Walled garden” is a bad term to use because the definition is inexact . . . and it’s pretty funny how definitions of it vary, and how they have changed over time. I didn’t change the meaning of the term on you . . . it’s a vague term in the first place. Even if there were Facebook and Twitter integration, SL would *still* fit the definition of a walled garden, just like an iPhone.

I didn’t say more about export vs. import for three reasons. One, I’m busy. Two, I believe Dusan probably has a lot to say on the matter, and it would be rude to upstage him any further on his own blog. Three, it’s been a long time, but I think I initially got the idea from Csven anyway, years ago, and it’d be better to look up what he’s said about it first.

What I see going on here is an attempt to make a mountain out of a malformed URL, getting bogged down in terminology, upset because I said I believe I have vision (saying I have two arms doesn’t mean you haven’t got any), and other distractions. I didn’t post here because I felt like having a contest to see who’s the most slippery debater, but to discuss the future of SL. I feel we’re on the edge of that ugly territory wherein a spelling error is used to question the validity of someone’s views, and I wanted to have a discussion, not a debate. If I upset you, I apologize. We’d be better off discussing this inworld without an audience to impress.

“I think [mesh] exports will have a far greater positive impact than imports.”

I’d be curious to hear your rationale and examples of what kind of impact that export would have, aside from simply making OpenSim variants much more appealing? (As in, you elude that residents will build in Second Life and sell to other platforms. I think the exact opposite is more likely.)

“Second Life is supposed to be a world-changing, better-world-creating thing. It can be that, but not if everything it offers is imported from somewhere else.”

If user-created-content is “world-changing”, then why have dozens of other virtual worlds that *did* have exportable content not change the world? Seriously, Second Life being world-changing has nothing to do with object-export, and everything to do with eroding geography and physical limitations as a barrier. These are things that have to do with access and community, not building tools.

“The problems of social media integration, for the average Resident have been discussed over and over by others who will be more affected by them.”

This “average resident” understands how to use social media, but I don’t automatically grant that they get the “why”. The how is a matter of implementation – certainly there are silly ways of integrating social media (for example, forcing real identity). The “why” is much more of the big question, in my view. Second Life’s community is limited by Second Life’s log in. There really is no convenient way to share in-world events without completely writing new ones in a different medium (google calendar, facebook, whathaveyou), and that doesn’t lend itself to easy sharing in-world. And speaking of limiting community …

… your example of “but profiles CAN be accessed” is exactly why it’s bad. First, you didn’t have the right URL – it wasn’t intuitive enough to grab easily. Secondly, it’s an obscure URL. Why isn’t it just http://www.secondlife.com/residents/yourusernamehere? Thirdly, the information is missing the majority of the elements of a SL profile.

“The real question is . . . do you really think SL and other virtual worlds, with their walled garden approach, are “unusable”?”

No, actually, that’s putting words in my mouth. I never alleged Second Life or other virtual worlds that take a walled garden approach are “unusable”. What would be more accurate would be “are not usable in as many ways as one that takes a more interactive approach”.

“I’m not a typical Resident, either, but I have enough vision to see that at this juncture it’s particularly important to focus on SL as a whole. ”

If you were aiming to name-call me as lacking vision, you’ve succeeded.

But furthermore, I think “focus on SL as a whole” is a vague statement. You mean it as far as the majority of Second Life’s residents. But at the same time, any time revolutionary features come to Second Life (music, web, sculpties, etc) – residents adopt them and the idea of what most-residents-do expands.

Also, there’s another flaw to your logic, here. Most residents never make it past orientation, let alone past the first few hours of using Second Life. Your statement assumes *active, long-time committed* residents, and in that case, you’ve mapped out a plan for Second Life to never expand to new audiences.

“Walled garden . . . works for the iPhone”

This is an invalid example. You’re now redefining what I mean by “walled garden”. What I mean is interactivity with the rest of the Internet. The iPhone store is a walled garden in a completely different sense – in the proprietary store and hardware. Equivocating the two concepts is apples and oranges. The iPhone is a success *precisely because* it is not a walled garden in my sense. It connects to the Internet. To your favorite chat programs. To searching for things using GPS. Etc.

“[walled garden] Works at the local amusement park”

If we equate Second Life to an amusement park, there are literally hundreds of online games with a market much, much larger than Second Life. Second Life rakes in tens of millions for Linden Lab. The gaming market rakes in tens of Billions. So I don’t think this example works too well, either.

“[walled garden] and at the upscale subdivision down the road”

I don’t think equating Second Life, or any other Internet service, as a place of shelter and physical safety works.

“and [walled garden works for] the nearby corporate campus with the guards checking badges.”

Here, and with the last example you’re defining “walled garden” as security. That’s not what I’m talking about at all. I’m talking about interactivity with other mediums of communication. Naturally, any piece of software should be secure and not hackable. But that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.

“Sure, opening it up would be better for some (not all) Residents. But this is a debate I don’t have time for today.”

You make the assumption that by integrating social media, suddenly everything is “opened up”, or whatever that means. This is a *privacy* issue, not a walled-garden issue. No one here is lobbying to enforce 100% user transparency. We’re simply endorsing integration with other mediums of communication.

The problems of social media integration, for the average Resident (not people who are working for enterprises) have been discussed over and over by others who will be more affected by them.

There was already a way to IM an avatar, as well as a way to SMS an avatar, years ago (before SLIM, Avaline, and etc.). Can’t recall if it was using AIM or Yahoo or both without digging up the documentation, but I have in my Inventory a scripted “cell phone” which I purchased years ago which did this. This sort of thing was very popular for a while, as a novelty and a status symbol (the sim would get full and I’d have to wait to go to the store for more ringtones and updates). But it didn’t last. Because it’s easier for most Residents to use a regular SL IM, since they’re usually talking to other Residents.

You can already look at much of a Resident’s profile from the Web. http://world.secondlife.com/resident/avatar UUID here] I turn up SL user profiles all the time when doing Web searches. Sure, this could be improved . . . but I wouldn’t want to see Linden putting resources into this before they focus on other things that are more important for the average Resident.

The real question is . . . do you really think SL and other virtual worlds, with their walled garden approach, are “unusable”? If I thought that, I would be in a different business. And if it were true, no one would be inworld and we wouldn’t still be around having this discussion. What you’re really saying, Hiro, is that this walled garden approach makes SL less useful for meeting *your* goals . . . which aren’t typical for Residents.

I’m not a typical Resident, either, but I have enough vision to see that at this juncture it’s particularly important to focus on SL as a whole. Mainstream users do and always will outnumber Solution Providers. We depend on them, not the other way around.

Walled garden . . . works for the iPhone (with third-party apps, just like that cell phone in my avatar’s Inventory). Works at the local amusement park, and at the upscale subdivision down the road, and the nearby corporate campus with the guards checking badges. Works at a movie theater that doesn’t let you bring in your own popcorn. Sure, opening it up would be better for some (not all) Residents. But this is a debate I don’t have time for today.

Anyway, here’s another piece of the puzzle . . . thinking about LL’s goal of a web-based client and living in everyone’s pocket on their mobile device, check out an iPhone app called SculptMaster 3D.