|
The Archives
-
01.01.11The Predictive Power of Virtual WorldsVirtual worlds didn't so much predict the future as provide a giant sandbox in which to explore the different ways that the future could unfold. In presentations, I often say that I could have learned about social media from Facebook, or user-generated content from youTube, but I ended up in Second Life instead - and by ending up there, was able to see that the future isn't necessarily what the conventional wisdom says it will be. I can't imagine having any particular interest in things like on-line governance, privacy, identity, virtual commerce, law, economics, or 3D content development if it ...
-
10.12.10Mesh Is On Strategy for Linden Lab, But You Are Not a CreatorAllowing mesh imports into Second Life is on-strategy for Linden Lab and part of their broader 'Fast, Easy, Fun' mantra, according to Jack Linden with whom I appeared on last night's Designing Worlds. (Video after the break). I actually thought it was a good discussion, although I'm not sure I personally made a lot of sense, but that's par for the course. It was only in the latter minutes of the show that Jack said something which felt like something more than 'tech talk'. One of the things that the Lab does astonishingly poorly is putting platform changes into a broader context. ...
-
09.26.10Mesh Redux: Second Life NextMesh is coming to Second Life. I've been dealing with this idea for close to three years now, when I first realized that things like prototyping and architecture could never fully "live" in Second Life until you could import mesh models. I've written about it, advocated for it, spoke about it at the recent Second Life Community Center, posted thousands of words on the topic, held events at Metanomics including community forums and a full Masterclass broadcast in-world and on the Web which reached thousands of viewers. I've posted examples, discussed tools, promoted things like Prim Composer as a sort of ...
-
09.24.10Mesh and Second Life: Deal with It?Put this in the category of, um.....well I have no idea what category to put it in, but my respect for Reed, Gianna and Draxtor just dropped a notch or two with their video (embedded below the fold) about the coming ability to import mesh objects into Second Life. The video, which I'm sure is meant to be, um, funny, ends with the tag: "Mesh is Coming to Second Life....Deal with It". What's even more astonishing is that Linden Lab is carrying the video on the Second Life youTube channel. Now...I'm a believer that mesh is important, necessary, and will facilitate new forms ...
-
08.20.10Beyond Mesh Import: Second Life NextPhilip Rosedale confirmed at the recent Second Life Community Convention that the ability to import mesh objects (a standard format for 3D objects) into Second Life is a go, and will be rolled out in public Beta by the end of the year - bets are on a late September launch. In discussions with Philip Rosedale, I started to sense that there may be a wider expectation (by him at least) of where mesh imports could take us. But to give a glimpse of what mesh "looks like", here's a little preview of what's possible: I've written at length about mesh (and ...
-
06.23.10Mesh In, Wisdom Out: How Second Life May Inform the Next Generation of 3D Content[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="The terror of mesh?"][/caption] Concerns over a wave of content creators arriving in virtual worlds with a bag of mesh objects created in programs like the (free) Blender or the (incredibly expensive) Maya seems to cause jitters amongst the current content creators who have created businesses within Second Life. We discussed this a bit on today's Metanomics (video and transcript will be up tomorrow) and I concluded by saying that while the ability to IMPORT objects (including content that exists elsewhere) might seem like the main shift in dynamic, I actually think it's what Second Life will EXPORT ...
-
06.22.10Mesh Imports in Second Life ImminentTomorrow, I'll be hosting a discussion of 3D content development during a Metanomics Master Class, and with any luck Linden Lab will do what it seems to do with some regularity: make a big announcement right before the show. (They don't do this intentionally, it just seems to happen that way). In this case, rumors are that the Lab is about to lift the NDA on the work to-date on mesh imports. In fact, they sort of lifted the NDA already, only to clamp it down again after something like 15 minutes. Someone at a senior level decided they weren't ...
-
01.15.10Second Life and the Cultural Revolution (II)There's a cultural revolution going on in Second Life facilitated by a shift in approach by Linden Lab. Whether you think this revolution will scare away its core community or build its appeal to a wider audience depends on how you parse the future. What's certain is that Linden Lab is in the middle of a multi-year process which may end up being a textbook case of how to manage massive change in online communities. I recently wrote that Linden Lab was "at war" - but the war was with itself as the cultural mindset and organizational practices that made Second ...
-
11.19.09Setting the Stage for Mesh Imports: Second Life, XStreet Listings and the World to ComeLinden Lab recently announced policy changes on its popular XStreet commerce site in an effort to make the shopping experience more, um, friendly. The Lab cited extensive consultations in launching a "plan that all of our residents have helped us build." But not just the Residents held sway in the policy decision: larger considerations around how Linden Lab will handle mesh imports may have played a key role, and in this light the changes to XStreet have created the framework for future tiered pricing related to the value and type of goods and, perhaps, a long-awaited change to the premium/basic ...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.