Quiplash

I wish AR the best, and I hope Blue Mars makes it. But the current announcement does not give me confidence to believe that they will. They are clutching onto mobile the way a drowning man clutches onto a floating log.

On second thought, if BM fails, it is bad for the virtual world industry overall. AR came *SO* close it hurts. Surely any other copmpany out there that is looking at entering the virtual worlds market will think twice --and more than twice-- at entering the market after seeing BM's (and SL's) recent troubles.

Reading through the Blue Mars developer forums about this recent announcement is depressing. Everyone seems to be floundering around for what to do. Someone even suggested that Linden Lab buy Blue Mars.

Here's an absolute worst-case scenario, which is possible if not probable:
1. AR fails to get critical mass for its mobile BM client, and folds.
2. SL hits some sort of bump (perhaps is sold to another company), and folds. This is the most unlikely part of the scenario, but it's not impossible either.
3. We're left with a bunch of inferior alternatives.

Here's a best case scenario:
1. AR makes BM work in the mobile market, it takes off, and development on the PC side continues.
2. SL does a turnaround (maybe through some savvy marketing), and the userbase begins to grow again instead of shrink.
3. One or more companies out there see that there's a market opportnity and one or more alternative grids is started. A major player like Microsoft or Google gets involved. (OK this is the most unlikely part of the scenario)
4. Competition drives innovation and further development. A link with Kinect really makes things take off. From there on it's all roses and sunshine.

Okay so which one of these scenarios looks more likely? Hate to say it, but the first one. THis is shake-out time for virtual worlds, and if we're lucky, at the end of it we'll still have some not-perfect-but-good-enough place to stay.

Hypatia Callisto

I'm not sold on the UGC aspect defining a virtual world. Some of them that works, some of them not. Artists can still sell "UGC" to non-UGC worlds, without actually creating inside a world.

I'm wandering around this world at the moment.

imit8

Still barebones, as far as interface, but the platform as a whole has promise. I don't like the avatars and I'd like to see better cameras, but I like its performance.

Sine Wave launches browser-based 3D virtual world and MMOG platform – Sine Wave Company

So far, it's the most stable Unity + Opensim world I've used. I want worlds that will in fact work on anything - even apps for tablets.

__________________
"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Hypatia Callisto

I think we all don't have enough information to make any long term predictions. I know enough, and a lot more than you, about Blue Mars to know that I cannot predict what the future for it actually is.

I knew that Jim Sink's direction was going to end up in the end of Jim Sink at Blue Mars, and that did in fact, come to pass. But that's all. Henk Rogers seems as committed as ever, as the founder. So it's not dead.

DanielRavenNest

Lower sim costs, in some cases higher prim counts, and more personal service. I have visited InWorldz three times now, and every time there have been staff there in the arrival area to greet me and help orient newbies.

Hypatia Callisto

Won't scale with thousands of users, much less millions.

I've done customer support for an online service with millions of users, it's no walk in the park.

Walker

If I recall correctly, the Lindeny welcome area experience rapidly died when concurrency was something like 9k-10k.

DanielRavenNest

I did not say it would, I answered Wildfire's question about what they *think* they can offer that's better than LL. Actually doing it is a whole different story. Heck, LL could have done a lot better managing the Mainland if they had dedicated support people who managed a few hundred regions each. That way they would know their area, and residents would know who to contact. Instead they chose to make support as hard to reach as possible.

Beebo Brink

What they offer right now is small community and strong customer support. Which is certainly very appealing, but does not provide enough of a commercial base to match the development that LL can implement. So it's always going to be a trade-off between ambience and functionality.

The minute another grids catches on, however, small community is shattered and customer support becomes significantly more difficult and expensive, even with an increase in income. No matter how well-intentioned any grid company may be now, the true test of their competency and vision comes with growth.

__________________
Noob: "okay.... im in a house with cages and people in gags and the door just locked and i cant get out :c"

Quiplash

Took a look at imit8, ResLive and GoJiyo, all by Sine Wave. Interesting!
Have to explore these a bit further, thanks for the tip Hypatia.

fuzzy3d

Sorry my english. I am that guy that created this video.

It is first test on my new iPod Touch 4gen after two hours creation in Unity3D (not AR (what is AR? or SL?)). You can see here 268300 fully textured triangles (= long loading time (custom shader with three textures- color, second for image based lightning, third for reflections)) on mobile device in Retina resolution (960x640). This is not avatar, this is 3D test. I am not working on virtual world, this is 3D viewer- prototype.

My newest video is here:

Can you do this better?

I am not working for any "AR" or "BS" (3D is only my hobby) and if you need to see better and professional mobile 3D world look at this:

Good enought?



Masami Kuramoto
sorry
but
you are absolute


.

fuzzy3d

Yes, you are right , everything i can do is something like this:


This forum is out of reality for me. Well, i show you something like yours "avatars":




Good enought Masami Kuramoto, our sweet ?



.

Hypatia Callisto

Masami also thinks that you can do a virtual world with nothing but html 5 and webgl...

My answer is: Masami, call us with your proof of life video when you have one made!

Charlemagne Allen

Tossing a metric shitton of buzzwords into the fire and burning them for warmth. Then, comes the martial law and the currency collapse.

__________________
Charlemagne Allen: YOU'RE A RACIST!
Charlemagne Allen: I HAVE CHATLOGS!
smokergirl Lowenhar: HOMOPHOBE
smokergirl Lowenhar: CONTENT THIEF
Charlemagne Allen: RELIGION SUCKS DONKEY BALLS!
smokergirl Lowenhar: KISS MY ASS YOU CLOSE MINDED HYPOCRIT
Charlemagne Allen: YOU WERE AN ESCORT FOR BARN ANIMALS!
Charlemagne Allen: ZOMG BIG SIG!

Pretty things:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlemagneallen/

Masami Kuramoto

Hi fuzzy3d, nice to meet you.

I'm afraid you totally misunderstood what I said above. I understand that English is not your first language, so please allow me to explain.

First, the acronym "AR" means Avatar Reality. This is the name of the company that created the virtual world "Blue Mars" and recently its spin-off "Blue Mars Mobile".

Earlier this year, AR published several preview videos of "Blue Mars Mobile" that were meant to show the progress of their work, i.e. porting the virtual world "Blue Mars" to Apple's iPhone.

However, those preview videos were not showing a virtual world at all. They were showing a graphics demo that a guy like you would create in Unity3D after less than two hours. This is why I posted your video for comparison. I didn't mean to belittle your achievement. I was criticizing AR, not you. There is nothing wrong with your work; you never claimed it was more than a quick demo or prototype. But AR claimed they had ported a virtual world to the iPhone, which is simply not true. That's what I called "BS" (= bullshit).

I hope you feel better now. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

DanielRavenNest

Technically even the PC version is not a "virtual world", since changes made by your avatar to the environment are not generally shared or persistent with other avatars or the next time you visit. It's not even a good game platform, in the sense that you cannot save your location or state of play. All that stuff could be added, but it's not there at the moment.

The mobile version now has chat, twitter posts, dress up, and clothes shopping, and that's it. That is more than it had when it first came out, but I agree with Masami, it's not a virtual world. It's a demo that shows you can render a Blue Mars avatar on an iPhone at this point. Getting to a world is a long long road. Even fully integrating the Mobile with the PC version has a lot yet to go.

Masami Kuramoto

Oh, it's not just me who thinks so. There are quite a few bright people who agree with me. Or rather, they convinced me.

The proof of life videos are all over the place; you just have to look them up.


You will probably disagree for the sake of disagreement, but KataSpace, even in its early prototype stage, resembles a virtual world more than Blue Mars Mobile ever did.

Will it be fast enough? Will it scale? I think so. Modern JavaScript engines use JIT compilers, so the downloaded client essentially turns into native code on the target platform. I've looked at numerous WebGL demos, and few of them ever dropped below 60fps in my browser. The Sirikata server is implemented in C++, which is a smart choice in my book. Scalability and decentralization (the developers call it "federation") are at the top of Sirikata's list of design goals. Learn more about it here:

Hypatia Callisto

That is just the rendering tech, Masami. There's a lot more to a virtual world than that.

As I said, call up when you have done a full architecture using NOTHING but WebGL and HTML 5

No communications protocols, no databases, no chat servers, no voice, no sound, no inventory, no payment systems, no physics, nothing else.

Yeah, Godot will show up first

Hypatia Callisto

Sirikata is using MORE than HTML 5 and WebGL... try again.

Hypatia Callisto

Yes, I agree... and it will take more than HTML5 and WebGL, too

Blue Mars has the same thing, in the PC version - Scaleform and DirectX (OpenGL in the case of the iOS client). It takes more than that to create a world.

Hypatia Callisto

haha

I did go back to Blue Mars, btw. I'm using it as a testbed for other ideas I have though (same with UDK)

Anyway, I want to see someone, armed with nothing but HTML5 and WebGL, do what Fuzzy3d did in 2 hours, and show me their video or screenshots.

I won't even ask for the virtual world bits. I just want to see them START.

See, part of the beauty of something like Unity, is you can get started pretty fast without a lot of coding, to develop a decent little game. UDK is more complex, but even with that, there's the basics to develop something like a 3d chat for anyone who decides to use it.

(though it won't be a world like SL is)

Hypatia Callisto

See, I did this beachfront in a few days in the Blue Mars City Editor, after I sorted out how the terrain painting works. (and how to get around the terrain painting defaults, which suck)

Was pretty intuitive though once I got around the sucky defaults, and I have to say in-world or in-editor terrain painting is a pretty nice thing. One thing it does NOT require is "coding".

Web design didn't really take off either until people had programs like Dreamweaver to use. Most people (even the pros) don't script in HTML without some way to see what they are doing visually. Programs like Fireworks still exist for a reason, to do rapid prototyping.

All this craze for HTML5 and WebGL is "back to the past" ... as if VRML would have won the day if it had only been a little more pretty. Well... no. It didn't win for a reason, and if the reasons it didn't win aren't addressed, this is not going to "win" either

I'll continue using game engines, because they do what I want, "out of the box" for realtime graphics. It's like using Dreamweaver for HTML. I figure, eventually HTML5 and WebGL will get their "engines" too... their "Dreamweaver" and they will go by different names as well.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Masami Kuramoto

No, Hypatia, I won't try again because it is perfectly obvious (to everyone except you) that I was talking about the client when I said:

"The future of virtual worlds is web-based, using WebGL instead of platform-specific plugins."

I was never even remotely implying that the server would run inside the browser or something.

Hypatia Callisto

By that definition, Blue Mars is not purely that either. It's got a server component as well. And it takes some time to integrate that.

Chat is not just on the server. Games based on UDK are client-server - the server and client is in the same application.

I'm not sold on browser based worlds - I think it's just one permutation. (an old one - Blaxxun and other VRML solutions were browser plugins) It's just as likely that the browser can be taken inworld and the world running in a full fledged application with 2d rendering tech for when it's necessary in an immersive way (the reason for HTML5, Scaleform/Flash). There's two schools of thought there... more than two.

It's perfectly obvious to everyone except Masami.

Hypatia Callisto

Also, where's your WebGL work, Masami? Or do you just hang around in forums talking about WebGL worlds but not actually making them? Sirikata looks interesting, but so far it looks more like a thesis project (which the video makes pretty clear - these guys are doing it more or less as a university project... we've seen that before with things like Croquet, hasn't set the world on fire yet).

It doesn't even do most of the things that little ol' Unity does, right out of the box. When I see people making little browser world apps with WebGL and HTML5 and having something to show for it in 2 hours, like you can with Unity, then I'll take a look at it again

Till then

Hypatia Callisto

went to kataspace... I think molasses was faster than that demo... lol. (and it sure ain't my hardware) Never did get to see my avatar, and it apparantly only works in Chrome for now. (I'd have to futz with Firefox to enable websockets)

Yeah. I see how that's going to work out well with different browsers already

ETA:

http://codereview.chromium.org/5643005/

LOL