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I'm surprised the article didn't even mention "High Fidelity", a VR platform created by the original founder of Second Life.

return0 9y ago
hifi fails to get traction. I 've been watching that for years the number of active regions is 90. And there are lots of complaints about the project at the moment (and about SL's own VR world wannabe, project Sansar). OTOH a lot of people fed up with SL's limitations and extremely expensive land fees have moved to the open source opensimulator platform.
Animats 9y ago
How's that working out? I installed the client once, wandered around a bit, found it boring, and quit. Here's their promotional video.[1] The graphics are lame. It's like a video game from about 15 years ago. It looks worse than Second Life. Why isn't this thing up to AAA title graphics quality? What's the advantage over Second Life? High Fidelity starts their world out as a boring flat plane. They should have started it out as good-looking natural terrain, with trees, shrubs, and grass. Use SpeedTree to generate a realistic looking world. That would set the standard for how good things should look. If people buy land and build things, the good-looking natural features will push them to do better work. As people move around, they should wear the grass down a bit, and when there's enough wear, an NPC road-building crew moves in and builds a path. There should be an automated Department of Public Works which gradually installs public services. And if an area is abandoned, grass should grow through cracks in the roads. Amazon is coming out with a "Snow Crash" show. Somebody should have the Snow Crash metaverse running before it comes out. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=42&v=-ivL1DDwUK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=42&v=-ivL1DDwUK4
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  At 49 seconds in, one of the characters looks _a lot_ like the Team Fortress 2 medic, to the point where I wondered if they could use their models.
- AJ007 9y ago
  I don't know how well user generated content of AAA graphics would work. An open world makes it even worse because the players have to be exposed to all of the things that keep performance in check. Those same things break any illusions of what they are looking at being more than a paper thin movie set.
- Animats 9y ago
  I hadn't tried Second Life in years. I just spent three hours in there. It's full of "For Lease" signs. There's a vast amount of unused real estate. Overpriced. Many billboards with space available. A huge area of empty sex clubs. Almost no avatars. Saw maybe six people in three hours. Works fine, though. Joystick navigation is terrible, but that's probably fixable through configuration.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  I interviewed with them a couple of years ago and I was horrified that their code was as bad as it was in such a short period of time. Very few code bases get better over time, and they were already at spaghetti code level. You have to sacrifice quality over quantity as soon as you begin or you are lost.

return0 9y ago

hifi fails to get traction. I 've been watching that for years the number of active regions is 90. And there are lots of complaints about the project at the moment (and about SL's own VR world wannabe, project Sansar). OTOH a lot of people fed up with SL's limitations and extremely expensive land fees have moved to the open source opensimulator platform.

Animats 9y ago

How's that working out? I installed the client once, wandered around a bit, found it boring, and quit. Here's their promotional video.[1] The graphics are lame. It's like a video game from about 15 years ago. It looks worse than Second Life. Why isn't this thing up to AAA title graphics quality? What's the advantage over Second Life? High Fidelity starts their world out as a boring flat plane. They should have started it out as good-looking natural terrain, with trees, shrubs, and grass. Use SpeedTree to generate a realistic looking world. That would set the standard for how good things should look. If people buy land and build things, the good-looking natural features will push them to do better work. As people move around, they should wear the grass down a bit, and when there's enough wear, an NPC road-building crew moves in and builds a path. There should be an automated Department of Public Works which gradually installs public services. And if an area is abandoned, grass should grow through cracks in the roads. Amazon is coming out with a "Snow Crash" show. Somebody should have the Snow Crash metaverse running before it comes out. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=42&v=-ivL1DDwUK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=42&v=-ivL1DDwUK4

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pavel_lishin 9y ago
At 49 seconds in, one of the characters looks _a lot_ like the Team Fortress 2 medic, to the point where I wondered if they could use their models.
AJ007 9y ago
I don't know how well user generated content of AAA graphics would work. An open world makes it even worse because the players have to be exposed to all of the things that keep performance in check. Those same things break any illusions of what they are looking at being more than a paper thin movie set.
Animats 9y ago
I hadn't tried Second Life in years. I just spent three hours in there. It's full of "For Lease" signs. There's a vast amount of unused real estate. Overpriced. Many billboards with space available. A huge area of empty sex clubs. Almost no avatars. Saw maybe six people in three hours. Works fine, though. Joystick navigation is terrible, but that's probably fixable through configuration.
BatFastard 9y ago
I interviewed with them a couple of years ago and I was horrified that their code was as bad as it was in such a short period of time. Very few code bases get better over time, and they were already at spaghetti code level. You have to sacrifice quality over quantity as soon as you begin or you are lost.