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> Rosedale has a startup called High Fidelity, and they were creating basically what you suggest, a new SL without the technical debt. It was also distributed i

> Rosedale has a startup called High Fidelity, and they were creating basically what you suggest, a new SL without the technical debt. It was also distributed instead of centralized. Unfortunately that world has shut down because it wasn't commercially successful. (I expect largely because the people who would have been their early adopters were in SL, and didn't want to move until there was enough content available, and not enough users meant nobo dy was creating content.) HiFi horrified Second Life content creators. It downloads assets from HTTP. There's no grid. There's no central asset server. There are no mandatory user accounts. So anything you sell can be quickly copied, hosted wherever, and duplicated with complete impunity. SL will kick you off the grid if you misbehave, but HiFi was made in such a way there was no grid to ban people from. Besides that it was nigh impossible to give them money if you wanted to. You could buy domain names (as in pay for an internal analog of DNS) that was something like $15/year. And that was completely optional. It wouldn't have paid for their coffee budget. As far as I can tell there was no coherent plan to make money at all, other than "let's tax the economy" in a system that not only was utterly hated by content creators, but where anybody could set up a competing shop any time they wanted. > I wish they had been successful, the platform architecture was really good. The code still lives on! Feel free to join our Discord or meetings: https://overte.org/ https://overte.org/

zargon 3y ago
I saw your other comment after I posted that. I didn't realize the content was so easily copied. Makes sense that creators would be reluctant to adopt it. The less commercially motivated creators were likely affected by the chicken-and-egg problem. I have much respect for Rosedale for working to create a virtual world based on free software principles. He has said he was expecting the VR headset market to grow sooner. Perhaps he was waiting for that before putting effort into offering commercial services. (Poor timing... if I recall correctly, Quest 2 launched and/or got popular soon after HF closed?)
- dale_glass 3y ago
  High Fidelity announced they were changing tracks to a corporate targeted product in May 2019, and entirely shut down in Jan 2020. The Quest 2 came out in May 2019, and Covid19 became a big problem just a bit after HiFi shut down! Talk about some bad timing. But anyway, in my opinion HiFi's problem wasn't so much that as bad management. To me it seems like they tried to combine an architecture and a business model that didn't make any sense. The way I see it, there were roughly 3 meaningful business plans, none of which they used: 1. Imitate SL. This would have meant having a grid, a mandatory login screen, and probably a closed server codebase. Keep people inside the walled garden and milk them. 2. Run an open source consulting company. Basically they make this software for custom events, like virtual conventions, concerts, meetings, maybe even a game engine. They'll customize whatever needs be for you. And then there's the source on Github under some commercially unpalatable license like the AGPL, for whoever wants to play with it, to advertise the tech and get contributions. 3. Embrace the community. Run a kickstarter/patreon, talk constantly to the community, sell swag, and basically act like a big youtuber that takes donations from their fanbase. I think they were probably way too big for that to work. I think #2 had the most potential, especially once Covid19 started. #1 would have required deep architectural changes and would have greatly angered the existing users. I'm part of a non-profit that develops the code so we're doing #3.
voldacar 3y ago
>HiFi horrified Second Life content creators. It downloads assets from HTTP. There's no grid. There's no central asset server. There are no mandatory user accounts. So anything you sell can be quickly copied, hosted wherever, and duplicated with complete impunity. SL will kick you off the grid if you misbehave, but HiFi was made in such a way there was no grid to ban people from. That sounds amazing. I had no idea something like this existed. I never encountered anyone mentioning it on HN, reddit, discord, etc. Maybe marketing was also an issue for them?
- dale_glass 3y ago
  It was still officially in beta when it died, and still rough around the edges. Also I think naming it "High Fidelity" was a very bad choice marketing-wise.
- Animats 3y ago
  > HiFi horrified Second Life content creators. It downloads assets from HTTP. So does Second Life. It's just that the asset formats are unusual. You can't really prevent people from downloading game assets. You may be able to prevent them from reselling them as their own, by recognizing duplicates. The Open Simulator people are working on change-tolerant hashing algorithms for this.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    All true, but there's a vast difference is in the degree of control. So say a SL avatar maker spends 40 hours making an avatar. At say $10/hour they'd like to make at least $400 to make it worthwhile. So if we sell at $5/each that's 80 copies to be sold. (just making up some plausible numbers here) Here's how things square up: SL: Buying stuff is the normal, encouraged mechanism with a well integrated marketplace and currency system. Ripping an avatar requires additional tools. Ripping an avatar may be fairly difficult due to baked textures. If found, you may be banned and lose everything on your account. Some things you own may not be replaceable. If you distribute your ripped avatar, LL could conceivably trace its movements and remove it from the inventories of anyone you gave a copy to. All in all, a considerable amount of pain you can get into for saving yourself $5. Most people wouldn't use a ripped avatar out of fear of endangering their account. So, it's certainly not perfect, but on SL things are very manageable. If LL cares, misbehavior can be punished to the point it's not worth the risk to anyone who actually has anything invested into SL. HiFi: There is a marketplace, but obtaining the HFC currency is bizarrely painful, requiring obtaining Ethereum, setting up an in-world meeting with a company representative, and exchanging ETH for HFC. Seriously, that's how it worked. Ripping an avatar is trivial with basic knowledge of the scripting system. The actual avatar is stored on a completely normal HTTP server you can get it from with wget or a web browser. It's in GLTF or FBX. If found, sure, HiFi can ban your account, but you don't need one. You don't really have an inventory or anything to lose. There's no grid, you're able to visit every part of the universe you're not specifically banned from. You can trivially host your copy of the avatar on any hosting service. You can share it with anyone and the system can't prevent it in any way. It's possible the avatar maker couldn't even sue you easily if they wanted, because you can just keep using non-official servers hosted in some place that doesn't care about US law like Russia. It's very much possible for a ripped avatar to spread far and wide with it being nigh impossible to stop. There's no real central authority, so it's pretty much your word against theirs.

zargon 3y ago

I saw your other comment after I posted that. I didn't realize the content was so easily copied. Makes sense that creators would be reluctant to adopt it. The less commercially motivated creators were likely affected by the chicken-and-egg problem. I have much respect for Rosedale for working to create a virtual world based on free software principles. He has said he was expecting the VR headset market to grow sooner. Perhaps he was waiting for that before putting effort into offering commercial services. (Poor timing... if I recall correctly, Quest 2 launched and/or got popular soon after HF closed?)

dale_glass 3y ago
High Fidelity announced they were changing tracks to a corporate targeted product in May 2019, and entirely shut down in Jan 2020. The Quest 2 came out in May 2019, and Covid19 became a big problem just a bit after HiFi shut down! Talk about some bad timing. But anyway, in my opinion HiFi's problem wasn't so much that as bad management. To me it seems like they tried to combine an architecture and a business model that didn't make any sense. The way I see it, there were roughly 3 meaningful business plans, none of which they used: 1. Imitate SL. This would have meant having a grid, a mandatory login screen, and probably a closed server codebase. Keep people inside the walled garden and milk them. 2. Run an open source consulting company. Basically they make this software for custom events, like virtual conventions, concerts, meetings, maybe even a game engine. They'll customize whatever needs be for you. And then there's the source on Github under some commercially unpalatable license like the AGPL, for whoever wants to play with it, to advertise the tech and get contributions. 3. Embrace the community. Run a kickstarter/patreon, talk constantly to the community, sell swag, and basically act like a big youtuber that takes donations from their fanbase. I think they were probably way too big for that to work. I think #2 had the most potential, especially once Covid19 started. #1 would have required deep architectural changes and would have greatly angered the existing users. I'm part of a non-profit that develops the code so we're doing #3.

voldacar 3y ago

>HiFi horrified Second Life content creators. It downloads assets from HTTP. There's no grid. There's no central asset server. There are no mandatory user accounts. So anything you sell can be quickly copied, hosted wherever, and duplicated with complete impunity. SL will kick you off the grid if you misbehave, but HiFi was made in such a way there was no grid to ban people from. That sounds amazing. I had no idea something like this existed. I never encountered anyone mentioning it on HN, reddit, discord, etc. Maybe marketing was also an issue for them?

dale_glass 3y ago
It was still officially in beta when it died, and still rough around the edges. Also I think naming it "High Fidelity" was a very bad choice marketing-wise.
Animats 3y ago
> HiFi horrified Second Life content creators. It downloads assets from HTTP. So does Second Life. It's just that the asset formats are unusual. You can't really prevent people from downloading game assets. You may be able to prevent them from reselling them as their own, by recognizing duplicates. The Open Simulator people are working on change-tolerant hashing algorithms for this.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  All true, but there's a vast difference is in the degree of control. So say a SL avatar maker spends 40 hours making an avatar. At say $10/hour they'd like to make at least $400 to make it worthwhile. So if we sell at $5/each that's 80 copies to be sold. (just making up some plausible numbers here) Here's how things square up: SL: Buying stuff is the normal, encouraged mechanism with a well integrated marketplace and currency system. Ripping an avatar requires additional tools. Ripping an avatar may be fairly difficult due to baked textures. If found, you may be banned and lose everything on your account. Some things you own may not be replaceable. If you distribute your ripped avatar, LL could conceivably trace its movements and remove it from the inventories of anyone you gave a copy to. All in all, a considerable amount of pain you can get into for saving yourself $5. Most people wouldn't use a ripped avatar out of fear of endangering their account. So, it's certainly not perfect, but on SL things are very manageable. If LL cares, misbehavior can be punished to the point it's not worth the risk to anyone who actually has anything invested into SL. HiFi: There is a marketplace, but obtaining the HFC currency is bizarrely painful, requiring obtaining Ethereum, setting up an in-world meeting with a company representative, and exchanging ETH for HFC. Seriously, that's how it worked. Ripping an avatar is trivial with basic knowledge of the scripting system. The actual avatar is stored on a completely normal HTTP server you can get it from with wget or a web browser. It's in GLTF or FBX. If found, sure, HiFi can ban your account, but you don't need one. You don't really have an inventory or anything to lose. There's no grid, you're able to visit every part of the universe you're not specifically banned from. You can trivially host your copy of the avatar on any hosting service. You can share it with anyone and the system can't prevent it in any way. It's possible the avatar maker couldn't even sue you easily if they wanted, because you can just keep using non-official servers hosted in some place that doesn't care about US law like Russia. It's very much possible for a ripped avatar to spread far and wide with it being nigh impossible to stop. There's no real central authority, so it's pretty much your word against theirs.