HTML in SL: Better Than Havok 2!

People Love To Complain

People in SL seem to love to whine that updates are not worth the frustration for the features that are implemented. While I disagree, and could illustrate before and after patches, I will simply say that the HTML update planned for 1.7 and subsequent patches will be, in fact, the greatest thing since sliced bread, perhaps better. The immediate reaction I hear from a lot of residents is "So what? I can browse the web without opening a new program. No big deal." But they are very short-sighted in this sentiment.

Reverse Compatibility

The obvious use of HTML in SL is an integrated web browser. I've previously discussed that reverse compatibility with HTML is necessary for Second Life to become the Metaverse. If you look at the Metaverse as the next-generation web-browser, it becomes obvious that we need a way to look at flat, 2-D pages in SL. We should also totally eliminate the need for other browsers like Internet Explorer or Netscape. Aside from the bonus of Linden Lab being able to control rendering (and thus not have issues switching between SL and a browser), we should have a way to open Second Life without logging in, and look at web pages.

Above this, HTML has a way of improving a lot of features in Second Life.

Text on Prims

HTML-on-a-prim, as it's fondly known, would eliminate the need for those silly looking floating text scripts, and XyText altogether. This eliminates needless lag on the sim servers, and potentially reduces bandwidth to the size of a text file, rather than a full image. This means less bandwidth in and out of SL and overall lower load on SL's overburdened asset servers.

Bye Bye Notecards!

Notecards would be made obsolete. Users could make much nicer announcements, promotional cards, documentation of items, etc. Pretty much every event or party invitation invitation I get is a Photoshopped image on a prim, anyway. This subsequently reduces the number of inventory items, eliminates instancing of notecards that would normally have multiple references in world, and thus, again, SL's asset server breathes a sigh of relief.

Marketing and Business

There is huge potential for businesses in Second Life. First of all, any shop owner can have their virtual store on the Internet accessed via SL. To that extent, the whole concept of a mall can be revolutionized, since only one prim is needed. Now the prims in a mall could be for look alone, and only one prim is needed to open up the HTML store. A mall shopper could enter the store, touch a prim to load the website, purchase items through SL Boutique or Second Server or the like, and have the product delivered in-game.

Now you're reducing prims, allowing users more creative freedom with shops than having a million pictures hung up on the walls, and taking the whole vendor load off of the asset server. (Notice a pattern, yet?)

XML RPC Work-around

There's also the way to work around the XML-RPC problem. Since Linden Lab does not want to implement full two-way XML-RPC due to security and spam concerns, the same operations could be worked online. It will be possible to do streaming content (movies, music) loading from webpage, (which FlipperPA already has a hack worked out for this) scoring for games like Tringo or SIM Combat (FPS) displayed on HTML, or pushing dynamic image content from websites onto prims. (Snapzilla picture frame?) Again, load lifted off sim CPUs.

It also means that once interactive HTML is implemented, users can make custom mini-UIs - like maps, control panels, dance machines, etc.

Quicker Searches, Less Patches

Linden Lab has already stated that they will be using HTML windows to replace the Find window. This means your searches are done on different servers (again, less lag) and the User Interface can be updated without having to take down all of Second Life for a patch. Huzzah!

Maybe this is a preamble to making the whole UI customizable?

Timeline

James Linden provided the priority list of HTML implementation as:
(1) static external webpage in 2D browser, no interaction
(2) static external webpage on prim surface, no interaction
(3) update URL for primitive, all viewers get update
(4) LSL call to set URL for primitive
(5) webpage from script/notecard/typed-in HTML
(6) interactive web page in 2D

and the current progress in the most recent Town Hall as (with comments):
(1) Non-interactive 2D browser - 95% complete
(2) Static External Web Page on prim surface - 75%
(3) update URL for primitive - 0%
(4) LSL call to set URL for primitive - 0% (but easy)
(5) web page from script/notecard/typed-in HTML - 0% (harder)
(6) Interactive 2D browser - 50%

Better than Havok 2

Oh, back to Havok 2. Havok 2 is perhaps the single most requested feature in SL. It will make collision detection better, and make movement of objects and avatars smoother. Cool, huh?

That's pretty much it. For all the groaning for Havok 2, it pales in comparison to what HTML in SL can do. HTML in SL has the potential to revolutionize how we use SL, eliminate the need for other browsers, greatly reduce load on sims and asset servers, and will be the base for many useful tools in Second Life. While people are excited about Havok 2, and rightly so, it's clear: Havok 2 is merely the wrapping paper around 1.7, whereas HTML is the true present underneath the shiny exterior.

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Scalability: Disaster Recovery Waiting to Happen?

Another patch, another afternoon with slow texture loads and teleports, right?

So I'm in the Live Help channel, Tuesday, and sure enough we're getting flooded with "my tp is not working plz help" requests. Over and over, Live Helpers patiently respond. "Yes, it's due to the servers being reset and recaching after the patch. Yes, the Lindens are aware and looking to fix this." Fortunately, when Second Life was slashdotted Wednesday, the issues had been cleared up. *grin*

But what happens if Second Life gets a major endorsement? Wired or PC Gamer could interview Philip and do a good write up of SL, and bam... 100%, 200%, 300% increase of subscribers, even if most were $10 accounts. Then what would happen to the asset server? "The Great Influx" of new users could cripple SL for days, maybe even weeks!

I could post a dozen links to discussions in the forums, but the bottom line is that Second Life's main data lookup is centralized. From what I've heard from older players (I'm a middle aged player, apparently.) Linden Lab was on the verge of bankruptcy, so they decided to cut some corners to get out a working product. Now, they're dealing with undoing the shortcuts that they took to get things started. (Which also includes why Havok 2 took so much time.) So we are left with a strained system for looking up data and streaming it to the users. Which is sort of important to get unstrained, eh?

For SL to be truly successful, this somehow needs to be de-centralized. Okay, let me back up. SL being successful is defined as globalized, widespread use. Between now and there we face things like standards, language, legal, and political barriers, dispute resolution, etc. But these still are moot if the system can't handle the population. A centralized system is simply not scalable.

From my conversations with Lindens, I think they are very much aware of the problem, but now we get back to the whole slashdot problem. What happens if we have a "disasterous success" story and SL is down/sluggish for days because of an mass influx of new residents? Perhaps this could be a good thing, even, forcing Linden Lab to fix the back-end software immediately.

Second Life Past "The Great Influx"

What will Second Life be like after "The Great Influx"? I suppose to answer this, we should look back.

A year ago, every event was announced by Lindens and many players would attend every event.
A year ago, you found out about new products from Show and Tell.
A year ago, "Land Baron" was a new term that many people didn't believe existed.
A year ago, there was one mall in SL, located in Magenta.
A year ago, there was no snow, no desert, no North lands, and private sims was a new experiment.
A year ago, there were no custom animations. Dance bracelets cycled through the default 8.
A year ago, poseballs and vendors were new technology.
A year ago, "Hoochie Hair" did not yet exist.
A year ago, there was about a quarter the number of Lindens.
A year ago, there was no Live Help, few liasons, but Lee Linden was chained to the (old) Welcome Area.

So what will Second Life look like after it becomes big?

• There will be many companies with their own private estates, as well as kiosks and land scattered through the world.
• Large communities of players will band together in themed areas.
• SLrs will no longer need a seperate browser. They will pop open their integrated Firefox window to look at old-style web pages, while updated webpages will appear directly in Second Life on prims and in 3-D.
• Whole new sets of tools will arise: search engines, in-world messaging, voice chat, instant messaging, and integrated services.
• Players, groups, events, places for sale, and items for sale will become too numerous to list. Subgrouping will be required. The map will be regionalized, classified ads more like Craig's List, freebie clasifieds will arise privately outside of Linden Lab, and online sellers like SLBoutique and SecondServer will be king.
• The gurus of Second Life today will be the in-demand professionals of tomorrow. Older residents of SL will be hired left and right by major corporations looking to integrate into Second Life. Many will become entrepeneurs. Lindens and gurus alike will become rich.
• Content providers in SL will be inundated with service requests. They will hire staff to help, demand changes from Linden Lab, and ultimately force the addition of letting residents going "invisible mode".
• Several more big-names will discover SL and invest.

It's a bright future. Learn SL today, and when the world embraces it, you will be greatly rewarded.

For me, I am already rewarded by being part of the shaping of the Metaverse today.

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The Real FIC

Normal On The Surface

"You're looking at the real FIC", FlipperPA Peregrine said. The location was not Indigo Sim. The crowd was not a bunch of avatars using a dance machine. No, it was East Central Philly, in a club owned by one of FlipperPA's friends in the real world. About ten Second Lifers were gathered in the real world, celebrating the real world nuptuals of FlipperPA and JennyFur Peregrine.

The scene was, on the surface, surprisingly normal. Flip and Jenn had not met in SL, in fact, they've known each other over half a decade. People were relaxing at the party, drinking, enjoying normal type conversation like music and what people do for a living. People danced, dressed up, videotaped, etc.

I did say "on the surface".

Take my conversation with Artillo. His wife and my girlfriend paired off, being both marginally SL-aware, while Artillo and I talked geek stuff, and yes, SL forum chatter. We were ten minutes into discussing our favorite love-to-hate posters, when Artillo's wife proclaims,

"You didn't tell me it was like playing with Barbies!"

Or take the fact that some of the folks I met were male and had female avatars. Talk about altercation of perception of a person!

Another oddity was discussing jobs. At few of us planned to shift our RL income from our current jobs to something more SL-centralized, and at least 1 of us already had. (I wish I could say it was me.) Two other were DJs. Collaborations were afoot, and yes, this leads us back into the topic:

The Real FIC

The FIC or "Feted Inner Core" was a term invented to describe the SL elite. They are the mean-spirited, anti-change "content barons" who are the big money makers and who conspire together to rule SL. Okay, so we do conspire to rule SL, but the rest is utter rubbish. The fact is that when you've been around SL long enough, you know who's got talent. Naturally, when you collaborate on projects, you will choose the talented people to approach. And it works the same in real life, just as many people have pointed out in the forums.

But cliques? Hardly. Someone like Torley is proof that you really just need to be nice to get in favor with the veteran players (and Bub Linden, for that matter!). But moreover, if you have an ounce of talent and apply yourself, not only will older players generally love talking with you and welcoming you to hang out, but they will respect you and want to work with you. I've had many occaisions where a random instant message in SL turns into a business collaboration. And speaking of www.fetedinnercore.com, that was a product of a gathering of Flip, myself, my gf, JennyFur, Maxx Monde, and Higbee Protagonist. Add alcohol, Marcos Fonzarelli's slick logo design, and a prodding by yours truly, and Flip registered the site.

Great mystery? Conspiracy? Bad attitude? Hardly. Though a few forum conspiracy theorists would disagree, the bottom line is the FIC is just people really enjoying Second Life. But oh! We have the Lindens in our pockets. Yes, yes we do. Fall in line or you shall be crushed by the Juggernaut which is the Feted Inner Core! BWAHAHAHAHAAHHA!!!! Shiny leads the way to victory!

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