Intuitive 3-D Interface: Finger Mouse, Amazon, Barriers

In this entry, I'm going to be talking about barriers to entry into Second Life, and some ways we can get around them. As observed by a variety of blogs, we seem to have leveled off at about 42,000 concurrent users, and we have a very high (90%) attrition rate of new users to Second Life. Judging by the raw account numbers, it seems signups have slowed down from their break-neck 20% per month pace, as well.

It would seem obvious to me that there are some barriers to usage in place that are preventing even more people from accessing and enjoying Second Life. These are things we need to address if we want Second Life to become a ubiquitous Metaworld platform.

But first, something really cool.

Finger Mouse

Thanks to Mark Wallace at 3pointD for alerting me to this:



3-D input device created as small as a ring

Nice!

The reasons I love this:

• It's student-made.
• The device is lightweight and fits on your finger
• This is the first thing I've seen that has a potential to be inexpensive 3-D input device that isn't clunky.

I love my Gyration mouse, for sure, but even a few ounces being lifted in the air for an extended period of time can cause strain on a user's wrist. (Heh! I bet that reads funny to some people!) This is also where I see these students' first challenge. Even if the ring's weight is trivial, the mouse will need a passive mode where the user can rest their hand on the desk, both to (a) Keep their arm in an ergonomic position as often as possible and (b) Operate in 2-D where applicable.

Also, the students are going to have to miniaturize the receiver device. I can imagine something like the Wii's IR-bar clipping to the edge of a monitor.

More images.

This sort of device could pave the way to doing much more elaborate 3-D interfaces in ways that are still intuitive for user navigation. Case in point: Amazon.

What I'd Do With Amazon.com

During Virtual Worlds 2007, Millions of Us CEO and former Linden Labber, Reuben Steiger, stated, to paraphrase, that 2-D interfaces will never be replaced by 3-D in some cases. While I agree on principle, I disagree with his example: Amazon.com

I shop Amazon for stuff like books or DVDs, and it's useful for when I know what I'm looking for, or at least the artist / author I'm looking for. However, I just can't browse Amazon worth a dang. Where Reuben can't imagine Amazon.com in 3-D, to me it's obvious that just because we may not be able to visualize technology, doesn't mean it won't exist. That to me is a signal that we're getting closer to a technological singularity, not that we're saturating our interface technology to a point of perfection.

First and foremost, Amazon in 3-D will likely try and recreate a real shopping experience. I say this for a few reasons:

• It's easy to imagine
• People are going to malls less, but missing the experience of shopping at stores
• There has been hundreds of years of experience and research into how shoppers shop in 3-D meatspace. That knowledge will transfer (though not 1:1) to 3-D Virtual space.

Secondly, I imagine organization based on 3-D arrangements, rather than 2-D. If Amazon were to come to my company tomorrow and ask what I'd do, here's some ways I'd propose showing off books:

• Think about X-Y-Z. (in SL coordinates, where X is forward, Z is up, Y is lateral) Perhaps the Y-axis is books by the same author. Perhaps the Z-Axis is books similar in topic / genre. The X-Axis could be older versions of the book, or other languages, or different formats. (Audio, large-text, paperback, hardcover, etc).
• Keep book covers as thumbnails, but think 3-D "book covers". As you hover your mouse / click on book covers, they could expand into 3-D dioramas, using basic holo-rezzer technology. (Reminds me, tonight I need to document my Mutable Spaces holo-rezzer and open source it.)
• Allow users to customize their own portal using a dynamic HUD device to have access to the traditional website, 3-D, 2-D and text based information, and sort their 3-D visualization in any number of ways.
• Populating a local shopping cart and then pushing all data to a web-interface all at once. Once SL gets HTML, this becomes seamless.

Barriers to Entry into SL

What makes Second Life popular?

It's a combination of a 3-D immersive environment, protection of individuals' IP rights and ability to assert them through a virtual, yet stable in-world economy, and interfaces to real-world applications and data. 4 things: 3-D, money, IP, connections. Got that?

I mention this because while Second Life has a lot of the right stuff to be a popular platform, it has barriers to entry. And this is precisely how topic #1 relates to topic #2.

One major barrier to entry is the interface, and the associated learning curve. Lightweight, intuitive controllers like the prototype 3-D ring mouse will make new users able to more quickly jump into a 3-D environment. This is really important because while 3-D is a very intuitive space to reside in and understand from a conceptual, human point of view, it isn't necessarily an easy space to navigate. New users literally have to be taught how to walk, talk, and fly.

Playing with better hardware interfaces are part of a solution, but only one side of the equation. At the same time, we need to work on improving our software interface, i.e. the SL browser.

It's a Browser, Not a Game

Most centrally, I think the crux of what needs to improve with the SL interface is that SL, right now, works like a game interface. You act always through an avatar proxy who walks, flies, touches, rides vehicles, etc. This is great for an immersive SL, but the Metaverse is something more. Since SL derives so much from connecting to the real Internet, and since SL is eventually supposed to supplement the Internet, it seems appropriate that our interface ought to behave much more like an Internet browser.

This has a variety of facets, which off the top of my head, I'd include HTML, a customizable interface, built-in Jabber compatible chat, etc. Many of these things are in works, so I'd like to touch upon one aspect that I have not yet in my blog: Passive Browsing.

Passive Browsing as Emergent Behavior

Also known as "ghost mode", Passive Browsing would let SL browsers (clients) access content in Second Life without rendering any avatars. "Ghost Mode" is a misnomer, really, because it assumes that "You can see other people, and they can't see you". This is not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is catering to emergent behavior of the real Internet and incorporate those aspects into SL.

Interaction with avatars is something I focus on with my professional builds, but at the same time, not everything requires having an avatar. Going back to the Amazon.com idea, I really don't need an avatar to browse through Amazon's wares. Having it in 3-D would be a boon, as I've pointed out, but the avatar only gets in the way.

So the point is this - we have this huge Internet with billions of pages, and we have a way that people like to surf it. While there are definitely new ways to explore data that Second Life is providing, why would we force the public to abandon all of that existing behavior? We've spent over 15 years figuring out just how to best tailor the Internet to make usage easy. Why would we throw away that wisdom?

It seems obvious to me that we should be able to incorporate that knowledge into Second Life, and make our 3-D platform a much more robust, comprehensive tool.

Barrier Lowered: Easier Learning Curve

Why not, instead, let people set to avatarless, Passive Browsing mode? Suddenly, there's no inventory, no instant message window, no friend list, no build tool. What remains is a much simpler, intuitive interface. New users intimidated by all the features of Second Life now have much less to deal with, starting off, and have a much lower technological barrier of entry.

Barrier Lowered: Easier on Network and Graphics Requirements

Better yet, a Passive Browsing mode would mean much lighter hardware and bandwidth requirements, since avatars add both a significant amount of network lag as well as complexity to render. Without having to worry about what avatars are showing up to their land, owners would have complete control over all things on their parcel, and could tailor content to be much less graphics and network intensive.

While computers have dropped in price since SL has started, there graphics and CPU requirements of SL are still above a great deal of computer users. This becomes an even larger issue as we leave the Western world and into countries with less wealth. Bandwidth has the same issue, and is a problem in the US, as well, where rural areas have trouble getting high-speed Internet access. Alleviating both of these by lowering requirements means a far greater number of people will have access to Second Life.

(Thanks celebrity for reminding me about this part.) Remember Network is also about load on the servers. If a server isn't having to manage all of the cross-connects between users to see one another, then we're also looking at an increase in the number of people who can simultaneously view content. I couldn't guess to the amount this will be true, but even a 2-fold increase would be beneficial.

Barrier Lowered: Psychological Resistance, aka "I don't play online games!"

Another significant barrier to entry is the fact that many, if not most people consider virtual worlds to be games. People won't touch Second Life because when they think of it, the closest thing in their mind that they understand would be World of Warcraft. To them, Second Life is silly, trivial, and/or just not interesting. Instead, having the SL be able to act more like a browser, people could come in, not feel super intimidated, and when they are ready, then go ahead and start up their avatar.

Barrier Lowered: "I don't want my kid interacting with people online unsupervised."

Along the lines of the last advantage, there will be responsible parents who may feel their child is too young to interact with strangers over the Internet. While age verification is one good step, we have to realize that the real Internet isn't PG-13, it's intended for everyone. So while an 8-year old in Second Life would definitely need to be restricted to G-Rated content, they additionally may need to have their avatars turned off. This is a concern I've heard raised by many people, who are interested in providing virtual world content for young people as a rich learning environment, but who don't want to expose them to the risks of interacting with people on the Internet.

Concerns

Passive Browsing, or "Ghost Mode" raises red flags with people. Many people I've discussed this with are highly resistant to the idea because they see it as a privacy issue. I think the easiest and most obvious way to assuage these concerns are adding a parcel flag that could restrict users by whether they have avatar mode on or off.

I might add that with the open source client, it's inevitable that people will develop ways to go around this anyway, so this is a larger security issue that will have to be addressed regardless of whether there is Passive Browsing mode, or not.

Others don't like how this breaks the immersive element of Second Life. This is the same stubborn rejection of Second Life interacting with the Internet. This should not be seen as restricting ability in SL; instead, this is adding new functionality to use SL in new ways. It should be viewed as augmenting SL's capabilities for people who would use it other than specifically in an immersive way. (Going back to the Amazon example to prove there are major, legit ways where this can be true.)

Passive Browsing Summary

So we have a list of reasons why passive browsing would be beneficial:

1. Lighter hardware and bandwidth requirements for some users
2. Removing some psychological barriers for some potential users
3. Adding abilities to better control your 3-D environment
4. Simplifying the interface for instances that don't need a full avatar browser
5. Extending Second Life to younger audiences

I hope this is something you all can consider and promote. Let's discuss how we can best implement it!

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re: re: Hotspots, Second Life's New Controversies

Gwyn, thanks for taking the time to reply to my last entry! :D

It's so much info, I had to put it in a new blog post. Again, Gwyn's words are summarized, and in italics.

The question here is simple: will you trust someone on a relationship — personal or business — taht flatly refuses to talk to you on the phone?

Business - no. But I already do it via real phone or Skype anyway, and I'd assume most business people in SL do the same. There's little impact on SL because RL business people in SL make up a tiny % of the population. As for people doing in-world business, there's no need to do phone calls for microtransactions - IMs work fine.

Personal - yes, sure. I have had and have and will continue to have meaningful personal relationships with friends whom I only chat with via text.

but it also means for the voice-challenged that you'll look as stupid as you sound

And lots of people are horrible typists, too, with awful grammar, spelling, word-use, they swear a lot, and what-not. So what? Again, if they need to do business, they are using phone / Skype already, and if it's personal, I don't think it'll matter if it's text.

Let's talk about numbers here, Hiro :) The number of people who read books these days is a tiny, microscopic fraction of all people who know to read and write. TV is not exactly "immersion" in the sense that it requires a conscious effort to do so — unlike a book. Although "play games" is definitely a form of immersion, I'd like to have an idea on how many people do, indeed, play games routinely for immersion, as a percentage of the overall population, spread across all age bands (like SL does). I wonder if it's not much closer to the number of book readers than TV watchers!

While you may be right about books, it was only one item in my list of examples, adding to a cumulative effect of "people immerse themselves to have fun". Actually, thinking about it, people immerse themselves in physical sports, which are outside the rules and context of everyday life, too. "Immersion" is suspension of disbelief, and/or it's leaving the real world and finding another to be in temporarily. It's escapism. Richard Bartle rightly points out that you don't need graphics for it, either. Granted, pictures do help immersion. So does being at a place.

However, the mind is powerful. A buddy of mine clued me in to a study that showed that people watching performers actually started emulating similar brain patterns to the performer. Realize - the expectation was that they're different - enjoying should be, logically, different from performing. However, what they found indicates that when you enjoy something, even if you're a passive observer, your brain is tricked into being immersed into the same patterns of the performer. Eerie, huh?

People jump at scary movies because they have suspended disbelief. People cry when their favorite sit-com couple breaks up, for the same reason. Just because TV and such doesn't require a "conscious effort". (Though certainly conscious effort might make it *more* immersive.)

So I think you have your immersionist ratio backwards. Just like it is now in SL, 99%+ are using it for fun - for immersion.

(I said:) On the other hand, if you look at tech like Reallusion's CrazyTalk, and at Gwyn's mention of the Logitech webcam software, you'll find that the face-morphing can be applied to some pretty far-out avatars. So, it'll still be your choice whether it's you in world.

Yes, I agree, I was more thinking of real-time face morphing of your RL face on top of your avatar... so that it looks exactly like yourself.

The current technology of displaying your features on top of any type/style of avatar (coupled to voice morphing) is much more in line with Bartle's views of immersion, and obviously I'd enjoy that. Still, as said, you can't disguise a bad accent or a stutter or simple shyness...

Sorry, you have this backwards. Facial morphing software is something where you absolutely can fill in the gaps. You can have your avatar wear a smile by default. You can customize the look of your avatar. You can tweak settings so that your morphing software exaggerates or understates your expressions. It should hopefully capture all sorts of subtle nuances with your expressions, but the bottom line, that fact doesn't affect immersionists at all. Immersionists do want to show their real feelings, only through a different body or role.

And they can always turn the webcam off. Same as voice. Use an emoter HUD, no big deal. If you're so bent on how far role-players will go to mask themselves, then by your same logic, those roleplayers will be as tolerant of that behavior in others.

(I said:) Granted, an appeal system needs to be in place for people who are falsely censored.

Indeed, that was the point here. LL will do nothing of the sort.

The appeal system I was talking about is more of a community driven one. Just as we can use a distributed model to ban people, so could we too use a distributed model to unban.

I was thinking along the following lines. Someone makes a comment that I'm wearing a too short skirt (it happened!), and require that I flag it as adult content. I refuse, since short skirts are definitely not 'adult' content, unless the person doing the request comes from an Amish camp or is some sort of Islamic fundamentalist. This person then flags my account for review by LL, and eventually, LL will force me to wear the 'adult' flag on that skirt. Our Puritan friend smiles. After a lot of discussion and persuasion I eventually get that flag removed, and my skirt becomes "PG" again. Furious, our fundamentalist friend now enters my name on all major banlists on the grid. I'm limited to enter my own parcel only, and walk across Linden Land — bye bye SL.

I definitely believe that Linden Lab will be open to including reasons why people are banned as part of the mechanism, and I would encourage people to do it. If people want to flag you as "banned for sexual content" then indeed, there will be other fundamentalists who will also want to ban you for the same reason. So be it.

Perhaps the easiest thing in the ban list implementation is for any initial banning, it tag it with who did the initial ban and require a reason to be input.

(I said, regarding getting around adult ratings by simply hovering outside of the area and camera'ing inside:) All of this predicates on being able to see it with your camera. I predict instead Linden Lab will cull the mature data for unverifieds, as part of the same technology that Linden Lab is developing to cull data for muted residents. (They announced the later about a year ago.)

You might be right on that (I've seen it mentioned as being close to completion, although in other completely unrelated issue, which however could be used here as well) although it comes to my mind that some strange results might occur if you are wearing a PG skin and an 'adult' dress over that skin... :)

There will always be exceptions and bugs and we should expect them, and expect Linden Lab to fix them.

(I said: ) Gwyn, you certainly are on a cynical streak! The vast majority of SL, while it may be "M" rated, is more like PG or PG-13. Most users don't have porn, even if they keep their land "M" rated in order to be able to drop the occasional swear word. ...

Most definitely very cynical and sarcastic :) However, "most users don't have porn" is the understatement of the year; I'd say, "most users don't have anything but porn". ... We're mentally trained to ignore porn pop-ups or porn-related spam, and simply avoid these, and have the idea that just because Google does not list any porn (they have great filters!) it isn't there.

Ah, you misunderstood me. When I said "most users don't have porn" I meant that they don't have it on their land. Most people have PG plots of land. Do most users *encounter* porn in SL? I'd say that's a likelihood, of course.

... Whole subcontinents or vast areas of the SL mainland are just porn — even if more often, these days, on skyboxes.

Disagree. Look at the classified ad / Find tools with and without Mature turned on. PG wins.

... I'd say with some degree of confidence that porn (or at least "kinkyness") is about 2/3 to 4/5 of what is done in SL...

I guess you and I just disagree on this evaluation. I've flown through plenty of residential areas, I've seen what's there, and it's not adult-land. I guess to settle this, we'll need some actual data.

Well, the story of companies being happy about the way that pornography, gambling, escorting, and all sort of "nasty" un-PG-ish behaviour is slowly being reduced (if not banned), is not "cynical" at all... I have heard that comment from several companies ("oh, we would do more in SL, if it hadn't so much adult content" or "we cannot associate our brand to a world where we'll be next door to a porn theatre or sexy underwear boutique"). Fortunately, most of them are open-minded enough to disregard the issue, or old enough to remember the same arguments about the Web when it started; but, in honesty, we don't ever hear the comments from the companies that never entered SL because of its rampaging sex-oriented content industry... just from the liberals who understand the way the Web started, and SL is not different.

Point made, but I also see really angry articles out there lambasting SL for being pornographic, and no one seeming to care. Hillary isn't rushing to ban SL like she did Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto. Right-wing parent groups aren't rushing to have SL shut down or fined. Look at John Edwards - Fox News ran a smear story about them saying literally what you just said companies fear, "Oh, Edwards is next to porn! OMG!" ... that was the last we heard of that article.

(I said:) The simplest recourse to someone using the ban list to ban someone unjustly is to have them banned in return.

An eye for an eye... :)

I realize this is just a pithy quip, but seriously, there is a difference. Eye for an eye tried to equivocate bodily harm with financial reparations. The truth is, you can't make that connection. However, when you talk adding someone to an Internet no-access list, it certainly *is* an appropriate punishment for someone abusing that very list. Or, at the least, reversing their bans and not allowing them to add names to subscribable lists.

Not even spam lists work like that, Hiro. Think about what the SL Mafias will do (definitely "an eye for an eye") when they get this power. So far, they could only grief-on-demand (or sell "protection"); now they will be able to "ban-on-demand". "Join our list or else you and your tenants be banned from all the world..." What will a club owner or mall owner do? Risk losing their customers, or join the Mafia banlist?

Two responses to this:
1. Anyone openly doing this is violating extortion laws, and can get a permaban from Linden Lab for violating US law.
2. This assumes that people will want to subscribe to mafia ban lists. "Oh, the mafia ban list? Who cares who XYZ mafia hates!" will probably be the overwhelming response.

... The only issue here is that there is no appeal and recourse, except banning people in return, which really, doesn't help Jane Doe a lot (who will subscribe to her one-person list?).

Point made, and I've already agreed that appeal and recourse should be pushed.

(I said: ) 1. The amateur isn't completely out of the picture, because there's still a lot of squarish stuff. And remember lots of stuff sold are attachments, where 255 prims is plenty to do what you want.

Well, I agree that they won't be completely out of the picture, but it's another one of those "evolve or die" turning points in SL.

Not really. The learning curve is no more difficult than flexi-prims, lighting, or even when ring-prims came out. So what?

(I said:) 2. Sculpties are approximated in-world. As Gwyn pointed out, they are based on a 64x64 texture. That's *not* a whole lot of information for a complex object. Great for mushrooms, bad for detailed chair legs, as Gwyn asserted.

Indeed, although if one sculptie is not enough, get 4 or even 10 or 20 — it's far better than 300 tortured spheres to do a Starax-quality statue :)

Read what I said again. The answer is, "No, you're mistaken." No matter how many sculpties I use, I will have a hard time making sharp turns on an object without it being rounded and approximated - in much the same way as the land mesh works.

And am I the only person in SL who thinks, while Starax was talented, he's way over-hyped and over-rated by a community who has put him on a ridiculously high pedestal?

Ouchie, Blender... well, I'm not sure how familiar you're with it, but let me tell you, professional architects who are used to AutoCAD (which can be learned with a 20-hour course), after a month at looking at Blender, are still clueless on how it is supposed to work :) Having seen this happening a lot with several professionals — architects, even pro 3d modellers — I'd say that Blender is not a choice for someone who is a professional in SL, much less to someone who is an amateur in SL!

AutoCAD is very different interface. Besides, the scope here is flexiprims. Blender is really good at editing points and edges on objects, which is perfect for organic-looking, rounded-edged objects. There are tutorials. People can learn them. People are free to learn Maya, too. Last year, Maya offered an old version free. Ain't hard to get a basic mesh-editing software and grab tutorials for it.

It would be wiser to wait for LL's in-world modelling tool... even if that means waiting half a year.

Not sure what you're basing this on. Learning how to do 1 thing in say, Blender, may take a dozen hours or so. It's not like people will need to learn everything.

(I said, regarding replacing SL asset architecture:) How 'bout some insight into what that algorithm / architecture might be?

I asked Robin if they would be using DNS like the Sheep... it's the way to go, and not exactly a new idea. DNS is about 32 years old or so, and I've posted the suggestion to move the asset server to DNS back in 2004... the cool thing is that they could still use plain text files for storing assets, just how LL likes to do :)

And she said ... ? DNS doesn't solve the "commonly used items" problem, and it sure doesn't begin to address security of permissions issue. That's my take.

Gwyn: Only Linden Lab (and, well, the user community around SL) are thinking about this model.

Hiro: They are smart visionaries, but they certainly are not the *only* smart visionaries working in this field.

Being a visionary is easy if you don't need to run a company supporting a platform with 6.3 million accounts ;) ...

Realize I wasn't taking away from Linden Lab's accomplishments. Instead, I was pointing out that what you wrote implied that not only are other people not dealing with the issue directly, but they aren't even thinking about it. That's simply not true. Also, it can be said that outside thinkers can look at a problem from (a) fresh perspective (b) with less personal bias and (c) with disregard for how difficult it may be - sometimes the hard-to-implement answer is the only answer, as Havok 4 integration has illustrated.

Your statement went beyond comparing expertise, and was saying that other people don't even take interest, and that's not true. Maybe it's not what you intended to mean / say.

(I said:) [on the Sheep's use of DNS for distributing inter-sim content] Anyone with a couple programmers and a few weeks time can make a system that works for 100 or even 1000 users.

... but DNS currently supports a billion users :) Not a bad bet, I'd say.

Yeah, but DNS assumes that the data itself has no financial and IP value. There's no value to knowing what IP points to what domain. There is value in textures, in objects, in scripts. The DNS model becomes a nightmare when you have to consider security and permissions.

(I said: ) Off the top of my head, things like planar mapping on textures, allowing the camera to zoom in and out farther and easier, and allowing LSL access to land functions are three features that have happened in the last six months or so, and are all really useful.

My point exactly: three features in six months ;) Even Microsoft does more than that...

Let me reiterate, in a much larger, bold, red font so you don't miss it this time. ;)
Off the top of my head ... meaning that I didn't feel like recounting dozens and dozens of similar features, and I only wished to illustrate a few. There have been literally hundreds of small, valuable features implemented in the last 6 months. Even if you compiled the release notes for every release, there are features that sneak it that evade documentation.

Compare that to hundreds of pretty useful features between December 2003 and June 2004...

And I'd say that Linden Lab has maintained a pretty steady pace on smaller features.

(I said:) Linden Lab is putting out the features, but as Second Life has the big requests filled in, the newer features will be more subtle.

Possibly yes. However, I'd say that the number of features that they really, really require are not so subtle!

Here's my list: HTML, Havok 4 (for getting rid of the 0.01m limit), mono, facial expressions, voice. The rest is just features, in my opinion. Linden Lab is already working on the things I've listed, and as Cory Linden once pointed out, there's only so many programmers you can put on one project at the same time.

The point is, by mid-2008 SL has to look as good as Sony Home, but running on PC/Mac hardware. This should be LL's uttermost goal.

No, that's not the point. Sony Home is designed for gamers. If the Metaverse is supposed to be an augmented Internet, then SL has to look like ... drum roll please! ... The Internet!

That means HTML and flash are important, and graphics that can only be run on a cell-processor based machine and viewed properly on a ultra high def TV is not so important.

What's that sound? I believe, Gwyn, that was the sound of me shattering the basis behind your argument. *grin*

(I said:) Second Life can be fun and immersive in ways games can't, and not only is that okay, but it's better that way.

That's definitely true. However, the key issue will be: if the likes of Sony Home can figure out how to implement dynamic, user-created content in their much more advanced platform (I believe they'll have a huge disappointment, but we'll see...), SL will look like a "poor man's" metaverse with clunky graphics and lousy performance, and be not "fun" at all.

And they will face the same challenges as Linden Lab has, meaning it will take them years to work it out, while Linden Lab can continue to improve. We've been through this discussion, Gwyn. :)

Sony Home is proprietary. They don't want to play nice with others. Nintendo is the same way with the Wii. Microsoft is the same way with X-Box Live. Why? Because they are game companies, and they are thinking exactly the same way as the "OMG SL is a game" people that you so often dismiss.

So I find it ironic that you are using rationale that would normally come out of the mouth of people that you dismiss, to bolster your argument that Sony Home is competition.

Now, if you're looking for real competition, it may come from Google or IBM, who both have virtual world technology, lots and lots and lots of research money to spend, are in highly R&D based markets (compared to gaming, which is highly calculated marketing based), and are already in the "Internet" attitude, not the "gamer" attitude. While IBM's the new kid in the VW club, I pointed out exactly why Google is a threat in June of last year. I believe you had taken part of Google speculating around that time, too, so you should know better. *wry grin*

Right now, we can always say: "Sure, SL does not do all fancy effects, but it allows for dynamic user-created content, which is what people really want — if you want high-quality static content, go and play games." But for how long will this last? I'd say at least 2-3 years, but not much more, until the current rendering engine becomes so obsolete that nobody will ever want to look at it.

The big question is, will any of the current competitors outpace LL's development in that time frame, or will they fade and disappear?

I think this all is an excellent point, Gwyn. Realize SL content will always be divided into two flavors, possibly a third:
1. Amateurs. This is SL's equivalent of ugly MySpace pages. God Bless 'em! This will always be ugly and never at game-quality.
2. Professional. This will scale with CPU cycles, i.e. Moore's Law. If Linden Lab has 2-3 years, imagine then approximately 1.5 - 2 times the computing power, both on servers and viewers of Second Life. That's a pretty significant increase, when you consider SL pro content now looks like ... hmm... maybe 2003 graphics? 2004 when you count photo-realistic skins?
3. Intermediate. These are amateurs who are on their way to pro level. There won't be a lot of this kind of content simply because it's a transitional group.

So, Gwyn, does that make you the Linden Lab critic in the disguise of a fangirl, while I'm the fanboi in disguise as a critic? Or are you really a fangirl disguised as a critic disguised as a fangirl? Or ... ?

I'm confused. But feel free to reply. :)

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re: Hotspots, Second Life's New Controversies

I can't let Gwyn have *all* the fun. My reply to her recent blog post, and I'll shorten some of what she's saying to summarize. Her stuff I'll put in italics.

Linden Lab is now profitable

... No, they’re not making billions; but finally they’re able to rely on their income to plod through the next stages, without relying upon external sources of investment.

... open sourcing the technology makes Linden Lab uninteresting to potential buyers ...

This means that Linden Lab ... will continue to grow and expand their operations. Slowly, of course, but on a solid and positive cash flow, a good income, and a marginal profit. Just what it takes to continue the Road to the Metaverse.

I think Gwyn's conclusion is correct. Linden Lab being profitable means that they can continue to do it on their own. Philip made his fortune; this baby he wants to keep as pure to his vision as possible.

Voice in SL

Due to launch on the next release (May 23), I expect eagerly the impact this will have on people’s lives, when one more layer of anonymity is finally revealed.

I have to disagree with Gwyn on this. I've been in plenty of virtual worlds and MMOGs with voice, and there are several facts:

1. Not everyone uses voice.
2. Of the people who use voice, they don't necessarily turn it on all the time. This can be for a variety of reasons, the most simple and eloquent of it is, "Ugh, I don't feel like talking right now."

No more pretension of being someone you’re not; the mist of illusion about your true self is dispelled and Second Life will slowly abandon “the place where you wished to live” to become “the new communication medium of the 21st century”. It’ll be a huge jump into unchartered waters – specially because, as so many point out correctly, there will be no alternative.

Linden Lab is already planning to do voice-mask technology, so this thought that we're abandoning role-playing as a possibility is simply unfounded. While I agree Second Life will become the new communication medium of the 21st century, it does not mean that is *all* Second Life is. It will still be "the place were you wished to live" for many people. The alternative, that Gwyn feels will be lacking, is simply not using voice. No big deal.

Sorry, immersionists — you’re out of this game. It’s augmentism from now on that will dominate the shaping of the Metaverse.

This is so unlike Gwyn's normal writing. SL's 3-D interface is immersive. People want to be immersed. That's why they read books, go to movies, watch TV, and play video games.

The next step will probably be some sort of face-morphing based on a picture on your Webcam, that will allow your avatar to assume some of your real expressions and present them in-world. ... and face-morphing is available from Logitech as a popular, mainstream product. Bye-bye, anonymity — it’ll be really you in-world.

Yes and no. As I've been predicting for almost 2 years now, face-morphing software will definitely come. On the other hand, if you look at tech like Reallusion's CrazyTalk, and at Gwyn's mention of the Logitech webcam software, you'll find that the face-morphing can be applied to some pretty far-out avatars. So, it'll still be your choice whether it's you in world.

Resident Validation

... Internet users are responsible for what they watch, and content producers are responsible for what they put on the Web. ...

And so does Linden Lab. But to go a step further in forcing residents of SL to accept that now they’re responsible for what they do, they’re introducing (probably also in May 23) a new, opt-in, validation system. ...

... you’ll be forced to flag all your content and your parcels as being adult or not.

Not quite. Like your classified ads, it'll probably be off by default, and you'll turn mature rating on. So, you're not really forced to do anything if you don't have adult content.

Only validated avatars will be able to hold adult content in their inventories, and enter (or own/rent) adult parcels. ...

LL will rely on the community for flagging content that is mislabeled, and abuse-report it — just like it happens in, say, YouTube or MySpace. ...

I think pointing out the methodology working like YouTube or MySpace is important. These are huge systems that have shown that user-flagging of inappropriate content works. Granted, an appeal system needs to be in place for people who are falsely censored.

The issue is polemic at several levels. Many residents have established a relationship of trust with Linden Lab — and their laissez faire mentality — and are positively uncomfortable with third party companies validating their real life data. ... A better approach would have been to give residents a choice of company to work with.

Agreed. There's no reason Linden Lab couldn't have an API and let multiple verification sites compete. That would also drive lower rates for the consumer, i.e., you and me.

So, what will this impact SL? Sure, a few will leave — so what? There are always people leaving — SL has as low as 10% of retention rate, and that is not an issue for LL.

I think Gwyn verbally danced around this response. The people who will leave will be of two primary flavors: underage and legal. Underage users is illegal and we don't want them seeing the mature content anyway.

On the other hand, legal-aged citizens will be faced with ban lines around all Mature-rated content. Anyone who doesn't trust the company enough not to want to register is going to be pretty pissed off, and may leave. I think a conscious education program is part of the solution, and putting in place some safeguards need to be created and put into place, to insure that user data is kept private between them and the verification company.

The impact, however, will not be in how many people will leave ... but how they use content. The ‘adult’ market in SL — specially the one pursued by amateurs — is huge ...

They will not disappear overnight — but their customers will. To enter these shops, you’ll have to be validated, and this means sending your data to a company most don’t trust. Even if the fuss of going through that process is not much, many will never bother with it, and leave a “puritan” SL for something else… well, mostly, pronography on YouTube or MySpace, which is easily accessible and doesn’t require even a credit card.

I think this is a real possibility, as well. At the same time, SL will gain more legitimacy, and with its growth rate, there may simply be so many more users coming on that sellers won't ever get a drop in sales. Time will tell.

I expect a “transition” period where people will offer to buy ‘adult’ items, unflag them, and give them to friends (thus making transferrable items fashionable again, hooray!); and others who will validate themselves, flag a whole sim as adult, and then allow people to rent plots nearby and allow them to use their cameras to close in to the desired adult content.

I disagree again. All of this predicates on being able to see it with your camera. I predict instead Linden Lab will cull the mature data for unverifieds, as part of the same technology that Linden Lab is developing to cull data for muted residents. (They announced the later about a year ago.)

... At the end of the day, we’ll have a mostly Disneylandish landscape, all PG and politically correct, and “ghettos” where the few validated adults will enjoy themselves to the fullest.

Gwyn, you certainly are on a cynical streak! The vast majority of SL, while it may be "M" rated, is more like PG or PG-13. Most users don't have porn, even if they keep their land "M" rated in order to be able to drop the occasional swear word. I doubt this will have much of an impact on the Second Life landscape at all, though perhaps adult content might organize themselves together more, since they won't want to be in the middle of an area and be the only place with ban lines.

For companies coming in to Second Life, this will be a boon. The landscape will be stripped down of prnography, illegal gambling, prostitution and even probably violence — the perfect environment to show off your corporate exec that this “metaverse thingy” is what your business has to be in.

Hm, well, gambling is another issue entirely. Ultimately I think a simple lawsuit or US Government decision could effectively shut down gambling in SL; that to me is much more of an effect than verification of accounts. I really do think Gwyn's gone off the cynical deep-end on these predictions.

“Governance Tools”

At the beginning, this will be something quite simple: the ability to “subscribe to ban lists” directly from a tab on the “About Land” parcel dialogue box. ...

What this means is that Abuse Reports will be quite differently handled. First, they will go to Estate Owners (LL on the mainland), and Estate Owners will do whatever they please with an Abuse Report. ...

Obviously, this also means — no appeal and no recourse. LL will do nothing about that. If Rude Avatar hates your guts and places Jane Doe on a ban list that blocks her out of half of the world, that’s it. Jane has no way to appeal that decision. It’s done. ...

Actually, this is not fundamentally different from world-wide anti-spam and anti-hacker lists; they work under the same assumptions, perhaps with a single difference — they usually are incompatible among themselves and require different software. In Second Life, there will be a single mechanism that will work for all lists.

I'm with Gwyn so far.

Although this will make griefers in SL very short-lived, the question that is always raised is how you’ll get fairness and justice — how can you prevent one person from destroying your enjoyment of Second Life by placing your name on all lists, thus effectively banishing you out of SL except for your parcel? Without appeal and recourse, and LL effectively out of the loop, ostracism will reign supreme in this libertarian world — not justice nor democracy or the right to a fair trial.

Here's where I diverge. The simplest recourse to someone using the ban list to ban someone unjustly is to have them banned in return. Anyone in a position where they are able to add people to their ban list, and have it propagate to so many people, has established a great deal of reputation. That reputation is shattered if a banned person has any sort of proof that they were unjustly banned. The masses will rise up and ban the original banner. That's a huge disincentive.

I also have hope for technical solutions. There can just as easily be a "whoops, mistake" list, where people subscribe and it automatically removes people from ban lists.

However, LL has stated very clearly that they wish to have as little as possible with resident arbitration and moderation — for legal issues mostly, but also to allow international growth under different laws — so I guess this step was unavoidable.

I think this is an important thing to point out. There is a "who has power in the metaverse?" question. Ultimately, governments have bombs, tanks, and soldiers that back the laws that they want to enforce. Governments will demand ability to have autonomous law in the Metaverse, and for their residents, and there's little Linden Lab can say about it.

Also, realize this isn't just a legal issue. When Linden Lab open sources the server code, there needs to be a system in place that anyone can use. Ta-da!

(Sculpted Prims)

If you’re a professional 3D modeller/designer/artist, good news for you. Also on May 23 (hopefully!), Linden Lab will give you a new primitive type: sculpted prims, a fancy name to introduce NURBSesque shapes into SL. After years of demanding “meshes in SL” (remember, the number of 3D designers world-wide is much smaller than these people would like to claim; popular products like Poser, for instance, sell about 150 thousand copies, and I always wondered how many of those are actually SL users…), this is the closest we’ll get (for now).

Linden Lab was very, very clever. It’s obvious that SL has to “look better” — less primmy, more organic, more professional content. ...

Yup. Awesome news. :)

It will also mean, to an extent, much richer content. Shapes that take a lot of prims — complex chairs, statues, etc. — will now only require a single one. Vehicles limited to the annoying 31 prim limit will now be able to have fantastic shapes with incredible realism. But a side effect
is reducing dramatically the texture count on a scene — one of the worst causes of lag. A cube has 7 textures, which have to be stored somewhere, even if they’re not visible. A “sculptie” will only require two — one for the shape (64×64), and one to apply on top of it. Thus, on average, the texture count could, in theory, go down, although the realism of the scene will improve dramatically. ...

And Gwyn explains nicely why these will help SL's lag.

What is the negative side of it? ...

Sculpties are almost impossible to do on a “trial-and-error” base. You’ll not only need a professional 3D modelling tool — and there are hundreds available on the market; although not all will be able to export to SL’s native “texture” format — but deep knowledge on how to use it. If you have never used a 3D modelling tool in your life, you won’t be able to learn it over a weekend, no matter how hard you try — 3D content creators in RL study for years and years until they are able to do what they want with those tools.

True.

So, the amateur is out of the picture. They’ll still be able to play with the regular tools, of course — but until LL introduces their own integrated sculpting editor, the amateur will have no choice but to buy other’s content. In a year or so, nobody will buy a 13-prim chair anymore, when you can get the same thing done with a single prim.

Not quite true.

1. The amateur isn't completely out of the picture, because there's still a lot of squarish stuff. And remember lots of stuff sold are attachments, where 255 prims is plenty to do what you want.
2. Sculpties are approximated in-world. As Gwyn pointed out, they are based on a 64x64 texture. That's *not* a whole lot of information for a complex object. Great for mushrooms, bad for detailed chair legs, as Gwyn asserted.
3. Download Blender. It's free. There are free tutorials. People get past Second Life's learning curve, so I'm sure people can learn Blender.

The amazing qArl Linden and Cube Linde

This is the hot dynamic duo of LL’s developer team. While the rest of the team plods along banging their heads against the wall with Havok 4.5, physical avatars, HTML-in-world ... or even Mono, these guys are the Golden Angels of salvation. After sculpties, there is more to come — shadows on the ground, and shadows over other objects. Or changing the default sky texture. Or more detailed prim movement without breaking the shaky physical engine underneath. Also, with every new release, dynamic reflections get better and better (mirrors!)
...

What Gwyn says is true, and I'm excited about all of these features, but the fact is, *somebody* has to be working on features. I don't think it's right to glorify some programmers who get to work on small, fun, projects, over the dedicated developers who are banging their heads against the wall, trying to come up with reliable, innovate solutions for existing problems like physics, HTML, and lag.

It's a lot easier as a programmer to make something work, than make it work right.

Scalability

Cory and his team will very shortly present a white paper on what will be “SL 2.0″ on the server side. ...

What’s the “big change”? It’s all happening under the hood. For some months now they have been dealing with the issue of having two co-location facilities — in Texas as well as California — and tracked down the many problems of a de-centralised grid. And the veredict is not good: SL does not scale well outside a single grid. A new, radical model needs to be developed from scratch, and that’s what Cory’s been doing.

Duh. We all knew that a de-centralized grid is difficult with shared assets. A

The server simulators are self-sufficient ... What they seemed to have ‘forgotten’ was that some things need to be centralised, and their approach so far doesn’t scale well beyond a single grid.

I don't think they ever thought that assets could truly be decentralized without some common exchange protocol.

So, they’re introducing a new model which will be presented to the public soon, and closely thereafter implemented. ... It’s not computing power, just designing far better algorithms. ...

You're not really saying anything here, Gwyn. Obviously, it's a new model, and obviously, it will be a better algorithm. How 'bout some insight into what that algorithm / architecture might be?

Second Life, however, has to literally grow beyond its (electronic) borders. They cannot “afford” to think on a centralised model, but imagine how the grid of 2010 will look like: a huge mainland probably run by Linden Lab in a dozen co-location facilities across the world; several “licensed” grids run by corporations and universities, all connected together; and individuals using their own sims running from home and allowing a handful of friends to connect. All this is “part of the Metaverse plan”. Only Linden Lab (and, well, the user community around SL) are thinking about this model.

I'm sorry, Gwyn, but this last statement is simply absurd. Lots of people are thinking about the 5 - 10 year outlook. You're starting to sound a bit too jingoistic, Kool-Aid drinking of Linden Lab, here. They are smart visionaries, but they certainly are not the *only* smart visionaries working in this field.

The Electric Sheep Company’s OpenMetaverse project or OpenGrid are examples of things that need to address world-wide interconnection across several grids, using the same SL protocol (the Sheep were very clever, they used the 30-year-old DNS system to distribute assets — way to go!).

Not *that* clever. Anyone with a couple programmers and a few weeks time can make a system that works for 100 or even 1000 users. That's what Second Life originally was, remember. Until projects like these are tested by the numbers, you simply can't claim that they're the special sauce. If they were the special sauce, honestly, we'd all be using it already.

The “Open Letter”

… once more, residents are congregating to push their Luddite views upon Linden Lab. Called “Project Open Letter“, this has about 4000 signataries, and their purpose is quite clear: prevent, as quickly as possible, that Linden Lab introduces new features without fixing all outstanding bugs.

This is hardly a “new” initiative.

Yes, true. It's not new. There have been letters like it before, and there will be ones after it. That's why I didn't sign. Why bother? As Gwyn pointed out, Cory and Philip and the Linden Lab team are already thinking about and working through all of these things. When I read a letter like Project Open Letter, I think, "Gee, isn't that like screaming at the cook while the cake is still in the oven?" Patience! Use the tools that Linden Lab has - bug-reporting and tracking software, feature requests, the developer program, etc.

And more importantly, the thing that most gets Linden Lab to change something is to make a popular work-around. When teleports were broken to the point where people were releasing their own teleport device, Linden Lab got the message and fixed teleports. Mostly.

In my (almost) three years in Second Life, I have been very unfortunate to enter it on a stage where the major developments (SL 1.4, with the introduction of XML-RPC and animations) had just been introduced. Until June 2004, SL’s development cycle was quite clearly defined: features, features, more features, and another set of features. All were major changes when launched and had bigger impact than say, flexiprims a few months ago or sculpties right now. It was the only way to make sure the interest in SL raised and attracted the media’s attention; there were only 12,000 users in SL in June 2004.

Since that time, things have been quite more difficult for Linden Lab. They tended to focus on fixing a few bugs here and there until the resident population quieted down and started demanding for more features. ...

This cycle has been repeated quite often. In late 2006/early 2007, LL had at least advanced towards a different model: assynchronous releases, ie. making the client separate from the server, without requiring people to log in to the (mostly empty) Beta Grid. This introduced the incredible advancements watched on the First Look series. I was personally overwhelmed with the elegant solution: keep the Luddites happy (there wasn’t a major release for almost half a year!), and let the rest of the world log in with the First Look viewer and get access to those fantastic new tools and features. ...

Linden Lab will still give us voice (for those that really enjoy it) and sculpted prims, but I guess that will be all that is “noticeable” until the year ends. Most of the development efforts will now be targeted to scalability issues — a very worthwhile endeavour, of course, since reducing things like lag, instability, inventory loss, and login/teleport difficulties will go a long way with appeasing the Luddites — and minor tweaks here and there. ...

Okay ... here goes:

1. If it's broken where SL is unusable, it needs to be fixed above all else.
2. On the other hand, the more features you add, you're going to break your new fixes that you just introduced, so a minor level of buggyness is tolerable, else things will never push forward. That's because the more features there are, the more that can break.
3. Gwyn is wrong in her assertion that features haven't been coming out. For any developer, we see lots of small, extremely useful features that are not visible to the end-user, but empower people to make much cooler stuff. Off the top of my head, things like planar mapping on textures, allowing the camera to zoom in and out farther and easier, and allowing LSL access to land functions are three features that have happened in the last six months or so, and are all really useful.

Linden Lab is putting out the features, but as Second Life has the big requests filled in, the newer features will be more subtle.

... Hopefully LL re-introduces the series of the First Look viewers again — letting us enjoy a better Second Life while the Luddites remain happy within Sony Home and its vastly superior static content

Heh. Gwyn wraps up with a shot at gamers. Yes, Second Life's focus is not gaming. But, no, SL doesn't have to be all about business.

Lighten up, Gwyn. Second Life can be fun and immersive in ways games can't, and not only is that okay, but it's better that way.

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Extended Deadline for Free Book Giveaway

Hey folks, mostly because I'm super busy, and partly because I haven't gotten 10 good replies yet, I'm extending the deadline for the giveaway for The Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life for another 10 days. So please! Send me your "what was I thinking!?" type newbie stories to noobs@infinitevisionmedia.com! Get a free book valued at 10 bucks! And shipping!

I've been reading along, and I'm about halfway through it. I'm rather impressed that they deal frankly with many of the topics. If this were describing a real place to meatspace tourists, it would definitely warn of some of the seedier and dangerous areas. It also goes into good detail about what kinds of things a new user would like to do, like customizing an avatar, how to shop for clothing, etc.

I found it valuable reading this book, being told about the new-user experience again. For a developer such as myself, it helps to stay in constant touch with what new users are doing and thinking, so that attractions we build are fun and intuitive.

Anyway, send me your stories! Now!

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Virtual Rape: Seriously? Seriously.

I'm not the expert on it.

But Dan Hunter at Terra Nova sure as heck isn't, either.

He referenced Wired's Regina Lynn's article, here. Lynn has studied sex in virtual worlds more than any author I've read, though if Stroker Serpentine were to write on the subject, I might change that statement. I have not been victimized in this manner, but I am a proponent of gender-equality. Virtual Worlds ought to be a good place for that to happen. When I read comments trivializing things like "virtual rape" like I read at Terra Nova, it upsets me. It's simple-minded to make some pithy comment like calling Lynn's story "drivel", or saying, "It's okay. It's not real.", or "Is virtual 'rape' the same as rape? Of course not, any more than PK is murder."

Oh, "it's not real", huh? If tens of thousands of users are online spending countless hours with each other, is that all made-up? If you pour your soul out to someone online, share sexual fantasy, and private things that you might only share with a spouse, is that not a form of infidelity? How many marriages initiate online? How many people get so wound up in this virtual world that it consumes their lives? It sure sounds real to me.

As to the comparison to player-killing, or "PK", this is a really lousy analogy. In any world I've ever gone to where death is possible, you enter knowing very consciously that death is a part of the game. If you are PK'd, it is because you signed onto a game and entered an area that is marked as "unsafe". No one volunteers for sexual harassment, or to be exposed to it.

Thought provoking was a comment, "If we define rape as a crime that occurs inside the victim's mind, we're crossing a very dangerous line." But while this initially sounded like a true rights vs. crime statement, I quickly realized the same can be true about real rape - victims are often too afraid for their life to resist when a threat of force is clear, and hence the "reasonable woman" standard. (see Ellison vs. Brady). There is clearly a difference in mindset between attacker and victim, to where the attacker more often than not has every expectation on them that they should know what they are doing is wrong, even though they may claim, "Oh, she wanted it" or some other trite justification.

I think Lynn's off in her assessment. She says "virtual rape" is not a crime, but I think she was just trying to make a distinction between real-world rape. "Virtual rape" could easily fall under sexual harassment law. She does, however, state how damaging this could be to a person, in real terms.

I'm always up for philosophical discussion of the nature of how interaction in virtual worlds applies to real world, and vice versa. However, the one-liners and brief dismissals I find in Terra Nova, both in the article and in the comments, are sad, and without any real substance of contemplation on the subject at hand.

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Dr. Dobbs Life 2.0, Round 2

If you missed me my presentation on Sunday at Life 2.0 (or, if you just didn't care about rezzers, vendors, givers, and/or builders), you have your second chance to hear me today, 12 noon SLT - 2pm SLT. I will be on a panel entitled, "The 3-D UI" with avatars Kiwini Oe, Aimee Weber, and Dobbs Fredricksson.

I think this will be a good topic to discuss, because the subject lends itself to talk about the emerging technology not only in SL, but that will be guiding our world in the next decade and beyond. To listen in, register at Life20.net and you can listen in to the audio stream at noon PST.

Reminder!

And reminder, send me your newbie stories to noobs@infinitevisionmedia.com! I'll be giving out ten copies of the new book, "The Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life" to the best! Full rules here.

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