Reader Submission: Moving About the Metaverse

 
By DrFran Babcock

INTRODUCTION

Greetings, everyone. Since I left Second Life for Philip Rosedale’s VR-inspired High Fidelity, I have not been around Second Life much. Sadly, High Fidelity, as a 3-D virtual world, died a little over two years ago. If you ask Philip Rosedale, co-creator of both Second Life and the subsequent High Fidelity, why this happened, he attributes much of it to the slow adoption of virtual reality hardware and some other reasons that have to do with how people choose to interact.

I love virtual worlds. I have never left virtual worlds since I left full-time Second Life in 2014, moving to the aforementioned High Fidelity. Since then, I have spent most of my time in Vircadia (the open-source world based on High Fidelity’s architecture), Sansar: The virtual world created by Linden Lab as the successor to Second Life; and even Horizon Worlds—Meta’s foray into virtual worlds.

What I plan to do, in writing a sporadic column for the Newser, is to share some news and tidbits from the rest of the Metaverse. It’s important to understand that my view of the Metaverse is colored much by the work of Tony Parisi and Avi-Bar Zeev. Thus, many worlds and One Metaverse.

Last, I want to thank Bixyl Shuftan and Gemma Cleanslate for nudging me back to writing again. I am in Second Life, but only for brief periods of time.

NEWS FROM SANSAR

It is sad to report that Sansar is on life support. At the time of this writing, all of the employees have been furloughed, and many have gone on to other jobs. They are still open, and are still filled with the most beautiful worlds bar none. The remaining community of about 50 avatars are fiercely loyal, and continue to function as if things are without problems.

I would recommend that you go in there, and look around, because I fear that it might evaporate. Sansar was sold to Wookey Technologies a while ago, and at that point, all communication with the owners ceased. There were no more Product Update meetings, and each time the Umbra License (a tool that helps the graphics to run better)  was not repurchased it took a while for it to be repurchased. I believe, at this writing, that the license has lapsed.

It would be a tragedy if Sansar was lost, because I still believe it’s the best looking virtual world. It has drawbacks, chief among them that you cannot build collaboratively, but how many people know you can have 20 worlds completely free?

NEWS FROM HORIZON WORLDS

I was lucky (?) to score a closed Beta invite to Meta’s Horizon Worlds. I have no love for Facebook, but I was curious to see what they had to offer. I will discuss the positives and the negatives here:

Positive:

Building, while rudimentary, is easy, and you can do some creative and different things.

You can build in collaboration. It’s very cool to make your avatar huge, and look down on your build, manipulating objects as if they were a diorama.

The scripting language, proprietary, is visual. This means that hopeless coders like me can manage to script some life into the worlds I build. This is a big plus, in my opinion.

At present, the developers were accessible and willing to answer questions. Since they have opened Horizon Worlds to all USA and Canada adults, it seems to have change.

Negative:

Well, it’s Facebook/Meta, so they want our data.

The avatars have a lot of variety, but I want legs. Come on, Meta.

Children are running rampant in Horizon Worlds. I attended a scripting question and answer meeting, and children kept disrupting the meeting with profanities and racial slurs. The lone developer was unable to manage the number of trolls, and the session was ruined for me. If Meta wants their world to succeed, they will have to deal with this. I think it’s a problem of children “borrowing” their parents’ Quest 2s.

I will leave it at that, and promise more to come.

NEWS FROM VIRCADIA

This is the world where I spend most of my time. It is most definitely not for everyone, because it is not easy to download, easy to use, nor easy to create.

Vircadia is developed by a small, dedicated, committed, and productive group of content creators and residents. There is one event every night except Tuesday, and the folks in their Discord server are helpful, and not fatigued by answering the same questions over and over.

Currently, we are working on a live-action play based very loosely on A Christmas Carol, but with a dark satirical bent, and a focus on virtual worlds. It will take place on Tuesday, December 28, at 2PM Pacific Time.

IN CLOSING

I also attend other virtual worlds, and I am glad to talk about what I do, but I would love to hear from you. If this is content you want, let me know and I will continue to share what I see as I move about the Metaverse.
 
DrFran Babcock
 

More on Facebook And Meta And Virtual World Plans, Grumpity Linden's Interview

 
By Bixyl Shuftan

Late last month in late October, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook the company would be changing it's name to "Meta" to reflect it's plans to build a huge virtual world called the "Metaverse." Since then, there's been more than a few comments and developments.

As the term "Metaverse" was developed by Neal Stephenson in his cyberpunk novel "Snow Crash," he was interviewed about Facebook's move. "It’s flattering when readers take the work seriously enough to put their own time and money into bringing similar ideas to fruition," he remarked, "... science fiction writers have occasionally been given credit for inspiring real-life inventions, so this is not new and it’s not unique. I was aware of that fact thirty years ago when I wrote 'Snow Crash,' but I didn’t necessarily expect it to happen." He had never spoken to Zuckerberg, nor expected any kind of compensation, "In order to get compensation from FB or any other company I would need to sign some kind of deal in which I gave the company rights to some IP in exchange for payment."

As it turns out, Facebook may have a problem as another company filed first for rights for the name. Meta PC, which has been in business for a little more than a year, decided to officially apply for the name in August. The founders Joe Darger and Zack Shutt say they're willing to let Facebook have the name, but only if the larger company pays them 20 million. They also poked fun at Facebook by photoshopping a picture of Mark Zuckerberg holding one of their computers. Since neither company officially owns the name, Facebook may still be able to get it. But this oversight is resulting in a few chuckles. In the meantime, the result has been a great amount of free publicity for the smaller company, which saw it's social media followers increase by fifty times.

And what do the people at Linden Lab think of Facebook's move? Grumpity Linden, or Anya Kanevsky in real life, was interviewed by the French magazine Le Journal du Net (JDN). "It's interesting to see this interest in the metaverse from the Epic Games and Facebook announcements," Grumpity commented, " A metaverse is a collection of connected virtual worlds. In a sense, Second Life is a full-fledged metaverse. A living place in which, in the form of an avatar, you can stroll through shopping malls, go to the beach, visit art galleries, etc. Second Life also has its own economy and its own currency, the Linden Dollars."

She would go on to say that Zuckerburg and his people, "realized that the reputation Facebook has forged over time can be a barrier. This lack of confidence in the company exists and there will have to be a number of levers of confidence to allow those who wish to explore these virtual worlds. At Second Life, we ensure the privacy of our residents. For example, some assume their homosexuality in Second Life, but we know that some may live in areas of the world where their sexual orientation could lead them to prison. We are therefore extremely vigilant on this issue of data security. With the immense wealth of data in the hands of the digital giants, it will be necessary to ensure the protection of the privacy of the users of these virtual worlds."

Grumpity would remind that most content in Second Life, "was created by our residents and not by Linden Lab employees. We just play the role of facilitator. This represents our vision of the metaverse. I don't see how creating different games that would be connected to each other could be akin to the metaverse. In my eyes, this is content created by companies for users. For the metaverse to exist, it must be created and managed by the people who live there."

Sansar and it's option to wear VR helmets came up, "Many were not thrilled with the idea of ​​carrying these VR headsets that are quite heavy and require enough space at home to be able to use them. If virtual reality allows for an immersive and incomparable experience, we observed that few of our residents were ready to wear these helmets for more than thirty minutes. So we plan to keep trying new things around virtual reality, but VR isn't the only possible future for Second Life."

Grumpity would remind Linden Lab's virtual world was still making money, "In 2020, the creators of Second Life collected nearly $ 73 million. Many of them use the platform as a completely or have made it their main source of income." Although the Pandemic was ending, the people who signed on or returned were still logging on to Second Life, "even if they spend less time there."

The interview can still be read on the JDN website. As it's in French, English speakers may need to copy-paste in Google translate or have some other way of traslating it. Inara Pey would also write about it.

As time goes on, no doubt there will be more developments about Meta and it's plans to go into virtual worlds. Stay tuned for further details.

Sources: Axios, TMZ, IGN, JDN,

Bixyl Shuftan
 

News and Commentary: More On InWorldz's Closing

By Bixyl Shuftan

InWorldz is gone.

Due to shut down on Friday July 27, the place began going down Thursday night as sims were shut down, and people packed their items away as the management stated they would try to save what could be through an OARS. On Friday, people could still log in at 2:30 PST, but soon after when yours truly was there, the last of the sims couldn't be acessed. From the chatter on Discord's InWorldz group, and the newly created InWorldz Disporia and Relay For Life of InWorldz, it looks like a few people were able to hang on for a while and even relog. but by Saturday July 28 at Noon, the last few people finally lost their grip as the place went completely offline.

There's a lot of sadness, confusion, and more than a little anger. And that's certainly to be expected. While HyperGrid Business reported about merchants in the virtual world being "concerned about perceived drop in users and commercial activity and worry that the grid owners are no longer committed to the success of the grid," the announcement on Monday hit people by surprise. "Why did she not have the funds to pay her bills?" As the co-founder of the place hasn't been around for over a year, he can't say. When another noted virtual world, Avination, went down, the reasons were the company's cash reserves being wiped out by thieves using stolen credit card numbers to buy virtual currency, and then a "catastrophic" data loss it couldn't afford to pay to fix. And this grid had a far smaller population, and numbers of private sims than InWorldz. How did a larger gird that escaped problems on this scale go under?

All we have to go on is Beth Reischl's explanation was that she took out a loan from a subsidiary of Paypal, of which she seemed to be saying she'd taken out loans before to cover development costs, and despite the money being available to pay them, for some reason the company declared "non-sufficient funds" and took out a lien against them. She stated when she called them to resolve the issue, the person she talked with was "very combative" in blaming her for the situation, and further attempts to resolve the situation were fruitless.

The Gofundme campaign Reischl started adds to the confusion. Started in an attempt to try to save the grid, once most of the money was raised, she stated that instead the money would be used to help make a new grid. Why the sudden change? Her words, "What then, what about next month?" was a suggestion the money troubles were pretty deep. The sudden change in the reasons for the Gofundme plus questions as to how the Grid could have found itself in need of a loan made for a lot of confused people, as well as a number of angry ones who suspected something fishy was going on.

Those whom were exclusively or mainly using InWorldz have a choice of where else to go. At least one, Mobius, is taking the moment to offer them a break if they move there.

To every resident of InWorldz,

We are sad to see InWorldz go, and you might need a new home so we at Mobius are offering to InWorldz Residents who want to make Mobius that when you order a region with the coupon code TTL31 you get the region 50% off for each month you have your region until you close it down. This offer ends 9/9/2018.

As Hypergrid Business stated, "for people looking for a closed, commercial grid" like InWorldz (or Second Life), which offer greater control over who can get in (such as griefers) and more power to protect content creators, there aren't that many options out there, "The three major closed grids are The Adult Grid, Virtual Highway, and DreamNation. There are also several educational grids that are closed, and some grids run by companies and other organizations that require privacy or control. Almost all other grids are hypergrid-enabled. As of May, hypergrid-enabled grids accounted for 98 percent of all OpenSim land area and 97 percent of all active users." According to a poll Hypergrid is doing, and still ongoing, the results as of the writing of this article suggests the greater shares of InWorldz users are heading to the Discovery and DigiWorlds grids, with Kitely in third place. As of July 28, Hypergrid says in DigiWorldz there have been "more than 250 new user registrations since July 24, and has up up 71 new regions." Maria Korolov's article would give a rundown of many of the worlds InWorldz users could head to (besides Second Life, of course).

Besides how come InWorldz went down, there have been a few questions yours truly has been asked. One is will there be a replacement for the InWorldz grid and when will it be? As of the writing of this article, there's been no date given for the opening of this replacement grid, or it's name. And outside the core group of hopeful inWorldz fans, it's usually being called the possible new grid or plans for a new grid. But there are a couple Discord groups, InWorldz and InWorldz Disporia one can join to talk to InWorldz members for possible information. But at this time, so far it's all speculation. It's current tech department head, Jim Tarber, has stated that he will not be part of any successor to InWorldz.

Talla Adam of the Metaverse Traveller would say, "No date has been mentioned for InWorldz II to open but it will probably be several weeks given the amount of work to do. When it does open, some may well return. So for some of the departing refugees it might be a two-way tip - hard to say really. But there is a lot of bad feeling and people feel put out losing stuff and having to move anyway. The longer it takes to rebuild will also play a part in determining how many will return."

What will happen to the Relay for Life in InWorldz event? In short, without an InWorldz and no date given for the supposed replacement grid, it's a safe bet that the event won't be happening. What is likely to happen is that the event will be moved to another virtual world. Which one this will be is unknown as to how long the decision might be. One can check the Relay for Life of the Metaverse Discord group for possible details.

Could this happen to Second Life? In short, not any time soon. While Linden Lab has been accused of a number of things, rightly and wrongly, over the years, not having a desire to watch the bottom line is something it seldom is. About a little over a year ago, it was suggested the Lab was making 65 to 70 million dollars USD. But while it's finances are sound for now, over the past several years Second Life has undergone a slow but persistent long-term decline in the number of it's sims. While it has been hoped that Linden Lab's recent adjustments in what it charges for sim tier can reverse this trend, the results are still less than conclusive. Even if this trend is halted, there's still the chance a future CEO could pull a series of blunders on the scale of the Content Creator Terms of Service controversy right when someone develops a virtual world that unlike Sansar people can make a virtual home instead of simply an experience. So trying to predict Second Life's future beyond a decade becomes problematic. But unless there's a global catastrophe such as a worldwide economic depression or a planetary power grid failure from a solar flare, it's a safe best the virtual world we know and love will still be around for several more years at least.

As hundreds, probably thousands as the days go on, set up in a new virtual world, and residents from Second Life look outside wondering what happened, no doubt there's many smaller stories to be told. Feel free to send the Newser any reader submissions about your experiences in InWorldz, or your new home.

Sources: Hypergrid Business, The Metaverse Traveller, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

The Odd Ball's First Event in Inworldz

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Sunday Sept 29, Tuna Oddfellow and Shava Suntzu launched their first performance of the Odd Ball in the virtual world of InWorldz. The event took place just after Noon SL time and InWorlds time. Jana Kyomoon performed live music for the crowd.

In the moments before the show started, Tuna and Shava's club looked much like it had when I was there a few days earlier, save for the piano where Jana was playing, and the huge magician's hat that's been the center of every Odd Ball I remember. A number of people showed up, sometimes one just after the other, "hope you don't mind me landing on your head." Some had longtime experience with InWorldz, others had shown up for only their first time today.

Then Tuna announced the start, "Welcome everyone to the first ever Odd Ball in InWorldz." And then things began to take shape. First the club vanished and the floor turned psychedelic shades. Then all around us, the sky turned kaleidoscope colors. The Odd Ball was back, and it was just as trippy as before, "it's a carnival ride for the mind." "Sure am glad I not did drugs in college. I wouldn't know what is show and what isn't."

Shava tried to explain the way the special effects worked, "The theory is that your brain's wiring for estimating space is being tricked into reframing the frame of reference, as though you were on a carnival ride, or as though you had entered a vaulted space like a cathedral or domed space in a big building, or were looking off a mountain top. There's a moment of a feeling of pure awe that our brains give us when we can't compute a space like that, left over from the reward our brains give us in childhood when it's so important that we master spatial relationships in play. That's our theory."

A few people had a little trouble with the sound, but not usually for long. And it took a while for some to get dancing with the animations in a whole new Grid. And the psychedelic colors had an effect on some people, "Oh my God, I'm getting dizzy." "Wow, couldn't find my mouse pointer for a sec." "Ohh this iss grreeaat." "Hey, try moving around in this." But everyone had a great time there. "If you know me in SL," Tuna told the audience, "please friend me here. If you know me here, please friend me here.- it's really that simple."

Tuna was happy that he was able to have the Odd Ball so soon after closing it in Second Life, "It took me years to deveiop our show. I am amazed we recreated it in days." "I'm surprised you got it up and running this fast too," another responded. Shava told, "We got it all working, you have no idea how hard Tuna was working on this this week! And Quadrapop has been so helpful and so many folks here too!"

People discussed what they had done here, "I think after 4 years I've got more stuff here (smile), certainly got a better avi." "Well, I could have never built Replicant City on SL. So that is a tremendously good trade-off." "With the exception of the shoes and hair, everything I'm in is either self made or uploaded from samples online I found." "First thing I did when I got here, made an RLV collar. (grin)"

People also discussed what others were doing in Inworldz, "Have you seen Wizard Gynoid's experiments with linkage geometry here? 80,000+ linked prims ROTATING!" "Here we can actually have single-object mega starships. Not to mention single-object ocean sailing ships."

Eventually, the hour was up, and the show was over. The triply effects soon faded, and the club was back, "Well folks, we've come to the end of another Sunday Odd Ball! We'll be back tomorrow at 6pm with more tripped out brain candy." "Thank you for the music that was awesome." "YEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHH TUNA!" "Really do appreciate your support," Jana told the crowd, "and again a BIG congrats to Tuna." "Great time everyone and WELCOME TO INWORLDZ TUNA & SHAVA!" "Kewl show & really nice people doing it."

Shava commented, "So many people we know were already here -- both worlds or you know, we've been dual citizens three years. But a lot of folks came over first time from SL just for today and probably more for tomorrow's show. We do two shows every month with Jana this time of month, and we didn't miss them just because of this." There would be another show scheduled for Monday at 6PM Pacific/SL/InWorldz time. "This is only the beginning," Tuna told the crowd.

Before the crowd dispersed, Quadrapop handed me something: a "Wingless" anthro Fox avatar. I could look foxy again! I had to change the color of the hair, but there was no arguing with the price. Finally a foxy look.

As it turned out, there was an event in Inworldz just after the Odd Ball. Bain Finch and Panza Elde from the Relay for Life were there at a dance party, and invited me over. And earlier, there had been another. "Bixyl, you missed the fun this morning," Panza told me, "Sailing event. I ended up on the rocks." "Ya, you missed Panza's driving," Bain mused. The dance party had a number of Tinies there, some from Raglan Shire, which has a presence in Inworldz. I was also told that in the past week. a large number of residents from Second Life  had come over, notably content creators.

There was other thing I noticed. Lag was less in Inworldz than in Second Life. At least this was my experience with an older computer. I also didn't crash any. A few residents from the Odd Ball did seem to have some problems, though. SO the switch wasn't an improvement this way for all.

"Thanks for being our Tunaverse – can't have a consensual hallucination without the consenting!"

Bixyl Shuftan