What makes virtual worlds successful?

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 22:05:53 +0200

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

"The #Metaverse is dead" vs the probably rather unexpected 20th anniversary of #SecondLife. I couldn't help but ramble away about why some #VirtualWorlds became successes and other, more recent ones failed miserably. And I've made it an article so that mobile users can see the formatting, too.

Click here for your reading pleasure.

#SL20B #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #HorizonWorlds #HorizonWorldsIsNotTheMetaverse #Roblox #Minecraft

Metaverse in general Second Life OpenSim Horizon Worlds

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Mon, 03 Jul 2023 10:19:58 +0200 zuletzt bearbeitet: Mon, 03 Jul 2023 11:00:24 +0200

Cheryl Furse

CherylFurse@opensimsocial.com

@jupiter_rowland

nice

but some remarks

My Bitcoin ticker says actually $30667,4
Where is a crypto crash?

secondly

Worlds.com was first pushed by media, and even Steven Spielberg, Aerosmith and David Bowie. The problem at that time was that only few had DSL connections. But if you look how it looked it was in the 90s the same as #secondlife Also same technology based on OpenGL.

thridly

Opensim a success? We are just 200 real people with thousands of alts. look at actual pic for traffic charts on OSW site. And I can tell of some sims that just owner is sitting there with alts and is afk or even has NPCs running there.

Some people I know have 3 grids running at the same time. lol

forth

I would compare much more with sim city. In opensim anyway, because most are just building landscapes and take pictures of it. SimCity has some more goals. lol

fifth:

You wrote in the end:

"In the meantime, the various "open metaverse" endeavours that want to create a decentralised, Fediverse-style network of interconnected virtual worlds are all doomed to make the same mistakes as OpenSim and not see what it has done right, simply because they've never even heard of it, and they probably never will."

You didn't mention thirdroom. Why?

It is open source, decentralized and without NFTs etc.

And now I am curious what you mean by what mistakes opensim did?

For opensim I only see one big problem. Stone age technology. Especially because of openGL and Firestorm still thinks we live in a 8 bit world.

This can be changed if there would be young developers interested in creating high end graphics. But you have only nostalgic 60 years old men in opensim who are not skilled to develop new technology.

That's all.

Thirdroom has 20 years old kids already who can develop new technology

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 11:50:33 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Cheryl Furse

> Where is a crypto crash?
2022 especially.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_bubble#2021%E2%80%932023_crash
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1145297807/crypto-crash-ftx-cryptocurrency-bitcoin
More recently: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/06/10/bloodbath-sudden-1-trillion-crypto-crash-sparks-fresh-coinbase-warning-and-tanks-the-price-of-bitcoin-ethereum-bnb-xrp-cardano-dogecoin-polygon-and-solana/

> Opensim a success? We are just 200 real people with thousands of alts.
That's your personal perception which you yourself think you "know" for a "fact".

If you really think this is a cold, hard fact, please prove it with a link to statistics.

By the way, here come cold, hard facts: the Hypergrid Business stats from June 15th.

#HypergridBusiness reports 424 active grids. Everyone would have to run at least two grids.

You refuse to believe that number? You think it's made up? It isn't just a number. Here's a list of all 424 grids. Count them. Then check the links. Almost all of them should be active.

125,841 standard regions on the reporting grids alone = each user has to have almost 630 standard regions on average.

#OSgrid alone reported 27,325 standard regions. If everyone had land on OSgrid, that'd be almost 130 standard regions per #OpenSim user.

Also, as of today, by the way, OSgrid lists 5,689 sims (taking varsims into account) on its official website, all by name. Only few of them are official. All the others are hosted by their owners and attached to OSgrid externally. OSgrid does not offer land rentals.

If every OpenSim user had land on OSgrid, everyone would have 28 sims or more on average attached to OSgrid. That's enough land for a stand-alone grid.

If you claim for a fact that this is bullshit, and either OSgrid or its staff makes up most of the names on the list, go in-world and check on the map whether these sims actually exist on the OSgrid map. Mind you, they may be offline. Many of them run on people's Windows PCs which they shut down when they don't need them. Nonetheless, these sims have existed and been online recently.

And that's only OSgrid. On average, everyone would have to own countless sims alll across the Hypergrid.

> I would compare much more with sim city. In opensim anyway, because most are just building landscapes and take pictures of it. SimCity has some more goals. lol

Goes to show you don't get out much.

What people actually do is hoard freebies and party. Female users also play Barbie with their avatars. And some have virtual sex.

But in general, most users don't spend more time than absolutely necessary decorating sims. Look at those many freebie sims that look like they were slapped together within one afternoon.

> You didn't mention thirdroom. Why?

Because I only wanted to pick out a few examples. If I had to include #ThirdRoom, I would also have to cover #VRchat and #Vircadia and #Overte and #RecRoom and #MozillaHubs etc. etc., just to give each and every virtual world out there a fair treatment. The article would have grown HUMONGOUS.

Even when it only came to free, open-source, decentralised virtual worlds, I would also have had to mention and analyse Vircadia, Overte and Mozilla Hubs and rip #Decentraland apart for lying into people's faces.

Besides, I know you're a huge Third Room fangurl. But Third Room is far from being as successful as #SecondLife or #Minecraft or #Roblox. It's a tech preview. It's in a very very early stage. It's far from having a community of thousands, having in-world places that you can spend weeks or months or years exploring, having in-world events etc.

Right now, Third Room is only just barely where Second Life was in 2002, only with public access. It is where OpenSim was in July 2007, immediately after OSgrid was launched, and before people flocked into OSgrid, claimed land and started building.

Also, since Third Room is based on Unity, this blocks creativity. Everything has to be built and scripted outside Third Room. That's like building an entire Second Life or OpenSim sim outside Second Life/OpenSim, scripting it outside Second Life/OpenSim, then dropping the whole thing into Second Life/OpenSim in one chunk, and if you want to change even a small detail, you have to go back outside Second Life/OpenSim and go through almost the whole process again because Unity doesn't let you do shit in-world.

> For opensim I only see one big problem. Stone age technology. Especially because of openGL and Firestorm still thinks we live in a 8 bit world.

32-bit. Second Life wouldn't even be technologically possible in 16-bit, much less 8-bit.

Also, you claim that #OpenGL is stone-age technology because its initial release was in 1992. Well, bad news for you: Your precious, oh-so-powerful MacBook Air M1 runs on an operating system from the age of dinosaurs. It's basically #BSD (macOS is based on Darwin, and Darwin is based on BSD), and BSD is from 1977.

Oh, and by the way, OpenGL has advanced over time. The minimum version required for the official Second Life viewer is 3.2 from August 2009, the minimum version recommended is 4.6 from July 2017.

> This can be changed if there would be young developers interested in creating high end graphics. But you have only nostalgic 60 years old men in opensim who are not skilled to develop new technology.

Another false claim of you which you "know" for a "fact": Everyone in OpenSim except for you is a crusty old geezer at an average age of 60 years.

> Thirdroom has 20 years old kids already who can develop new technology

LOL ROFL

Okay, let's check the factuality of this.

This is the Third Room code repository on GitHub.

The contributors, at least those that aren't bots, are:
Robert Long, software engineer
Nate Martin
Ajay Bura
Matthew Hodgson
Rhea Danzey, senior SRE
Hugh Nimmo-Smith
antpb
Travis Ralston, senior software developer

At the age of 20, you can't be an engineer. You can't have an engineer's degree of any kind. You're still in university or college.

At the age of 20, you certainly can't have "senior" in your official job title.

At least some of these developers don't even look like they're 20. Not 25 either. Not even 30.

So next time you present your personal perception as cold, hard, undeniable facts, prove them. Or don't complain when someone comes with actual facts that contradict what you say and proves these.

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 13:13:30 +0200

Cheryl Furse

CherylFurse@opensimsocial.com

@jupiter_rowland

oh my ... Jupiter

first: Bitcoin had always up and downs. Many want to see a crash. Especially EU who even wants to forbid crypto currencies. The truth is like for any assets: Put your coins in a hardware wallet, put it under your cushion and wait 4 years or so. Don't look every day on market what you get for your coin. It is normal that there are ups and downs. What people write is one thing. What bitcoin is worth today is another.

secondly: Ellen even estamates 100 real people in opensim lol If it is 100 or 200 or 300 or even 400 it doesn't matter. Success looks different. And you see it in the traffic charts of the OSW site. To come in traffic charts just because 2 or 3 Avis are there is not really proof for a sim to be crowded lol And if you go to the sims you see the owner afk with his alts or even like last time NPCs that are counting for traffic too. And to have proof that there are thousands of people in Opensim in whole anyway not even. Where are the sims with hundreds of people gathering? It never happened. If there would be thousands like you say then there would be in all the time I'm in opensim just one event where perhaps 100 people were.

I was on parties a lot. There were parties with 50 people. But afterwards I know also that the owner, the DJ and some of the guests let dance 3 or 4 Avis at the same time to have high traffic rate competing with other parties where they did the same lol

Look in Secondlife. There are really thousands of people and there are regions where you meet 250 people 24/7 and you have to get a ticket to stay for an hour like on HBC (Heavy Bondage Club) No one would put alts there because it is so laggy there. lol So all the 250 people are real people there.

You can believe in your fake statistics but you lie yourself in pocket if you believe fake statistics. We produce fake all the time by ourself. I'm often online with 2 avis. One is sitting at home on my sim and the other is on Lbsa to talk with people. So in this statistic on OSW site I posted from today with 174 avatars online 2 of them I were there. And I just use 2 Avatars. Esse e.g. has on her Trianon Complex mostly 3 Avatars running. From her own grid one and from two other grids each and look all the same. They are dancing there on stage and should be greeter. Mostly you won't be greeted or just by one of them who are all Esse. lol But she is always with her sim in traffic charts of OSW with 3 people mostly.

In this way I could tell much more.

How many regions are in Opensim doesn't matter anyway. Ask Glenys who has 100 4x4 sims on Wolfsterritories with Abby plus own grids. lol

Jimmy brings also some sims online for some time and shut them again. Just for storage. Other people have whole grids just for storage. Jimmy has also OSgrid sims connected to OSgrid on his own computer at home. Another computer than the one he runs Decadence Grid. I know many people who run 3 Grids at the same time and pretend to be different people as owners.

Etc PP I could tell much more. Just don't believe in your own Propaganda. Otherwise you can't decide anymore what is reality and what is just virtually in your head going on.

Thirdly: To the simcity comparison. Some of the sims you can see where party happened e.g are made in one afternoon and you get a lot of stuff just to put your lego together so that it works in an afternoon. Most female Avis who are real females don't play so much Barbie. For the first 2 weeks it is great but after you miss other things. Most female Avis who are real females don't have so much cybersex. I just know one exception who is insatiable. lol But most female avis I know are men who are for sex.

Then I come to the next point. I'm not a Fangurl. A girl with Dr. rer. nat. in front of my female name often pretending in science forum to be a man just to get some voice lol I know how you old men tick and I use it. By the way Ellen is also a girl with a Ph.D. Very rare but such is existing.

As scientist I'm not a fangirl of anything. I just look and analyze and compare. If thirdroom is really going to become a success I don't know. But the korean developers for all the realistic graphics (third party companies in south korea for thirdroom you can read on the homepage as well) are 20 years old kids and this is a big difference to all the 60 years old men who build in opensim Lego.

And that thirdroom works best on Safari seems to be a hint that there are also connections to apple. This is now just a suspect. But could be a hint.

To the 8 bit world of Firestorm. If you look what you can import and what not then you see that in principle Firestorm allows just that what you you got in the 8 bit world. You can't even import animated gifs and have to trick with 8x8 pics that can only have 1024 x 1024 px resolution. If this is not 8 bit world then I ask you what it is then? Just because you could import a 32 bit image (meaning of colours) doesn't mean that it is 32 bit world. lol

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 14:04:36 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Cheryl Furse

> Ellen even estamates 100 real people in opensim lol If it is 100 or 200 or 300 or even 400 it doesn't matter.

She estimates. Estimating is different from knowing and having statistical proof.

> Success looks different.

Yeah, as if Third Room had millions of users.

> Where are the sims with hundreds of people gathering? It never happened. If there would be thousands like you say then there would be in all the time I'm in opensim just one event where perhaps 100 people were.

Whether you want or not, OpenSim has about 70-80% as many users as Second Life. But it has more than four times the land mass. It has more event locations, so it has more places for musicians to perform and for DJs to play than Second Life, also they're so cheap to build. Thus, OpenSim has more events at the same time.

> You can believe in your fake statistics but you lie yourself in pocket if you believe fake statistics.

Now you claim I had faked these stats.

Fact is that these stats aren't written by the grid owners by hand. They're automatically generated by the grid servers with no human intervention. Hypergrid Business automatically pulls the stats from the grid servers, again, with no human intervention whatsoever. This is described here.

Also, I'm pretty sure that OpenSim has ways of recognising unique users and telling which avatars belong to the same user. IPv4 addresses, Mac addresses, e-mail addresses of local avatars etc. OpenSim certainly does not count each avatar as a unique user.

Hypergrid Business doesn't falsify these stats either. Maria Korolov, founder and owner of Hypergrid Business, is not a hobbyist blogger. She's an internationally renowned professional journalist. She has reported from front lines in war zones while being shot and bombed. Repeatedly. The last thing she'd be interested in is falsifying OpenSim stats.

I put more faith in automatically generated stats published by a professional journalist than in the estimations of a hard case of #DunningKruger syndrome with no proof to back them.

And you're still evading the question how 200 real-life people can possibly run hundreds of active OpenSim grids.

> To the 8 bit world of Firestorm. If you look what you can import and what not then you see that in principle Firestorm allows just that what you you got in the 8 bit world. You can't even import animated gifs and have to trick with 8x8 pics that can only have 1024 x 1024 px resolution. If this is not 8 bit world then I ask you what it is then? Just because you could import a 32 bit image (meaning of colours) doesn't mean that it is 32 bit world. lol

Goes to show what you know about computers. Or rather, what you don't. You don't know what 8-bit even means. For you, everything before the MacBook Air M1, the Resident Evil 2 remake and Third Room is 8-bit because it's, like, so fucking outdated.

8-bit is 1970s technology. The Apple ][ is 8-bit. The Atari VCS 2600 is 8-bit. 8-bit graphics can have 256 colours max.

16-bit is 1980s technology. Early PCs were 16-bit. No more than 16MB of RAM possible. 16-bit graphics can have 65,536 colours max.

In 1990, we already had 32-bit everywhere. Most 1990s and many 2000s PCs were 32-bit. No more than 4GB of RAM possible. Super NES and Sega Mega Drive had 32-bit graphics.

Second Life was created in the late 32-bit era. Firestorm was created in the 64-bit era.

Check Firestorm's system requirements.

16GB of RAM recommended. This isn't possible with a 32-bit PC, much less an 8-bit home computer. This is 64-bit.

If Firestorm was truly 8-bit, it'd run on a 40-year-old home computer like an Apple ][ or a Commodore C64 with no problems.
Firestorm requires 64-bit for macOS and Linux. No 32-bit support. And no 8-bit support either.

Last but not least: There are no 3-D virtual worlds in 8-bit.

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 15:04:40 +0200

Cheryl Furse

CherylFurse@opensimsocial.com

@jupiter_rowland

Jupiter

There is no statistical proof, if you can directly falsify from experience living in opensim itself. Just by knowing how it works and when you know the people. And we all fake the statistics. You see it every day in the traffic charts on OSW. I fake it also when I'm online with 2 Avis at the same time. And this is just harmless.

Automatically generated stats are blind. We had last days even sims in traffic charts where most were NPCs. lol This sim was every day listed with 8 to 11 avis. I was there and wanted to know why so many people are there. Then I was talking with chatGPT NPC Aiko lol Just Foxxy was real person. lol It is ok for me and I don't care. I found it funny. Aiko is really fun to talk with. Is better than chatGPT 3.5 Turbo

By the way "...than in the estimations of a hard case of #DunningKruger syndrome with no proof to back them." is rude. Be more polite and respect you talk about women with Ph.D. and not any old male hobby informatics that are just chatters like you or Copper. You both are very similar. lol Perhaps because you are so similar you are so hard enemies in your battles on OSW site.

Would it be different if we were men and are chatters like you? I guess so.

I never said I'm tech skilled. I'm even a tech blond. But such like what you are talking about is just general knowledge and you don't have to study for such to get a clue about it. Especially if you are mathematically skilled/educated at university and know how computer generated statistics work.

So don't become an asshole just because someone responds to your post and is interested in what you write and has some critics in your opinions.

I'm the only one in fediverse who cares about what you write.

To the rest I won't write more than that:

To let run software on a 64 bit system doesn't mean that it is also able to do things that are possible in a 64 bit environment. Most 3D Models I have in Blender cannot be imported in OS because complexity is higher than 65,536.

What does it mean? More than 16 bit is not possible. Isn't it the number?

So if it helps to understand and to have a compromise. firestorm still thinks we live in a 16 bit world and not 8 bit world. ;-)

I can run atari games on my Mac with an emulator that is just able to run on new 64 bit MacOS but not on old 32 bit MacOS . So this software is then also 64 bit but what I get on screen is just 8 bit.

In principle we have the same for Firestorm. It can run only on a 64 bit system but what you get is just 16 bit. (For importing things anyway)

I run my Firestorm also on an emulator Rosetta so that it pretends to be running on an Intel Computer. But it doesn't make out of my Firestorm a software that runs on a M Processor like e.g. Resident Evil is doing.

I'm not a tech guru and feel even blond in tech but I can read and think logically.

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:40:37 +0200

Hyacinth ?️‍⚧️ ☮️

Hyacinth@groovytoot.com

@jupiter_rowland I think that is about right as far as active users go. I measure success more by how many are active and find value in it. I think our small grid is doing pretty well with about 25 people who are really on almost every day and having fun building, etc.