[sldev] Second Life competition (was: a rant)

[Second Life]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Hurliman" <jhurliman at wsu.edu>
To: "Second Life Developer Mailing List" <sldev at lists.secondlife.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 3:00 AM
Subject: Re: [sldev] Second Life competition (was: a rant)


> Callum Lerwick wrote:
>> On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 23:49 -0700, Ettore Pasquini wrote:
>>>> b) LL is falling behind in the feature races as competitors gather
>>>>
>>> Who are the competitors?
>>>
>>
>> http://www.croquetconsortium.org/index.php/Main_Page
>> http://metaverse.sourceforge.net/
>> http://solipsis.netofpeers.net/
>> http://www.activeworlds.com/
>> http://www.there.com/
>> http://www.redlightcenter.com/
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotsoul
>> http://www.blaxxun.com/
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise:_The_Vieneo_Province
>> http://player.thesimsonline.ea.com/
>> http://www.habbo.com/
>>
>> Did I miss any? Not going to list every MMORPG, they're not really the
>> same thing. (Similar to MUD vs MOO/MUSH/MUCK in the old days...) Okay so
>> Sims Online seems kind of borderline. http://www.planeshift.it/ is
>> interesting, it has an open source client based on the Crystal Space
>> engine and the game actually doesn't look like ass.
>>
>
> Why not include Quake 3 in the list? It's 3D, and you play online with 
> other people... That's about the only similarities I could find between 
> Planeshift and Second Life.
>
> But seriously, if we pruned all of the entries there that don't support 
> user created content (isn't that the point of Second Life?) what are we 
> left with? Croquet, OSMP, There, and ActiveWorlds? Now that we have a list 
> (please add in the ones I missed, I'm only recognized or read through a 
> handful of those) we should talk about the best features of each and 
> whether SL is lacking those features. I know Croquet has a really cool 
> portal system. Although I would be really afraid of adding any more 
> rendering time or bandwidth requirements to the viewer to implement actual 
> portals, what about adding LSL support so when you click on a prim it 
> offers to teleport you to a certain location in another sim? With some 
> clever prim building and a screenshot of the remote sim you could make it 
> look like a portal.
>
> OSMP has an offline sandbox, I know a whole group of people are working 
> steadily on that right now. I'm not familiar with There or ActiveWorlds, 
> so I'll pass the suggestions on to the next person now.
>
> John Hurliman
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Though most of your pruned list are still a far FAR cry from SL.. There are 
a couple of killer features in There that SL SHOULD have considered from the 
beginning.

1) Inventory references are permanent! When you take something out of 
inventory in there, a permanent inventory marker is left in the list (but 
grayed out). At ANY TIME you can "retrieve" your inventory no matter where 
in world it is. This would save an insane about of grief with misplacing no 
copy item and prevent the annoying "I am in world XXX at location XYZ" pings 
that a lot of items now have.

2) Inventory can be marked transitory for "demo" purposes. You can buy any 
item with a "try out" flag and get something like 10 minutes use out of it. 
This is especially important for clothing in SL which frequently does not 
fit at all and is frequently mo mod, but would be almost as important for 
anything else.

3) And finally, even though There is graphically and creatively non existent 
compared to what SL /can/ offer. There's vehicle physics (minus the region 
crossing rubber banding) are far far better than SLs and are just as old.

4) Oh heh and There's no bump shield idea is infinitely better than the 
parcel by parcel no push mechanism which is easily circumvented in SL. You 
just turn on no push in There and it is active on yourself wherever you are 
and it's absolute. You cannot be pushed by any means ever. Cut and dried, 
it's how it SHOULD work.

Anyway, tawdry bits of wizdumb from my time on there before joining the now 
almost infinitely superior SL, but of course there is always room for 
massive improvement in anything :)

Farallon