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

[Callum Lerwick]

Why does Microsoft insist on breaking decades old quoting practices?

On Sun, 2007-04-08 at 10:18 -0700, Second Life wrote:
> From: "John Hurliman" <jhurliman at wsu.edu>
> > 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.

That's why I didn't put it in the list, DUH!

Found another one: http://www.moove.com/

> > 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)

I haven't played any of them but There, I was going off wikipedia and
their home pages the best I could.

Actually the primary criteria *I* am using is, is it a free-form
environment primarily meant for socializing? User created content is a
secondary criteria.

> > we should talk about the best features of each and 
> > whether SL is lacking those features.

Yes!

> > 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,

Quake 3 did portals, and pre-Geforce TNT2 type hardware was current at
the time. The TNT2 apparently could do stencils in 32bit color but not
16bit, which is what we ran in those days. We do have the source
now... :)

Hell, the original Prey engine was doing portals on a P166 and the
original 3dfx Voodoo Graphics card, check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdyavnsGVSk

"In hindsight, portal tricks such as these should be used as tricks, not
as an engine paradigm."

Portals, used sparingly, and implemented properly, shouldn't hurt
rendering performance any more than what you'd expect from the added
geometry you see on the other side of the portal.

And shouldn't hurt at all if none are on screen anyway.

Whoever it was that was implementing real reflection, mentioned that the
only way to get real reflective water is to implement portal rendering.
Which implies to me that maybe, just maybe, portal rendering is being
worked on. :)

On the back-end, sims would probably have to connect to each other
across a fourth dimension, in a similar manner to how they currently
connect in three (two?) dimensions.

> 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.

YES! I played There a little, while it was in public beta (is it still?)
several years before I got on SL. I was completely astounded and
disappointed at how cryptic and primitive SL's inventory system is by
comparison.

> 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.

YES!

> 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.

And as I remember, if you set yourself nobump, it affected vehicle
physics such that anyone running into you had the effect of hitting a
very large tree. :)

Also, I have no idea how their servers were structured, but you could
race your friends in your "borrowed" dune buggy over miles and miles of
seamless terrain, with none of the sim switching glitchyness SL has. ;P

When open source simulators become usable, I'm kinda hoping someone will
hack in support for variable sized sims...

There is simply way more polished than SL, user interface-wise.

But on the other hand it seems to be implemented in some bizarre manner
such that it heavily depends on Internet Explorer, in fact it seems to
be some kind of IE plugin, and has no chance in hell in running on
anything but Windows. Which also meant IE patches and upgrades tended to
break the client, forcing an update. lol windows
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/sldev/attachments/20070408/57cc3136/attachment.pgp