The Second Life world seems to have its panties in a bunch over a new 3rd party utility by Rezzable dubbed Builderbot.

Basically, Builderbot can copy every object in an Second Life sim and put it into an OAR file that can be loaded onto any OpenSim server, thus making a near exact copy (scripts as usual are a problem).  They also are creating an OAR editor, and (even more impressively) a way to port OAR files into Second Life, thus making transfers from OpenSim to Second Life possible.

There are two things that are upsetting to the Second Life community: 1. Builderbot does not look at copy permissions or ownership, it just copies everything on the sim. 2. Rezzable was planning to release the SL to OAR part of the Builderbot for free.  These things had the whole community grabbing torches and pitchforks ready to boycot Rezzable. Rezzable finally gave into demand and will not be releasing the SL to OAR part free.

Hate to be the person that disagrees with pretty much everybody on this issue, but maybe I’m the only one who sees the big picture. Builderbot is an awesome idea and a key component to expansion of the 3D web. It is probably the most important 3rd party SL utility ever, and if Rezzable doesn’t release theirs, someone out there should release something similar, including the ignoring copy permissions and ownership part.

Mobile Building

Lets start with the obvious need for Builderbot. Currently, putting a build in Second Life requires that you actually be in Second Life and spend sometimes weeks building there, paying monthly tier as you build. If you want to take your time and do it right it will cost you. Then there is the occasional system hiccup that could cost you hours of work.

Builderbot does two things, it moves the building part of the project off the SL grid. You can now build your server build on your own computer, no system outages to worry about. You can save and backup your work to OAR files as often as you like. If you make a mistake, just load the latest backup. When you are done building and ready to move your build to SL, it can be moved into SL in a matter of minutes, or at most hours. This is the primary design of this program.

Fixing SL’s Design Flaws

Second Life as it was initially concieved is a flawed system. Whoever thought it was a good idea to equate Real Estate with computing power, I hope they have learned a valuable lesson. I have written about this major flaw before. Bottom line, SL runs on thousands of computers, and as many as 80% are not doing anything at any given time.

The obvious fix is to store unused regions in memory and load them up to an available server as needed. Linden Labs could cut their server need by 50-75% with such a system.

They could also bring up mirrored instances of extra busy servers. Want to give a concert that 1,000 people can attand? Just copy the build on 10 different servers that can service 100 people each. If more people want to show up, add more instances.

None of this is possible without a reliable backup system. OpenSim has OAR files, SL has got copybot (basically nothing). What Rezzable is doing is creating a tool to save SL regions as OAR files that can be stored when not in use, quickly loaded when needed, quickly mirrored on multiple servers. Obviously there is some extra programming involved to do all this, but considering the cost savings it is definitely something worth doing.

Why it is necessary to ignore permissions

The biggest concern from most of the Second Life players, is that Builderbot ignores permission. Copy a region, move to OpenSim, and everything in that region has no permissions at all. Anything in Second Life could be quickly copied, permissions be damned.

Rezzable argues that there is nothing in SL that cant be copied already. Players argue “True, but you shouldn’t make it so easy.”

Building a region is like building a website. I build websites myself and anyone can steal my code by right clicking and click “view source”, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. It is super easy.

What most Second Life players  are asking for is DRM management for SL content!

DRM has been a failure everywhere it is tried. Music, video, ebooks, the case against DRM is pretty clear. Read boingboing.net to find out why. How many of you asking for DRM for SL have stripped DRM off a music or video file so you can play it in the format you want?

A Future Marketplace

I come from the 3D Artist community where people build and sell detailed models for use in other people’s projects. All of these models are distributed DRM free and fully copyable and sharable. Yes, there is piracy in 3D models, but it is part of the cost of doing business. But since I do artwork I may want to sell, I pay for all my models and commercial licenses.  This business model is where the 3D web (SL and Opensim) will eventually go.

Most SL players are thinking in L$ economic terms without seeing the big picture. Eventually there will be an xstreet for all grids, and the ability to buy a pre built full region builds (OAR files) to load on to your personal server or hosted server is likely to be a new popular alternative method to static build exploring.

There is much money to be made in building custom regions.  Especially commercial clients who would not dare copy other people’s work. Individual objects and props have their place in the new marketplace as well, especially if they include commercial licenses that will allow the objects to be put into other builds.

I believe this could be a huge market. If I could explore lag free by loading OAR downloads to my computer based open sim server, I would love it! If I could edit them and share with others to show my edits, that would be really awesome as well. I’m quite certain I am not the only one.

The possibilities for Second Life are numerous as well. Can you imagine the fun of going to an SL club that has a different build for every event? Random combat locales? Roleplay setting that can be brought up as needed?

Like it or not this is the future! Second Life is just the early primitive beginning. In a few years we will probably wonder what all the fuss was about.

Metaverse News builderbot, future, opensim, Rezzable, secondlife, virtual economy, virtual real estate

I try to do an exploring post at least once a month, and it has been a while. Checking my “in box” of places to blog about, I find a few incredible fantasy builds I have neglected to mention, so lets get exploring. While the following three builds have fantasy themes, none are role player worlds you have to be in costume for, so I put on some casual exploring gear and hit the virtual open road. All 3 are PG rated too.

First up is a Greco Roman build called the Pillars of Hercules. Above are two good pictures of the wide exteriors, but I failed to get some good pictures of the elaborately detailed interiors of these buildings. This is quite the tourist attraction, both inside and out.

Second one up is quite a bit less elaborate. Its a region called Drowsy, and it features a series of small fairy tale like builds all with a whimsical feel to them. I met a mother and baby bear there. We had a nice chat, and so I decided to buy them some ice cream.

Finally, for the big finish is The Garden of Davinci. Another elaborate single server build with multiple buildings, this one more of a Renaissance feel to it.

The place is spectacular day or night. There is an Eagle ride that takes you on a flight around the Island ending up on a floating rock high above the rest of the build.

From above is about the only good way to see the whole build.

Happy Fantasy Touring!

Virtual Society exploring, fantasy, secondlife

40 years ago this week, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on its way to being the first manned space ship to land on the moon. In honor of this anniversary, I thought I’d find a way to recreate the mission in Second Life.

Well the first stop in our voyage is of course the International Space Museum at Spaceport Alpha. If you have never been to this awesome region (which I am sure I have mentioned before) well shame on you. It is one of the best educational regions in Second Life.  I have known people who joined Second Life, just to go see this place.

At ground level they have a display of all the famous rockets in space exploration history.  Above is a picture of me standing in front of my favorite rocket, the Ariane 01 used by the EU to launch satellites.

Apollo 11 was a Saturn V rocket, and I am sure there is one somewhere in the museum, but the only rideable rocket is a Gemini ship which predates the Saturn V. Close enough for this mission.

Before we take off though, we probably should get a spacesuit.  A quick check of Xstreet has a few available, but I managed to score a freebie helmet, gloves, and life support pack in the National Space Society region. Add your favorite leather body suit and boots, and you have a working space suit. Not authentic by any means, but good enough for virtual space travel.

So here we are aboard our ship waiting for launch. Actually launching will take us to the International Space Station display and the beginning of a tour of all the planets . A nice display, but not where we want to go.

We want to go to the Moon, so it is time to move on to the Daden Space region. This place requires that you be in a spacesuit. Pick up a HUD and stand on a teleport pad.  Yay! we made it to the moon!

Finally, it is worth mentioning that NASA has some 40th anniversary activities and events planned. You can find a schedule, along with a couple of detailed lunar lander lunar rover models in the Nasa CoLab region (right next door to the ISM).

Media, Virtual Society education, event, exploring, secondlife, space

Just read an announcement that Doppelganger inc. is closing the teen oriented 3D virtual world vSide a week from today. Its sister 3DVW “Virtual Lower East Side” was still in beta when it was “temporarily closed for updating” about a year ago and never re-opened due to pulled sponsorship from MTV which also closed Virtual MTV a few months back.

I always thought it seemed a bit too simplistic, and the lack of variety in avatars and clothing options was a turn-off. But it did not take up much drive space, and the cool looking line art graphics could run on older machines without a problem.

But after three years of development, it should have been more popular by now. Lack of additional funding is the culprit.

I’m going to have to look at the other virtual worlds to see if they are all still operating. In this economy we could likely expect more closings.

UPDATE: see my comments below.

Metaverse News closed, virtual worlds, vles

If you have an Nvidia card designed for DirectX 10 (8800 or better Windows XP or Vista), and you update to the latest drivers released June 19,2009, you might find something new in the NVIDEA Command Center: Stereoscopic 3D glasses support.

I have not seen this feature mentioned anywhere, not even on Nvidea’s own site. Probably because it is in the experimental stage. Older drivers supported it, but you had to hack your registry to enable it. Now you can enable it with a couple of clicks.

There are two methods that are supported. The first requires a special 3D ready monitor with two video inputs, a set of glasses that opens and closes shutters on either eye and an IR device that triggers the glasses, at a cost of $600 or so. Eventually this will come down, but it costs to be on the cutting edge.

The other method is to use a pair of red/cyan glasses, (called anaglyph 3D, or Nvidea calls it 3D Discover) which if you don’t have a pair lying around, you can get four pairs packaged in the DVD of Spy Kids 3D which you could probably find on sale for $10 or less. I have a few different kinds lying around and the ones from Spy Kids work the best.

The stereoscopic effect can be enabled or disabled with a simple key press (ctrl-t is default but you can set it to whatever you want) and works with any Direct 3D game with mixed results.

It does not work with OpenGL — Sorry Second Life and Google Earth fans!

I tried it in Guild Wars, and the stereoscopic 3D looked fine, but the text labels on the screen were not in 3D and looked wrong. Also much of the text is in bright primary colors that changes with the red/cyan glasses. I am sure there are other games in the same boat, so the system is not perfect.

I tried stereoscopic mode in other direct 3D games. Tomb Raider Underworld looks fantastic, race games are amazing fun in anaglyph 3D, even The Sims 2 and 3 work fine. Because all of this is handled at the driver level, no game has to be rewritten to work, it just has to use Direct 3D. Older games work wonderfully well without having to be rewritten.

There is a certain fatigue factor after long use, so you can’t play this way for hours, but it is a fun way to rediscover many of your older games, and enjoy them again. It also adds a new feature to PC gaming you can’t get on consoles.

Apparently once they get the bugs worked out, NVidea will be promoting it more and will be selling special anaglyph glasses anywhere video cards are sold.

Media, Metaverse News 3d anaglyph, 3D navigation, nvidea, reviews, stereoscopic 3D, videogame