Recently two of the big 3D Virtual Worlds released some numbers of how they are doing, and I thought it might be fun to compare.

IMVU

Population: 40 million registered users
Active: 6 million average monthly uniques
Money Spent (Annual Run Rate) : $25 million
Activity: Users average 1 hour + per day on the site
Peak Traffic: 80,000 simultaneous users online
Other Stats: 770,000 chat sessions per day, and 175,000 virtual items are sold daily
Source

Second Life

Population: Over 20 million registered accounts
Active: Over 1 million unique logins a month,  over 750,000 average monthly repeat logins (logged in at least twice in a month)
Money Spent (Annual Run Rate) : over $500 million
Activity: Users average 1.3 hours + per day on the site
Peak Traffic: Peak Concurrent Users hit 88,065 in April 09
Other Stats: Over 1 million monetary transactions per day
Source and Source

These are very interesting statistics. While I realize that the nature of these two 3DVWs is very different, making meaningful comparisons difficult, they both can claim #1.

IMVU is easily the highest populated, thanks to an aggressive advertising campaign. But, the Second Life economy is about 20 times bigger. Oddly the activity and peak traffic statistics are very similar, so there is no clear winner based on popularity.

Then there are many that question whether or not IMVU is even a virtual world or not. By my broad definition it is, but others consider it a 3D chat program and social network rather than a Virtual World.  Since you can create your own avatar, build your own home, customize both as you see fit, and visit any room you want, its a virtual world in my book. The only significant difference between IMVU and the more narrow definition of virtual world is navigation.  You cannot walk around in rooms, you click on little yellow dots which animate your avatar to a location in the room. You also cannot navigate from room to room.You select an active chat, or create a new one, and you move to a room. Due to the lack of navigation, there is no real estate or vehicles, which explains why its economy is smaller than other virtual worlds.

Some of the statistics are questionable, or at least not directly comparable. IMVU’s active user count seems to be based on sign ins to their website, which is a social network site as well as a portal to the 3D chat, while Second Life’s is purely client logins. The IMVU client allows you to sign in and then wait for a friend to invite you to chat like other IM programs do. That would also skew the “activity” stat above.

Similarly, Second Life’s Activity stat is over inflated due to bots. “Bot” programs keep an avatar logged in daily for long hours, they are used to automate club invites or to model clothing in stores. While bots are a small number of the active user count, they over inflate the time spent in world. According to SL’s own charts 3% of the avatars log in for more than 300 hours a month. That 3% represents 34% of the “activity” in SL.

So are these the two biggest? Well most 3DVW services are a bit stingy with their statistics. About the only thing we have to compare is total accounts (Population), which as you can see above is misleading. No matter how you measure, “active” accounts is always significantly lower than total accounts.

Here are the next five 3DVW’s based on population stats (via kzero.co.uk and other press releases):

PS3 Home 7 million
Free Realms 5 million
Red Light Center 3 million
There 2.5 million
Kaneva 2 million

All others are under 1 million.  Of these five, I suspect There has the most robust economy (possibly bigger than IMVU), but Free Realms is the fastest growing (a million new sign ups a month), and likely the most active these days.

Regardless, it is clear by population alone that IMVU and Second Life’s position as #1 and #2 (or #2 and #1 depending on what stats you use) are safely uncontested at this time.

Metaverse News IMVU, secondlife, virtual economy, virtual worlds

Some strange things in SL news this week.

First up, Second Life has been interested in working with third party partners for a while now, that is no secret.  This week it was discovered what they were doing with these partners.

Dreamland, a privately financed continent created by long time business avatar Ansche Chung, started renting real estate at cheaper than tier levels. People looking into this have found out that Dreamland is purchasing real estate in bulk for a discount rate, and passing on the savings to its customers — which of course is growing because of the cheap rates.  Smaller real estate providers are crying foul!

I totally understand the SL side of this. Offering bulk discounts, or wholesale prices is a regular business practice of many businesses.  In a way this is a sign of Second Life maturing as a company.

I also understand the frustration of the small real estate providers who find themselves at a financial disadvantage. Virtual real estate is not a good thing to be into these days, prices across the grid are low, and getting lower. The PG vs. Mature vs. Adult policies is not helping things either.

Its a story worth following further.

Meanwhile, a 3rd party viewer client added an interesting and unexpected feature : jiggling boobs!

Yes, with the independently developed Greenlife Emerald viewer available here, you can now see all the female (and some of the male) avatars jiggle as they dance, walk, and whatever.

Just load the viewer and go to Edit > Preferences > Emerald > Page 2 > Effects > Click “Enable enhanced physics on avatar breasts”. (If it does not work immediately, you may have to restart the viewer)

I wonder how long it will take for this to be added to the official viewer?  I’m guessing a while.

Speaking of Official Viewers they released version 1.23.5 this week to plug a security hole involving notecards. Another 3rd party viewer called Neillife was exploiting this to allow people to copy inventory and remove permissions. Linden Labs caught a bunch of people doing exactly that and banned them.  This made a lot of content creators happy.

Well one person’s ban is another person’s slap on the wrist. The majority of these bans were overturned so fast I suspect a few of the violators didn’t even notice it.

Regardless, it sent a message not to use the exploit, and with the new official viewer the exploit has been plugged.

I just do not know how many people are going to be using the official viewer. What do you want a security hole free client, or one that allows you to look at bouncing boobies?

Finally a note. Second Life’s founder and former CEO is forming a new company. He will still be on the board at LL and will continue to be the public face, but he will only be at LL part time according to his note.  Good luck Phillip, and thanks for all the fish!

Metaverse News boobs, secondlife, sl clients, virtual economy, virtual real estate

I normally don’t do exploring posts so close together, but its been a slow news month, so why not another?

For this one the theme is real life architecture from Europe recreated with care in Second Life. I found three dedicated reproductions both inside and out of famous buildings.

First on the list is the youngest, La Sagrada Familia is a cathederal in Barcelona in real life, but in Second Life it can be found in Meloloona (more pictures).

The ornate details of the original building do not translate to Second Life, but the build is impressive enough to check out. Its quite elaborate even for SL standards.

Next up is an older and smaller mirror build of the Parthenon in Greece. I have stumbled on a few parthenons in Second Life, including one on the official Greece Tourism region. But the one built in Sculptie Experiments (more pictures) is the best I have seen.

The primary reason I favor it is for its use of 3D sculptie prims throughout. This allows a much more detailed and authentic Parthenon build.

Finally, this recreation of Le Mont Saint Michel off the coast of France is one of the most incredible mirror world builds in Second Life. If you have not seen it you really should. They actually recreated the entire island to scale. It can be found in the Mont Saint Michel region (More Pictures).

Like the real place, the hill can be climbed by following a circular path, lined with shops, which is how the rent gets paid.

It is not entirely authentic. Hidden underneath the mountain is a large techno battle zone. See if you can find it.

Virtual Society exploring, France, Greece, mirror worlds, secondlife, Spain

I like doing these themed exploration posts. Most of the time I have two similarly themed regions, then seek out a third to round out the post. Every now and then I find three regions that kind of go together, but not in a simple to explain way. These three are organic, semi fantasy, semi historical, mostly outdoors shopping regions. Couldn’t think of a shorter way to explain it.

In that same spirit, I decided to take on a pseudo fantasy-historical look to tour around these regions.

First up, sounds like a movie plug. Its a place called Where the Wild Things Are like the upcoming Spike Jones movie. The region itself is simply called Pax (More Pictures). As I pop in I find myself in a thunderstorm. This mostly natural outdoors build seems to have its own geology, a forest growing along a recently created lave bed. OK, so that does not happen in real life. Its a pretty build to visit.

Our next stop is a fantasy themed world with a steampunk underworld called 6pi (More Pictures). Not sure what the meaning is (when I tried googling it all I got was 18.8495559…), but it is a nice build anyways. Above is me in front of the main shopping area taking up about a quarter of the region. The simple coloring and elemental plants give it a fairy tale kind of feel, like it is a nice place to hang out. Another half a region is mostly a natural plant build with a small village that sees to have popped up.

The fourth quarter of the build is easy to miss as most of it is buried underwater. It looks a bit steampunk, with its pipes and rusted color, offset with glow effects, some of which are quite nice.

Finally, on this tour is a tropical Pirate themed build called La Cuesta (more pictures). The region consists of a bay, a dock, a shipwreck or two, a cottage, and an inn called the Groll Inn.

After a long days journey visiting three islands, I decided to check myself in.

Virtual Society exploring, fantasy, pirate, secondlife, steampunk

There has been a fair amount of drama on the whole adult continent Zindra front. The move of all adult content to a new continent has brought land speculators, complaints, AR griefing, and other nonsense. Time to take a second look.

On September 15th, Linden Labs has drawn the line. All adult businesses must be on Zindra or an estate server set as “adult”. Rule breakers will no longer be seen in search and could be forced to move.  Furthermore, SL clients not enabled with code to handle adult permissions (1.23 or higher) will no longer be able to see adult islands on maps, or see any shops or groups that are adult in nature.  LL is still vague about their guidelines to prevent people from working around them, though there are 3rd parties figuring it out.

In the June essay, I mentioned two possible scenarios of where Zindra will head: 1.) A sanctuary away from alt griefing and kids pretending to be adult, or 2.) an adult oriented ghetto.  Many of the more established successful businesses have relocated to private estates rather than Zindra. Because of this, its looking more and more likely that the second scenario will prevail.

A quick tour around Zindra today is like a big mall of mostly crap. A good 90% of adult merchants do not know how to make a good store build. Lots of bright tacky colors, or way too big textures that cause load lag. I went to some of the busiest businesses and either found a lot of bots / camping chairs, or builds in private skyboxes.

That to me is a virtual ghetto.

Ironically, after exploring the main areas of Zindra, my favorite build I found was designed to look like a ghetto (More Pictures).  Its actually a group of builds in the same area with the same “ghetto” aesthetic.  Lots of naughty poseball furniture and toys, mixed with sexy clothing shops and booth and apartment rentals.  It is the most interesting build, or group of builds, I found on the whole continent. (Pictures in this article are from that build)

The as yet unanswered question is how will this segregation of adult businesses affect the rest of Second Life.  Adult rated regions currently make up almost 5% of Second Life, and the stricter enforcement (especially on estates) is going to make that percentage rise. Traffic will change, as will land prices, but how and how much are unanswered as of yet.

Below is a map of the main section of Zindra as it now exists. Compare it to the map I made in June and see how much it has changed.

Metaverse News, Virtual Society adult content, censorship, exploring, secondlife, virtual sex, zindra

Over a year ago, I went around the world in Second Life builds and noted the lack of builds based in Africa. I did find one decent one at the time, but felt annoyed that there were not more. It is the second biggest continent after all.

Since then some new ones have been built. I tracked them down and thought I’d share.

The first is a really impressive 4 server build called Visiwa (more pictures).  According to its website it was originally opened in October of 2008, but has expanded quite a bit since then. I saw some tacky construction signs (are these really necessary?) indicating it is still expanding.

The port in the top picture is dubbed Port Kijiji (an ancient African work for “Village”), and it is surrounded with stores, including some available for rent.

In the back are some residential spaces, also with some vacancies, if you are looking for housing in a beautiful exotic locale. Even if not this is a cool place to explore, just don’t feed the lions.

Speaking of lions, the next African location I visited was simply called Virtual Africa (more pictures). Built by a non-profit based in South Africa, its a small tourist attraction complete with 3d models of about a dozen different African animals, and a fair number of plants. The whole thing has a safari feel to it.

You can walk around, balloon around, or hang glide. There are also tents for rent, auditorium, and some informational displays.

With these real world tours, I like to try and find historical locales as well.  No problem, I found an Ancient Egypt City of Thebes (more pictures). This is a role play server, so you have to be in costume to look around.  I just decided to scope around with my camera.  If you want to visit someplace a little less role play, I found a build called Egypta occupying a quarter of a server.

Well that’s my brief tour of Africa in SL. Hope you enjoyed it.

Virtual Society Africa, exploring, Historical, mirror worlds, secondlife

This week, two of the more successful creators in Second Life filed  a class action suit against Linden Labs due to lost business resulting from other players copying their items and selling them as their own.  This is a very touchy issue for a lot of people, the thread at sluniverse.com was 15 pages long in the first 24 hours of the post.

I thought I’d share some thoughts on this. I am not a lawyer, and I have no clue how this will play out. My best guess is an out of court settlement that will not change the situation at all. Personally, I believe that there is plenty of blame and misunderstanding to go around.

Lets start with the basics:

1.) Second Life was not designed with security, copyright, or IP protection in mind.  Otherwise, 60% of all textures and 90% of all sound files would have never made it into the game.

2.) It is technically impossible to stop the copying of textures and objects on to people’s hard drives, and damn near impossible to stop these copied textures and objects from being imported back into the game under a different “creator” name.

Linden Labs has failed in two ways:

1.) They failed to publicize facts 1 and 2 above, thus giving most players the false impression that they can make what they want and no one could copy it. Even worse, they instituted a policy early on that the rights to all textures, animations, scripts, etc imported into the game would remain with the player that imported them, thus implying that they can be safely used in game.

2.) They have failed to enforce copyright claims, even at the bare minimum level an internet “service” is expected to do. Claiming to be a “service” and claiming only the users of the service are responsible if they violate copyright or trademarks has not stopped other internet services from getting take down notices, and should not stop Linden Labs either.

The filers of the class action are stating some things in the class action that are clearly not true as well. Take a look at point 6 on page 3:

6. Linden Labs has the means to simply and easily halt the alleged conduct, but refuses to do so because it makes too much money from all the infringement.  Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit in order to prevent Linden Labs from continuing to commit trademark and copyright infringement and to recover damages for Linden Labs unlawful behavior.

This paragraph is for the most part false, and its inclusion undermines paragraph 4 and other parts of the complaint. Especially false are the words “simply and easily” as if a simple command into some SQL database would solve a complex copyright issue.

There are a lot of ideas floating around to prevent copyright issues from coming up in the first place, and I have yet to see one that would not seriously harm legitimate businesses or the SL economy as a whole.  The most popular is to not allow people who do not have financial data on file to cash out lindens for dollars, in hopes that the lack of anonymity will scare away copy scammers.  The flaw is that it is not necessary to use Lindex to buy and sell lindens. If LL starts restricting the Lindex, it will open up third party exchanges.

The only way around these loopholes is to not allow any unverified free accounts to have any lindens at all. This will further deteriorate new player experience, and ultimately hurt the economy as a whole as it limits the customer base.

The least harmful way to enforce copyright is the “You Tube” way. Take it down if a copyright holder wants it taken down. The burden of proof of a copyright claim would be on the copyright claimer, requiring evidence that you uploaded said texture or created said item before the copy, to prevent false reporting for griefing purposes.

Complaints regarding copyright or trademark should be investigated. If the investigation determines the claim is valid, the offending object gets removed and replaced in people’s inventories with a notecard explaining what happened, and who made the complaint. It should also possibly result in the suspension of the copiers account, rescinding of land holdings and lindens.

I know this would result in a lot of innocent victims losing stuff they paid for, resulting in lots of complaints, but it could lead to other reforms for the better, like a rep system or insurance system. Who says these have to be run by SL?

Even this is not a fool proof system, but it is a way of doing something, which is more than they are doing now.

Some other 3DVWs that allow user created content that can be bought and sold by players, namely There and IMVU, have restrictive approval requirements, that also cost money to submit new items, and it takes days to get it approved.  This makes sure people aren’t copying other peoples work, but it also slows way down the growth of content in the virtual world.  Second Life has definitely benefitted from the exponential growth afforded from an open submission policy.  Restricting the policy would completely change every aspect of Second Life.

In conclusion, I believe this lawsuit will never get to court and will end in some settlement.  I’m not worried that SL will close, I am worried that LL will have to make some draconian change in policy that will ruin SL. Getting rid of the offending material, and maybe the offending avatars is fine.

Making changes to the submission process, or making economic changes, would no doubt do more harm than good.

Metaverse News copyrights, legal, linden labs, secondlife

Its September and that means the new fall season of TV is coming. As usual the networks rearrange their schedules and schedule most of my favorite shows opposite one another.

I do not have cable or satellite, just an antenna to pick up local HD channels. My “DVR” consists of a tuner card on my computer running Windows Media Center — far and away the best DVR software despite the fact that the files it saves are proprietary. Between WMC, and websites like Hulu and streaming video on network sites (cbs.com, abc.com, etc.), and pay for TV like iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix, I do not miss anything I want to see, despite the lack of cable or Satellite.

The problem is, none of this can be seen on my TV, just my computer. All I can watch on my TV are live channels, DVDs, and my previously metioned Apple TV.

I decided that I would find a way to solve this once and for all. I researched many possible fixes: Wireless enabled television (too expensive), building a media PC (also too expensive), TiVo (another monthly fee to pay, high startup cost), a media server (none support the WMC proprietary files),  a converted xbox or linux box with XBMC loaded (same WMC proprietary issue), a Windows Media Extender (difficult to find, most no longer being supported) and a PC toTV device (poor screen resolution no HD support).  I mention these options because others may find them more suitable. 

For me, the easiest and most cost effective solution is to get an XBox360.

I don’t own any consoles, never had the need, as my computer is powerful enough to play anything. But if I want to watch all this internet based television on my actual television, the XBox360 is the best way to go. I got the “arcade” model, the extras you get in the “elite” are needed for console gaming enthusiasts, but not needed for my uses.

Setting all this up turned out to be a major chore as I ran into some undocumented issues that Microsoft apparently does not even know how to fix. My computer connects wirelessly to a router in the same room as my TV, so all I had to do on the xbox is plug in a cat 6 ethernet cable (the 54mb limit of the way over priced wireless G adapter Microsoft sells is too low to stream HD).  Once connected, my computer had no problem seeing my XBox, but the XBox could not see the computer. 

The official answer from Microsoft is to make sure your network is “private” and that and that both file and media sharing is enabled. It turns out you must also turn off Internet Connection Sharing as well (its a service under administrative tools, disable it from ever starting so it does not come on when you reboot your computer).  Microsoft either does not know about the issue, or they dont think it is common enough to publicize as a possible fix.  Took me a good 4 hours of troubleshooting to find this out though.

Anyways, once fixed, I can play all my media files through my TV, including my DVR recordings via the Windows Media Extender feature. The xbox also has netflix built in.

What I still could not do was access hulu and other streaming video.  Turns out there is an easy fix for that too called PlayOn ($40 one time after two week trial). It installs on your PC and plays online streaming video through your TV by pretending to be stored video. Works on PS3 and Wii as well.

And with that addition, I can watch anything  I want on my TV, sans cable or satellite.

Media appletv, internet tv, Media, Media Center, tv, xbox360, xboxlive

I want to take a second look at Blue Mars from the perspective of what Blue Mars is trying to be. It is still very unfinished of course, but based on what I read and what I have seen so far, I get a picture of Blue Mars’s real purpose, and it is not what most people think.

The majority of the people jumping on the Blue Mars bandwagon are Second Life players, hoping for something similar, or more accurately, something not in control of Linden Labs.  I feel for them, but they are likely to be disappointed.

Let me tell you what I believe Blue Mars really is and why its goals are not compatible with the Second Life model of the 3D web. Or, to use an obvious metaphor, Second Life is on Venus, Blue Mars is on Mars.

Take a look at what Blue Mars is doing.  First, as I pointed out in my previous review of Blue Mars, a primary activity in virtual worlds is building stuff, and Blue Mars is keeping the building parts out.  Second, they are keeping avatars fairly standard, with only the face being adjustable. Third, they are built on a gaming engine designed to be flexible enough to make many kinds of video games, not just social worlds. Fourth, the tools they are making available to “developers” are professional level, requiring some prior game design knowledge, sending the message “amateurs need not apply”.

The missing piece of the puzzle is to look at the latest trends in 3D Virtual World games, and I consider myself an expert. Take a look at my What is the Metaverse? page. I give a list of attributes for a metaverse, one of which has sadly not come into fruition. To quote:

Game Launching – Think XBox Live, where you meet up with your friends, pick a multiplayer game to play, you all load up the game and suddenly you are all teamed together. Obviously XBox Live has this ability, but XBox Live is all text until you get into the game. Playstation 3 Home is a 3D social world that lets you do this too. If we really want to have a “Metaverse” this is the way to do it: Tie all the individual online games together, let players carry their identity from game to game, and provide a way to move in groups between games.

My idea is to create a toolbox that game developers could use so that player could move from game to game with the same identity and similar avatars.  Playstation 3 Home is supposed to have this ability, I do not know how well it works. I know others were attempting this ability, but never successfully.

What we have been seeing as a trend is an intermediate step: Create a bunch of small games yourself and  integrate them into a larger virtual world. This is what Free Realms is doing, as well as Empire of Sports, Football Superstars, and Moondo.

The design of Blue Mars is that of a portal to various games. Each game space is capable of having its own rules and designs, but uses the same avatars in each room. What Blue Mars is mostly looking for is “game developers” to create these game spaces, not SL object builders or fashion designers.  Some game spaces could be created to work similar to  Second Life, or they could be adventure games, sports simulations, RPG games, even first person shooters, as long as it is 3D and runs on the CryEngine2 and designable using the game engine provided.

This is what Blue Mars really is: A gaming portal with common avatars.  It is not a good place to start a designer business like Second Life is, it is not a good place to become a merchant or build your dream house or hold meetings.  Blue Mars is designed to be a place to build 3D games and get other players to come check out your games.

If successful, Blue Mars will be a compliment to SL, not a substitute.  Second Life is designed to be a social network but has limited game design potential (made problematic by script lag).  Blue Mars is designed to be a gaming network with limited social potential.

I do not have any thoughts about Blue Mars potential for success in this venture, except to point out it is likely to be difficult. The real measure of success will be if they actually attract professional game designers and gaming companies to create content for their platform.

In the mean time, they are going to have to develop some “developers” themselves. These early developers are likely to not be very good early on, but will get better.  Meanwhile, Blue Mars needs to develop their own in house “killer apps” to attract players.

There is potential here but it is a path that has never been tried before.

Metaverse News bluemars, game platforms, metaverse, secondlife

I decided I have done enough tweaking and released Dating Sim 6.0 as a download.  I was going to release it as 5.9 and then have 6.0 be the “bug free” version of 5.9, but being bug free is likely an impossibility anyways.

Since version 5.0 I have looked over all the “places”, especially the older ones, and I have enhanced them all in some way. I took a look at version 5.8 and decided the weakest parts were the non-romantic lake beach, the boat, and the home improvement store. There were also some bugs in the nightclub that could not be fixed without a complete code rewrite.

The other enhancement I had made since 5.8 is to organize my rendering files better. The Ariane model has changed here and there over the years, and some of the older pictures did not look as good as the later ones. So I went and re-rendered a bunch of the older pics using the newer Ariane models. These pictures are “cleaner” looking and actually compress into smaller jpg files. Even though there is more content, version 6.0 is actually a smaller download than version 5.8.

The new download is here.

If you find any new bugs, post them in the comments.

Metaverse News Dating Simulator, updates