tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post5821712311728484976..comments2022-11-03T11:39:13.662-05:00Comments on Andromeda Media Group: Requiem For Blue MarsWill Burnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-88947452569390156912011-11-04T21:18:23.760-05:002011-11-04T21:18:23.760-05:00Just want to comment quickly that Bitmanagement.de...Just want to comment quickly that Bitmanagement.de is, in fact, the successor to Blaxxun.com. Blaxxun finally folded their website when the licences for their community software expired. Only a Korean university and a private individual bought Blaxxun community 7 server software. The Cybertown world still runs on community 3 or 4 software. I go back home to Cybertown occasionally just to see if it's still on life support.<br /><br />Personally, I would think X3D might be a viable alternative, if it could be incorporated into HTML5 without the need of a code plug-in, or stand alone viewers.Joey1058https://www.blogger.com/profile/07582012137258654962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-38537436346192987462011-01-18T10:06:07.063-05:002011-01-18T10:06:07.063-05:00The original intent of Open Croquet was in fact a ...The original intent of Open Croquet was in fact a peer-to-peer approach, which is how we usually demonstrated the system. When we built Teleplace, the enterprise market required a more centralized approach (for many reasons, including security, document management, credential management, etc...). My original intent was that portals would be generic links to any other virtual world - basically a 3D web. I still believe this is the proper approach.<br /><br />I also agree that using video to provide 3D interaction is not a good idea. Interesting story is that when I wrote The Colony (1987), I decided to go with 3D primarily as a compression medium. You just could not fit a big graphics intensive game onto a 440K disk. You can see it here . I believe this is still the right way to approach the problem, and the key to making this a success is embracing procedural models of the world.David A. Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08378620295464558412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-37742384038964111892011-01-18T03:24:55.774-05:002011-01-18T03:24:55.774-05:00@Troy
As I've said, it's one extreme or t...@Troy<br /><br />As I've said, it's one extreme or the other. Centralized or P2P methods. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, however when taken together, they compliment and fill in where the other may be deficient.<br /><br />As for OnLive, it works because it's a gaming service that is rendering limited instances. Plus the subscription fee is compelling to the user and covers costs and a profit margin. I'd rather not compare a gaming service to a virtual environment or vice versa.<br /><br />As for open Croquet, Cobalt, etc. The very thing that gives it strength (Peer to Peer Networking) also is its biggest Achilles heel. The same is true for centralized approaches. <br /><br />The secret, when it comes to Virtual Environments, is knowing that they solve each others problems.Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-60154465871499809332011-01-18T00:45:38.594-05:002011-01-18T00:45:38.594-05:00Could you comment on Open Croquet / Open Cobalt / ...Could you comment on Open Croquet / Open Cobalt / Teleplace, which uses a decentralized (P2P) approach? Do they do it right?<br /><br />Also, if server-side rendering is such an awful idea, then how does OnLive stay in business? What's their secret sauce?troymchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04738403527078049637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-15151350620289281422011-01-17T19:56:12.405-05:002011-01-17T19:56:12.405-05:00"Only in the end, do they realize the "i..."Only in the end, do they realize the "ignorance" of the Dark Side.;)"<br /><br />The lack of wider business models that can succeed and be sustainable has been the way of web3d tech/vc companies for almost 20 years.<br /><br />LL did not "invent" virtual economies of 3d assets. They go back to the 90s as well. <br /><br />Each failures "answer" is always to "build" a new widget, since thats what software/hardware engineers do to spend others money....<br /><br />making products, selling products, and managing services are not these companies leaders/owners strengths.<br /><br />Its always the same bankers, with younger -newer- grad students every year.- Each generation more "wired" into the internet and it's "relevance engines" for information. History is constantly being deleted from value. And beta or obsolete is the only mantra of the machine makers and machine made (humans). <br /><br />5 years from now this cycle will be repeated again.<br /><br />The medium of RT3D will continue to find usage in entertainment and simulations communications... but mediums alone are not a buisness... but things that you do business within.<br /><br /><br />anyhow. hawaii must have been nice...and so it goes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-38792743819629403012011-01-17T18:37:28.302-05:002011-01-17T18:37:28.302-05:00@ Joe Rigby
I think 70% right is pushing it. Dece...@ Joe Rigby<br /><br />I think 70% right is pushing it. Decentralized (as I've said) means just that. It means reducing or eliminating the need for many people to stand in line at a single source for redundant information. OpenSim I do not think does this, however well they manage to decentralize the overall servers, we're still standing in line at each of them for redundant information.<br /><br />This is, I believe, that extra 60%, so if anything, the numbers for openSim would be reversed: 40% right, 60% wrong. Which is still better than SecondLife which I'd say are 80% wrong and 20% right.Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-28434828422894129392011-01-17T18:25:32.048-05:002011-01-17T18:25:32.048-05:00@ Gwyneth
Definitely a refreshing counterpoint! A...@ Gwyneth<br /><br />Definitely a refreshing counterpoint! Although I cannot say that LL "got lucky" with their approach. Massive cutbacks in staff and the musical chairs approach to CEOs would indicate otherwise. If anything, I'd say that LL is simply holding out longer, but the outcome is likely the same.<br /><br />When I say "decentralized" I mean just that. The cloud is not decentralized and relies on a single point of access to work, and as we've seen before that doesn't work reliably (over the summer of 2010 I recall many times when 500 Internal Server Error was common).<br /><br />1GB per hour in based on observations concerning Skylight and Cloud rendering, and I'm merely speculating that it would be similar with OTOY cloud rendering for BM. In terms of streaming a lot of bandwidth and the mobile providers, I believe it would be the exception and not the rule that such options would exist, which to me seems like they are needlessly cutting their adoption rate further than they already have.<br /><br />As for "broke" you're right, it's not entirely true. BM is broke in the sense that additional funding has dried up and they are using whatever they have left to put toward mobile applications. But seeing as their business model is essentially the same, I would say that even in mobile it will have the same consequences if not magnified.<br /><br />In the case of LL, again, I'm not so certain they were lucky as you put it. I think the top level business model is a good one, however it relies on bad underlying architecture to sustain, and that is building a castle on sand.<br /><br />Thank you for your input :) It's much appreciated (and highly interesting) to read.Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-91149145441696903242011-01-17T10:18:14.099-05:002011-01-17T10:18:14.099-05:00Avatar Reality, while in theory emulating LL's...Avatar Reality, while in theory emulating LL's business model, were not so lucky. And here I think you hit the nail with the technological hurdles: they adamantly refused to create a "lightweight" viewer from the very beginning, because they "thought" that their target market were hard-core gamers and game designers which would love to come to a "serious" game platform (as opposed to LL's renderer). This shows that they, like most start-up companies who have since then failed (and some industry giants like Google with Lively), <i>never did any actual market research</i>. By 2009, when Avatar Reality launched their open beta, they could easily have seen that SL's resident population is anything but "hardcore gamers", and even though SL's viewer is far too demanding for "regular" users, and way too complicated to use, it barely allows a million regular users to be happy to log in every day or so. Anything far more demanding in terms of hardware would simply fail. I think they were encouraged by a lot of professional designers with state-of-the-art high-end desktops who joined BM and were very encouraging on the forums — they felt they were designing for a company that knew what kind of requirements a professional designer needs. But how many of those have been attracted to BM? 100? 1000? Probably not much more. That's not enough to cover the running costs.<br /><br />I have to humbly admit that I had no idea about the costs involved in a streaming solution; your article was an eye-opener in that regard. So instead of doing a lightweight viewer, trying to get a larger user base, and thus offset the running costs by generating more income, they opted instead for an expensive solution which would push the break-even point to an even more distant date in time (if at all). No wonder that their funders were unhappy about the decision.<br /><br />I also have to confess that I didn't understand that Avatar Reality would be <i>streaming</i> content to iPhones! I thought they would be doing a native iOS application — the description of what they intend to do is something like IMVU for the iPhone. But I always thought it would be a <i>native</i> application, roughly inspired in Blue Mars and using its brand, but pretty much detached from the BM experience. Hmm. Well, pushing 1 GB/hour over a mobile phone network is definitely a <i>business</i> for the operators; perhaps they are expecting to establish some kind of business relationship with them. For operators with metered bandwidth, intensive-bandwidth applications are quite welcome! I can very well imagine Avatar Reality getting a fraction of those fees to support their running costs in the streaming solution; it's just a question of making the right deal with the right kind of operators. For the ones with a flat fee, of course you're right, they will probably ban BM on their networks...<br /><br />But thanks for the historical perspective. I totally agree that most start-up CEOs never do any homework outside their technological know-how (and their funders even do less). It's not just looking back to history; it's also about market research. The "build and they will come" approach is hardly an established plan that leads to success, as so many residents in SL (and companies which tried to establish virtual presences there) have found out in the hard way. Sometimes, of course, you're lucky. LL was lucky by hitting by chance on a successful business model based on tier and a free (in the sense of not controlled) market economy of user-generated content. Avatar Reality was not so lucky.Gwyneth Llewelynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03394790308025005462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-39840468764630690412011-01-17T10:17:43.485-05:002011-01-17T10:17:43.485-05:00Very good pot, Aeonix, and definitely required rea...Very good pot, Aeonix, and definitely required reading on this subject! However, may I be the discordant voice and not <i>fully</i> agree with you on each and every aspect? :)<br /><br />From a purely technical perspective you're right in your assessments, even though "centralisation" is not that bad as it sounds, and it depends a lot on what you actually mean with "centralisation". Facebook is "centralised" — just heavilly distributed. Google is pretty much the same: "central" data sync'ed around hundreds of thousands of edge servers. Second Life distributes assets via Amazon's cloud — that was perhaps one of the most "silent" accomplishments that might have gone unnoticed to you. Aye, I agree that SL's model is not "fully decentralised" (in the sense of Facebook or Google or Hotmail or any other similar model...) but a hybrid approach: redundant central asset servers which distribute cached content over the cloud, and partitioning of the grid in independent regions, where each region simulator just handles a fraction of the overall load. No, it's not a perfect solution. Yes, I'm aware there are serious bottlenecks. Yes, I'm aware it's not a "classical" decentralised or distributed model. But it's not as bad as you paint.<br /><br />From a business perspective, I feel you're misrepresenting Avatar Reality's position. They're not "broke" in the usual term of the word: they're a VC-funded start-up. Start-ups start with an idea (in the techie world, this is usually just a techie idea, not a business idea) and enough capital to survive 2-3 years. 8 out of 10 will utterly fail, and that is <i>expected</i> by business angels and VC company owners. 1 will break-even. 1 will be a huge success and let them recoup the investment on all 10 companies. That's how things work; that's why 80% of all VC-funded companies "fail" — they never had such a good idea that translated into a successful business model.<br /><br />LL was also "broke" in 2003 when their funding was exhausted, and like all start-ups, unless they came up with a successful business model, they would have folded like 80% of all start-ups. Luckily for us, they actually struck gold — they kick-started a virtual economy where people can rent land and buy items from other residents for L$. This was not planned from the start (LL predicted that all their income would come from monthly subscriptions like all commercial MMORPGs), but rather a very lucky decision, which by sheer coincidence actually translated into a successful business model. They never needed to apply for funding again.Gwyneth Llewelynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03394790308025005462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-21994061403786725642011-01-17T08:36:41.898-05:002011-01-17T08:36:41.898-05:00"so I feel that while they (Open Sim) have mo..."so I feel that while they (Open Sim) have mostly the right idea, in the end it seems like they are likely to succumb to the same issues over time."<br />So lets say Open Sim is 70% the way there with the decentralized approach does the other 30% involve inworld collaborative UGC development to some extent.Joe Rigbyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03311706895089765048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-89213503715535355452011-01-16T17:05:20.352-05:002011-01-16T17:05:20.352-05:00@Joe Rigby
The broader sense the question is not ...@Joe Rigby<br /><br />The broader sense the question is not "Is Second Life Doomed?" but whether the entire industry is afflicted with amnesia and doomed to repeat mistakes of the past. At this juncture, I can confidently say unless changes are enacted to the fundamental architectures involved overall, then yes, Second Life (as well as every other virtual environment) is doomed to repeat history.Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-38682890841154794332011-01-16T16:18:30.217-05:002011-01-16T16:18:30.217-05:00I read the habitat paper (via @pathfinder) earlie...I read the habitat paper (via @pathfinder) earlier, and while I think their understanding of "cyberspace" was a lot more game-focussed (more like a MMORPG than what we now think of when we hear "virtual world"), their ideas and experiences are still valid - twenty years later!<br />Just as they predicted, neither the huge technological change to "gigabaud fibre optic connections" nor "rendering three dimensions at high resolutions" have invalidated any of their theories and axioms.<br /><br />I bow to these pioneers of cyberspace and hope that one day some company will finally heed their warnings and guidance.AlexanderThe Benellihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08771057067433453009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-75830813374069054332011-01-16T09:42:18.826-05:002011-01-16T09:42:18.826-05:00"As for HyperGrid, I think it has a great ide..."As for HyperGrid, I think it has a great idea but unfortunately is based on the extensive bottleneck baggage of Second Life architecture,so I feel that while they have mostly the right idea, in the end it seems like they are likely to succumb to the same issues over time."<br />So is Second Life doomed?Joe Rigbyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03311706895089765048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-65526979057740514742011-01-16T06:33:02.873-05:002011-01-16T06:33:02.873-05:00Amazing :)
You are bang on about the rush to mobi...Amazing :)<br /><br />You are bang on about the rush to mobile being a waste a time. Data plans are so restrictive in terms of usage and so incredibly expensive... Joe Average is NOT going to be accessing his VW on his iPad or iPhone. <br /><br />Not to mention culturally... as it exists right now, people are private with their interactions in virtual worlds. Who the hell wants to be on a subway or in a line up at the Deli (wink) and be trying to navigate their avatar around and catch up with friends?<br /><br />It's not how people USE it. And they ought to know that by now.<br /><br />Those that know that VW's are making huge mistakes that will lead to their demise... have the painful obligation of trying to shout it out... having absolutely no one listen (or be accused as a nay sayer) ... and the sad sad role of watching all predictions come to fruition.<br /><br />I liked Blue Mars. Found it too hard on all my computers graphics wise (and I have some high end stuff)... but it lacked so much. I always thought it would scale back a bit and become more mainstream accessible... I had hoped. Because it was a very visually superior experience to be in there.<br /><br />Very sad to watch it tank...<br /><br />PS: You were right. But I know it sucks to be right in this case :(<br /><br />PPS: I feel like I should send a card to Hamlet Au :( Poor guy.<br /><br />xoxox<br />SkylarSkylar Smythe https://www.blogger.com/profile/06218136443422844497noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-6891984883838613702011-01-15T18:19:39.221-05:002011-01-15T18:19:39.221-05:00A recent comment came to my email, apparently unab...A recent comment came to my email, apparently unable to read the captcha to post, so I'll put it here with my reply:<br /><br />From William Glascoe:<br /><br />I'm a Web3D Consortium member so I take umbrage at remarks suggesting VRML/X3D (H-Anim) is defunct. Anyway, I'd like to read your critique of Octaga and Bitmanagement operations, which are built on VRML and X3D.<br /><br />My reply:<br /><br />It wasn't a suggestion that VRML or X3D are entirely defunct, it was more an acknowledgment that the initial hype and wave concerning those two technologies have (at best) taken a back burner and lost favor with modern approaches. Clearly these two technologies (and standards) aren't as mainstream as they once were, where I remember the entire world was buzzing about everything being in VRML or X3D as the future, now I rarely (if ever) hear a word about them. So for all intents and purposes, they are defunct in terms of serious consideration for a new platform which may utilize them on a mainstream scale.<br /><br />I'm sure there are companies and efforts still in progress which base their efforts on VRML or X3D, but in 2011 they have the same weight in the industry as say, Blaxxun or ActiveWorlds would have to enact progress. Maybe this will change going forward and there will be a breakthrough in those two standards which warrant a second look on a wide scale, but until then, at best these technologies are "latent".<br /><br />For my readers:<br /><br />If you're interested in seeing where VRML and X3D stand in quality and use today, feel free to check out the links provided by Mr. Glascoe of the Web3D Consortium.<br /><br />www.octaga.com<br />www.bitmanagement.deWill Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-80150423684882590302011-01-15T16:51:47.324-05:002011-01-15T16:51:47.324-05:00@Becunningandfulloftricks
Thanks for the comment!...@Becunningandfulloftricks<br /><br />Thanks for the comment! I didn't post a link to Lessons Learned because I've reposted it in whole and in part on this blog a couple of times. Thank you, though, for offering a link to it for my readers :)<br /><br />As for HyperGrid, I think it has a great idea but unfortunately is based on the extensive bottleneck baggage of Second Life architecture, so I feel that while they have mostly the right idea, in the end it seems like they are likely to succumb to the same issues over time.<br /><br />If anything, I'm intrigued by fully decentralized approaches such as Solipsis (http://www.solipsis.org/) however, I believe a real solution may be in a median approach between the two extremes. Hybrid Decentralized approach.Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-88298649721370245752011-01-15T12:05:46.453-05:002011-01-15T12:05:46.453-05:00Outstanding post. People ignore past lessons at t...Outstanding post. People ignore past lessons at their own peril. I wonder why that's so often the case with businesses designing virtual worlds.<br /><br />I remember reading "Lessons from Lucasfilm's Habitat" back in the early 90's. Still a brilliant read today. I didn't see a link posted to it in your blog, so here's one: http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html<br /><br />What are your thoughts about Hypergrid connectivity and Opensim? I think it's a compelling way to avoid the bottleneck/centralization issue in the same way the current model of the Web has solved that issue. Constellations of interconnected worlds, and the ability to move freely between then...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-57081519491934138352011-01-15T10:05:24.073-05:002011-01-15T10:05:24.073-05:00great post, thx.great post, thx.sororNishihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17385408562954387986noreply@blogger.com