Second Life, Linden Lab & OpenSim News
Philip Rosedale the founder of Second Life and the co-Founder of High Fidelity will be live on Lab Gab (Episode 23) today starting at 10.30am SLT. Strawberry Linden will be asking Philip many questions about various interesting topics. It’s going to be most interesting to hear what Philip has to say later on today.
This live episode of Lab Gab will be streaming on YouTube, Facebook and Periscope. Please spread the word. You can watch it live below too.
Less than 10 hours to go!
Philip Rosedale announced some big changes last week at the weekly General Assembly meeting (1hr) in High Fidelity. There was a large audience for this important meeting.
The first being the closure of all its public domains/spaces apart from the Welcome domain for new users. The welcome domain will be a tiny space and it will not be available for everyone to hang out there.
Philip wants the end-user to run the servers instead and he thinks that there will be more people concurrent across the servers in time. How successful this will be time will tell I think.
Philip said In the prior year of High Fidelity the platform failed to get 1, 000 users concurrency apparently. There is not enough revenue flowing into the company currently and everyone would need to pay US$10,000 a month to keep the company going into the future. Then the company would see positive cash-flow.
Philip mentioned Second Life saying that “this is not Second Life in 2004. Second Life actually took off like a rocket, once it got working. Even though it had tons and tons of problems… but it took off like an absolute rocket. And the reason that it did, I think, was that this experience of bringing a lot of people together and letting them build things together live, well, in the time frame when we built Second Life, it had never, ever been seen by anyone. It was the most exceptional, jaw-dropping thing that anybody had ever seen except in science fiction”.
Here is what Philip actually said during the meeting
We are going to close down all our public spaces. We’re gonna do that after this meeting, before the end of the week… First of all, we are not a social VR game… This is not a chat application where we get people together and hanging around in a room talking to each other. High Fidelity is designed to be a platform anticipating the very broad use of VR across the internet for things like this.. going to work, going to school, doing all kinds or different things.
And we’re certainly doing our very best to get that started, but we sort of feel lately… a couple of things have happened that make us feel we are making a mistake by running the biggest servers… We feel like we are actively doing a disservice to everyone by running these public spaces. Instead, what we ought to have is you guys running your own spaces…
At least as an experiment, but hopefully, as a good call, and we’re going to do it in the next day or so, is we’re going to shut everything down, except for a help space for new users… but it will be a tiny space, and we aren’t going to let anybody hang out there.
One of the problems that VR has right now… the most popular VR app in the world is Beat Saber… the number [of concurrent users] is going to be about 700. So one important thing is that in the prior year, not only have we failed to get 1,000 [user] concurrency, but so has everybody else. Now, VRChat has 1,000 concurrency… but I don’t hang out there a lot… But I don’t think that the experience you have in VRChat is yet my vision of a real virtual world.
Second, by shutting down our public servers, I actually make the prediction that there will be… more people concurrent across the servers that you guys run than us. So I’m not saying that we’re giving up on the servers, I’m saying that I want you to run them.
Given the number of people that we have…let’s add to it Anyland and Neos[VR], and for that matter even Rec Room, even though that’s much more of a game. Let’s actually add all those people together into one product. That company will not survive. There’s not enough revenue… Everybody here that’s having such a good time…you guys need to pay us US$10,000 a month for us to keep the company going, indefinitely into the future, for us to basically be a positive cash-flow company, as we say here in the Valley. And everybody else in VR right now is faced by that.
Now there’s two ways to think about that. This is one of these ego-threatening things so that it’s hard to see clearly, to look at it objectively. Way number one is to say, it’s just that there’s too many bugs in this High Fidelity thing. If they just fix the bugs, why, people would fall out of the sky like cats and dogs into here. If that were true, you’d see them falling into somewhere else. And what’s happening is that the open-platform system we have here isn’t attracting very many people in this day and age. And so we’ve gotta ponder what to do about that.
One thing to do, which all the companies have been doing… is better support for desktop users. Because any assessment of the rate of progress on HMDs is a sobering one… they are not selling enough to create a general-purpose community that is both interesting and profitable… So, it’s really important to recognize, that through no fault of our collective selves… it’s not working. This model is not working right now. The flat world that is an open building environment, is not compelling enough as it stands right now, for the number of HMDs that are out there, to get lift off. And so we’ve gotta think hard about that.
It is going to work, believe me. I’ve worked my whole life on this and I’m quite certain, I know it’s ultimately going to happen. I’m just saying to your guys, just fixing the bugs we have… is not likely to get us or any other company to cash-flow break even…It’s also got to be enough to move you guys to make great content. There should be 15, 20, 50 people around the table right now making a living in here. And we’re not there yet. So we gotta figure that out.
You guys, this is not Second Life in 2004. Second Life actually took off like a rocket, once it got working. Even though it had tons and tons of problems… but it took off like an absolute rocket. And the reason that it did, I think, was that this experience of bringing a lot of people together and letting them build things together live, well, in the time frame when we built Second Life, it had never, ever been seen by anyone. It was the most exceptional, jaw-dropping thing that anybody had ever seen except in science fiction.
The problem we have today is that that’s just not true. The internet affords us many, many, many, many different ways to be together as people, for example, or just to chat. And so one of the things we are up against here is that there is not as much of a genesis moment with something Like High Fidelity or, for that matter, something like VRChat. Coming online you just don’t have the kind of meme in the sense of a grand or cultural meme kind of written out there like Second Life did. That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make it. It simply means that we have to be more clever and the strategy that we use to get people in here has to be somewhat different.
What do you think about the closure of the public domains/spaces ?
On Friday 7th September High Fidelity reached a new record of 356 avatars during a load test yesterday afternoon. The previous record was 256 avatars which was set just recently. These load tests are done on a monthly basis apparently to reach the long-term goal of seeing One Billion in VR.
Here is the official confirmation via the High Fidelity Twitter page.
THANK YOU to everyone who joined our Load Test this afternoon. 356 avatars! A new record. FYI: We’re moving the next load test to a Saturday so more users can join! Learn more and register here 👉 https://t.co/3G16mqpShu #VR
— High Fidelity (@highfidelityinc) September 8, 2018
Reward Breakdown
The next load test will be on Saturday 6th October 2018 from 11am to 12pm PDT. The more avatars that attend these regular load tests the greater the rewards. For more information see here.
Congratulations to High Fidelity on reaching this new milestone.
On 27th April 2016 the High Fidelity Twitter account announced that High Fidelity is now in Open Beta. High Fidelity was first founded in April 2013 by Philip Rosedale when he started the company from scratch. High Fidelity is a software platform that allows you to create shared, editable, virtual reality spaces on your own home computer or cloud server.
Three years later High Fidelity has grown a lot and its great news to hear that High Fidelity has now reached the open beta phrase. It’s free at no cost. Spread the word! 🙂
We’re delighted to announce High Fidelity’s open beta! Check it out here: https://t.co/WnRMvqy3Idpic.twitter.com/ib4jClgro1
— High Fidelity (@highfidelityinc) 27 April 2016
Also…
Immense thanks to our alpha community and everyone whose hard work contributed to getting us to open beta. ❤ And now, onward!
— High Fidelity (@highfidelityinc) 27 April 2016
New this week
Philip Rosedale was at SVVR 2016 this week talking about High Fidelity and showed off a brief demonstration of the social VR platform. Philip Rosedale made the announcement that they’ve been building towards open beta for the past three years.
“Shared VR is going to be a much bigger phenomena than even what we’ve experienced so far.” – Philip Rosedale
Try the Open Beta today
If you are interested in trying out High Fidelity Open Beta > download here. You can stay updated on the latest news via the High Fidelity Blog. There are many interesting videos and new demos to watch on High Fidelity, see here.
Check out the new special Drax Files podcast @75 featuring Philip Rosedale talking about High Fidelity and a little on Second Life. This show was broadcasted from within High Fidelity for the first time and the show runs for 1hr/29 minutes.
Skip to 54 minutes to listen to the special interview between Draxtor and Philip Rosedale talking High Fidelity. I found the interview pretty much interesting and fascinating.
Give it a listen if you are interested in learning more on High Fidelity.
Today I decided to sign up to High Fidelity Open Alpha for the first time and as many know already I love testing/trying out early new developments out. Firstly its worth going to the Sign up page to create a account and get started. Then you should receive a email soon after to verify your email. Then you should get another email saying “Alpha: You’re in! What’s next?” with a simple checklist.
The simple checklist gives you many options to get started including watching tutorial videos, downloading the interface, setting up your own domain using the Stack Manager, registering place names and for discussions visit the Alpha Forums.
Downloading the interface takes up around 40MB and each build may change in size. Once installed, log in and start your High Fidelity Open Alpha experience. Again this is a very early alpha and it’s not finished yet.
At this stage it’s worth watching High Fidelity video tutorials and reading the High Fidelity documentation to learn more. 🙂
I hope that this helps when you sign up to High Fidelity Open Alpha. I will blog more on HF and share more snapshots soon.
Philip Rosedale announced on Wednesday 1st April that High Fidelity has moved into the early open alpha phase. Please note that this is a very early release with loads of bugs in it and that many things need to be improved. If you love testing early developments then this is something for you to try out.
In recent weeks invites have been sent out to start testing High Fidelity and I’m glad it’s moved into the open alpha phase. I have signed up today to High Fidelity and I will publish what I think soon.
High Fidelity’s open source software is now available for early alpha use, enabling you to download client and server installers, deploy your own domain servers, create user accounts, register unique placenames, and start building and experimenting.
This is a very early release, and High Fidelity is still very much a work in progress. The look and visual quality is far from complete, and big things like avatar movement animation and physics are still not in place. There are lots of bugs to fix, and content formats will continue to change. But enough systems are now functional to make us feel that High Fidelity is useful for some types of work, experimentation, and exploration. Having run a small and controlled early alpha to iron out the really show-stopping bugs, we’re now eager to engage a larger group and recruit open source contributions from other developers working on building the metaverse.
You can download the client and server installers, create domain servers, create user accounts and start building in this early open alpha phase. There is a alpha version of the High Fidelity marketplace where you can find scripts, building materials, avatars and much more. There is work being done to add payment systems in the near future.
You can create your own virtual world by downloading and running the Stack Manager. The client software that you use to enter your world or those others have created is available by running Interface, and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. We are working on a GearVR/Android version as well, but it isn’t ready yet.
You can build content by importing models and using JavaScript to create interactive objects and behaviors. You can communicate with your voice and with facial expressions, and you can optionally use the Oculus Rift HMD and other input devices like the Razer Hydra to touch and edit the world. We will also support the HTC Vive HMD and hand controllers as soon as they are available.
3D Audio is operational: If you are using a high-quality headset, you can hear other people and objects in the environment at their correct locations, with very low latency, and with the echoes of your own voice off the virtual walls. Sounds can also be made by interactive objects in-world, and audio is mixed together by a server node so that many people can talk together without increasing the audio bit-rate each person receives.
Avatars can be created with a variety of characteristics, whose faces are animated in real time using both head motion and audio (for HMD users) or more highly detailed expressions gathered from a depth-camera (for desktop users), as you can see in this video from our recent funding announcement:
The transition from the alpha phase to the beta phase will happen within the year or so bringing greater stability along with much more. For now it’s a work in progress and its far from complete.
You can expect continuous and substantial changes as we complete new features; we will likely break content as we continue to design and experiment. The transition from ‘alpha’ to ‘beta’, which we expect will happen over a year or so, will signal greater stability in the content formats. But as an open source project with contributions from many developers and with a broad set of features working, we think the time is right to open things up completely for early use.
For the latest news on High Fidelity visit the blog to stay updated.
Update: The demo video is now private.
On 24th April 2014 there was a new blog posted called High Fidelity System Architecture which is a excellent overall and good read. These are very exciting times for High Fidelity I think and I can’t wait to hear more about High Fidelity in the coming months.
A new demo video was uploaded this week showing testing of Philip Rosedale’s new metaverse which is very interesting indeed. The demo was a basic introduction video to High Fidelity Alpha and shows the first interface software. It looks like Second Life back in the early days and it looks pretty good to so far from what I’ve seen so far (below). The demo runs for 6 minutes and 49 seconds. If you are interested in High Fidelity Alpha, sign up here.
Learn the basics of High Fidelity Alpha
On 31st March 2014 Philip Rosedale posted a new blog post on the official High Fidelity Blog called Identity in the Metaverse. Philip talks about how we don’t need to have name tags above our heads and the concerns over maintaining privacy in virtual reality. It’s a really interesting in-depth blog post about the identity in the metaverse and it’s a must read.
Check out the bold highlights from the blog post below…
Currently High Fidelity is at the Alpha stage and many are waiting for further updates to contribute to the new start-up. I think many are excited about the possibilities and future developments with High Fidelity. Recently on VentureBeat “Second Life founder’s stealth virtual reality startup High Fidelity raises $2.5M”
Sign Up Here for the alpha!
Daniel Voyager 