@Ton Zijlstra @Metaverse 💞 beyond.pictures The entire "Metaverse = blockchain + crypto + NFTs" cryptobro scene seems blissfully unaware of the existence of @Second Life (tagging them so they can have a laugh for the weekend if they notice). In fact, apparently, so does almost everyone who started a virtual world since the mid-2010s, especially since Meta's Horizon announcement. A few virtual world makers may be fully convinced that Second Life is dead and gone since 2008 or 2009, just like so many others. Most of them, however, seem to never even have heard that name ever before.

The only exception seems to be Horizon itself, but only because it was spearheaded by a former Linden. And even then, Horizon failed because Zuckerberg had too much control and, at the same time, no idea whatsoever how virtual worlds work.

It's especially the cryptobros who put raking in money above and before anything else. Sure, a commercial virtual world needs a business model and a steady source of income to stay afloat. But the "business model" of many crypto-based virtual worlds is, "First I'll sell land to celebrities and megacorporations for cryptocurrency worth millions of real-life dollars a patch. Then I'll rake in even more money when the cryptocurrency rises in value as people start speculating with it. And then, well, yeah, I guess I'll take care of the world." Lots of "metaverses" tanked because they sold NFT deeds to virtual land that they never actually managed to create.

Decentraland actually exists, you have to give them that.

Still, the makers of Decentraland had and still have to learn a lot of things about virtual worlds the hard way if they refuse to look at other worlds and what makes them successful.

This includes in-world building. Just because it's possible, doesn't mean it's convenient. And virtual worlds based on game engines like Unity3D or the Unreal Engine don't make it convenient. If you want a city in-world, you have to build the entire city in an external game scene editor as one block, all small details included, script it there, export it, convert it, and then you can import it. You can't actually build anything in-world. You can't change anything in-world. If you have a few more visitors at home, and you want to add a chair or two, you have to fire up the editor, edit the whole scene, add the chairs there, export it again, convert it again and throw everyone out of your home because you have to delete and re-import the entire scene.

Second Life lets you add a chair right there, right then. Second Life lets you build furniture on the spot if you're skilled enough. Or entire buildings. At "worst", the external tools you use are Blender for 3-D meshes and Photoshop or GIMP for textures so the single objects you make look better. And still, you piece your part of the world together from big and small objects in-world. Say about Second Life's graphics engine what you want, but it facilitates world-building greatly because it doesn't require in-world places to be static, monolithic scenes like in video games.

Speaking of which, Second Life is often criticised for its learning curve and bad on-boarding. Decentraland seems to manage to be even worse.

Oh, and if the makers of Decentraland had actually done their homework and some more research, they wouldn't use that stupid "first decentralised metaverse ever" claim. It's stupid because it's wrong.

The "first decentralised metaverse" came to exist in 2007 already with OpenSimulator, a free and open-source server-side re-implementation of Second Life's technology. The term "metaverse" has actually been used around OpenSim since 2007, including by (now offline for extended maintenance) OSgrid, the first public OpenSim grid, the oldest still existing OpenSim grid and one of the two biggest OpenSim grids.

Decentraland is "decentralised" in the crypto sense: It uses its own cryptocurrency rather than relying on one of the big ones like Bitcoin, Etherium or Dogecoin. But as a virtual world, it's still one big monolithic walled garden.

OpenSimulator is decentralised by being the technology underneath well over 3,000 big and small individual virtual worlds. Now it comes: Almost all of them are connected to one another via the so-called Hypergrid which was created in 2008. You can have an avatar on one grid and visit another grid with that avatar, even taking your inventory with you. You can have friends on other grids. You can join groups on other grids (although group functionality across grid borders can be hit-and-miss).

Lastly, virtual land NFTs being cash cows only works because people don't know about Second Life or think it's dead, and because they've never heard of OpenSim. There are more than enough stories of people or companies shelling out eight-digit US dollar sums for patches of land in new virtual worlds.

AFAIK, Second Life charges you some $250 of monthly rent for a 256x256m standard region with an island on it, surrounded by ocean, and $300 per month for the same size of land on the mainland. Granted, only if you can get that land in the first place.

@Lone Wolf's Wolf Territories Grid has various offerings, depending on land size and capacity. The default is a bit over $25 a month for 1,024x1,024m and 20,000 prims. And the Wolf Territories, being a commercial grid, are actually considered expensive because the "standard" has been $10/month for 256x256m and 15,000 prims, and some grids go as low as $5/month for 256x256m. You're likely to get what you pay for, but still.

This is also possible because, unlike Second Life, unlike Decentraland, unlike Horizon, unlike almost all other virtual worlds, land is not scarce in OpenSim. Anyone can literally make their own land in OpenSim. You can run OpenSim on a Web server or on a machine at home. You can host your own land as a stand-alone and attach it to an existing grid, although only few grids allow this. Or you can even host your own entire grid and open it to the Hypergrid if you so desire. The vast majority of grids is home-hosted.

In fact, all those who are working on building the "open Metaverse" should take quite a few more closer looks at OpenSim. Otherwise they're bound to make some very painful mistakes.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Decentraland #Blockchain #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #Cryptocurrencies #NFTs #MetaPlatforms #MetaHorizon #Horizon #HorizonWorlds #SecondLife #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Hypergrid #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Decentralised #Decentralized

@Katja Diehl

Drittens: die Träume zahlloser Cryptobros vom schnellen Geld. Der Trick geht so: Man plant ein "Metaverse" aus Basis einer Blockchain inklusive einer Kryptowährung. Dann verbreitet man die Propaganda, daß virtuelle 3-D-Welten ohne Blockchains, Kryptowährungen und NFTs technologisch vollkommen unmöglich sind.

Dann verkauft man Besitzurkunden für sauteures virtuelles Land als NFTs, die natürlich nur gegen Kryptowährung erhältlich sind. Für Eigenwerbung nutzt man KI-generierte Bilder hyperfuturistischer Cityscapes, weil man noch gar keine virtuelle Welt zum Vorzeigen hat. Dann erst kümmert man sich vielleicht darum, daß tatsächlich mal eine virtuelle Welt zum Laufen kommt.

Na ja, "Laufen". Nur ein paar sind tatsächlich gestartet, aber alles andere als erfolgreich und alles andere als verläßlich. Decentraland ist ein Paradebeispiel: Es vermarktet sich als "das erste dezentrale Metaverse überhaupt", was Bullshit ist (dazu komme ich im sechsten Teil), und es hat kaum Nutzer, auch weil es sagenhaft verbuggt ist. Viele Projekte gingen sogar durch Kryptocrashes den Bach runter, bevor es irgendwelches Land gab, weil zum einen die Cryptobros und zum anderen ihre Kunden sagenhaft viel Geld verloren haben.

CC: die anderen bisherigen Threadteilnehmer, @Tenkoman, @Kevin Karhan :verified:, @Nowhere!Fast!, @C.Suthorn :prn:, @Jan Kruse

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #Metaverse #Metaversum #VirtuelleWelten #Crypto #Cryptobros #Decentraland

@Ryan Schultz I still remember when cryptobros tried to make everyone believe that The Metaverse (or metaverses in general) absolutely require a blockchain, a cryptocurrency and NFTs, and that 3-D virtual worlds are technologically impossible without any of these three.

The irony is that it's the worlds without these three that actually work, even decidedly non-commercial Overte. The cryptobros' get-rich-quick schemes ended up underdeveloped (NeosVR) at best, likely even buggy (Decentraland), and I guess not exactly few sold expensive NFTs as tokens to virtual land which never came to exist because they've never launched their world in the first place.

It's hard to tell whether they were cases of intentional fraud, and the owners never intended to develop and launch a virtual world in the first place, or whether they did want to launch a virtual world, but their cryptocurrency crashed before they could fund the development.

I mean, I find it increasingly hard to believe that the makers of Decentraland really knew nothing about virtual worlds first. I find it more likely meanwhile that they intentionally lied to their customers about having created the world's first decentralised metaverse than that they simply didn't know that this title belongs to something that's eleven years older and actually decentralised.

By the way, there have even been cryptobros who obviously could be bothered to spend a bit more time on Google, and who discovered OpenSim. Free and open-source. Most importantly, free-of-charge. And readily available, they wouldn't have to pay for the development of a virtual world platform first. So they decided to glue a blockchain and a cryptocurrency onto OpenSim and either sell land for crypto or offer crypto gambling or both.

None of this came to fruition. Regardless of whether they were dumb enough to open their grid to the Hypergrid, they had to compete with grids that offer standard Second Life regions for $10/month and varsims for not much more. On top of that, closed grids had to compete with the Hypergrid which had a lot more and better content, not to mention more users.

Oh, and OpenSim doesn't really work with VR headsets for a whole bunch of reasons, so they couldn't market it to the VR crowd either.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Metaverse #Blockchain #Blockchains #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #Cryptocurrencies #NFT #NFTs #Cryptobros #Decentraland #NeosVR #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #VirtualWorlds