5 Things You Didn't Know About the Upcoming Twinity Beta

Interesting. I believe that the future will, of necessity, need to allow avatars exist as co-equals with the 2D web. What I mean by this is that the current SLURL and links back to the web approach are not seamless. On a high end box with two monitors or more, and running the client in a window... you can have an acceptable experience moving back and forth. A more seamless experience would clearly improve the situation: the oft rumored, but never-quite-there in world browser would be a start.

I can quickly see an in world browser morphing into a gateway mechanism. My son (who is on the Teen Grid) said it would be "... cool if you could use an in world browser like a hud. When you found somewhere interesting, you could rez an object on the ground and step into it like a gateway. Your friends could step through it after you, so you could travel the web together. The portal would close behind you after a minute or so."

I think he had a point: the reason that virtual worlds are interesting is the shared experience aspect. (One type of old text-based virtual world was called the MUSH: Multi User Shared Hallucination... even more appropriate with graphics if you ask me.) While some of the 3D art is fascinating even alone, Second Life comes into its own when doing something like the "Things To Do" tours, Geek Meets or the various classes, presentations, shows, etc...

The flip side of my son's idea would be to "enable" the web with avatars via browser plug ins. An instance this was seen in the dating sim reviewed earlier here. The down side is that such a plugin would seem much less immersive. However, with operating systems now effectively mandating high end 3D cards, perhaps the mashup of browser and virtual world will occur sooner than we think... in five years a new machine without the 3D computing power of a modern gaming machine will be unthinkable, if only to run the desktop. That kind of power makes the mashup seem inevitable.

Remaining to be solved, even after desktop technology makes the mashups possible, is the scalability question. Maxing a sim out at 30 or even 60 users is just absurd when you realize that many popular websites receive thousands upon thousands of concurrent users. "Outsourcing" the servers via open source clients seems ineffectual: each server remains limited. A more robust solution would be for the servers to act as a "real" grid computing solution; where resources would be brought to bear on a region as more users visit it. When you look at a map of second life, you see sim after sim with 1-4 peole in it, and smaller numbers of sims with dense usage. With virtual machines or a clever back end task allocation system, regions could be migrated in real time so that low use regions would be grouped on a small number of machines, while high use sims would gain more and more resources.

Such a scalability solution only goes so far though. At some point the interprocess communication due to the users themselves grows high enough that multiple instances would be necessary. For presentations, for example, if would be interesting to allow a small number of users to be tagged by the sim owner as "cast" and have their data transmitted to a series of splinter servers, where it would be echoed. Q&A could be handled by enabling chat to reach the cast (and of course whatever the "cast" does would transmit back).

Of course, this kind of scalability would be costly: regions would not be enabled for this kind of flexibility without additional cost to the region owner. But it would be far more scalable than the existing system, with hard limits on server performance that effectively *can't* be raised.

For those poor souls who have kept up with me, I apologize for the length of this post. However, I think these are issues that need to be addressed by any virtual world that wishes to supplement the web in any significant way.

For those who weren't tired out by reading the prior comment, a point on an issue *other* than "being tightly integrated with the 2D web". I have seen comments elsewhere saying that a higher barrier to entry for content would be useful in managing the world. The crux of this point is that user generated content in virtual worlds leads quickly to "virtual sprawl". The ad-fields, abandoned junk piles on 512 sq m lots, the endlessly repeated carbon copy "store in a box" or "bondage castles"... these do lend some credibility.

By making the 3D content only available through external tools and imposing a review process, the "casual" builder is done away with. Some believe this is good, thinking that content of merit only comes from a small group of elite content builders anyway, so why put up with the noobs and their trashing of the virtual world.

Personally, I disagree: search tools, peer groups and landmarks mean that I rarely attempt to simply "cruise the world". (Ban lines, security orbs and dodgy sim borders of course don't help). Just as Google allows users to find useful content quickly in a vast wasteland of websites, good search tools (hopefully we can better than we have today in Second Life) allow for the co-existence of noob-vanity junk piles *and* "real content".

Instead, I suspect such barriers to entry will simply retard the initial growth of content to a point where it imperils the growth of the system. This is not a forgone conclusion however; MMORPGs have almost no user created content... if a virtual world provides enough content themselves, "they will come".

I agree with John Lopez - I think.

The ability of anybody to build anything at any time, without having to ask mother-may-I, is one of the key strengths of the system. Twinity's insistence on vetting content ahead of time, due to the horrifying possibility that copyright might be violated, means they'll be going out into the marketplace with a significant handicap.

The current copyright-violation phobia among corporations is insane, like an obsessive-compulsive's fear of germs that keeps them from leaving the house. Yes, copyright is important and should be protected -- but it exists to *encourage* creativity, and here we have Twinity explicitly and deliberately *stifling* creativity. Copyright exists to preserve creativity, creativity is not a threat to copyright.

The limitation of creative (and thus economic) freedom in Twinty is likely to be a substantial, persistent and probably impeneterable barrier to widespread adoption. Think of a Web in which one can't sell anything without the approval of the people who run the DNS servers, or design one's own website (as opposed merely to posting to a 'blog).

Unfortunately, for all that we'd like unfettered freedom, I think the Twinity folks may be on to something unpleasant that the Lindens are just now discovering: virtual world operators are unlikely to be able to hide from liability behind common carrier shields.

Consider: to be a common carrier (and thus not liable for the content that crosses your medium) you need to avoid exercising editorial control. But in at least two areas (child pornography and online gambling) US law is requiring virtual world operators to exercise editorial control.

At some point I fully expect some deep-pocketed corporation to go into court with a copyright infringement suit, not against SL's residents, but against Linden Labs itself, on the theory that LL has lost its common carrier status by cleaning up gambling and kiddie porn, and thus showing itself ready and able to monitor and police content created by residents. That's going to be a hard suit to defend against, and one with potentially huge liabilities.

Obligatory disclaimer: IANAL.

I tend to agree with the idea that it is not only the simple ability to create things, but also the freedom to create _whatever one wants_ without prior approval (possibly then facing the legal consequences of course) that makes Second Life particularly special - as well as, as mentioned, the built-in tools.

That isn't to say that Twinity won't be _successful_ of course. Plenty of worlds exist very profitably without any of this. But if it is planning on being an alternative for creative types, well, pre-vetting will simply kill that, unless there is a complete offline building solution, which I doubt will be the case. (I see no indication that they are planning to let people run their own development servers to test builds in, and one simply cannot just make things in Maya et al and hope that it all comes together, after the approval period, when it goes live.)

Mr Gunderloy: I am not entirely sure that LL's behaviour _is_ actually all down to the requirements of US law. Certainly it isn't as far as pornography goes, and with gambling, it seems to be that they are deliberately abandoning the idea of common-carrier status. Perhaps they do not feel that they can properly run SL as common carriers whilst having behaviour regulations against griefing etc, I'm not sure, but I don't think that it is impossible that somebody _could_.

Mike, you may be right about unfettered creativity being too legally dangerous in the US today. And that's one of the reasons I fear for the future of the U.S. economy -- because the freedom to create is one of the essential parts of an open, successful society. And 2 billion Chinese and Indians don't give a crap, and they're just as smart and hard-working as we in the West are.

50 years ago, smart kids growing up in New York, Los Angeles and London may be dreaming of going to Bangalore or Peking for education and work, because they have no future at home. I really don't want that to happen, but I think the current intellectual property regime in the US is one factor driving things in that direction.

I of course agree with the general sentiment here that stifling creativity is a bad thing, and agree with Mitch that it's pretty scary that virtual world builders are being forced to think this way due to the possibility of legal action.

Twinity may in fact be gambling that corporations will prefer a more controlled environment, and there is one other piece to this puzzle that will shed some light on their stance that you'll get to hear about in a couple of weeks, but at teh end of the day, i think it's a bad move. I hope they tweak some of this stuff before they go live.

As for LL and common carrier, well it's hard to know what they're playing at. I *think* it's quite likely that they just lost their nerve over some of this stuff. I dont believe they're deliberately giving up common carrier status, I just think they're blundering, making bad decisions, and I wish they'd stop it.

Creative freedoms:
1 - John Lopez's description of the HUD-browser as a rezzed 'gateway' object reminds me of the Arthur C. Clark statement, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The idea of embedding media sequences into inworld objects and allowing them to unfold in space and time approaches the sense of 'magic' that places like SL so desperately need to augment their 'technology.'

2 - Anything BUT "the freedom to create what on wants," at least for artists, is a necessity for any sustainable creative platform, be it a RL nation-state or a SL sim. But, I believe that aesthetic and expressive discretion, in the midst of this 'creative freedom,' come from the development of cultural forces capable of teaching this. These forces emerge through time (we are still young here) and the repetitive sequencing of successful examples. Whether it's a model building or a business model, the knowledge concerning what, why and how to apply the freedoms (creative, expressive, economic) we are granted by society's rules, is communicated by the structures that it is capable of developing.

Hi, This is Jeremy from Metaversum. First of all, thanks for all the comments on this posting. I'd like to take a moment to give some answers on some of the points raised in the discussion here. I'll also start by saying that there are a few topics where we're not disclosing everything yet, so I'm afraid some answers will be somewhat incomplete.

@ John Lopez: regarding the integration between 2D and 3D worlds, search functionality, and web browser integration, we have some plans in this regard. Please stay tuned.

@ John Lopez, Mitch Wagner, Ashcroft Burnham: The "high barrier to entry" isn't really the motivation for our content policy. I think there is some misunderstand about the implementation of our content vetting process. It's designed for items that are meant to be for sale, not for personal items. It's certainly not meant to stifle creativity. I can definitely understand why it's seen this way, but that is not the goal. Also, in practice, I believe that you'll see that the process is not a major burden.

@ Ordinal Malaprop: Regarding testing objects before vetting them, you will have the ability to upload and test your objects built in Maya, 3DSMax, Blender, etc before submitting them for approval.

And finally, on this point, we as a company have a philosophy of being flexible and community-driven. We really try to listen to feedback from all sides and adjust accordingly. We're not afraid of changing a policy if it's not working. Internally, we've already discussed a lot of alternatives to many of the things we're planning. I think that's only prudent in virtual worlds these days - the landscape is changing so fast that the ability to change is a must.

Jeremy, thanks for your reply.

>>Also, in practice, I believe that you'll see that the process is not a major burden.<<

Doesn't matter. People aren't going to be interested in starting businesses in places where they have to first ask mother-may-I. They'll just go elsewhere -- like Second Life. People don't want to be treated like criminals. People who start businesses on 3D social networks do it for fun, and if they have to ask permission to sell every single damn thing they create, it won't be fun for them. They'll go do something else instead.

How many people would blog if every single post had to be approved by some central authority.

Based on what is described here, Twinity is looking like Second Life but less. Less freedom, less attractive.

I hope I'm wrong, and I'm keeping an open mind.

alot of you are really buying into the cult of the amatuer...shame you cant see the shortsightedness of your arguements, but also cant see that most of you "agreeing" all seem to be .edus...lol so much for whos the "elite"..lol

the freedom to "take a dump" is a good thing... and the ability to let the whole world see it today ( the www) also in general a good thing.....BUT its not a sustainable plan for a culture or society. The long tail will only be tucked between your broke hungry scared legs.....:) unless your king,.."its good to be the king" .....but theres always a HUN at the door.....
If as Silly Valley believes cultural content is only fodder to be repackaged in technology, then welcome to the dark ages- again- where the only culture was one of technology- the sword. or fear- the church.

let freedom to "crap" exist on a open standards www- NOT source- learn the diff people- :)
one that can run in a rt 3d and on 3d standard formats with no gatekeepers but any one with a server for rent and an idea to create.....

this world is the "illusion" of SL...youve all been seduced by a dream, and most refuse to realize its a decade in the making.....but ok,. your new 3b's trying to make a name and a buck during a media type change from video 2d images to immerssive digital 3d man made environments....

real world business, and sustainability, and in creating the common culture that we as a species seem to need in order not to bonk each others over the heads over everyday items, requires a system of survival for many, For still physical sustanance is required for all, not just "college professors" "bloggers" "lawyers" and VCs.

i dont know what or who twinity is, but it seems that they are so far "planning" a reasonable model for sustance for themselves as a company and the culture that ultimately allows them to be a company....

frankly this type of "plan" is so so rare in any of the "plans" stated for the usage of the millions raised for the millions of sheep currently grazing in the the newly found medium of rtimmersive networked 3d....

best
c3