Baba Sucks

Confusion over Neuronet continues. The International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies (IAVRT formerly IABIT) is drawing all kinds of attention. C|Net first reported and it has since been picked up by 3pointD, GigaGamez 2, Eric Rice, reBang, and now Slashdot.

IAVRT’s claim,

IAVRT is working with its VR member peers and the global community to create and govern a new real-time virtual reality network, separate and distinct from the Internet, which will be called the Neuronet. The Neuronet will be designed from the ground up as the world’s first - and only - network designed specifically for the transmission of virtual reality and next generation gaming data. The Neuronet will organize the virtual reality world and ensure its safety, reliability, and functionality.

Right away this seems odd. Why do we need a new network? Ostensibly, it is to allow for higher bandwidth to support real time virtual reality. A huge task to be sure, and expensive. It’s also already been done — in the form of Internet2 the research network funded by hundreds of universities and government grants in the U.S. Read more

The end times are near! Just one look at the Shirky mess will make it clear that this hype bubble has popped. Time to jump ship everyone… right? Come on! AMIRITE?

Well, no maybe not. Some others have done the job of debating this one. Read Wagner James Au over at GigaOM and Tateru Nino at the Second Life Insider.

I was prompted to write this after reading Giff’s posting Second Life skeptics — you’re right! (and wrong). Mostly the first paragraph,

We continue to see the inevitable anti-SL pendulum swing from all the hype of the last few months. Frankly, I don’t blame the detractors, and I think the skepticism is really healthy. I know lots of people who “just don’t get it” and my response is “all in good time.” I don’t expect everyone to have a need that fits the current environment, or to see the promise through some of the current limitations.

What is Second Life?

All the big hype about Second Life, but what is it really? The simplest answer someone might give you is that Second Life is some kind of game. Unless they think Second Life is the coolest game ever, it was probably said dismissively.

Oh, it’s just another online game. WOW Is way better.

Isn’t it a game though? It’s got all the components of a game. It’s used on a computer, it’s got little 3D people you can control. You can even shoot people and blow stuff up. It’s a game! But not.

It looks like a game. What makes it not a game?

It’s not a game, because without hundreds of thousands of hours of effort by the users of Second Life, there would be nothing at all In Second Life except flat ground and little avatars. A giant 3D chat room. Second Life doesn’t come pre-packed with all the planned scenarios and bells and whistles of a game. No rules of play or objectives. It’s a collections of tools and and a place to make use of them. It’s (shitty)3D modeling software, a (shitty)Software development platform, a couple thousand servers, and magic. Read more

Take a gander at this pretty sight. That’s right, the Nintendo Wii connected to Second Live(via IRC). It’s too pretty. It uses the libsecondlife IRC gateway and CGI IRC on EFnet. That’s the best we got til WiiLi releases their juice. Enjoy Pix

Using libsecondlife irc gateway to get chat to IRC where it is relayed to an IRC connected Nintendo Wii.. sexy

The Opera browser pointed at a web based CGI IRC client which relayes chat to #libsl on EFNet and then into Second Life. RAD

How?

Go ahead and try it for yourself. Join the channel #libsl, and chat! Your words will carry on the internet tubes to the libsecondlife HQ in Hooper (no longer, but it was fun while it lasted. The Wii in IRC is still cool.)

posting from the wii. mother said not to play with it too much or…

need to get SL running on this thing, at least irc.

The Register gave libsecondlife a little writeup.

Second Life is certainly at an intriguing point in its development. A fully open sourced Second Life has the potential to become the de facto standard for a three-dimensional version of the world wide web. “We would love to see a fully open source metaverse,” says Freedman.

Cory’s town hall went off pretty well, except for some repeater issues. Cory covered most of the major topics in his info-dump. Linden Lab is working on scaling, and it’s hard work(tm)

Here’s some of what Cory discussed, covering HTML on a prim, libsecondlife, open source, Mono, and the ever popular Havok. I’ve removed all those annoying line breaks in what was essentially a copy and paste job. Read more

Pooley Stage: Camping for Cory

Merry Fucking Christmas!

Pooley Stage: Camping for Cory