Slashdot Mirror
Google Launches Lively, an Avatar Based 3D World
no.good.at.coding writes "Google has launched a Windows-only, in-browser (you need to install a client first, though) 3D avatar world — Lively — that you can embed in websites and use to interact with other people. It's not as expansive as Second Life yet, but expect things to get better."
What's next, a program to install animated smileys to your Outlook e-mails?
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
Can people interact as themselves rather than cartoon characters? Are there that many people into dolls and make-believe or are there too many people who are too depressed just being themselves? Then they don't need avatars, they need help.
You can't handle the truth.
The number one mistake of any new MMO service is the failure to be MMO. Does it scale? Will it work when even 1% of the US broadband users are trying it out? Will it work when every visitor has added a hundred ginormous phallic temples to every acre of land? Will it work when ten thousand of your closest "friends" attend your online bar-mitzvah?
[
expect things to get better.
Like running on multiple platforms? Having a userbase that isn't all newbs checking it out for a couple minutes? Having suggestions on what to _do_ with it that can benefit meatspace unlike other 3d worlds?
If you count all the people who logged in once and never again--and Linden Labs apparently does--Second Life has the population of a decent-sized country. I'd say it's got plenty of awareness.
The main problem is that less than a few hundred thousand think it's worth their time to stay.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
I don't give a shit anymore. I'm glad that somebody was interested enough to do this, and that other people find it interesting, but I will be staying away. My workplace, which fancies itself as hip and smart, will probably make this mandatory, like they have with Facebook, which will simply be another pointless drain on my otherwise interesting day. Bah humbug!
People keep saying this, but it nothing like Second Life, at least not yet. This is an avatar-based chat system. Yes, you can use Second Life for that purpose and many do. But the interesting parts of second life are the virtual economy, the ability to build and script complex objects, the ability to buy 'land'.
It's rather like saying that an umbrella is the same as a jet-fighter because both can keep you dry when it rains. ..and if you don't like that metaphor - you're like a haddock in a hot air balloon.
If more companies built stores in SL and sold real goods through it,
holy crap why? I can buy what I want from a good old 2D website faster than some half assed second life store that is impossible to navigate or get any real info about what I am buying.
Last thing I want is to go to a "virtual" dell store and wander around, I want to find the server, click on the options and click on buy.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In all seriousness, why on Earth would I want to use the Second Life client to do what you recommend? We already have the World Wide Web and it works quite well for those things. "The same thing, but harder to use" isn't going to be much of a selling point.
That's such a delusion. People you talk to online are not anything like what you think of them. You're not interacting with a person, you're interacting with your own imagination, seeded with a few select facts or fictions from someone else.
If you really do feel connected to people you meet online, then you're actually not connected to anyone, and you're creating imaginary friends, like someone in a sensory deprivation chamber having lucid dreams.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I just took a look at the demo (And since I"m a Gentoo user, can't install the plugin) and why the hell does every female avatar in there look like a damn elf? [...]
Fail.
Because elves are hot.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
That's such a delusion. People you talk to online are not anything like what you think of them. You're not interacting with a person, you're interacting with your own imagination, seeded with a few select facts or fictions from someone else.
do you think the people you talk with in offline (real) life, are the way they are, the way they talk with you ? how many people you have met in your entire life, that were just as they seemed to be, after you got to know him ?
in 'real' life you subject people to the test of time to know them better. only after some time, you can get to know someone. continuous exposure in a mutual environment eventually makes who they really are to come out.
this rule doesnt change in the real world. if there is someone that believes someone whom s/he knows from online communities for just 1-2 months is the way s/he is, you can easily say that that person is naive.
because same goes for online environments. its infallible. constant mutual online activity with a person eventually makes who they are to come out.
If you really do feel connected to people you meet online, then you're actually not connected to anyone, and you're creating imaginary friends, like someone in a sensory deprivation chamber having lucid dreams.
excuse me, but you already are in a deprivation chamber. everyone is. each conscious mind is a deprivation chamber, and the deprivation is only remedied by the extent of usage of sensory organs and interaction with the environment.
by definition, you use the same organs while seeing a bloke and sending voice signals to him on a street corner, and while video chatting with someone on the internet. there is no difference in technical terms.
each interaction produces impulses to your brain through your sensory organs, and invokes certain thoughts and emotions. and those thoughts and emotions are real. they do not differentiate between laughing to a joke told in a pub or a joke told online.
again, time is the only defining factor for personality of any person. nothing else. a person you know from 'real' life is no different than any person you know from online, until they persist through the test of time. and time passes in equal pace both online and offline. sometimes even faster online, as there is more interaction in online world due to the ease of use.
Read radical news here
If you really believe that, then maybe you're slightly autistic. I think it was in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink where he talks about the inability of some autistic people to read any form of body language, whereas normal individuals process an amazing amount subconsciously. You either don't realize the amount of information you pick up talking to someone in person, or you don't pick it up at all. Communicating with just text is like visiting a bakery without sight or smell--you've lost the richness of the experience. Granted, virtual avatars only add another thin layer to the whole picture, but if you don't realize what you miss in face to face communication, then you would be the emotionally/mentally challenged one.
I am not interested in any virtual 3d world that isn't decentralized, meaning that anyone can set up their own server with their own rules, with the ability to easily and seemlessly travel between servers. Something like a 3d version of the www.
I second that 100%. A 3D-equivalent of the WWW would perhaps have many advantages (as usual, it is hard to imagine how we would really use it), but it needs to be as open as the WWW to be of any real use. So there needs to be an interoperable standard for avatars, and a standard protocol for your "browser" to interact with any 3d server. Why would I, as a company, invest in an online store inside second life, which is an environment over which I have 0 control, where some other company has the power to print money?
Good point, people always try to misrepresent themselves. But in a real-life, face to face interaction, it's much more difficult. The rules of physical interactions make such deception more difficult, and make it more likely the person you're interacting with is actually somewhat the way they seem. So if you like to have "fantasy" interactions where you pretend you and the people you're around aren't who they actually are, then online interactions are ideal. But if you prefer authenticity, face-to-face is definitely the best.
In that case, since I am not in the habit of arguing with myself, I see no need to rebut the obvious fallacies of your argument — or perhaps you meant something else by "not interacting with a person, you're interacting with your own imagination"?
Do you like Japanese imports?
... because right now they're terrible.
I'm honestly surprised; Google's previous beta rollouts have, to my memory, been a lot more functional at first unveiling. This new system is seriously broken... I can't put more than one person in a room (no idea why, as others seem to have no trouble), it's slow, it's limited, and it has serious user interface design issues.
Google will have to move fast if they want to compete in this space. There are, quite frankly, too many options for social interactive chat right now; the only thing Google has going for it in this market is name recognition.
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
Except people will still say things they wouldn't say in real life because getting your avatar slapped isn't the same thing as being slapped in real life.
It's just not a good substitution. People like having flame wars and arguments on the internet. That's the only reason we haven't come up with something more "suitable" than emoticons to show nuances that are more complex than can easily be shown in text. People simply like having an excuse to argue and fight where it will have no bearing on their real lives. It's a form of entertainment for some, stress relief for others, and simple escapism for still more people.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I think it's something else. There is something that makes certain people hate things that other people love if the first group sees the love as unreasonable.
I've seen groups of people with an unfounded hate for iPhones, VWs, Google, cell phones, text messaging, social websites, instant messaging, ...
So honestly, I think there is just a blind reactionary backlash when some people don't understand why a product, service, company or concept has "Fanboys".
I try to avoid both sides, but I admit that in the 70's-80's I felt a little irrational hate for VWs now and then (even though I've owned more than one). If you're talking this century I've got a hell of a lot of love for Google, and lately I get a little warm fuzzy for Apple every now and then--but I try to be realistic and criticize them as much as praise (something fanboys seem completely incapable of doing--I think that would be the definition of a "Fanboy", the inability to seriously criticize the target of your infatuation).