Op/Ed: Contemplating Second Life’s Demise
by Pixeleen Mistral on 23/03/07 at 9:37 am
by Onder Skall, courtesy of SLGames
This just has to be said.
The Herald recently featured an announcement about the YearlyKos Convention using 8 sims with 4 more set aside as backups. Many of us read that and thought: “Oh, ok, I might actually be able to go to this event without the sim crashing.”
We probably said it without any bitterness because we’ve become used to the limitations of SL. Most of us have abandoned other virtual worlds in favor of this grand experiment in self-expression, and we’ve forgotten that most MMOs don’t lock up just because there are ten avatars within a thousand meters of each other.
This is why I love when publications like Kotaku comment on Second Life. While the details aren’t any more in-depth, they say things that we don’t think to, like:
“What I don’t get is why organizations waste their time. I mean most sims have a pretty tiny cap. For instance, the turn out at last week’s book reading by Dean Koontz was expected to be about 30 people. Why in the hell would he waste his time?”
They have a point. This is ridiculous.
There is no truly viable alternative to SL yet so we put up with the limitations. Nowhere else offers people the opportunities for self-expression that we have here, and when you add to that the free market economic system, Linden Lab pretty much owns our asses.
However…
We’ll all at least check out any system that allows for the independent creation of scriptable objects and a free market system. Just look at Kaneva – it’s clearly less than SL, but the latent desperation for something better has driven many to put up with it long enough to take a really good look.
When the new thing comes, be it Areae or Outback Online or HiPiHi, the number of people who can sit in a room together will make all the difference. Imagine the Koontz event in front of 100 or 1000 people. SL’s hype machine will pale in comparison to what would be created by an event like that. No matter what Linden Lab came up with, be it voice capabilities or other marvelous toys, “U2 Plays Virtual Concert For Hundreds” would bury them.
Hype aside, I’m curious about how ready to jump ship SL residents really are. If something better came along, would you leave? Many would be abandonning a legacy of work, but if it meant that our new creations would have a better home it might be worth it. Some may harbor a sense of loyalty to Linden Lab, and there are a lot of “what ifs” here, so I’ve chosen to phrase my question thusly:
If Linden Lab created a separate, completely rebuilt-from-the-ground grid and client (Second Life v2) that was essentially the same but could handle much higher loads, would you cash out, leave the old grid behind and switch?
… and a follow-up question that should be of particular interest to LL …
Do you think the corporations will?
Cay
Mar 23rd, 2007
It really depends if my items were transferable to the new grid. If they all were compatible, in a heartbeat. But if it would mean leaving it all to start over from scratch, I´d have to think about it, but might just do that. Eventually everyone is going to, if all the other aspects are the same.
But I would never switch to the Kaneva, cause it just is so much less and needs to evolve more before I jump in.
Lot of ifs here, but I am all for the bigger masses -less lag thing. What would I offer about SL to achieve it? Well I prefer nothing. It would already be possible having world wide grid. Yes, just like the WWW the WWG would have the texture databases scattered around the globe, so all the wires would have less load.
Trevor F. Smith
Mar 23rd, 2007
2007 will be the year the metaverse exploded. There are so many companies and garage geeks working on 3D spaces with user creation tools that I wouldn’t be surprised if companies spring up to serve niches like indie musicians. It’s not hard to see how a site that provided bands with customizable performance halls and merch kits could run a tidy business.
TJ
Mar 23rd, 2007
Hmm, let me think for a moment. OK, moment’s over. Yes, sure if ANYONE would come up with a more stable, faster, better graphics version of SL, I would leave in a heartbeat.
But there is not much around (YET) which would tickle me fancy.
On the other hand, Linden has to start understanding, that in the moment Second Life is getting some one who’s a (at least) serious competitor, the whole economic system will break down and people will leave ship faster than Linden can say “Bless you”.
So for right now, the only thing we can do is to wait and see (and be prepared).
TJ Ay
csven
Mar 23rd, 2007
Would I? Yes.
Corporations? Of course.
SL is, imo, a nice experiment. It’s inevitable that something more compelling will replace it. Whether that’s SL 2.0 or some other application, who knows? Personally, I’m watching Croquet and the associated FUNK project.
Khamon
Mar 23rd, 2007
Y’all are called Basement Pirates Trevor; remember it; live it.
Yes and Yes
The tree textures are coming with me. If I can’t transfer anything else that’ll be okay. One caveat is that land is freely texturable and terraformable; otherwise I might end up somewhere like HiPiHi anyway. Of course I’ll need to learn more symbols; right now I read like a six-year-old. Will they have voice? That’ll be a great place to practice speaking as well, practical *and* fun.
Khamon
Mar 23rd, 2007
Between Firstlook development, the new messaging protocol, and open source clients, the grid *is* being rebuilt from the ground up. I believe we’ll be shocked with how functionally useful the software is by midsummer.
Talon Sidek
Mar 23rd, 2007
No small players will ever challenge LL, ever again. That point passed when they opened the world to free signups.
To make the metaverse into what it needs to be in terms of CPU power and network bandwidth requires massive investment. I’ve been on the front lines for a much smaller MMO and I understand the challenges.
Ask YouTube. There are only a few companies on this planet that can make the sort of investment needed to create the kind of world we’d all like Second Life to become.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 23rd, 2007
I’m a little puzzled by this “30 cap” stuff. On the mainland, I routinely see it on even my weaker, sicker sims at 39-40.
On new class-five islands, I see 67-100 or more even if they have 2 islands put next to each other. It’s not uncommon to see 100 avatars on Brasil, and you don’t actually severely lag out there.
So I can’t help thinking that surely the Sheep would have the class-five sims with that capacity for something like Koontz. Even if they happened to have class 4 (and I know of no scientific study that says one is actually better for inworld field purposes of loading avatars!), they’d surely get more than 30 or 40 and more like 60 on an island.
I personally don’t see the need to jump ship. All the kewl kids said The Sims Online was dying, defunct, dead, a horror, and they fled to Second Life. I lingered in The Sims Online and took my time making the transition, making sure my sim was sold on ebay, etc. I retained an account and pop in now and then. I see a burgeoning, busy world in TSO, which surprises me because everybody said this world was closing completely — and it didn’t.
The cook kids left There, too, for Here — and everybody trashed There. But now There is under new management, it seems, has more cool stuff, and even the MTV people have put Virtual Laguna Beach on There. So I don’t see that predictions of There’s demise were relevant.
Kaneva has its potentials, but it has no real estate to buy and no user-created content to sell — yet, anyway.
So why the dire predictions? The metaverse is a big place, room for lots of worlds.
MY hunch has always been that the Lindens, who are elitists at heart as their practice has shown over and over again, despite their populist and progressive rhetoric, will create some separate grids for business, education, private projects, etc. The Better World will go over there, and we will be in the Worse World. The Better World will cost more, bunches. The idea that one can “cash out” to go to a Better World and not lose money is silly. Whose going to buy that laggy blighted Worse World property?
marilyn murphy
Mar 23rd, 2007
i have said for a couple of years it seemed that LL is preparing SL for a sale to a mega corporation with deep pockets and the savvy to expand on what sl is now.
yes, i would move. as to whether the corporations would move i care not a wit.
the scenario i always thought most likely is, LL sells out totally to (lets pretend Sony). So they keep the current grid limping along and tear apart the tech parts they now own and launch a new viable, stable, built from the ground up metaverse that has the software and hardware to back up the reading by Koontz to 250. the u-2 concert to 500. and etc. ok, so the sale occurs this year, the new metaverse appears in 2010. that’s if blizzard buys it. what im basically saying is, instead of some garage techs doing it, a major player does it building on the Linden Labs original software.
shockwave yareach
Mar 23rd, 2007
Myself, I just wish LL would fix their problems instead of trying to slap more and more buggy “features” into the system. Find the damned single points of failure and come up with a redundancy path or distribute the tasks more widely. I don’t want to move – I like SL. But a number of my friends and I have made a pact that come October, if SL is still as buggy and crash-prone as it is today, we will quit enmass and go back to a Text-based world.
Already I’ve watched a number of people take their money and leave because of the terrible reliability. Some had businesses, some did not, and some invested considerable sums of US$ into LL. They had no other 3d world to retreat to but they couldn’t stand SL’s constant failures any longer. I understand that SL is still in its teething phase and that problems arise when you are trying something new. But if LL is ready to call their tech the universal Web3.0 solution (or so it seems) then they should have all the bugs worked out first. They don’t, and those of us who have put time and energy into SL for our own amusement have found it less and less fun as time has passed, due principly to the terrible reliability. We are fed up about losing our inventories and having a night’s work vanish on us as the sim goes poof beneath our feet.
And when everyone has left because we cannot use the platform, just who are all those businesses LL is bringing on board going to cater to?
Prokofy Neva
Mar 23rd, 2007
Marilyn, my question about the Koontz thing is this: I could go hear him at, say, Barnes & Nobles in an audience that seats 300 or more and even have a latte and browse a new book while waiting. That’s in RL. And I could watch him on TV or hear him on radio with millions.
So in a virtual world, why would I bother? The value-add is the community of other readers, his safety in being able to quickly and efficiently interact with me, a nobody, so that he’s not facing wierdness, stalkers, draining irritants as a famous person, etc. etc. But…the qualitative differences between 30 and 250 are really no different for him in terms of virtual worlds and their value-add, or for me.
That is, no game is going to likely effectively have more than a real-life venue would that is seeable, hearable. I’m thinking, geez, let’s say 450 in one of the smaller rooms at the Waldorf. 1,000 in that really grand ballroom but frankly, you then have to wire in one of those big screen TVs and a good sound system for the people seated in Siberia. So let’s say 300-400 in RL comfortable with an ordinary mike. And on a game/world, that won’t be beat, it seems to me, technology wize.
So…why? And if there isn’t a value-add that is beyond the numbers, that has to do with other things like community or commodity or whatever, then it doesn’t matter.
Inigo Chamerberlin
Mar 23rd, 2007
LL is making, has made, the terrible mistake of thinking too small. That, coupled with their sad attempts to cram much of SL into a straitjacket of conformity with real life.
A point Prok makes rather well in his post above. Indeed, why visit a virtual world to do things you can do, and do better, easier, cheaper, more comfortably in real life?
The geekoid hippy types who thought up and have attempted to realise SL actually had sadly limited imaginations. Given the opportunity to do… anything!… what did they choose? Mimic real life with a few added bits and bobs. Flying is a nice ‘extra’, but TP? The only reason for TP is that vehicles, even Avatars at times. are not, cannot be, reliable means of transport in SL.
It’s sad that, given the possibility of building ANYTHING, being ANYTHING, what have we got? So-Cal suburbia writ large in virtual space!
That’s not what you come to a virtual world for, not to fit into a bunch of aging hippie’s California Dream! Witness that some people in SL do attempt to build outside the straitjacket the Lindens have attempted to cram them into. Some people ARE what they want to be. But LL surely doesn’t make it easy – do they?
Me? I just have my little slice of virtual reality I can amuse myself in for now, explore the sadly tight limits, but really I’m just marking time, waiting…
Am I going to drop SL like a hot potato when one, or hopefully more, competing products arrive (and if you look carefully there are some interesting possibilities emerging)?
No way.
Firstly I’ll be checking out the alternatives very carefully, SL has, if nothing else, taught me a lot about what I want in a virtual world, AND what to look for in it’s management and development team. And what to avoid like the plague! (Hi there, Phil, Robin, Sunshine, Path…)
When I find something that looks like a viable alternative I’ll still be taking my time, attempting to wring every last US$ I’ve ever put into SL back out… some hopes! But every $1 I do recover will be a bonus, because it’s all effectively written off anyway.
So, waiting and watching from my foothold in virtuality – biding my time – planning my moves carefully. But, in time, move I will.
And here’s what will break Linden Lab. The vast majority of the paying residents will be doing exactly the same. Some quickly in a flurry of publicity (dhrama don’t you know dharling!), some more quietly – you’ll hardly know they’ve gone. At first. But go we will…
Bear Jessop
Mar 23rd, 2007
I have been in SL since 12/05. According to may bank statements, during this time, I have spent about $6000 US in game, and about $7,000 US for a gaming set up tweaked for competitive prize fighting. That is a fair amount of houses, weapons (I play in a Gor sim), clothes, what have ya. Having said that, I would start from zero in a heartbeat for a vastly improved SL type experience. With a one gig card, 8gig RAM (not a typo), I have fast, fairly consistent game, but I watch those around me suffer through all the problems (inability to move, invisible avatars, insanely slow rezz times, chat lag), and in truly interactive situations, their problems become my headache.
Yeah, if they build it, I will come
Bear Graves, Actor playing Bear Jessop, Admin of the City, Foothills, and Valley of Thentis
Khamon
Mar 23rd, 2007
“LL is making, has made, the terrible mistake of thinking too small.” – Inigo
For all it’s hype, communal thinking always results in small expectations based on minimal anlysis. The management thought it was cute that a few people were renting apartments when 1.2 was released. Admittedly, no Linden ever imagined groups would be used for anything more than sharing land and then, only for the purpose of collaborative building. Estates were added amid statements that they would only be bought occassionally by people with highly specialized needs. We still have one video stream per parcel *and* you must be over that one parcel to download that one stream at a time. The floating point error in the sim code is apparently fixed because LL have published that fact; but it’s not; but they said it is; so it is (not).
The whole experiment has involved the tail chasing itself. It’s good that a couple of projects have solidified enough for the teams to make vast improvements in the system. They’ll need those portfolio items in the coming years as people expect techs to work rather than fly around the world posing as virtual world experts extraordinaire.
Khamon
Mar 23rd, 2007
“The idea that one can “cash out” to go to a Better World and not lose money is silly. Whose going to buy that laggy blighted Worse World property?” – Prokofy
I wonder this about oddly shaped parcels on older, low-class Mainland sims. But people have them priced far above equivilant areas on the newest continent. Do they really expect to sell that land; or are they just thinking to get rick quick off those laggy old piles of virtual dirt. One can safely guarantee there’s no gold in them thar hills.
kathygnome
Mar 23rd, 2007
I think the thing keeping SL as the industry leader is their willingness to allow anything and everything to go on in their world.
Other virtual worlds have, probably in legal terms quite wisely, limited the ability of their members to produce pornographic content, violate copyrights and trademarks, and so on. Linden has for years been one step ahead of a company ending lawsuit or government prosecution.
I certainly don’t think much of Kaneva, but There.com is certainly a superior platform to SL. Except there are no animatronic Xcite penises. No genitals at all. Design is monitored and censored. Player/”resident” input is minimized and controlled.
The real issue with anyone wishing to take the place of Second Life is not technology, it’s taking the legal risk to run a completely wide open world.
Curious Rousselot
Mar 23rd, 2007
Going back to the question posed in the article, If LL made a brand new SL2 on a separate grid. It had all the features of the current SL, was fast, and less buggy too. Would I switch?
Yes I would. Even assuming the only thing I could take with me are the textures I made myself. I would do so for two reasons:
One: LL is not going to maintain two grids for long. It doesn’t make sense. They may run them in parallel for a year or two but eventually they will phase out SL1. It is the most cost effective thing to do. The key here is that LL would be running the new SL2. If it is a competing product, it is not likely to actually kill off SL. After all, There and TSO are still around.
Two: If I get in early, before the current major players in SL, I have a better chance of becoming a major player.
Cocoanut Koala
Mar 23rd, 2007
Stop right there! Hold the phone!
You mean I MISSED A BOOK READING BY DEAN KOONTZ?
I might as well kill myself now.
Oh well, I probably couldn’t have gotten in the sim anyway.
coco
Onder Skall
Mar 23rd, 2007
Prokofy: Can you tell us more about leaving TSO? You say you left late in the proceedings after a rush had already begun. How easy was it for you to divest yourself of your investments? Were you way below market value, or was it pretty much the same as it would have been otherwise? Were there fights or arguments over people leaving? Was there a last-ditch retention campaign?
I’ll bet there are interesting stories from that time… I think I would have liked to have been there to see it.
Morgan Northmead
Mar 23rd, 2007
As a consumer, I am motivated to make the best purchases from my finite resources. If LL created SL2.0, I would certainly switch as soon as possible. I enjoy SL for its variety and for the ability to “accidentally” meet interesting people from all over the globe. I’m not interested in switching today to platforms that are more limited than SL, even if their performance is somewhat better.
That said, if my experience in SL does not improve (last night, I crashed approximately every 5-10 minutes), I’ll probably just drift away…as so many registrants seem to do.
Nathan Storaro
Mar 23rd, 2007
“I have said for a couple of years it seemed that LL is preparing SL for a sale to a mega corporation with deep pockets and the savvy to expand on what sl is now.”
I fully agree with Marilyn Murphy about that. For me, they are now just trying to improve the company’s market value, with the fallacious “let’s put a hundred million people inside” bradcasted to the media, once in fact just a few 30-40 thousand really persevere to log, while handling all the terrible well known grid issues/bugs.
The fact is, and it is already incontestable, that 3D online metaverses are the future of the web – we just do not know now HOW important they will be, and HOW they will function (a WWG is not a so bad guess, as someone suggested above). At some time in history, it will be too important thing, to the big companies not invest hard on it. And, in that time, yes we will see a big company creating its own “second life”.
The cheaper way to do that? Simple: buy Linden Labs, get all their experienced and expertised engineers, and by this time, do it right, from the beggining.
So yes, I would switch, for sure. And about companies, of course they would too, if it was more profitable – companies just follow market (read “buyers”).
Just a last comment: Don’t you people think that is at least strange that a huge company as IBM invests thousands of dollars, just to “participate” in a business created and controlled by a much minor company as LL? Don’t this sounds to you as: “let’s go in, learn it from inside, not only technologically but philosophically too, and then, control it – in a way or the other”???????
Inigo Chamerberlin
Mar 23rd, 2007
SL2 – by – IBM?
Hmmmm… that will not end well. Probably won’t begin well either!
Khamon
Mar 23rd, 2007
I dunno Inigo. The PS/2 was an innovative oh, I see what you mean.
WaynePorter.com
Mar 24th, 2007
Second Lifes Problems The Value of RD
The Second Life Herald carries an interesting take by Onder Skall from SL Games. It hits on the real problems with Second Life
This just has to be said.
The Herald recently featured an announcement about the YearlyKos Convention using 8 sims wi…
marilyn murphy
Mar 24th, 2007
i agree with your response to my response prok. i said it poorly perhaps. what i really am simply saying is: the new and better metaverse that can handle the load required will be built by a major company, not garage techs.
as nathan points out, the simplest and cheapest path to that is for the major company to buy out linden labs and build on what they have.
Aubrey Fry
Mar 24th, 2007
Check out sine wave island and Easy Babcock in SL, he put on the biggest and best gig in SL. He hosted a party for Phil Hartnoll (Orbital) and his new band, Long Range. Easy Babcock made twelve copies of Sine Wave island so that as many people could turn up and enjoy the music and visuals in full quality. As you may know you can only usually have about 40 avatars in one sim at one time, any more and the sim starts to fall over. This method of copying the sim allowed as may as 600 Avatars to enjoy a pre-view of Long Range (www.longrange.tv) and their new album ‘Madness and Me’. Check out Long Range and their next gig in SL, brought to you by East Babcock and the Sine Wave Company.
Cory Edo
Mar 24th, 2007
Re: the Dean Koontz reading, the audio was streamed to 9 locations within SL, plus questions were flowing in the group chat. Here’s more information:
http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/giff/?p=327
Coco, ESC announces events like this in our Counting Sheep group, plus on the Sheep blogs as well – we’d like to do more events like this in the future, as the feedback from the Koontz event was very positive, so we might be bringing more of your favorite authors inworld soon!
We’ve long known about both the functional and realistic limit on avs in a sim, and while sharding and streaming events helps distribute the load (a practice LL had pioneered with town halls back when they were still text only), we’re among the rest of the residents looking forward to better architecture that allows higher numbers of avatars to exist *comfortably* on a sim.
Boss Melnitz
Mar 24th, 2007
The answer is yes. I would definitely leave SL for a virtual world that is “done right”. Not only is the system highly unstable, but Linden Lab has shown repeatedly how arrogant they are by sticking it to their customers. In fairness I will offer up that they seem to have gotten slightly better on that front in recent months, but the cold hard truth is that they know they are currently the only “game” in town, so to speak. In most ways, they resemble a classic business monopoly.
New systems are not far off, and SL’s days ARE truly numbered. I see no effort on the part of Linden Labs to make their system scalable, and the same problems that were evident months ago are still there (I’m STILL having to hit the ‘region’ option to see water after a TP….HELLOOOOOOOOO!!!!).
Not only will I leave for a better virtual world, I won’t even look back.
Luth Brodie
Mar 25th, 2007
I remember sometime last year – summer I believe – there was a lot of buzz going around about a competitor and LL should be frightened. Philip during the next town hall addressed this as not being worried because LL can “out update anyone.” Anyone who has been here long enough knows that while they do update fast and often, it’s usually to fix the last one and break 2 more things.
The typical LL attitude is that they will never shake in their boots no matter how many times we all tell them we will jump ship the moment something better comes out.
If LL made a SLv2? I doubt that will ever happen because that would mean LL admitting SL doesn’t work. Instead they just blame it on us. Be it our connection or our computers.
If someone else made something that had the capabilities of SL without the band-aid fixes, blame game, worked more often then not, and the holier than thou attitude? Sign me up!
forseti svarog
Mar 25th, 2007
Yes, the koontz event maxxed out at about 330 concurrent avatars across the different locations, so probably the total uniques was a number slightly higher. Worthwhile? I think so. My understanding is that Dean doesn’t like to travel, so the odds of a Koontz fan finding Dean visiting their local Barnes and Noble are unlikely. There were definitely some Koontz fans that signed up for SL just to be able to participate and get closer to a favorite author. Kotaku is being obtuse IMO. Why should Dean ever do anything at all, unless it’s on national TV, using their logic.
We’re all waiting for breakthroughs in scalability, both in software and in the power of our graphics cards. I look forward to testing the new VW platforms, and seeing how they stand up to scalability issues.
urizenus
Mar 25th, 2007
I really think that the whole scalability thing is being made to seem more important than it really is. This is something I’ve learned from Joseph Jaffe — Crayonista though he may be. Reaching large audiences just isn’t that important if you can reach the right small audience in the right atmosphere. Micro-casting trumps broadcasting these days. If that’s right, then we shouldn’t worry so much about the number of users we can get into an in world event, but should keep our focus on the quality of the in world events.
Onder Skall
Mar 26th, 2007
urizenus – I have to disagree. While micro-casting has a place and a use, that doesn’t mean that it’s any kind of replacement for mass broadcast. Seriously, I cringe every time I see the words “For An Intimate Audience” in a headline… as if it’s always the preferred method…
It’s like saying that the Herald would do really well with just 10 visitors a day so let’s not worry about putting it on a decent server.
Spankubux
Mar 26th, 2007
oh is SL ending again? Didn’t it end last year and the year before too?
Brace
Mar 27th, 2007
“oh is SL ending again? Didn’t it end last year and the year before too?”
Its been dead for about a year now.
Its just that nobody else has figured that out yet.
People mistake the twitching death throes, the convulsing of muscles into rigor mortis with signs of life and growth.
oop
just cuz my three pound “portable phone” from the 80′s still works, doesn’t mean its the best thing to communicate with.
Atomic Summers
Mar 30th, 2007
Second Life will die because they won’t rebuild it, and rebuild, and rebuild it. They haven’t yet, nor will they do it in time. It’s a joke. If more people in the real world knew what the user base was like, they would laugh, and laugh, and laugh. It gets attention because the idea is tantalizing and long-awaited, but they use it for a story, with no idea of the incredibly poor quality of Second Life, all around. It is not and will never be “the Metaverse”. It will be quite a while now before we get something that lives up to what Neal Stephenson imagined as the Metaverse, or what all of the cyberpunk genre gave us to dream of.
@rm@nd@
Apr 1st, 2007
I believe people would leave. if as a population we were satisfyed with existence we would not have created computer worlds that allowed us such free control in the first place. If you are limited creatively you search for a forum that does not restrain you.
SuezanneC Baskerville
Jul 4th, 2007
If a much improved, incompatible SL v2.0 appeared, new users would all use it instead of the old system. The old system would thus be unlikely to be economically sensible to maintain and would be shut down.
Hipihi is available to try now. In the past few days I’ve learned the rudiments of how to edit the terrain level and texture, and build with Hipihi prims and texture them. It’s worth giving it a try, if you run Win XP and can handle dealing with the current version being Chinese only. If they have an economy that can be converted into RL money and add scripting it can certainly give SL a run for the money. If it gets popular enough, there might be more money to be made in Hipihi or other similar system, so folks that are in SL for money would switch despite having to abandon existing investment in SL. The Hippihi prim system appears to be so similar to the SL prim system that for pure builds, no scripts, I suspect that an exporter importer could be devised. I think SL builders should be investigating this; it would be a way to access a large market if SL architects and sculpters and such could enter the Hipihi market with their existing products.
Hopefully, technical progress will be such that it won’t be more than a few years before systems like SL and other existing virtual worlds are obsolete. Processors with thousands of cores on a chip, fiber-optic to the desktop, displays large enough to show avatars life sized, control done by video cameras reading emotions and body language, stuff like that.