I gave a little background on where Second Life is coming from in terms of content creation. Now, let me point you to today’s debate.

If you have an issue with Second Life, you can use their JIRA system to report it. Its a great way for having open communications with the people working on the system. For my last blog, someone mentioned being able to import obj files. This is an old Wavefront technology that comes up a lot with 3D graphics systems and its use in Second Life comes up a lot:  http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1110

Now I don’t want to get too hung up on obj right now. There are other formats as well and this is just a tiny piece of the big debate. Lets come back to that later.

  Recently  Qarl Linden (creator of the sculpted prim) posted a JIRA to discuss what people wanted more, Mesh import or more inworld tools.  You can access the JIRAS here:

Work on Meshes

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1494

Work on Inworld Tools

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1495

Essentially there are three groups in this argument but this a bit like saying there are only 4 types of life forms-  animals, plants, fungi, and protists – look ant any one group and you will see many subgroups and there are those that are in multiple groups.

Technologists

Our first  group of content creators are those interested in Second Life providing support for much more advanced and detailed forms of geometric representation. For many of these people, this means supporting meshes, kind of a surface defined by a bunch of points (not too much unlike sculpties).  Like there are many types of animals in the animal kingdom, there are other solutions too. Some like having more analytics (more prim types like cylinders, cones, etc.). Some want booleans (ability to subtract one prim from another). There are other solutions too which I’ll talk about later.  but the the basic idea is kind of the same. Prims and scupties are way too limited and we need more expressive formats in Second Life.

Community Builders

The second group is focused more on the community than the technology. If SL supported more advanced geometry, how would current residents create them? There is the problem. If you remember, this is a minor problem with sculpties. What will happen with an even better ways to represent geometry? Would it be a barrier to current resident builders?  In-world building in Second Life is a special thing. Why would we want to force content creators out of second Life in order to create?

Capitalists/Economists

A third group are those focused on the economics. Many content creators sell their creations. CopyBot problems created a community outcry as others could copy and resell someone else design. Imagine the potential economic impact if either more advanced objects can be created or the huge amount of existing 3D geometry could be easily imported into Second Life. For many, an understanding of the economic impact followed by a plan to avoid economic problems must be addressed first. How do we protect these people’s intellectual property?

Now I have some opinions on all this.  I’ll talk more about that next blog.