Grid vs. Portal?

How Croquet does the portal thing.

I imagine that the debate over grid vs. portal will shape up to be something like the controversies of PC vs. Mac or cloth vs. disposable. And while everyone is debating these topics heatedly, they won't even notice how these polar opposites are busy converging.

I'd always heard of portals, of course, ever since, I dunno, reading about tesseracts or things like the Woods Between the Worlds. And with SL, there's been constant discussions about this on the forums for years, and it usually boils down to some tekkie-wiki type spouting with exasperation about why he can't have a world where he can just layer up builds in the sky and have portals, instead of having to have everything contiguosly and more or less happening on the ground. Those spouting the most in exasperation tend to be younger, male, and programmers. They just want fun stuff to fool around with, and the householding/playing store/playing whatever aspects of SL don't grab them as much. They hated telehubs with a vengeance precisely because even though they WERE portals (see!!!) they were portals that ported you to a spot but then made you slog over avatar traps and malls (or so they said -- these types of malls/telehubs were actually in a distinct minority as I constantly tried to prove to anyone I could grab on to.

Walker had a blog showing how Croquet had a little window open within a window, see, and that seemed pretty neat, but frankly, distracting.

"One of the most intriguing things about Croquet is that Croquet spaces can be connected via 'hyper-portals,'" writes Walker (Mark Wallace is his RL name), so that a number of users could create a web (as in 3D Web?) of connected Croquet spaces and even spaces within spaces, etc. That’s right in line with a vision of the evolving 3D online space as a number of tangentially connected 3D spaces, rather than the contiguous Grid of Second Life."

I guess I find the Windows approach to worlds, that we're stuck with from Microsoft, more than a little annoying. I actually hate Firefox too in the way that it makes tabs of stuff that get tucked under, asks you whether you want to close tabs, destroys and closes windows you wanted to keep open, etc. But I don't like the fan-tan spread of applications/"windows" that those Ibook Mac laptops give either. They loom up at me unexpectedly sometimes when using the Mac laptop to get on SL and I hate that. I don't really know *what* I want, maybe a deck of cards, maybe something I push around with one finger like in that movie with Tom Cruise about seeing into the future. I imagine I'd learn to screen out little windows popping up all the time. They'd feel like advertisements to me.

But...I'm sure it doesnt' have to be all or nothing. I mean, we're people who like other people and like to have things at least a little bit like earth, being able to see stuff by ambulating around. I don't like the Port and other builds in SL that are layered up like Legos with matchbox boxes and matchbox toys. They seem stupid and ugly and inconvenient to me. And frankly, in them, convos carry if they aren't separated by more than 20m2. Nobody really has beat that, though in a previous version of SL, there used to be an option to have a convo only with that one avatar near you that only he'd hear (why did they remove that, I wonder? It was there when I came in September 2004).

I'm not sure the thing that Walker is so excited about, the 3-D Mashup, the 3 Point D, the 3-D version of the web, is really so all that. Fred Limp's piece at this link, in fact, tells you the truth about this situation:

"There are some interesting philosophical issues here. For example, Antione de Saint-Exupery said, “A person taking off from the ground elevates himself above the trivialities of life into a new understanding.” Perhaps, but it’s also possible that small-scale 3-D views and abstractions can isolate us from the reality that maps and images represent, providing an unsupported sense of omnipotence."

AN UNSUPPORTED SENSE OF OMNIPOTENCE might be the hallmark, the banner, the clarion call of the FIC and SIC in SL. Who are these guys??? (And as I commented on Walker's ESC-sponsored blogola, the 69 people who are going to do the Road Map of the Metaverse (do you want to barf? Sounds like you better pack some sensible shoes and a BIG lunch with nutritious snacks!) contain...six women only. Hmmm.

When I tuned into the grid/portal thing in SL, it's usually be with SNOOPYBrown Zamboni or another "futurist" talking about how he wanted to walk right into portals here and there. I think they did this in Snowcrash. And I'd think to myself, these kids just want dorm rooms, you know, like co-ed dorms that you just walk around in each others' rooms all the time. Maybe that's fun when you're 20. But even 20-somethings like to occasionally "shut the door baby, don't say a word" when they hang their halo on their girlfriend's bed post, no? Am I missing something?

The single biggest tenant complaint I get isn't even "they broke in on me when I was on the pose balls" but "they broke into my house and used my pose balls when I wasn't there." Imagine that! People don't like portals. They don't want portals open -- at least not to their bedrooms. They want their space, they like it contiguous, and they hate it invaded.

I'd have to hear SNOOPY and the other ESC natter on more about how they envision their portal existence but I think it's part of a kind of souped-up Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood. I log on to SL. I go and visit some kindly neighbour, who I proudly boast isn't my contiguous neighbour and isn't even in America but who is a portal away in like Indonesia or something and I can say "won't you be my neighbour". Ok. Then I click and visit, like, a king or something. Or Mr. Green Jeans. Help me out here, I'm not remembering the stuff Mr. Rogers did and it's kinda blended with Capt. Kangaroo here. But...it's basically just kids' TV. You know, Blues Clues. Go here, do that, see this, click on that, look behind here. Don't sit still in your seat because, well, you have ADD. Wait. Um. I think it's not fashionable to call it ADD anymore but ADHD. Wait. CAPD. No. Wait. KID. Kinetic Interactive Disorder, the inability to be alone with your thoughts or even be alone with another and share your thoughts without multi-tasking in a thousand other windows.

Well, I will think about this a whole bunch more, but meanwhile, I have to tell you about something cool Anshe Chung did while everyone was debating all this. She just *made* these little thingies called "Touch Portals".

Anshe's TOUCHPORTAL instantly transports you out of her Mainland plots for sale into Dreamland.

I first noticed one in one of those impossible to spell or remember Korean "down under" sims. Gah, if you thought the moth names were bad, I actually can't even FIND some land I bought AND rented out and have NO idea where it is because I can't remember its name or even the first couple of letters. It's embarrassing. I can only hope that the box will expire and call me that way lol.

I was flying around some Ansheland -- which BTW is going down in price out there -- and dithering about the view. Great piece of land. But...something in the water in the view. Something that looked stupid, and maybe not the kind that would go away in 30 days. Plus, junk on the Linden land. Typical Sl situation. I was going to buy it and wait it out but then...something caught my eye. I realized that Anshe had for awhile been putting something different/extra on her land. She used to have stand-up Chinese-style signs. People bitched about them. So she laid them flat. She'd put out flowers. Now she has this little pretty rock formation with flowers and a...something.

What is that something?

I flew over and zoomed in. It looked like a sort of compass. It was round, glassy, and with a metalic setting. TOUCH PORTAL it said.

Wow, I was thrilled! I love stuff like that in Second Life!

So I touched. It immediately pulled up the map, only a nicer, smaller version of the map (the map always annoys me every night. I am always tugging on it, pulling on it, trying to get it to rez, blah blah). This tighter-formation of the map rezzed up, probably using that new map API thingie they have going. It had a kind of bulls' eye on it. You then clicked, and it took you directly to Central Park...or a kind of centralized Anshe hub.

Anshe in Central Park discussing her temporary account closure earlier this month, and the concept of her own currency.

In the centralized Anshe hub were spokes leading out to all her now 100 or more sims. It's really quite something to see. You gaze out over this vista, and you know behind the horizon are a host of worlds within worlds, Arabia in Ak'sha, ice in Winter's Gate, etc. Anshe's now gone into the content line too, as this hub contains prefabs -- and btw not made by the new Chinese people with the last name ACS but older residents I never heard of (accounts purchased perhaps?).

An Ansheland prefab available at the Central Park hub, made by Billia.

I have property in Ansheland and go there and to visit other sometimes, but there's nothing like flying around it and really spending time on it. To be sure, the bounce script problem really harms the experience. People don't like portals, they like homes. They bounce you all to hell, with aggressive warnings and angry hits. I hate this shit, and it's the fodder for angry discussions at times on the Dreamland list. Master Quatro seems opposed, but approaches this problem like a Linden, half-sad, half-powerless, fully determined not to mitigate against the "I get to do the fuck what I want on my property" school of world management. There are rules in Dreamland; bans of bounce scripts isn't one of them. Indeed, people deliberately move to Dreamland precisely so that they can deploy their bounce scripts and then fuck away to their heart's content, secure in the knowledge that not only will no one visit them and interrupt their sex balls, even MORE important,no one will go on their balls when they're gone (and even WORSE offense, because part of the whole Bobos in Paradise thang is to have expensive stuff that you keep in a kind of suspended animation for your exclusive use, when you can make the time or feel like it).

But...even with all those scripts here and there, it is still possible to take a pretty breath-taking journey through Dreamland. The Anshe-haters and skeptics need to do this to see what's up -- it's pretty impressive, pretty immersive, and manicured to a T. There are no uglies. And people make their own houses and yards and stay away from the ugliness somehow, even tho there really isn't such detailed rules on this. This is the miracle of Second Life, without Lindens.

I IM'd an Anshe operative to see if I could get a TOUCH PORTAL of my own. I'd love to put a TOUCH PORTAL on some dodgy crappy lagged out snow somewhere, and then TOUCH PORTAL out of there into the haven of Dreamland (or my other chosen location) whenever it became too much to bear. TOUCH PORTAL isn't the portal that SNOOPY imagines tho. Both worlds remain on the ground, contiguous, geographically interesting. It's just you go from one to the other through that door, however. I don't arrive in the air, in a box. Or in the air, next to floating geometric shapes, or...nowhere but on some vista near the end of which I can glimps the Palm at the End of the Mind.

Comments

[Brace]

I miss portals. Active Worlds has them since well, everyone lives in separate little worlds - the "public/main" area AlphaWorld is actually HUGE - but the fun part was as you mentioned creating these webs or networks.

You could do them with other worlds, or link up your builds across one world or both.

There seemed to be this unspoken etiquette that you must make some effort to have a creative telportal area.

There were of course the usual stargates and whatnot, but I've seen and created some really cool portals.

Portaling was also used as a way to archive your builds, since if you were crazee for building like I was, you'd snap up any opportunity you had to build anywhere and everywhere.

Your friend's world, a contest site blocked off, public land - wherever.

You could then create a Directory. Sort of an archive of all the things you created. I asked Ariel the last time she popped into AW: mine is still there! :D - I had these doorways with the picture of the main build and signs explaining them and you'd just walk through the picture to go explore.

AW also had that handy back arrow, where you could then port back to where you were before, and continue your perusal of the Directory.

I can agree that some portals are distraction, but again a culture might build up around these sorts of things like in AW.

You always had your portals in a separate place that people could then go to and jump around world to world.

My favorite network of all though was this guy who'd set up a web of Castle Builds. He'd go searching for them, and contact the person and ask if they wanted to be added to the network. Awesome!

I believe he had over 20 places to go visit, and each was a unique castle and you got to have a wonderful trip and see the endless variations on a theme.

[Prokofy Neva]

In a way, we had something you're describing in TSO with the balloons. If you wished, you could fan them out and see other avatars and what they wrote about/to you. You'd click on that avatar, and then on his profile somewhere was his lot, which you could then tp to.

Everything you're describing sounds confusing as hell. But you seem very enthusiastic about it so I take your world for it. I never saw Active Worlds and only know this about it: that the people who come from there are very good builders usually in SL, and like worldism more than platformism.

Is it still open? Is it hard to learn/master/walk around in?

You seem to be describing something like a webring.

Well, let's say I wanted all the castles in SL. I could have the tags on the search terms. I do this with SL PUBLIC LAND PRESERVE. You type in that term, you get 14 parcels or however many I have. It's a list to tp around in, one by one. You could take a card from the dispensor and use the landmarks, but I find doing that off a notecard, when you have to copy them into inventory, one of the greater annoyances of SL, is too hard, and search is better -- when it works.

I found this incredibly hard to explain to a newbie. She took 2 hours to get this. Not sure why. Horribly annoying.

Yes, the SL p2p is clunky. There are the grey squares. p2p isn't all that, you know?

[Kyrah Abattoir]

don't tell me you managed to use croquet Prok? sometimes you impress me.

[Yumi Murakami]

Go to http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=llMapDestination .

On that page, the second script down (in the grey box) is the touch portal script. You can just cut and paste it into any object you like :)

You might like to remove the line beginning with "llAllowInventoryDrop", and the line beginning with "llSetText" to avoid the text appearing and avoid allowing others to change the destination, but otherwise that's it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Hi, Yumi, thanks for that. How did you learn about it? Was there a Linden post somewhere about the map applications and this was part of that? or?

I don't get how others can change the destination on a script that is yours not set to the group.

I think you'd want the text to appear to give information unless the text was in the texture.

I'm also hoping that it's going to be very clear how to set this script with the right sort of SL address such as to get that instant p2p.

[Yumi Murakami]

You set the target of the portal by dropping a landmark inside the object, together with the script.

As written, that script allows anyone (**ANYONE!**) to drop things into the scripted object (that's what "llAllowInventoryDrop(1)" does), so someone else could drop in their own landmark, which would displace yours.

Also in that script, the float text says "Click to show (name of landmark) on the map", which might be a bit misleading for new folks, especially since it doesn't clearly state that it will also let them teleport. The only way to change that, in that version, is to change the contents of the llSetText call directly.

I don't think the script was officially linked anywhere, it's just an example by someone on the wiki (which is presumably why it still has quirks like the above..)

When I get a chance to go in-world I can probably clean it up a bit.

[Prokofy Neva]

You set the target of the portal by dropping a landmark inside the object, together with the script.

Ok, well in light of this project I'm working on in Ross, here's the question then:

is there a thing that could make a random landmark generator portal thingie?

I've been going around to scripters for some weeks now putting up this challenge: make a random landmark generator.

I thought randomness was easier to generate. I figured if it can take pictures and load them up and randomly arrange them (can't it?) then it could take landmarks.

Like, you load all the landmarks into the prim by dragging them. Then the script just randomly runs through them. In fact, to be honest, it doesn't even have to randomly do it, but it has to do it in serial fashion. It takes one, then somebody comes along, adds another to the pile, that one goes next, etc. The idea is to have an explorator from the infohub.

[Prokofy Neva]

>As written, that script allows anyone (**ANYONE!**) to drop things into the scripted object (that's what "llAllowInventoryDrop(1)" does), so someone else could drop in their own landmark, which would displace yours.

Ok, so to refine my point again, I actually apprecite this point you're making about the anyone. But the anyone only lasts as long as the next person. And the owner can keep an eye on it so it doesn't get spammed. It's fine if the randomness then cannot be generated by anything other than the people coming up and dropping it in. But that's ok.

BTW, on Anshe's thing, I don't see how you can drop anything. It's her object. YOu can't edit it. Are you saying if I were to drag a landmark into her object it will substitute my land for hers? I don't think so. You press on it, it only goes to hers.

Also, glad you explained that "allow inventory drop" MEANS the landmark itself. That was completely unclear. When you say "inventory" I think of objects, not landmarks, although I realize they are objects to a scripter.

[Brace]

hi Prokovy :)

Its easy as pie to get going in AW
Some linkies of interest:

http://www.activeworlds.com/

http://www.activeworlds.com/worlds/alphaworld/
(can DL the latest version from here)

http://www.activeworlds.com/community/maps.asp
Old Skool maps of AlphaWorld - that HUGE world I mentioned

http://mauz.info/index.html
The best website to get the skinny on AW.
Check the tippy top links to AlphaWorld places and Worlds list.

As far as I know its still free to get started, and land is always free. Just fly or teleport out to nowhere in Alphaworld and claim a plot and git ya build on.

Building is soo much easier in AW, hence those that come from there already have some good fundamentals & once familiar with SL's way, you can take off running.

I've always dreamed of a blend of the two applications *swoonz!* Especially the built-in (and toggle-able!) web browser.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

I was going to post saying that this was llMapDestination earlier on today, only, you know, work and so on.

Yes, it wouldn't be a problem to have one that randomly selected a landmark from the ones within it. I can do that. I'll put it in my free box, come to think of it. Drop me a line if you want a copy.

There is an option available to allow *anyone* to drop *anything* inside an object, just by dragging it onto the object as you would if you were the owner. This isn't usually that useful. Other than that, adding landmarks to an object can only be done by the owner.

I don't really like teleports, myself. I approve of P2P because it was used to avoid what I observed to be a real and annoying phenomenon, av traps and texture bombing, before I'd even seen the arguments for and against on the forums; I was exposed to that as a newbie and it entirely put me off shopping and using the Find, something which I've not really ever got back to. Reflexively, I only TP to very specific places now, when I know exactly what is going to be on the other end.

But on my own part I far prefer using devices which actually move to transport people around. I have the Caledon balloons, I'm working on a taxi service and I refuse to use teleports in my own area, preferring instead chairs which are sat on and which move to destination points.

Teleporting gives one no sense of space, no appreciation that one is not simply moving between a series of skyboxes or, really, just switching between different applications. This is not what I want a world for.

[Prokofy Neva]

1. Your notion of av traps and texture overloads is skewed. It comes from a few telehubs that made a big, bad impression on you. You never visited all 48 as I did and counted the av traps. They were in the distinct minority. I was a newbie, too, and I was trapped at telehubs, too, but I began to work them, study them and got over that difficulty simply by seeing there were more than those few, centrally located bad ones. After about January 2005, or even earlier, the Linden telehubs like Brownlee had deliberate spaces of 4096 or 8192 around them with trees, so there was NO WAY yuo were trapped or a mall could get at you.

2. I don't like p2p very much for lots of reasons. I've got the distinct impression that by removing this transportation/flyby/telehub mall concept and boutiquifying and gentrifying the sales market, they've actually begun to hurt sales. Time will tell on this.

Still, people get all confused about using FIND even without telehubs. It's amazing to me, you wonder how they ever manage to use google (they probably don't). So this helps.

3. Yumi seems to think you can have a script where anyone can add a landmark. That seems to be something she's making, anyway.

4. From what I gather from talking to Yumi and others, having anybody put anything into anything can lead to griefing and crap, but I will trust she can put in the necessary checks.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Certainly I didn't visit all of the telehubs, and quite possibly I would have worked out which were the ones to avoid, but that would have been a pain, frankly, and P2P came in before it was necessary anyway.

It is certainly possible to have a script where anyone can drop things into an object's inventory; you just set a flag. You can also have it delete anything not a landmark or one of the original scripts automatically. I put an example in my Caledon free gadget box.

[Prokofy Neva]

Where is this free gadget box? In your store in Caledon?

As for telehubs, please name a specific telehub where you had this experience. Give dates, too, if possible.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

my advi e ordinal, don't tell her where to get it, Prokofy has tendencies to libel agains freebies makers, if you know what happened with the freeview.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Yes. Inside the little house thing on stilts, on a table.

Gawd, I can't name any specific telehubs, I barely knew what regions were back then. If I think of any I'll let you know.

[Prokofy Neva]

I think you should sell items that you laboured on, Ordinal, and not get alienated from your product. In fact, alienation from the product is a chief cause of creator-fascism in SL, IMHO. Seriously.

I realize you're a communist with a belief in collective ownership and property and the role of the creative intelligentsia, etc. in society but you've got to catch up with the Soviet thinking on this subject. They long ago abandonded Marx's notion of "to each according to his need; from each according to his labour". Like the Lindens, they saw that just led to camp chairs and such. So they adapted it in, oh, 1937 or something, to "from each according to his ability, to each according to his *work*." See? No free lunches here, actually. You all have to work, and you will get paid.

Oh, wait, the Soviet Union collapsed. Well, ok, wait...let me see if I can rework that: "from each according to their labour; to each according to their ability". Wait. I think the Lindens are trying that now, but I think it's not communism, but fascism. Wait. Let me think this through. "From each according to his tier level, to each according to how much FPS I have left over after my friends have at it first and when Lee Linden gets done with lunch."

Is there some sort of Free Huey fund I can donate to for the Commies if I take your free stuff?

Ordinal, I realize it was traumatic, and the experience caused you to have some memory gaps. Try to describe the experience. Tell me how it made you *feel*. What did you *see* in front of you?

So...you can't name any of the telehubs still? But...then it was ok to remove all of them and destroy the business of all those who worked at them? That doesn't sound like good Communism to me.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Hah! Sorry, you'll have to do better than that if you want to get some sort of outraged defensive response. I don't do the "internet argument for the sake of it" thing any more unless I'm drunk.

Anyway, that random droppable map destination script is still in the vendor, and if you like you can buy a few products while you're there.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

On a side-note on "3D desktops": http://www.3dna.net

It's a 3D desktop that "replaces" (complements?) your Windows desktop. Pictures from it uncannily resemble Second Life. The only thing that they have that SL doesn't (well, at least after 1.9.1 at least) is direct access to a browser. The desktop is apparently "free" (I have no Windows computer to try it out), you just need to buy and download the "virtual worlds" you wish to install.

Be at ease, Linden Lab has known about 3DNA for a long time. The major difference, of course, is that these "desktop virtual worlds" have to be built with external tools, and they don't have a "contiguous" landscape as well, but a "portal-based" one — the difference being that they also interface to your applications.

[Prokofy Neva]

So? There will probably be lots of 3-D thingies. It's the Next Big Thing. and there will be the same bubbles and over-enthusiasm. And they won't necessarily be worlds with any kind of tightly-woven fabric of people and ideas and goods and interactions, but just pages in the National Geographic that people flip.

This thing you've referenced isn't really a world, it's more like a 3-d room for your desktop where you can stick up stuff. There aren't other people in it. Maybe they will network it at some point, or whatever, but it looks to me that it is not streaming or mutable in the same way. That is, it has some user-created and sharable features, but they don't appear to me to constitute any kind of integrated world.

And the idea that I'd need to be told 'at ease' if something comes along to compete with SL seems odd to me. If something better comes along technically, and siphons off all the tekkie wikis to stop bullying and hectoring off the forums, and gets them to expend all their energy cranking and fussing about things the rest of us don't need to a new set of game/world devs, so much the better! or if this new world/thing has better and more free social organizing and doesn't fete the tekkies so that it is attractive also to non-tekkis, that's fine too!

[Kyrah Abattoir]

what does it takes to make you go prok? shutting down your internet connection?