March 26, 2019

MyWorld Meetup – 3/9/19

Theme: Comparing MyWorld to other virtual worlds

Daniel:
Features MyWorld has:

  • Better user experience
    • Smoother, faster client (viewer)
      • In-world movement will be faster and more responsive than current virtual worlds, making it easier to move your avatar where you want it
    • Plugins mean extending and customizing one client instead of having to choose between many
  • Next Gen graphics (large improvement over current generation)
    • PBR – easy content that approaches photorealism
    • Ability to create custom shaders is in the works – (for stylized content)
  • Far more powerful scripting system than what LSL engines provide
    • Better scripting language – fits professional coders while remaining easy for new coders
    • Script VM is already very fast – faster than the fastest LSL implementations
    • Will be able to safely run scripts on client
      • Opens whole new world of possibilities that are impossible in Second Life & Open Simulator
  • Flexible & powerful role based permissions system – will be able to apply very flexible permissions to far more than inventory/parcels
  • Land will be much more organic
    • Zones (regions) much larger than in Second Life & Open Simulator
    • Region crossings will be much less frequent because of larger zone sizes
      • Experimenting with technologies that will smooth out region crossings
    • Exploring “regionless” design where zone boundaries are invisible to users
      • Instead of building around region boundaries, users just choose where they want to build and let the server do its job
    • “Parcels” in MyWorld are 3D – can stack them on top of each other
      • Much more powerful if you want, e.g., an apartment building

Open floor:

  • Q (Zauberin) – Volumetric clouds?
    • Linden Lab attempted volumetric clouds but scrapped the project
    • Answer: MyWorld’s cloud system already supports volumetric clouds, but more will be done in future for maximum realism
  • Q (Zauberin) – What will MyWorld do to protect users’ privacy?
    • Answer: MyWorld places an extremely high value & emphasis on protecting user privacy. We operate with a “Radioactive Waste Model” of personal data – data is dangerous, and it’s very hard & expensive to handle & dispose of safely. Therefore, once operational we will only collect the bare minimum of personal information to meet regulatory rules. For example, age:
      • Have to verify to meet regulatory requirements, but doesn’t need to be actual birth date – just a certification that user is of a certain age
    • Users collecting data on other users will be highly restricted or completely banned (depending on type of data collected, and how it’s handled)
      • Question (Zauberin): What about visitor trackers?
        • Answer: These are probably ok as long as they’re not building persistent records of a person’s behavior
    • Q (Zauberin): What about monetary transaction records?
      • Answer: Definitely need to keep these – just like financial institutions provide statements, users need/want to see where their money went
        • In the event of a bug, these also leave a paper trail so that the account balance can be corrected
    • Daniel: Regarding privacy, we’re as opposite Facebook and Google as possible – they collect as much as possible and sell it. We don’t view our users (or their data) as products to sell advertisers, and we believe in and respect users’ privacy rights.
      • MyWorld will be fully GDPR compliant, and we will extend GDPR privacy rights to users whose data is not covered by the GDPR
        • GDPR is a new, comprehensive piece of privacy law that protects users in the European Union
          • Data can no longer just be collected, curated, and sold without a user’s knowledge or reasonably informed consent
          • Data collectors must have a lawful basis for collecting data, must fully disclose collected data to the affected user, and must delete data at user’s request
        • GDPR only covers EU citizens – but we’ll extend its protections to all users, not just users from the EU
    • Q (Zauberin): What about parcel privacy?
      • If you couldn’t enter a parcel your cant see anything there
        • Answer: Something we’ve considered and may support in the future
          • Implementation would not transmit information about objects in the
            restricted area to anyone without permission to enter