MyWorld Meetup – 4/20/19
Update (Daniel):
- MyWorld’s world model is already quite different from Second Life/Open Simulator – zones are much larger than 250×250 meters, and stack vertically as well as horizontally.
- We’re taking it another step forward – extending to a full “regionless” model where the server instantly generates the world on-demand without an administrator setting up regions. MyWorld’s zones will be quite invisible to users – users will see a continuous, large virtual world.
- We expect this to be fully functional by alpha release.
- As we move forward, we’re investigating full procedural world generators – this means the server will auto-generate oceans, mountains, plains, lakes, canyons, etc. automatically. Instead of users placing orders for full regions, they’ll find areas they like, claim as much land as they want, and customize the terrain/plants and build as they wish. This is not likely to be fully functional by alpha/beta release, but we will have some simple form of terrain generation in place.
- This also gives users much more flexibility with land amounts – if they don’t want full “region” sized pieces of land, they don’t have to rent more than they want and then rent out pieces to other users.
- Zauberin – In OpenSimulator there was a push for larger regions via Mega and then VAR regions. However, at the same time there was also a non-trivial demand for smaller regions. People who only wanted a smaller piece of land didn’t want a full 256×256 meter region if most of it was going to go unused.
- Zauberin – In OpenSimulator there was a push for larger regions via Mega and then VAR regions. However, at the same time there was also a non-trivial demand for smaller regions. People who only wanted a smaller piece of land didn’t want a full 256×256 meter region if most of it was going to go unused.
Discussion:
- Q (Zauberin): How will private islands work in MyWorld?
- Answer: The final world generator will generate sections of land in a common style – for example, large oceans and mountain ranges. For islands specifically, users can just go to a vacant area in the middle of the ocean and choose a piece of land for themselves. This could mean either starting with an island that was auto-generated, or just choosing an area and terraforming their own island. This has the advantage that users can make their islands exactly the size they want them to be.
- Answer: The final world generator will generate sections of land in a common style – for example, large oceans and mountain ranges. For islands specifically, users can just go to a vacant area in the middle of the ocean and choose a piece of land for themselves. This could mean either starting with an island that was auto-generated, or just choosing an area and terraforming their own island. This has the advantage that users can make their islands exactly the size they want them to be.
- Q (Zauberin): Will we be able to script auto-generators for specific areas? This would allow users to set specific parameters and auto-generate islands to their specifications, for example. This could even allow the user to supply a noise texture for the generator to use or specify heightfield textures to generate things like craters.
- Answer: This isn’t a feature we had planned on, but it does pose many exciting possibilities. There are no technical reasons we couldn’t expose the generator to scripts, so this is something we’ll look into. Regarding noise and heightfield textures specifically, one of the planned client-side tools is letting users load heightfields and “stamp” terrain into shape with them. This would be easy to integrate into the script engine (even apart from script access to the world generator).
- Answer: This isn’t a feature we had planned on, but it does pose many exciting possibilities. There are no technical reasons we couldn’t expose the generator to scripts, so this is something we’ll look into. Regarding noise and heightfield textures specifically, one of the planned client-side tools is letting users load heightfields and “stamp” terrain into shape with them. This would be easy to integrate into the script engine (even apart from script access to the world generator).
- Q (FordLady): Are you planning on doing all the terrain yourself (or automated), or will users be able to customize it?
- Answer: Users will always be able to customize the terrain (or other world features) of their own land. The world generator will pre-generate terrain, vegetation, and other features, and then users can customize (or even completely override/replace) the auto-generated terrain with their own. The generator allows people to explore an infinitely large world and choose where they want to claim and develop land.
- Answer: Users will always be able to customize the terrain (or other world features) of their own land. The world generator will pre-generate terrain, vegetation, and other features, and then users can customize (or even completely override/replace) the auto-generated terrain with their own. The generator allows people to explore an infinitely large world and choose where they want to claim and develop land.
- Q (FordLady): How much of this will be done by alpha, and will people need it to be complete to start building their own homes?
- Answer: The new regionless model (infinite world) will be done before alpha release as it’s a central, critical aspect of MyWorld’s long-term operation. We’ll likely have some early, simple world generation in place, but advanced world generation (like generating extensive biomes and placing vegetation) is likely to be highly time consuming and will likely have to wait until after release. There are entire companies that do nothing but advanced world generators like this, so we do need to carefully prioritize so that we get an alpha out quickly. That being said, a simple fractal generator should be pretty fast and easy to do, so we can probably get something more advanced than, say, a flat plain 10 meters below sea level.
- The generator will be set up to not overwrite areas that people have customized – if a user has built a home and then we make changes to the generator, those changes will only affect land that hasn’t already been settled.
- Answer: The new regionless model (infinite world) will be done before alpha release as it’s a central, critical aspect of MyWorld’s long-term operation. We’ll likely have some early, simple world generation in place, but advanced world generation (like generating extensive biomes and placing vegetation) is likely to be highly time consuming and will likely have to wait until after release. There are entire companies that do nothing but advanced world generators like this, so we do need to carefully prioritize so that we get an alpha out quickly. That being said, a simple fractal generator should be pretty fast and easy to do, so we can probably get something more advanced than, say, a flat plain 10 meters below sea level.
- Q (FordLady): How much of the things people create during alpha will be kept? Will everything be erased?
- Answer: The entity and asset systems are mature as they are and are highly unlikely to see any breaking changes when we get to release. As such, creations that people make will not be deleted during the transition from alpha to beta. Other systems, such as land and currency, will likely operate on a temporary basis during alpha. For example, during alpha, test currency will be freely available and will be erased at the beta launch. Land will not be assigned to users as their own during alpha, so it will probably be erased at the beta launch as well. At the beta launch, land ownership will become available, and after that point once it’s yours it’s not going to be deleted.
- Once we reach alpha, what’s permanent and what will be deleted will be clearly listed for users so that everyone knows what’s going to be deleted before they spend time on it.
- Answer: The entity and asset systems are mature as they are and are highly unlikely to see any breaking changes when we get to release. As such, creations that people make will not be deleted during the transition from alpha to beta. Other systems, such as land and currency, will likely operate on a temporary basis during alpha. For example, during alpha, test currency will be freely available and will be erased at the beta launch. Land will not be assigned to users as their own during alpha, so it will probably be erased at the beta launch as well. At the beta launch, land ownership will become available, and after that point once it’s yours it’s not going to be deleted.
- Q (Zauberin): In Second Life, if a user wants to make a home in a vehicle they have to either leave the vehicle parked in one place or link their belongings to the vehicle. How will MyWorld support creating homes in vehicles.
- Answer: Creating homes in movable vehicles has long been a primary support goal of ours. MyWorld’s entity system features a full hierarchical scene graph – this means that objects can be attached as children to other objects and move with them. For “house vehicle” entities, we’ll make this process automatic and invisible to the user – any object dropped inside the vehicle will automatically move with it.
- Answer: Creating homes in movable vehicles has long been a primary support goal of ours. MyWorld’s entity system features a full hierarchical scene graph – this means that objects can be attached as children to other objects and move with them. For “house vehicle” entities, we’ll make this process automatic and invisible to the user – any object dropped inside the vehicle will automatically move with it.
- Q (Zauberin): Will MyWorld support fluid dynamics? For example, could you have a flowing river?
- Answer: Yes, this has been a goal of ours for quite some time. There’s a question of how detailed this will be – highly detailed water simulation is very computationally expensive, so we’ll have to set some limits. Our current thinking is to do some physical analysis and pre-bake vector fields describing fluid flow. Those vector fields can then be used to animate flowing water and physically influence objects that are in the water.
- Answer: Yes, this has been a goal of ours for quite some time. There’s a question of how detailed this will be – highly detailed water simulation is very computationally expensive, so we’ll have to set some limits. Our current thinking is to do some physical analysis and pre-bake vector fields describing fluid flow. Those vector fields can then be used to animate flowing water and physically influence objects that are in the water.
- Q (FordLady): Does MyWorld have weather, like storms and rain?
- Answer: At the moment, no, although this is something that we’re working on. We want to get fairly realistic with this, but there are limits to how realistic we can go. Weather is a chaotic system and as such is notoriously hard to simulate – small changes in one area can lead to massive disturbances in another. Depending on how realistic we get, our weather system may need to put limits into place to protect against, say, the entire world turning into one hurricane after another. It’s likely that we’ll go for a very simplified weather system with a high degree of user control. This will give a sense of realism while still allowing users to control the weather to a reasonable extent.
- FordLady: Weather control could be kept within a small area.
- Yes, although weather in one area does highly influence neighboring areas. This would be a problem with any reasonably realistic weather simulation.
- Yes, although weather in one area does highly influence neighboring areas. This would be a problem with any reasonably realistic weather simulation.
- FordLady: Will there be seasons?
- Probably not, although we can definitely look into that. Seasons may be too realistic for some folks’ tastes – if you’re snowed in, you’d probably rather go online to a tropical beach than another snowy area. We’ll investigate this further once we get closer to release. That being said, there’s no technical reason we couldn’t support seasons – and if we opt not to go that route, users can always create a plugin to add seasons.
- Probably not, although we can definitely look into that. Seasons may be too realistic for some folks’ tastes – if you’re snowed in, you’d probably rather go online to a tropical beach than another snowy area. We’ll investigate this further once we get closer to release. That being said, there’s no technical reason we couldn’t support seasons – and if we opt not to go that route, users can always create a plugin to add seasons.
- Answer: At the moment, no, although this is something that we’re working on. We want to get fairly realistic with this, but there are limits to how realistic we can go. Weather is a chaotic system and as such is notoriously hard to simulate – small changes in one area can lead to massive disturbances in another. Depending on how realistic we get, our weather system may need to put limits into place to protect against, say, the entire world turning into one hurricane after another. It’s likely that we’ll go for a very simplified weather system with a high degree of user control. This will give a sense of realism while still allowing users to control the weather to a reasonable extent.
- Zauberin: With plugins, people could tie the weather in the virtual world to real-world weather conditions. There are web APIs where you can provide a zip code or airport code and download real-time weather data for that area. Plugins could use that to set the virtual weather parameters, and they could also use it to set the sun height/angle so that it corresponds with the real world at a certain point on earth.
- This is a great idea! We hope somebody will try this out with a MyWorld plugin! Regarding sun angles, the atmospheric system we’re using does allow exactly that already. You can set your virtual place to correspond to a real-world location, and it will align stars and planets according to how they would appear at that position on earth.
- This is a great idea! We hope somebody will try this out with a MyWorld plugin! Regarding sun angles, the atmospheric system we’re using does allow exactly that already. You can set your virtual place to correspond to a real-world location, and it will align stars and planets according to how they would appear at that position on earth.
- FordLady: The sun could even be up in one area and down in others.
- Yes, absolutely – although trying to make that correspond to real-world locations does present some challenges since planets are spherical and MyWorld is an infinitely large plane. That said, there are ways to mimic realistic sun movements, however.
- Yes, absolutely – although trying to make that correspond to real-world locations does present some challenges since planets are spherical and MyWorld is an infinitely large plane. That said, there are ways to mimic realistic sun movements, however.
- Q (Zauberin): For recreating real-world areas in MyWorld, people could download satellite terrain data. What are the minimum and maximum height of terrain features in MyWorld?
- MyWorld is not constrained to a 2-D world grid like other virtual worlds – you can go infinitely far in any direction, including up and down. This makes it suitable for space simulations as well as traditional virtual worlds.
- MyWorld is not constrained to a 2-D world grid like other virtual worlds – you can go infinitely far in any direction, including up and down. This makes it suitable for space simulations as well as traditional virtual worlds.
- Q (Zauberin): Would the deep sea block out light, and will there be lava if you tunnel towards the planetary core?
- Yes, the water filters will block out light, but we’ll allow users to set ambient light parameters so they can still see deep underwater if they wish. MyWorld itself won’t simulate the earth’s core, but of course there’s no reason you can’t add lava deep underground if you want to.
- Yes, the water filters will block out light, but we’ll allow users to set ambient light parameters so they can still see deep underwater if they wish. MyWorld itself won’t simulate the earth’s core, but of course there’s no reason you can’t add lava deep underground if you want to.
- Q (Zauberin): If you made an underwater base, would it render with the water on the outside?
- Yes, this is something we’ve had planned for quite some time. There are some rendering tricks that need to be done to make this happen, but we’re working on it. For example, if you’re in a submarine you should be able to look out the window and see underwater without the interior of the submarine being shaded as if filled with water.
- Yes, this is something we’ve had planned for quite some time. There are some rendering tricks that need to be done to make this happen, but we’re working on it. For example, if you’re in a submarine you should be able to look out the window and see underwater without the interior of the submarine being shaded as if filled with water.
- Q (Zauberin): For outer space, could you generate the world as an asteroid field?
- Yes, absolutely. MyWorld doesn’t assume that the world is even on a planet’s surface. Things like oceans and terrains are optional “extras” as far as the core of MyWorld is concerned.
- Yes, absolutely. MyWorld doesn’t assume that the world is even on a planet’s surface. Things like oceans and terrains are optional “extras” as far as the core of MyWorld is concerned.
- Q (Zauberin): I had a friend in Second Life who joined, did very little, and then left because the user interface was too complicated. What will MyWorld’s user interface be like?
- We’re taking a very different direction with MyWorld’s user interface than Second Life did in their viewers. Everything will be extremely streamlined, and while creating, very task-focused. Every tool or feature that you commonly use should be only one click or shortcut key away. Creating an easy, fast, and fun user interface is an extremely high priority for us, and one we’ve spent a lot of time on. As with any user interface work, we won’t know how well we did until people start using it and giving us feedback – but even now we’re highly focused on making it straightforward and easy to use. We always develop from the standpoint that simplicity is powerful, and we’re excited to see what we can do with the user interface.