It’s basically 80% doll’s house, 20% brothel, where everyone pays rent.
The idea isn’t terrible, but the implementation had some horrific flaws, and Linden Labs became notorious for infuriating users.
SL might have taken off if both servers and clients were fully open-sourced, and LL had concentrated on building a global system for connecting open servers together.
I strongly suspect someone will rediscover the idea 5-10 years from now, do it properly, and replace today’s web.
There is an open source version of the server called opensimulator , and compatible viewers. There are tons of worlds outside SL : http://opensimworld.com/
In already annoyed by the shift of data from text to video. It's so much harder to absorb and skim quickly. 3d internet is harder for content creators, and harder for users to access what they need.
I wholeheartedly ageee with this. I really dislike videos for content that used to be shared in articles. I can’t always play sound, it’s hard to skim, impossible to search and more difficult to jump to specific content. I really hope that this kind of content never shifts to 3D.
They tried, but so far it has failed to catch on and i predict more of these projects will go abandoned , including second life's own experiment, Sansar. IF anything the side-detour in VR has stalled the progress in virtual worlds for a few years.
The idea isn’t terrible, but the implementation had some horrific flaws, and Linden Labs became notorious for infuriating users.
SL might have taken off if both servers and clients were fully open-sourced, and LL had concentrated on building a global system for connecting open servers together.
I strongly suspect someone will rediscover the idea 5-10 years from now, do it properly, and replace today’s web.