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Travis Scott’s Giant Fortnite Show Is a Wake-Up Call for Linden Lab (Comment of the Week)

Giant Second Life avatar

While Travis Scott's literally giantic performance in Fortnite inspired some to think about the metaverse's future, it inspired reader "Seph" to also think about the metaverse's past:

It's incredible how technically impossible 95% of that is in Second Life. Does Linden Lab hope for things like this? This is where so much of Second Life becomes a non-starter.

Take just Travis, he'd have to be an animesh object rigged with Bento, a winged cenotaur glued ontop of Ruth who outside animators will not want to deal with. Then having to understand what LI is and why Travis is 10k and can't be bigger than 64 meters and the space he occupies is only 256x256m with a 40 person capacity.

Nevermind how uploaded sounds can only be 10 seconds long and they'd need a shoutcast server.

Nevermind how with even 100s of emitters, SL's particle system couldn't accomplish 1/10th of those effects.

Nevermind even with recently released EEP glued ontop of old Windlight, they woudln't be able to accomplish dynamically changing the sky and world so drastically.

Second Life still wins in that anyone can join anytime and throw on a concert to tens of people a day whereas this is obviously super coordinated and we'll only get a few a year from a few big artists. But still, incredible how technically behind Linden Lab has allowed Second Life to be, and how they built Sansar even more crippled when Sansar had all the resources in the world to be able to match something like this.

It's not completely a fair comparison, since the Travis Scott performance was completely pre-recorded and took place on thousands and thousands of separate servers. But to Seph's point, I don't many people really care about those technicalities, when the actual product is so awesome.

It does make me wonder how much of Scott's show could be pulled off in SL or Sansar:

It is possible, of course, to have giant avatars in Second Life — 200 foot Ceri Quixote made her debut in SL way back in 2012.  But then again, giant-ass Travis Scott doesn't actually have to be an avatar, he could be some kind non-physical projection. And the performance could effectively be shared on many multiple copies of many multiple sims, similar to major performances like NBC's Christmas show in Second Life. (Yes, NBC once had an official presence in SL.) But in the end, even with some major updates to Second Life's architecture, it would likely be a pale shadow of what Fortnite just pulled off.

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6 responses to “Travis Scott’s Giant Fortnite Show Is a Wake-Up Call for Linden Lab (Comment of the Week)”

  1. Joey1058 Avatar
    Joey1058

    Many years ago in the early days of the internet, Cybertown made magic happen. There was no such thing as “game servers” back then. So how do you throw a concert for thousands of fans around the world? You cheat. They created a floating viewer “platform” that held maybe a dozen or so “guests”. That platform resided in your blaxxun cache. it functioned like any other room on their server. but the stage was a separate server with a sky shell that had the appearance of numerous platforms hovering around the stage. All that you saw was your platform, maybe a couple of guests on your platform with you, and the stage off in the distance. The band was piped through the Real Networks audio platform.
    As far as live concerts go, I’m not going to pick on either SL or Fortnite. Each does what they can to make the experience as exciting as they can. Also in that Respect, I hope the new owners of Sansar can have great rocking concerts, ’cause its akin to magic, no matter what the game or decade!

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  2. Adeon Writer Avatar
    Adeon Writer

    It’s fair because even if it was pre-recorded, you can’t do it pre-recorded in Second Life either.

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  3. seph Avatar
    seph

    One of Linden Lab’s last major pivots for Sansar was concerts, particularly EDM via the partnership with the Monstercat record label. I don’t think it’s coincidence Linden Lab focused on this right after Marshmello’s concert in Fortnite.
    If you look at the Marshmello concert in Fortnite, and what became of Sansar the last year, it’s easy to see the inspiration. I just found it mouth-dropping how after a year of trying to catch up with the Marshmello performance tech, Epic completely changed what a virtual concert can be again with the Travis Scott concert.
    The bar has been upped way beyond what Second Life and Sansar can accomplish. I know Second Life is much more than concerts and music, but Linden Lab spent tens of millions of dollars in pursuit of what Epic has accomplished so well so I think Linden Lab should be super introspective and super uncomfortable with how far behind their tech is given how much this has been an expensive focus for them the last few years.

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  4. Masami Kuramoto Avatar
    Masami Kuramoto

    Proof that Fortnite is not the metaverse:
    Try doing this in Fortnite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RedLyae4b2s
    Epic’s idea of a metaverse is nothing more than a controlled virtual environment where corporations can stream events to an audience of gamers. And then the gamers can go and buy licensed merchandise from those corporations, to be worn while playing THE GAME. And that’s about it. It’s an entirely top-down, few-to-many affair, sort of a cyberpunk version of grandpa’s television. It’s not like Epic is giving YOU the tools to pull off something like that in Fortnite, on a budget, while remaining largely in artistic control.
    Of course I do agree that Second Life as a platform needs an upgrade, a technical overhaul. Improved content creation tools, import options, better shaders, a state-of-the-art reference avatar mesh etc. But there’s a reason why it’s still around after almost two decades, despite multiple attempts to replace it.

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  5. seph Avatar
    seph

    What’s looking easier and more likely, Linden Lab moving to make Second Life as technically impressive as Fortnite for niches like this, or Epic moving to make Fortnite, or a spinoff, include user-created and sold products and experiences?
    Epic already provides Unreal Engine and Quixel as content creation tools. They already have marketplaces and systems of user-to-user transactions in the Unreal Asset Store and the Epic Games Store. They pour millions into the idea of everyone being able to create freely and inexpensively with all the software and projects funded by the Epic Mega Grant including tools us SLers can’t do without like Blender.
    Fortnite pales in comparison to Second Life and Sansar in a ton of ways, but to me it seems like Epic is closer to creating a huge modern metaverse than Linden Lab is.
    Epic just has to decide to marry the side of their business that’s super into user-created content and user-to-user economies with the side of the business responsible for Fortnite. I’d bet on this before I bet on Linden Lab deciding to finally meaningfully improve Second Life.

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  6. Wagner James Au Avatar
    Wagner James Au

    Yeah I was not super impressed with the Marshmellow show — it was nice, but what made it “only in a virtual world-y”? I feel like they were copying old/current SL shows. Then this Travis Scott thing came along and just totally changed the game (in the game).

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