08-09-2011, 08:00 PM
First of all, a story fragment.
Well, the basic plot of the story is, it leads Jet to discover *who* provided the funding to get the metaverse running and why... and why it's not accessible outside of Genaros station. It also leads Jet to a 'puppet party' to chase up a lead... (Anyone seen episode 3 of GiTS Second GiG?
And where does Jet get the puppet, and what sort of puppet is it?).
The basics.
It goes live and publicas of Bubblecon in 2015.
Public Beta is March 2015.
It's best described as Facebook meets WoW meets 4chan meets CounterStrike.
It's distributed. Every client provides it's spare processing power to running the metaverse as a whole.
It's open source. You can run it on anything you can compile it on. It'll even run on a basic unwaved laptop, the same as a simple FPS, then scaleright up to full neural induction. You can also set up your own personal metaverse on your station of choice, if you can get it to compile.
Why it isn't allowed to connect from outside of Genaros ( usually) is a plot point.
It's fake. The metaverse always feels unreal... unless you're running massively dedicated hardware for reality simulation, and the models you're using have been designed for that. Most models are just basic meshes, with touch and texture being added to the standard appearance.
Until mid 2016, it's limited to Genaros station, with a few outliers having their own private systems for whatever reasons.
It's been tested since about April 2012, among a group of people who worked on the Genaros Weather System (Where Jet used to work right after boosting to space, and sold out her partnership in the metaverse when she joined the Panzer Kunst). Most of them went on to be the main administrators of the system.
It only went mainstream because sn0wcat got funding to bring it beyond his main circle.
Full volumetric hardware and texture is possible within the specifications... but it's limited to folks with the money to spent on massive amounts of computing power, and who have the intent to code a table that responds as a wooden table should.
Edit: This is what happens when the only wifi/net access is in a pub
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Quote:The Metaverse was, from a technical standpoint, a marvel of software engineering. It was a wonder of the digital world. It was an open-source. distributed, peer-to-peer real-time fully-immersive social network. Anyone could pull down the source code that the ‘verse ran on, compile it, and run it up on his, her or its own personal hardware and join in the fun. It ran on waved PDA's. It ran on dedicated server farms. It pulsed through veins and arteries of data that held the city together and gave it life. It was the world ad if it was dictated by the internet. It was where you could be anyone and anything you wanted. It was free, it was wild, it was vibrant and throbbing and pulsing with a visceral unreality that made it all the more fascinating. It was the world's own bazaar where everything and anything was possible, provided you had the sense to figure out how to code a plugin to your client that could do it. You could fight in a tournament using whatever set of combat rules suited. You could find a quiet corner and try our a whole new sexual experience in a body entirely different to your own. There were sports fields and racing leagues. There were markets trading virtual currency for real items, and vice versa. There were hacking contests. There were folks who went around in a Avatars wearing a shirt and tie with a question mark for a face who thought it was epic lulz to redecorate people's apartment-server if they didn't have a good lock on the door. You could log in with a public terminal with a basic avatar, you could log in through a full-immersive sensory-replication body-suit or neural induction gear. It was even possible to play with a mouse, keyboard and mic, FPS-style. The only limit was your budget, your hardware and your imagination. It was a barely controlled anarchy, with the only real rules hardcoded into the clients themselves. Don't lie about your real gender and age, no oversized avatars, some technical requirements to keep things from just falling over, and that was basically it.
It was, in Jet's humble opinion, the coolest damned thing in all of Fenspace as of its public launch at BubbleCon.
It helped that, through a quirk of acquaintance, she'd been involved in the project since the very first alpha's, years before the closed beta's had begun. and was the proud owner of the Fifth ‘verse server and first standalone server in existence. She'd been little more than a tester, someone needed a cyber to test certain features, and Jet was the cyber someone knew best. Even when Jet'd left Genaros, she was still testing the ability of each new feature in the 'verse to handle interwave lag over planetary distances. Her only contribution to the actual code was the personal flight module…. Solely because it'd gotten annoying walking everywhere. It was dirt-basic, crude, and not exactly elegant but it worked. It went into the mainline, and in six months had become something almost unrecognisable as Real Hackers™ found their way to fixing it.
So, Jet had a tester credit, a minor contributor's credit and that was it. Jet had also known most of the original creation team personally long before they'd actually went public with the thing and hit BNF status. Jet even remembered the barroom discussion that'd brought the whole ‘verse about, when the spark of an idea had first flared and caught hold years earlier. Jet pondered on the fact that that might, technically have made her the Hiro Protagonist of this particular metaverse. The thought always made her smile.
Sn0wcat finally made it big. After years bemoaning the lack of funds to take his idea beyond a small cluster of friends who'd worked together on the GWS, most of them had finally hit it big.
Such things let her get away with things not normally allowed. Jet's own private server still sat in that same building Jet'd lived in when she first launched up to Genaros station way back in 2012, right before the emergency con and a message from a certain Doc on a Rock that changed her life's direction for good. It was almost unique among current ‘verse servers in that it was capable of bridging out onto the wider interwave, bringing the ‘verse all the way out to Mars and into Jet's own private office. It was a feature that'd been removed for 'bandwidth and security' reasons right before the public beta. Jet's was grandfathered in to keep it, and keep her in contact with the station. Talk about your home away from home.
She made a point to remember to log in once a week or so, to check for messages or occasionally to meet people in a private and secure place. Anyone on the interwave with a client could browse into Jet's server and take a look around. In the public area, there really wasn't much more than the basic white room. All four walls and floor where made from the same mono-textured backlit milky glass. There were no shadows to render, enough friction to walk. It was the bare minimum a public area could consist of. It was little more than a directory. A few simple filling cabinets sat in a corner, containing a mirror of the Stingray Hardsuit packages. There were also some Highway Star files, including a frankly epic cutaway drawing, some wallpapers and a 'Race to 400' badge. Beside them, was a donation box, where people could donate to the Star project, and get themselves some subscriber-only benefits, and a Highway-Star only mailbox. They could also link out to the actual Highway Star site.
Someone was running a search through the filing using a basic Senshi avatar. It was the default Aiko model with borderline uncanny-valley eyes and a basic tactile mesh. She was fiddling around in the filing cabinet. Jet could call up her details; IP Address, age, sex, client and whatever else she wanted to tell about herself.
“Sorry,” she said, wearing an embarrassed smile. “But how do you download stuff in here?”
“Take the folder you want from the cabinet,” Jet repeated the same explanation “It'll unlock when it's been downloaded to your home computer.”
“Oh,” said the Senshi. The Avatar's expression didn't change, but Jet swore it should've been blushing. “It's my first time in one of these servers,”
“Welcome to the 'verse, “ Jet said, tiredly. She was more concerned with getting into her own private area. Being a cyber, Jet's client was a hell of a lot more advanced. Given the right data, she was capable of interacting with this whole virtual world as thoroughly as the real, and beyond. It all got very matrixy, and Jet wasn't sure how to describe it otherwise. In the real world, a buffer computer provided a safety net, but her own hardware was more than capable of interpreting the signals being sent from it, and constructing the entire world inside her own mind. With a thought, she could switch back to the real world, check up on something, then slip right back in with only the briefist flicker of disorientation. From a technical standpoint, it used a subset of the standardised puppet-body interfaces, only this puppet was a rough surface simulation.
Jet sent her personal login to the server, being rewarded milliseconds later by a simple door fading into view. The Senshi still wouldn't be able to see it, she didn't have the correct permissions. As far as she was concerned, Jet just disappeared.
Jet just had to touch the door handle to materialise on the other side. There was just a momentary flash of disorientation as her senses adjusted to the abrupt change in input.
This was the real server. This was the real metaverse. It was a replica of Jet's bedroom, of his bedroom from before. Jet'd begun creating it way back in 2012, during what she liked to refer to as her homesick period. The basic layout with collision detection and texture meshes for the walls, the bed, shelving and the like had taken three days. Everything else had been added in the four years or so since. Cupboards acted as filing cabinets, while the television was really a representation of a media player. There were ebooks on the shelves which Jet'd never gotten around to actually reading and there were a few little widgets to play with hung around, mostly toys and models. The laptop on the desk acted as a visual representation of the server load, and as a terminal emulator for when things needed to really get done.
The real metaverse covered all the senses. Sight, sound, hearing, smell and touch. Jet could brush her fingers against the fabric of the bedsheets and feel its delicious softness. Even though her avatar still had the same metal fingers and armour, she had the same sensory mesh as everyone else. This room was filled with hundreds of different textures. Evening sunlight provided warmth through an open window, chased by the scent of perpetually fresh cut grass. The curtains even fluttered just-so, but in a way that made it obvious they were a simulation.
Getting this level of detail was near-maxing the outbound connection of the server, pushing the processors in the buffer system to their maximum. It was so heavy, she could only log in at certain times when the bandwidth at Grunthal freed up. She could still feel the lag between touch and sensation, a slight microsecond delay that would be all but imperceptible to a regular human.
The metaverse never felt real. It was always possible to tell it was a simulation. The textures where all hollow meshes. Nothing would buckle or yield when touched. Sounds were all recorded files rather than hardware generated on the fly. Objects made the same noise no matter where you hit them. The unarticulated joints on the figurines on the shelf would never move, while in reality, Jet had to consciously try not to break them when picking them up.
In a wardrobe, Jet held a pair of other avatars. One was himself, based of a number of photographs, with hardcoated jeans and blue t-shirt. It was also the oldest, dating right back to the initial testing. The other was an athletic extrapolation of what might've been under the armour, complete with a choice of outfits. Jet picked one or the other depending on her mood, and who she was going to see, or what she was going to be doing when she got there. She could select them merely by touch.
Jet didn't bother. She'd only logged in to check a few of her messages.
The Highway Star mailbox was full. There were the usual requests for technical information, and the details of an upcoming show in the UK Jet would have to attend to keep one of the sponsors happy. It wasn't too onerous, Jet'd always wanted to go to Goodwood. Another was from a son of an Arab oil sheik who was very frivolous with his money, and was trying to cajole Jet into setting up a production line for the things, or at least building him his own one.
When she considered it, The Star was the best thing Jet'd ever done. A giant pain in the wing to keep running and maintain, but worth it. It brought contacts, it brought friends, it brought money and it brought in the true Fen currency.... bragging rights. Most of all, it brought fun and variety to Jet's life.
Finally, she moved over to her personal items.
A chill ran through her body... her real body... as she read the first one. It was the brush of deathly cold steel on bare skin,
Sn0wcat was dead.
Sn0wcat had thrown himself from his office window.
Well, the basic plot of the story is, it leads Jet to discover *who* provided the funding to get the metaverse running and why... and why it's not accessible outside of Genaros station. It also leads Jet to a 'puppet party' to chase up a lead... (Anyone seen episode 3 of GiTS Second GiG?
And where does Jet get the puppet, and what sort of puppet is it?). The basics.
It goes live and publicas of Bubblecon in 2015.
Public Beta is March 2015.
It's best described as Facebook meets WoW meets 4chan meets CounterStrike.
It's distributed. Every client provides it's spare processing power to running the metaverse as a whole.
It's open source. You can run it on anything you can compile it on. It'll even run on a basic unwaved laptop, the same as a simple FPS, then scaleright up to full neural induction. You can also set up your own personal metaverse on your station of choice, if you can get it to compile.
Why it isn't allowed to connect from outside of Genaros ( usually) is a plot point.
It's fake. The metaverse always feels unreal... unless you're running massively dedicated hardware for reality simulation, and the models you're using have been designed for that. Most models are just basic meshes, with touch and texture being added to the standard appearance.
Until mid 2016, it's limited to Genaros station, with a few outliers having their own private systems for whatever reasons.
It's been tested since about April 2012, among a group of people who worked on the Genaros Weather System (Where Jet used to work right after boosting to space, and sold out her partnership in the metaverse when she joined the Panzer Kunst). Most of them went on to be the main administrators of the system.
It only went mainstream because sn0wcat got funding to bring it beyond his main circle.
Full volumetric hardware and texture is possible within the specifications... but it's limited to folks with the money to spent on massive amounts of computing power, and who have the intent to code a table that responds as a wooden table should.
Edit: This is what happens when the only wifi/net access is in a pub
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?