Via the Metaversed blog comes word of a post over on media agency Centric’s blog listing “The Top 10 Things About HiPiHi (Link)“. I won’t list them all, but will instead cull the top three I think matter most and list them in order of importance:

1) The Lag Monster

“10. It’s surprisingly fast. Even though it’s served from China, we’re seeing 75-100fps typically on a midline system. Of course, the maximum concurrency is low, so we’ll reserve judgement on heavier use for later.”

Arguably the biggest issue for any virtual world is going to be speed. Not so much having those kinds of frame rates, which are heavily effected by client side hardware, but the “refresh world” rate between world states such that when someone moves something inside the virtual space everyone else sees the change at least within something like 1/30 of a second (film fps is 24; most video is 30). If not, then the “lag” will may be too disruptive to the experience.

2) Realism Disparity

“4. The flight engine. Whoever did their helicopter knew their stuff. This is responsive, nicely realistic, and very usable. Also, the helicopter appears to be made of irregular prims, which is neat in and of itself.”

This is almost certainly a result of using a more capable physics engine than other virtual worlds (particularly Second Life). The world itself can render beautifully, but if the physics aren’t similarly realistic, then immersion suffers {due to the disconnect}. Furthermore, without good physics {relative to the visual cues}, the content created by the users is of lesser quality than it could be. And as more sophisticated users/developers start creating content, physics engines will become increasingly important to them.

3) Cues and Consistency

“5. It’s a contiguous world. Want to swim from the mainland to the islands? Go right ahead. Want to fly from one side of the world to the other? Sure.”

If the world is going to mimic real terrain, then as far as I’m concerned it should feel like a real world and not like a patch job. If it’s going to be non-contiguous, then it should remove the real world references. What I think would be neat would be seeing “edge of the world” style cliffs along the boundaries. If the developer wants to add more land, they could simulate an earthquake and raise the land in a particular area along the periphery. Sprouting up “islands” in a field of blue which can’t be crossed conflicts with the visual cues being provided, afaic.

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While I was looking forward to HiPiHi‘s release before this report, I’m now looking forward to HiPiHi’s release even more, as it sounds like someone may finally give Linden Lab some competition. Recent events indicate to me they could use it.

(By the way, has anyone else noticed the Kaneva ads popping up all over? I’m guessing they’re taking advantage of all the negative press coverage currently directed at Second Life.)