#cwalttextmeta — Public Fediverse posts

I'm thinking about adding at least one of my channels to Trunk. I mean, it isn't like I don't have enough followers; they've risen above 500 again. But Trunk would help people follow me for a better reason than just one cool post or comment, all still without having to figure out how to check my profile.

That said, Trunk requires you to volunteer on at least one list, in at least one topic. That's where things get difficult.


For one, there's Described Media. I'm not even kidding: It's a list for people who describe the media which they post. People who add alt-text to their images. Even though everybody in the Fediverse is expected to do it all the time, at least if their posts reach Mastodon in some way.

I do it. But I don't do it "the standard Mastodon way". For one, Mastodon's limitations, especially the 500-character limit for posts, don't apply to me. I don't have any character limit in my posts. Thus, nothing forces me to describe and even explain an image only in alt-text because I've got plenty of space in my posts.

Besides, my images require absolutely massive image descriptions, especially taking all those typical image description guidelines into consideration. That's because none of them are prepared for the edge-cases that are my images. And with "absolutely massive", I don't mean, "800 characters? Are you nuts?! Who's gonna read that?!?" I mean up to over 60,000 characters, and I can guarantee you this is not a typo. Maybe even more in the future.

I'm not quite convinced that I'm a good example of a provider of media descriptions, partly because by adhering to general image description rules, I break most of Mastodon's image description rules, partly because next to nobody has the patience to read one image description that's longer than 120 toots or have it read to them by a screen reader, partly also because my own image descriptions become obsolete so quickly whenever I discover something new that I should do in image descriptions.

Even if none of this mattered, I don't post images often. Maybe once every couple months. That's because I have to schedule my image posts due to how much time they consume. The 60,000-character description took me two full days to research and write, breakfast to after dinner. And it might become even rarer in the future. I've started a dedicated (streams) channel to be able to post images with sensitive content, including but not limited to eyes and faces. But posting these will eat up the time I could also use to post perfectly safe images on this Hubzilla channel.

The Described Media list is rather for people who routinely whip up 200 characters of alt-text in under a minute or so, but who do so at least daily.


An even more obvious list, at least at first glance, would be 3D Virtual & Augmented Reality, seeing as the primary topic of this channel is OpenSim. In fact, in the long run, I could add two or three channels to this list.

But OpenSim does not fit on it. The list is for actual virtual reality, for new virtual reality and augmented reality developments of the 2020s. "The Metaverse" as envisioned by most. It absolutely requires VR or AR headsets, full stop.

OpenSim has been using the term "metaverse" routinely since as early as 2007, the year of its inception. But the list is not about "metaverse". It's about VR.

And OpenSim is what's commonly called a "pancake". It's made for desktop and laptop computers and their 2-D screens. It does not really work on VR headsets. It does not work on stand-alone VR headsets with integrated graphics hardware at all. That's mainly because VR headsets require a constantly guaranteed frame rate of 60fps. It isn't simplified and cartoonish and geared towards mobile graphics hardware like Horizons or Rec Room or the like. Instead, it's largely photo-realistic, high-detail stuff with high-resolution textures.

You may get 60fps out of a dedicated graphics unit on a not-too-highly-detailed sim when you're alone. But have more than a few avatars around, and your fps will drop below 60. Join a party or any other event with a couple dozen avatars, and you're heading for slideshow-level fps. That's because the avatars aren't made by the OpenSim devs and optimised for high performance. They mostly entirely consist of user-supplied stuff and optimised for good looks. Some two years ago, one average avatar had more vertices than an entire scene in World of Warcraft. They've only gotten much, much more complex since then.

A liquid-cooled 4090Ti overclocked to kingdom come won't give you 60fps at 1080p at OSgrid's Event Plaza on a Friday night. So, what chances does a stand-alone, passively-cooled headset based on phone hardware have if it has to whip up even more pixels? And none of this is even taking recently-introduced Physically-Based Rendering into account which absolutely requires dedicated graphics hardware with no less than 4GB of dedicated VRAM, preferably at least 8GB.

That is, you couldn't use OpenSim on a stand-alone headset anyway. There are only two OpenSim-compatible viewers available right now, they're only available for desktop operating systems, and their highly complex UIs (pull-down menus like you've last seen in Photoshop etc.) are entirely geared towards desktop and laptop computers.

In brief: OpenSim is not VR, and it's unlikely to ever truly become VR.

Okay, I still have the option to ask one of the four Trunk admins to add an extra "Virtual Worlds" list, arguing that OpenSim, just like Second Life, is not VR and thus doesn't fit onto a VR & AR list. But they might argue that it's close enough to VR & AR for a separate list not being justified.

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