[DAO:c1cb67a] Virtual Land Manager for Decentraland

Governance
1

by 0x01d871870cbbdde934526e17637c0cfef0b3b38b (VLM)

Should the following $120,000 grant in the Platform category be approved?

Abstract

Virtual Land Manager (VLM) is a new tool designed to connect the metaverse by allowing you to edit and moderate all of your metaverse experiences in real time. It can be installed with just a few lines of code and once deployed, allows users to share access to their scene dashboard and assign roles.

VLM can currently create images, video screens, and more, then transform them in real time. Video screens can play a live stream and then switch to a looping playlist. Its moderation feature allows you to ban certain users or wearables from entering your scene. An Advanced User role gives developers access to dashboard widgets to build their own custom controls.

But thereā€™s so much more, and Decentraland is just the beginningā€¦

Grant size

120,000 USD in DAI

Project duration

3 months

Beneficiary address

0x01d871870CbBddE934526E17637c0cfEf0b3b38B

Email address

unknower@vlm.gg

Description

VLM allows users to manage aspects of their scene in real time that would normally be a pain point for people regularly holding events in Decentraland. It can also free up time for our small group of skilled developers building compelling experiences in Decentraland, by letting them hand off certain controls to their clients and collaborators.

Quick Feature Highlights:

  • Scene Analytics
  • Live transformations (move,scale,rotate,hide,show,etc)
  • Easily configurable dynamic video screens (switch between live streams or switch to looping pre-recorded video playlists)
  • Images and NFTs can be placed in your scene and assigned different click actions, such as opening an external URL, moving a player in the scene, playing a sound, or teleporting the player out.
  • More advanced developer-friendly tools and controls for those comfortable with light coding - create your own controls!

These features are built out and ready to go! VLM is currently open to user signups at www.vlm.gg
Virtual Land Manager will be available to release to the public within the next few weeks.
This proposal will allow VLM to go without building a payment system for now, so it will be able to open up to free use by the community within a week of this proposal passing.

A more extensive presentation of this proposalā€™s objectives can be found in PDF form here:

Roadmap and milestones

All of the key features are already built out, but the longer form PDF has a list of all features that will be available at launch, as well as a list of key futures planned for development in the future. This grant covers the development of VLM retroactively, and covers the costs of future use of the platform for creators in Decentraland.

View the PDF proposal here:

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
2

Most people might not know this, because @Unknower is a humble person, but he has been creating this VLM system for a loooong time. Like before Iā€™ve even been in DCL. And is so so talented. AND many people and places you all probably frequent often use the VLM to update and maintain their builds.

Working with Unknower on my BubbleWorlds launch for MVFW23 was a dream. And I had no idea the VLM existed when I reached out to him help me dev the build. But quickly into us working and filling the space with wonderful imagery and features, Unknower suggested we try out his VLM he was in Alpha(I think, idk what phase tbh, it was alpha to me!).

And my what a life saver it was, to be able to update images on my end and reupload to the VLM instead of having to send him assets in folder and have him replace one by one, he gave me the power and resources to do it myself. I also now have a stream screen I can pop on, I can chat with ppl using the bouncer text, and many more features weā€™ve discussed I hope to have in the future built into the VLM so I can have access and control over it. (Thinking auto dance toggles, music playlists, etc)

Itā€™s almost like builder and the hud had a wonderful baby that makes it easier for non coders to easily and seamlessly update their existing builds.

Iā€™ve had to fortune to know get to know Unknower IRL, have gamed and learned from his daughter in Roblox, and worked directly with him in DCL. To say I not only endorse him as a Creative Technologist, but his VLM product, would be an understatement.

I know itā€™s changed my experience in DCL as a builder forever. I hope all the other VLM users come here to share their thoughts as well, so we can see how this is actually a needed product in DCL, and a grant that should be part of the DAO grants program. :sparkles:

3 Likes
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The current library used to integrate VLM v1 with Decentraland is already open sourced here: GitHub - Livication-Creative-Technology/dcl-vlm

The next iteration used to connect to VLM v2 will be open sourced under this account. The plan is to eventually host all of VLMā€™s integration packages here:

1 Like
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Itā€™s time for the community to stop getting in its own way with these proposals and just vote YES to those who have given so much to DCL over the last two years. Unknower is a tremendous asset to the DCL community and has offered so much without ever asking for anything. EASY EASY YES from me for this proposal. Letā€™s see DCL grow to its potential with the help of developers like Unknower.

3 Likes
5

Letā€™s fkn go @Unknower!

I know youā€™ve been working on this for quite a long time now, you deserve this grant as much as the denizens of DCL deserve this in their toolbox when creating in this space!

You have my vote bro!

3 Likes
6

Iā€™ve never voted Yes on a proposal faster than I have on this one. Iā€™ve had the pleasure of getting to know Unknower (lol) over the last several months and he has been so instrumental in improving some areas at Vroomway. Before we started using the VLM, we had to deploy multiple times a week, twice alone on Fridays, to swap between live links, banners, announcement videos, and other promotional stuff. Which added up to a lot of time. Having the VLM integrated has saved us countless hours of redeploying and uploading media/changing links. Being able to just update the content live via the VLM dashboard and not have to redeploy is invaluable. We can even change the position or add multiple at will with little-to-no additional code! Vroomway has a unique setup with our multiple-scene instancing, Unknower solved this issue in less than an hour and had us up and running in all our instances, and showed us how to do it ourselves going forward. I can only imagine how much time this would have saved us if we had VLM from the beginning. I think this is a great use of DAO funds to provide the community with something that can benefit every single project that exists now and to come later. There arenā€™t many tools that the DAO has funded that are applicable to every single project.

In addition to being overly capable of building something incredibly useful, Unknower has demonstrated his ability to provide amazing customer service. Which is something a lot of ā€œveterans/OGsā€ lack and makes a world of a difference with the product. Any time we have had any questions or issues he has been on top of it in an instant. It says a lot when someone is able to adapt their product to fit the userā€™s needs while also providing top-of-the-line support to achieve the goal. I do not give this endorsement lightly. I feel very strongly about supporting this and believe that this should become a standard tool for every project. I believe even the Foundation could benefit from this tool. :metal: :brick:

1 Like
7

With the amount of time Iā€™ve put into building this platform and preparing a 27 page proposal, I would really appreciate if No votes took the time to comment and provide some sort of reasoning for their vote.

Iā€™d like to point out that shortly before I started building this in March 2022, DCL Connect got a grant twice as large for development only.

DCL Connect proposal

Yet this product never came to be because, to quote patmacs,

ā€¦although the grant money does give us much needed breathing room to develop, it cannot properly sustain a long term development team without a proper financial mechanism.

Just something to keep in mind if youā€™re voting No because of budget. Software development takes time and is expensive. :man_shrugging:

8

Is there any plan to add sdk7 support in the short term?

FYI the dcl connect vesting contract never had any funds withdrawn but maybe @Patmacs is waiting to release a version w/ sdk7 support before doing that? Decentraland's Vesting Dashboard

9

Yes, this is one of the first priorities for future features and is listed on page 13. SDK 7 support is currently planned to be developed by the end of Q4 this year. VLM will support any features it can on SDK6 until official sundown by the foundation.

That said, this grant is intended to cover the use and retroactive development of the existing platform, and does not guarantee a timeline to the DAO for future development efforts. Any funds needed to guarantee future feature development will be requested separately.

To be fair to Patmacs, it seems like the efforts towards DCL-Connect ultimately went into the DCL-Dash library, which is an awesomely capable tool for developers, but in my opinion DCLā€™s main hurdle is not a lack of tools for developers. Itā€™s that you have to be a developer to use Decentralandā€™s most up-to-date features, and itā€™s not even the easiest platform to develop in for developers.

10

Dollhouse has the very good fortune to be one of the first users of Unknowerā€™s VLM system. Our venue runs several events a week, and this service has been immensely beneficial to me, saving me hours of time, effort and frustration. In the last six months, I have found Unknower to be responsive, reliable and professional. I admire everything he has done with the system so far, and look forward to contnuing to use his service for years to come. A resounding YES from me!

1 Like
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Yes this is correct. We have been spending our own money and developers have been working in good faith. Thankfully, we are very close to releasing a public repo. We are currently working on SDK7 integration and are fighting with colyseus for some reason. Once the project fulfills the promises of the grant we will be withdrawing funds from the grant to recoup server expenses and compensate the developers.

For those who are interested, we have been showing monthly updates during our 530Society Wednesday meetups.

12

Thatā€™s great to hear, because with the lack of updates in the DAO server in 2023, and no updates from you on your proposal page in about 2 years, I had assumed the project was abandoned. Not sure how anyone would have known any different, because I have been talking about Virtual Land Manager on spaces almost weekly for the past three months preparing for its launch, and nobody ever informed me that DCLConnect was going to be available around the same time.

Though, as I understand from an update to your Discord server on 2023-02-20, DCLConnect will not work with SDK6. Is that right? I also see it will also be a self-hosted platform, so developers can set up their own server. Is that required to be able to use DCLConnect, or will it have its own public servers that anyone can use to update their scene?

Also, if I might ask, if youā€™re simply updating your current codebase to support SDK7, why not release what worked for SDK6? A lot of people still havenā€™t migrated their scene to SDK7 and could really benefit from having the ability to make real-time edits now without having to completely rewrite the rest of their scene.

13

DCLConnect will still work with SDK6. We have been working through some changes to accommodate SDK6, SDK7 and other connectivity.

We are providing a self-hosted service option for many reasons that are too long to really discuss here. But to put it simply - itā€™s to guarantee uptime for your scenes without a dependency on our website that may be across the world from where you are (Located in NorthEast USA)

At current, DCLConnect has been functioning in select locations and has seen several iterations and refactors over the last year. The early experiments were successful in their limited beta forms. The latest ā€œstableā€ version (v3) was built on Strapi which we ultimately are deprecating in favor of an in-house content management solution. The first official public release (v4) will happen this summer. We have learned a lot from each improvement and the rounds of feedback we got from them. Our latest efforts aim to greatly improve the overall flexibility/customization of our platform.

We support your proposal and would happily discuss any (and all) lessons that we learned along the way. Our projects are not the same but they do overlap in many areas. We are always open to collaborate and share our code prior to official release.

Please reach out to us on our Discord, and/or message me directly. (patmacs on discord, no numbers after the name. Just patmacs)

1 Like
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Hey there, thanks you @Unknower for this proposal, are we still able to test VLM as creator?

15

Thanks for that explanation, and yeah that all makes sense. Didnā€™t mean to throw your project under the bus or anything. I mostly just brought it up to compare budget - I now realize the rest of my original comment was a bit uninformed.

16

I think the answer is probably yes, but I can read your question a couple different ways.

  1. Will VLM allow use by creators for commercial projects?
    VLM will be open to commercial use of the platform by metaverse-based businesses and other small businesses.
    If there is a very large corporate brand that wants to use VLM, that will be handled on a case by case basis. By large corporate brands Iā€™m thinking any company large enough to have an ad on the super bowl or world cup - like Coca-Cola, Apple, Samsung, etc.

  2. Can we test VLM before we vote on this?
    Sure. Anyone can get in touch with me today for a demo of v1 (ā€˜unknowerā€™ on Discord, no more numbers).

Iā€™m also working on getting a publicly available demo scene up of v2 so that anyone can log in and try it out in real time with other people making changes at the same time. Iā€™ll post an update on that when it becomes available.

Hopefully one of those answered the right question!

2 Likes
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Thank you for the answer, i m number 2, i will contact you on discord!

18

I saw the demo of what this can do on Sinfulā€™s Beyond the NFT show and I must say this will be an invaluable and must have tool for anyone building scenes in Decentraland, especially for those who host events with live video/music. Iā€™m looking forward to being able to use it myself!

Anyone who voted no, probably doesnā€™t actually participate in what actually happens in Decentraland or never tried running their own events. If you didnā€™t see it, I highly encourage anyone to go check out the Beyond the NFT episode to see it in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SJx2-gbme8

1 Like
19

Itā€™s great to see content management solutions like VLM are gaining momentum in Decentraland, and it definitely addresses some important needs!

It looks like weā€™ve been working on addressing similar issues all this time :star_struck: Community Highlight: doWowā€™s Interactive Billboards

20

This seems like a great idea, however my concern is the budget, thatā€™s why I voted No. Best of luck! :slight_smile: