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There’s a tool that was created for internal use of the engine to display avatars. This was never documented because it was never intended for creators. Some clever creators have found a way around it, and use it to show avatars with any wearable they want, play animations, etc.
We should officially expose it, turning this bug into a feature. However, we need to prevent misuse, as it can be easily used for evil in various ways.
NPCs: Creators don’t need to model or animate characters, as they have access to all existing wearables and animations. These models are also optimized with all the performance tweaks that have been done to avatars.
BUT this power can also be used for evil:
Impersonation: A scene could ruin a player’s reputation, by displaying a copy of them doing unacceptable things. A fake name tag can easily by displayed over the fake avatar’s head.
All in one wearable: A smart wearable can show a fake avatar in the place of the player’s real avatar, as a hack to access ALL existing wearables for free. Possibly all emote NFTs too. This fake avatar would only be visible by the current player and potentially other players using that same smart wearable.
Contraband wearables: A scene can show a fake avatar in the place of a player’s real avatar, and access ALL existing wearables for free. In this case the scene could potentially make these changes visible to all. The scene could for example only do this for certain players that pay for this service. Wearable creators & collectors could feel cheated.
24/7 Trolls: Fake avatars aren’t constrained by the scene’s parcel limits, so neighbor scenes can be used for trolling next door
Infinite crowd: (TBC) Fake avatars possibly aren’t counted towards scene limits (triangles, materials, etc), so these could be used to irresponsibly go over limits. They could even be used to intentionally crash the browser on neighbor scenes by displaying 100s of fake avatars there.
We need to find ways of allowing for the good parts of this feature, but mitigating the bad scenarios.
Approach
We should display something that indicates when an avatar is fake. This should be clear, but not get too much in the way of interactions with them. It should also be impossible to remove for scene creators.
Display a label over the fake avatar saying “NPC”, “Bot”, “Not a real person” or similar
When pointing at the avatar, display a hover hint with a similar label.
Other suggested ideas: have a different background color for the label, display a bot icon next to the name that can’t be removed
We could perhaps include the coordinates of the scene spawning the avatar in the label, or the name of the portable experience. For example: NPC [15,-128]
In addition to this:
Scenes should not be allowed to display a fake avatar outside the scene’s bounds.
Fake avatars need to follow the same rules and limitations as the rest of the content in the scene, counting triangles. If this is not easy to calculate, perhaps we can impose a limit per parcel, eg: one fake avatar per scene parcel.
Benefit
With this approach we don’t block the existing benefits to having fake avatars, but we can clarify to players what’s going on.
If someone uses this to pretend to own expensive wearables, their name tag will give them away as fake.
Competition
Alternative solutions:
Instead of showing something special on fake avatars, we show something special on real avatars. Maybe the real player’s name tag uses a special shader that is impossible to fake. Maybe you have to open the player’s passport to verify a player is authentic, although the passport could also be faked.
Cons: It might be visually annoying to see all names with a flashy shader.
Not impose any limits on the fake avatars, rely on reporting and blocking scenes that make misuse of them.
Cons: The functionality to allow this is not ready yet. Also, if impersonation is done well, players won’t know it was the scene. Or they might even blame the wrong scene if done by a neighbor.
Allow fake avatars outside the scene, but making sure the scene’s coords are displayed on the fake avatar’s tag.
Cons: Can still be used to troll, but at least there’s a clear scene to blame.
Completely block the fake avatar feature from scene creators.
Cons: We’d be missing out on a very cool tool
Block the fake avatar feature in most scenarios, expose it only through a very constrained in-world market feature
Cons: This still can’t be used for NPCs. Also creators might find creative ways around this.
Only allow fake avatars to display default free wearables, no tokenized ones.
Cons: This would kill the in-world market place use case.
Non-goals
There’ll always be creative workarounds for cheating and doing evil, this is about looking for a balance, where at least it’s not so easy.
This is not about extending the fake avatar feature, just about adding controls so that the existing feature is safer and can be openly disclosed.
Key Dependencies and Open Questions
What is the best way to indicate an avatar is fake?
Label
Can we make the label adjust to the avatar height, in case the avatar is taller? Maybe using the same functionality built for the name tag?
Can this label just be overlapped by a fake name tag?
On the other hand, a scene can already mess with real avatars like this too, showing a fake name tag covering the real one.
Hover hint
A creator can add an invisible cube around the avatar, and give that cube a different hover hint
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Abstract
There’s a tool that was created for internal use of the engine to display avatars. This was never documented because it was never intended for creators. Some clever creators have found a way around it, and use it to show avatars with any wearable they want, play animations, etc.
We should officially expose it, turning this bug into a feature. However, we need to prevent misuse, as it can be easily used for evil in various ways.
Need
Why fake avatars are great:
https://play.decentraland.org/?island=Ixb5m&position=110%2C-24
BUT this power can also be used for evil:
We need to find ways of allowing for the good parts of this feature, but mitigating the bad scenarios.
Approach
We should display something that indicates when an avatar is fake. This should be clear, but not get too much in the way of interactions with them. It should also be impossible to remove for scene creators.
We could perhaps include the coordinates of the scene spawning the avatar in the label, or the name of the portable experience. For example: NPC [15,-128]
In addition to this:
Benefit
With this approach we don’t block the existing benefits to having fake avatars, but we can clarify to players what’s going on.
If someone uses this to pretend to own expensive wearables, their name tag will give them away as fake.
Competition
Alternative solutions:
Cons: It might be visually annoying to see all names with a flashy shader.
Cons: The functionality to allow this is not ready yet. Also, if impersonation is done well, players won’t know it was the scene. Or they might even blame the wrong scene if done by a neighbor.
Cons: Can still be used to troll, but at least there’s a clear scene to blame.
Cons: We’d be missing out on a very cool tool
Cons: This still can’t be used for NPCs. Also creators might find creative ways around this.
Cons: This would kill the in-world market place use case.
Non-goals
There’ll always be creative workarounds for cheating and doing evil, this is about looking for a balance, where at least it’s not so easy.
This is not about extending the fake avatar feature, just about adding controls so that the existing feature is safer and can be openly disclosed.
Key Dependencies and Open Questions
On the other hand, a scene can already mess with real avatars like this too, showing a fake name tag covering the real one.
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