Back at the start of 2013, Linden Lab acquired Boldai AB, a team of three programmers who jokingly refer to themselves as being, “From the country that gave you Minecraft and the country next to the country that invented Lego”.
Together, the Boldai AB team had created Blocksworld, which they described as “the ultimate building game – only it isn’t really a game, but you build stuff”, in their very creative initial marketing trailer. Early reviews of the app referred to it as a “perfect mix of Lego and Minecraft.”
Since the acquisition, the former Boldai AB team have been a little quiet (other than the odd Tweet on things), and their website has carried little more than news of their acquisition and a link to the Lab’s Beta Product sign-up page, together with a new promotional video. The latter may well demonstrate the app – including the ability to share your Blocksworld creations, a common theme within LL’s new products -, but it lacks the shine and fun of Boldai’s own efforts; such is the price, perhaps, of putting on a corporate jacket.
Well, now we have confirmation – albeit confirmation easily missed – that Blocksworld may well launch in July, appearing on the platform for which it was originally developed – the iPad.
There are no official details of any launch as yet, other than the (almost throwaway) comment which forms a part of an introductory piece for an interview with Rod Humble by All Things D, including whether, as Boldai originally intimated prior to their acquisition, whether Blocksworld will also be made available for other platforms following the initial iPad release. It’s also not clear whether this initial release will be a “full” release of the product or an initial “beta” of some description. Time will tell on these latter points.
In the meantime, if you wish to try to keep abreast of LL’s new products, and have not already done so, you might want to consider signing-up to the Beta Product page, and I’ll leave you with Boldai’s original and imaginative trailer video.
Rod Humble is very much a Q&A man, something I can personally attest to, and which was shown back in June with his Q&A session with Best of Second Life magazine. There are pros and cons to this approach.
On the one hand, and particularly when working across large distances and different time zones, it means that neither side is tied to trying to commit to a day / time (at possibly an ungodly hour) in order to try to hook-up either in-world or by ‘phone or via Skype.
The downside to this is that it prevents a spontaneous conversation from developing, which stifles rapport, perhaps of greater impact from the reporting side of things, it gives the Lab the freedom to dictate the direction of questions / cherry-pick which questions they are willing to answer.
Rod Humble: master of the Q&A session
Much has been made of this second point, although from my own experience I can say LL are not the first to “vet” or pick questions to answer within an interview, and I doubt they’ll be the last.
However, perhaps what frustrates me more about the whole Q&A style approach is that can isolate questions from their broader context (unless submitted with reams of explanatory text), which can further dissuade the Lab from responding, when a more face-to-face contact might enable the aforementioned rapport to be established, resulting in a more relaxed exchange in which some answers might be a little more forthcoming.
I’ve no idea how much time Eric Johnson of All Things D got with Rod Humble recently, or how many questions were vetoed ahead of the fifteen that were answered. However, while the resultant interview, which appeared on July 5th, may initially appear to be much the usual mix of things we’ve been hearing about in interviews with the Lab’s CEO in general of late, it is a worthwhile read.
For those eager for Oculus Rift, for example, we find that the Lab is potentially looking at a “late summer” public debut for their support of the headset, and that Humble himself has been able to experience the capabilities.
I’m not actually that intrigued by the arrival of Oculus Rift in SL – although I can fully see the potential in integrating it into SL and the opportunities it may well open for the platform across a range of uses, and am thus fully supportive of the work being done. However, what does intrigue me is how the Lab are going to integrate Oculus Rift with the UI. Are we perhaps going to see the iteration of an entirely new form of viewer to cater for it?
Oculus Rift and Second Life: a “late summer” public release?
More interesting from my perspective are Humble’s comments around new users. I recently had the opportunity to fire my own questions at Mr. Humble in June, and the issue of new user retention was on my list.
Sadly, it was something he sidestepped somewhat (which is perhaps as much down to the way I asked certain questions as anything else); so it was interesting to read in the All Things D article that of the approximate 400,000 sign-ups a month SL receives, some 80,000 are still logging-in to the platform after about a month (some 20%). As Humble himself notes, that’s a massive drop-off; however it might also be said to be sufficient to ensure the churn is enough to stop the platform hemorrhaging users in quite the way some of the more dour commentators like to present.
We also get to see more of Humble’s thinking behind the direction in which he’s taking the company:
Game makers are always trying to stay one step ahead of content creation, so you get these bigger and bigger budgets, trying to make more and more polished content. Second Life and YouTube are both rewarding their users for what they create. I believe there will be a day when you’ll log in to your social network and see, “Oh, I got five bucks because I posted my silly cat picture.” What I’m trying to do is position our company to take advantage of that and facilitate people being rewarded for the time they put in.
Whether this positioning involves SL in the longer term, particularly as the company does appear to be involved in both investing in new virtual environments (such as High Fidelity, wherever that leads) and perhaps creating a direct successor to Second Life itself, remains to be seen.
For those curious as to why the Lab hasn’t itself pushed SL to the mobile / tablet environment, Humble also provides food for thought, both pointing to TPV work in the area and why the Lab has tended to avoid getting too involved.
Overall, this is another Q&A session which can easily be lambasted for being one-sided and only talking about the things the Lab wants to talk about; however, that’s actually what PR is about – promoting the things you want to promote and generating the interest you want to generate. While the All Things D does at times cover ground ploughed in earlier interviews, it also covers some fresh territory and provides further insight into some of the thinking at the Lab, and that alone makes it worth the time taken to hop over and take a gander for yourself.
So the celebrations of SL’s 10th have come and gone and once again it’s time to cast a final personal look back at the event, as is my habit. Well, actually, it’s an overdue look back, considering I had intended to get this piece out a week ago; but as the famous saying goes, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ Peys Gang aft agley, or so Robbie Burns wrote. Honest.
SL birthday events tend to be a fair mix of the good, the bad and – it has to be said, I’m afraid – the downright ugly. The builds are many and varied, the entertainment generally rich and diverse, the regions expansive and seemingly never-ending, the crowds numerous and, as a result and despite the best efforts of the Lab and the organising team, the lag ever-present and waiting to mug you at almost every turn.
The SLB Express, a popular feature from SL9B, made an appearance at SL10BCC, linking the present to the past in a very evocative way
All of this is to be expected enjoyed and, in the case of lag, countered. In this latter regard, kudos to the organisers for not only providing people with clear and concise instructions on limiting the impact of lag on their experience, but also for provide a set of “low-lag” and retrospective freebie avatars to adopt if one wished. Ah, Ruthie and friends, how we’ve missed you! I admit, I didn’t use any of the supplied avatars although I did wander around as a Primitar for the part of one visit.
There was much to be admired and enjoyed this year; so much so, that my own reports only really scratched the surface of things as I explored the regions. If your own piece didn’t appear in my updates, my apologies. It doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t like it – rather that time was frequently against me and I didn’t actually get to see everything.
This year’s celebration installations were especially good. I’ve already waxed lyrical in these pages about Flea and Today’s magnificent A’stra main / live stage, and will resist the temptation to do so again because, quite frankly, all of the stages were magnificent. I loved the echoes of SL9B’s lake stage within Kazuhiro Aridian’s mesh lake stage, which was simply awesome and brought something of a new meaning to getting high on magic mushrooms, with people dancing up in the air and over the water on the huge mushroom cups…
The Lake Stage by Kazuhiro Aridian
Marianne McCann’s History Walk was simply stunning, offering many of us who have been involved in SL for a good while a trip down memory lane, and was another part of the celebrations I found myself returning to on a number of occasions.
The theme for this year’s event was Looking forward, looking back, the idea being for people to look back at the last 10 years of SL’s history, or to look ahead to what the future might bring – or both. One of my personal criteria in exploring the regions was to seek out exhibits which reflected all or some of the theme and presented it in a unique or fun or immersive or personal way. I also kept an eye out for exhibits which, while not obviously reflecting the theme, offered an eye-catching, fresh and clever insight into Second Life or the community / persons behind the exhibit.
The Isle of Dee exhibit presented an immersive, attractive and engaging insight into this role-play community
And it is here that I had my first feelings of disappointment. Walking through the SL10BCC regions I found myself coming across exhibits which I’d more-or-less seen before at SL9B and / or at SL8B and in several cases even as far back as SL7B. Some made little attempt at redressing themselves. Others had a thin veil of “retrospective” painted across them which, for me, did little to hide the fact that they were retreads.
The Grove Country Club Estates is an upmarket residential estate in SL covering (at the time of writing) some ten regions which have all been painstakingly landscaped and which mix residential parcels with parks, roads and waterways. To the north of the estate is Patch Thibaud’s clifftop house of Majesterium, which is also open to the public.
As a residential estate, this is not my usual choice for a destination review per se, and this article isn’t intended to be such. However, I have to admit I do find the estate attractive and do like to occasionally walk the parks and wander along the roads, always taking care to observe the privacy of the residents (you can actually hire a bicycle from the welcome area when visiting).
One part of the estate to which I’m particularly drawn in Casablanca Bay South. Mostly water, this region has a hook-like sandy prominence jutting out into the sea, upon which sits the most attractive tapas and wine bar I’ve come across in SL.
If I’m honest, I’m not actually a great one for the idea of dining in any form in SL, and none of my homes in-world have every had a kitchen or dining area. However, as a means of providing a social venus where friends (and strangers) can meet and sit and chat, restaurants in SL offer perhaps a preferable venue to pitching-up at a club, etc. In fact, I met one of my longest-known in-world acquaintances at a restaurant, many years ago, and I can still remember simply sitting and chatting with him to the point where the wee small hours of the morning were fast on their way towards growing up…
Del Vino, designed by Coralie Bilasimo has a certain chic and a Mediterranean charm about it which makes it and instant delight – and probably a place that, where it to exist in real life, I’d be dining at quite regularly (and my waistline resenting me even more as a result…).
The Mediterranean touch is not by accident; the entire estate is intended to evoke a Mediterranean feel, and incorporates both Tuscan and Andalusian elements, and as one of the community’s builders, Coralie has had a hand in shaping the overall theme and bringing it to the fore through works such as del Vino.
Downstairs is a vaulted room offering party dining space around a simple wooden table, while upstairs is a more intimate dining area, with smaller tables for up to four and a banquet table out on the verandah overlooking the beach. The interior design is by Emery Milneaux, one of the estate’s co-owners, and fits the style and design of the building perfectly.
This is an exquisite build, where charm, chic, landscaping and an eye for detail and interior design come together to produce a truly memorable location within SL. I’m also pretty sure it’s one the images here do less than justice. If you are into SL building design and architecture – or simply want a marvellous place to meet with a friend or two and sit and chat, del Vino is absolutely worth the visit. And for those with a romantic bent, why not take a stroll along the beach afterwards, or perhaps along the jetties of the marina just to the north?
I’ve been meaning to run a catch-up on Imprudence since mid-April; my apologies to Onefang Rejected and crew for not doing so sooner.
My last report on Imprudence, back at the end of February, made mention of the fact that Onefang, who had been working on the Meta-Impy viewer (itself forked from Imprudence 1.4.0), had come forward with a stated goal of continuing Imprudence’s development and joined the Kokua / Imprudence team. After that, things went quiet as far as the rest of the world was concerned. However, this didn’t mean nothing was being done.
Recent Updates
In April 2013, the team released first experimental version of Imprudence 1.4, referred to as 1.4.0.3 exp 0, the first major release of the 1.4.0 code which had been in beta status for a very long time.
The update included a lot of under-the-hood work with many bug fixes from numerous contributors, improvements to the build processes, code clean-ups, the removal of the Google translate option, updates to the grid list, port of inventory category capability from Cool VL viewer, addition of a MOAP radar, and security improvements to the storage of users’ passwords.
This was followed almost exactly a month later, in May 2013, by a further release – referred to as 1.4.0.3 experimental 1, and which included further fixes and updates which built on the work released in 1.4.0.3 experimental 0.
With both releases, Onefang took time out to address a range of questions on Imprudence, and roughly outline what the team hope to achieve. His comments were caveated by noting two important points:
There is a fair amount of catching-up to do, and it will take time for the team to get there, so people shouldn’t expect everything to be done at once
The team is small, and all of them volunteer to do the work. As such, it has to be slotted-in between real life obligations, etc. Therefore, progress may be subject to interruption, and users were (and are) asked to bear this in mind.
Looking Ahead
In terms of bringing Imprudence in-line with some of the major updates other viewers have / are seeing, Onefang had the following to say (as noted in his replies to comments following the 1.4.0.3 exp 0 release – scroll down to read all of his replies in full). There are no time scales attached to any of the following because, again, the team are working on a volunteer basis and are subject to RL interruptions and obligations which may impact progress in one or more areas.
MOAP (Media on a Prim)
Robin Cornelius provided the team with the MOAP radar functionality, and subsequently with a working patch which includes most of what is required to get MOAP working in Imprudence, so the team hope to have this working “soon”.
Mesh Rendering
Currently, imprudence uses the “old” rendering code which cannot render mesh objects (boxes, cylinders and weird shapes result). Replacing this code is a major task and will take time to complete. As such, the aim for the time being is to catch-up on other code elements and come back and address the issue of render code update / replacement for a later date.
However, Onefang has been experimenting with code that bypasses the bulk of the old render code for meshes, and steps in at the last moment to add the mesh after the rest of the render is done. This approach has worked well as a proof-of-concept, and he hopes that if it can be shown to work “for real”, it will offer a possible interim capability for Imprudence to render mesh until such time as the rendering code can be properly overhauled / replaced.
Imprudence doesn’t currently support mesh rendering, as shown above with the LAQ mesh cottage (see inset for how it should look). BUT, while it may take a while for comprehensive mesh rendering support to be implemented, Onefang Rejected is looking at an interim solution which may allow Imprudence users to correctly view mesh objects in-world
Second Life Server-side Baking / Appearance
The team plan to make Imprudence SSB/A compatible in the future. This will not happen prior to SSB/A going live across the SL main grid (Agni), nor is it likely to happen any time immediately after LL have deployed SSB/A. However, Imprudence will be looking to support it as and when they can.
Grey people will be the order of the day for Imprudence users on Second Life once SSB/A is deployed – at least until the Imprudence team get SSB/A support implement, which they are looking to do in the future
Materials Processing
Again, earmarked for inclusion in Imprudence, but not necessarily on the immediate horizon.
Other Things on the List
Obviously, the above is not the extent of the team’s plans, but tends to represent the items they are most asked about. Overall, the “to do” list includes a lot of work and covers things such a multiple attachment support, pathfinding support (NPC support for OpenSim), avatar physics, parcel privacy support, scripting additions, RLV/a updates, HTTP updates, and more.
Imprudence remains a popular viewer, and runs well on OpenSim. That OneFang and the team are committed to keeping the viewer going and bring it up-to-par with other viewers and both with OpenSim and Second Life is to be highly commended. It may take a while for some of the updates to reach the light of day, so some patience may be in order for those who’d like to continue / resume using it with SL in particular.
Apologies for the late-running of this update. I started drafting it earlier in the week and, um, forgot about it.
Week 27 Server Deployments
Just a reminder that due to the Independence Day code freeze for week 27, and the fact that the Lab is closed on Thursday 4th, Friday 5th July for a long weekend, there were no server deployments this week.
Server-side Baking / Appearance
Deployment / enabling should be commencing in week 28, most likely starting on the 9th July. To help spread the message, the Lab has once again blogged on the deployment of the new service, referring to it by the official title of Project Sunshine (which is a part of the Shining Project) and again included their video explaining what is going to be happening.
The majority of maintained viewers provided by both Linden Lab and third-party viewer developers are already ready for the new service, with only Dolphin, Exodus and Imprudence being without support. Hopefully, both Dolphin and Exodus will update shortly, but it will be some time before Imprudence is in a position to adopt SSB/A – the team has a fair amount of catching-up to do.
So, to borrow from the Lab. If you’re not already running an SSB/A capability viewer: “Don’t be cloudy and grey – enjoy Sunshine today” – and update your viewer!
SL Viewer News
A further SL beta viewer release was made on Tuesday July 2nd – version 3.6.2.278133 – with (among other things) further materials fixes, as listed in the release notes.
In other updates:
The Lab has made a viewer repo public which contains various bug fixes and updates made available in the beta maintenance viewer. These include items such as the additional fixes for high-resolution snapshots (to prevent things like black rectangles appearing in very high resolution images). Expect to see them filtering through into TPV soon, and for the fixes themselves to start the SL release viewer possibly sooner.
The “project interesting” viewer which contains viewer-side updates to complement various server-side interest list project updates is still undergoing work to fix all the blocker bugs which are currently preventing it from being made public.
In terms of the latter, Andrew Linden reports that he is looking to gather data which will allow for performance comparisons with things like scene loading pre- and post “project interesting”, to see help measure the improvements in the HTTP texture download changes implemented by Monty Linden.
Other Items
What is a Reasonable FPS Rate?
In the last part of my week 26 update, I reported that the Lab has statistics which show that around 50% of users are running viewers with the Advanced Lighting Model option (“ALM” – formerly the Lighting and Shadows option and also referred to as “deferred rendering”) active, and that they further had data to suggest that up to 75% of users have hardware capable of running with ALM enabled “with reasonable performance” in terms of frame rates (e.g. an average somewhat above 10 fps).
At the time I reported this, I noted that:
However, given that fps is a highly subjective measure and somewhat dependent on a range of external factors (such as how many other avatars are in the region with you, whether you are moving around a lot or not, etc), the “YMMV” rule comes into play.
That the term “reasonable performance” is so nebulous sparked a debate during the Simulator User Group meeting as to what might be regarded as “reasonable” frame rates for a viewer running with ALM enabled (although not necessarily with any lighting & shadows options set). The broad consensus of opinion was that a rate of around 20-30 fps would be considered “reasonable”.
Part of the concern here is that while ALM is required in order to be able to render materials effects, LL might be overly optimistic in determining which cards have ALM enabled by default, which may in turn have an additional impact on new user retention due to people logging-in to SL and experiencing extremely low frame rates and not having any understanding on how to improve their experience.
Back at the start of 2013, Linden Lab acquired Boldai AB, a team of three programmers who jokingly refer to themselves as being, “From the country that gave you Minecraft and the country next to the country that invented Lego”.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 