The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, July 12th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. The key points of discussion are provided below with time stamps to the relevant points in the video, which will open in a separate tab when clicked.
This was a short meeting with a lot of non-specific text chat. Please refer to the video for details.
EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.527723, dated June 6th.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.2.3.527749, released on June 5th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
Anticipated Viewer Updates
A further iteration of the EEP RC viewer is with QA and should appear in week #29 (week commencing Monday, July 15th).
Bakes on Mesh is expected to go through at least one further RC iteration, although it is believed that all viewer-side required fixes have now been implemented.
The July 9th Love Me Render (rendering pipe improvements / fixes) update moved that viewer closer to being ready for possible promotion to release status.
The 360 Snapshot viewer has now been merged up to the current LL viewer release and is undergoing testing, so should be re-appearing as a project viewer soon.
The update of the viewer build process using Visual Studio 2017 / the latest Xcode is still stuck on a required update (to boost::fibers), and will likely remain that way for another week or so.
The project to improve texture fetching and caching in the viewer, which has been on hold for some time, is expected to re-start very soon. This work will likely including experimenting with using the HTTP/2 library, rather than the current curl library; this is also the project that includes support for higher texture memory in the official viewer as well as large on-disk caches. All of which, it is hoped will result in a noticeable performance improvement.
Other Topics
[5:15-7:23] It’s been noted the final deprecation of asset UDP messaging may be affecting the session times for scripted agent drivers built over LibOpenMetaverse, and the Lab threw out a question to open-source devs as to whether they could provide further information.
[27:02-27:40] There are some improvements coming to search, but it is too soon to say exactly how these will be reflected in the viewer; currently the focus is on improving the search infrastructure.
[29:40-31:25] work is continuing on the re-introduction of the “legacy” Profile floater. However, there are web-side changes needed (e.g. the feed needs to be turned into an API end-point). There is no planned simulator changes for this change, so profiles won’t be capabilities-driven.
On Friday July 12th Linden Lab hosted a town hall meeting on the subject of Tilia Inc., and forthcoming changes will affect those who have a US dollar (USD) balance associated with their Second Life account, and / or who transfer US dollar amounts out of Second Life.
The session involved:
Grumpity Linden (Senior Director of Product)
Patch Linden (Senior Director of Product Operations),
The session was moderated by Brett Linden, Head of Marketing for Second Life.
The following is a summary of that meeting, which addressed questions asked both through the official Tilia Q&A forum thread and during the meeting itself concerning Tilia and the announced changes.
Questions were selected on the basis of how broad an audience they might affect. Numerous questions of an account-specific nature, or applicable to specific country circumstances had been received (and were put forward at the meeting); however, due to the very specific nature of any answers relating to them, these were deferred with the recommendation that all such specific questions such be filed with support.
It was also noted that questions will also continue to be addressed through the official Tilia Q&A forum thread going forward.
The format of the event – including questions being asked multiple times, and / or not being grouped together means that this is not a full transcript of the session.
Instead, I have attempted to gather questions into logical topic headings and provide bullet-points of responses, together with direct quotes from either Grumpity or Patch where I felt they might offer greater clarity.
In addition, the video of the event ad recorded by Peetie Auer of SL4Live – TV is embedded at the end of this article, for those who would prefer to watch it. In addition, topics and questions in recorded in this summary include time stamps to the video. This will open the video in a separate browser tab and at the relevant point in the meeting, to again allow responses to be heard first-hand.
My thanks to Peetie for agreeing to my use of the video.
Summary: How Do the Tilia Changes Affect YOU?
If you have a US dollar balance associated with your Second Life Account on August 1st, 2019, or if you add a US Dollar balance to your Second Life account on or after August 1st, 2019 (e.g. by converting Linden Dollars to US dollars via the LindeX):
In addition, if you wish to credit process all or any part of that US dollar balance (that is, transfer it out of Second Life to PayPal or Skrill or another supported method) on or after August 1st, 2019, and have not already provided personal information to Linden Lab as a part of the credit process:
You will be required to provide personal information as outlined in Linden Lab’s July 1st blog post and listed in the Tilia FAQ.
(Note: you do not have to provide personal information if you have US dollar balance as of August 1st but never transfer funds out of Second Life – as per the note above, you will only need to agree to the Tilia Terms of Service.)
If you do not have a US dollar balance associated with your Second Life account on or after August 1st, 2019, and only buy L$ amounts:
You will not have to consent to the Tilia Terms of Service nor will you be required to provide any additional information to Tilia.
If you have a US dollar (USD) balance associated with your Second Life account on or after August 1st, 2019 you must consent to the Tilia Terms of Service. In addition, if you transfer out all or part of that USD balance on or after August 1st, 2019 you will be required to provide personal informationin order to do so (see the July 1st official Tilia blog post and the Tilia FAQ for details on the required information). Note: the USD balance given hre is for illustrative purposes only
Tilia Inc., is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Linden Lab. It was formed in 2014 and is focused on payments and the compliance work associated with operating virtual economies. As a part of this, it will provide services for both Second Life and Sansar.
Specifically in reference to Second Life, Tilia Inc., will, from August 1st, 2019, take over the management of all US dollar (USD) account balances user may have associated with Second Life. As such, it is central to the Lab’s work in seeking federal and state registration as a US Money Transmitter a form of regulated Money Service Business – MSB) and to comply with all US laws regarding the movement of money. This had been a stated goal within the Lab pretty much since Ebbe Altberg joined the company as CEO.
Note: while it is not relevant to this meeting or how users’ USD account balances are managed, I have written (and speculated) more broadly about Tilia Inc., in Tilia – a further look and a little more speculation.
The “Tilia Account” and “Tilia Wallet” / “US Dollar Wallet”
Two terms that have caused confusion amount users are “Tilia Account” and “Tilia Wallet” / “USD Wallet”.
The Tilia Account is the mechanism that will be used, from August 1st, 2019 to manage all US Dollar balances associated with Second Life (viewed via Account > Account Summary on your Dashboard at secondlife.com) and for managing transferring US dollar amounts from Second Life (viewed via Account > Credit Process on your Dashboard at secondlife.com).
You are effectively logged-in to it when you log-in to your Second Life account at secondlife.com. There is no separate “Tilia log-in” required.
The Tilia Wallet / US Dollar Wallet is, in simple terms, the US dollar balance associated with a Second Life account.
By default all “real money” balances (referred to as fiat money) held on a Second Life account is denominated in US dollars (USD).
Processing credit from Second Life (referred to as cashing out by many in the community) is expressed in US dollars, but can be converted to local currency by your preferred payment option (e.g. PayPal).
Does Tilia Affect Those Who Only Buy and Use Linden Dollars?
There is no need to provide any additional information to Linden Lab for purchasing L$.
Users can still purchase L$ amounts exactly as they have done prior to the August 1st, 2019 changes – through the viewer, via the Second Life LindeX web page, using credit cards and or other recorded payment options associated with their account.
Users are only affected if users have US Dollar balances, on or after August 1st, 2019, and / or who wsh to process credit their USD balances out of SL.
The changes specifically apply to USD credit processing and there’s no impact on the routine purchase of Linden Dollars we don’t need your ID we don’t need your sisters maiden name we don’t need your first-born and don’t even need a blood sample. You will continue to buy Linden Dollars as you did before.
Only those who have a USD wallet [balance] need to accept the Tilia Terms of Service and if you are one of those people then you will see the Tilia Terms of Service and [you will] need to accept them when you log into your account on the web.
How do users with US Dollar balances on their account consent to the Tilia Terms of Service? – By logging-in to their account via the secondlife.com website.
What if a user doesn’t want to consent to the Tilia Terms of Service?
So if you don’t have a USD balance and you don’t plan on having a USD balance and you will not sell Linden Dollars to acquire a USD balance, you don’t need to do anything. You will not be required to accept the terms of service and literally nothing changes.
If you do currently have a USD balance and you don’t want to accept the Tilia Terms of Service, you need to basically get rid of it; you need to either complete a process credit of your entire USD balance before August 1st, or spend that USD balance in Second Life. You can buy Linden [Dollars], pay for land, pay for a Premium membership etc. If you have a USD balance come August 1st, you will need to accept the Tilia Terms of Service.
Sweet Paradise, June 2019 – blog post
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 