Linden Lab’s Tilia services are now available for Unity developers via the Unity Asset Store
On Wednesday, January 26th, 2022, Linden Lab announced that its subsidiary company, Tilia Inc., the licensed money transmitter and end-to-end payments platform, has reached an agreement with Unity for Tilia’s API and services to be made available to Unity developers as an integrated end-to-end payment solution.
Referring to the agreement as a partnership, the announcement from Linden Lab notes that Unity has vetted the Tilia API to ensure it is suitable and optimised for the latest version of the Unity Editor, and developers building in Unity can now access Tilia’s API through the Unity Asset Store to enable in-game and in-world economies, allowing their users to make and receive payments, and even exchange in-game tokens for real money.
This is potentially the biggest partnership deal Tilia has thus far made (customers until now being reported as Second Life, Sansar and Upland – although ” NFT marketplaces” are also listed as being partners), potentially opening Tilia’s three services – TiliaDirect (in-world payment processing), TiliaWallet (capabilities for “stored value” for assets & enables user-to-user transactions) and TiliaPay (enables the redemption of tokens for fiat (real) money, allowing players to cash out) – to Unity’s entire community of developers.
Many of today’s top games and virtual worlds are built using the powerful Unity real-time 3D development platform and increasingly developers want to incorporate significant virtual economy elements that allow for in-game or in-world user transactions. We are proud to bring an end-to-end payment solution available to the Unity Asset Store, and we look forward to seeing how Unity developers will incorporate Tilia.
Brad Oberwager, Executive Chairman of Linden Research, Inc.
It is perhaps worthwhile noting that this announcement does not in any way mean that Unity is buying or otherwise investing in Linden Lab / Second Life or that they are about to do so (a question I have already been asked). This is about leveraging the power of Tilia Inc., and the services it provides to deliver them to Unity developers who wish to utilise them and, in doing so, provide further revenue streams back to Tilia / Linden Lab.
For further context, please refer to the Press Release from Linden Lab in full.
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, January 2022 – blog post
The following summary notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 18th, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting need to be reviewed.
Server Deployments – Main SLS Channel Restart Issue
Despite being updated in week #3 with simulator version – 567269 – and with no RC update available for deployment, the SLS Main channel simhosts went through a restart on Tuesday, January 25th – and ran into a problem, with many regions remaining down for far longer than expected.
No detailed explanation for the issue has been given as yet other than, “one of our internal systems got a bit confused about what was started and what needed to be started.”
However, the issue was not in any way related to the simulator version itself, so no danger of the improvements it contains being rolled back.
Wulf Linden noted that the situation has provided LL with a lot of data that will hopefully allow them to “smooth out the pavement for the future.”
At the time of writing, any deployment to the RC channels for Wednesday, January, 26th was still TBA. Check the Second Life Server section of the forums for any possible announcement.
Available Viewers
This list reflects those official viewers available.
Release viewer: version version 6.5.2.567427 – Mac Voice hotfix viewer, January 13 – no change.
Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.3.567451 issued on January 20th, combining the Jenever and Koaliang Maintenance viewers.
The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
Project viewers:
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
The Return of Andrew (Leviathan) Linden
The first person Philip Rosedale hired when establishing Linden Research (aka Linden Lab) was one Andrew Meadows. As Andrew Linden, he was pretty much the lead engineer for the server side of things, hosting what was the Tuesday Server and Scripting Meeting, (alongside Simon Linden) which later became the Simulator User Group Meeting. Andrew departed Linden Lab at the end of 2013 to join Rosedale at his (then) new venture, High Fidelity Inc.
Following news that High Fidelity had invested in Linden Lab (in what is increasingly looking like an informal merger) and that around seven High Fidelity staff were moving to work on Second Life, I pondered whether Andrew might be among them – and even publicly mused if indeed he would be in a later post on that subject.
Well, turns out he has, but under a new Linden name, that of Leviathan Linden. Appearing at the Simulator User Group Meeting on Tuesday, January 25th as Leviathan, Andrew has some trying to guess (good naturedly) at the reason for the name change – including having forgotten his old password! However, the explanation was simple, as he indicated whilst also noting the areas he’ll initially be working on.
Leviathan was the name I wish I had picked years ago. It seemed like a good pick for a new beginning. I’ll be working on simulator stuff. I’m getting back on my feet by fixing bugs and implementing small features.
Leviathan Linden (formerly known as Andrew Linden)
His appearance at the SUG meeting was positively received, as was the news he’ll once again be working on simulator-related projects. Which just leaves me room to say, “welcome back, Leviathan!”
In Brief
Following the reports of teleport disconnects / general region crossing issues, a further Jira has been filed noting recent events – BUG-231683 – in keeping with the request made at the last meeting, and this is now being investigated by members of the QA team.
Monty additionally noted other reports on crossings have also been filed and he is digging through them and the associated server-side logs.
User testing around BUG-231582 ” [Simplified Cache] Newly rezzed objects are invisible after relog under certain circumstances” suggests the issue is not cache related, but might be related to the Interest List, with it being noted the problem may have surfaced around the time back-end changes were made to the Interest List in preparation for the 360-degree viewer.
A question was asked on whether the tools update would impact anything with Key Frame Motion (KFM) behaviour on animations, with it being noted – anecdotally at this point in time – that the moving_end event seems to happen while the animation is still underway. None at the Lab appear to be aware as to why the updated server code should impact animation events, and a bug report has been requested if the issue is found to be reproducible.
The latter part of the meeting delving into a discussion involving a future implementation of HTTP/2, updates to libcurl, etc., and issues around them. Again, rather than me mangling things – please refer to the text in the video.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 