Author: Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

SL17B Meet Oz Linden – a summary with video and audio

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab
On Wednesday, June 24th, 2020 at the SL17B celebrations, the third of five Meet the Lindens sessions was held, featuring Oz Linden, the Lab’s Vice President of Engineering.

The following is a summary of the session covering the core topics raised, with selected audio extracts. The notes provided have been taken directly from the official video of the session, which is embedded at the end of this article. Time stamps to the video are also provided for ease of reference.

Note that this is a summary, not a full transcript, and items have been grouped by topic, so may not be presented chronologically when compared to the video.

 Table of Contents

Audio extracts, where included, have been cleaned-up and balanced to remove pauses, repetitions, etc.

In places, information that is supplementary to Oz’s comments is provided in square braces (.i.e. [ and ]) are used in the body text below to indicate where this is the case.

About Oz

  • Oz Linden

    Joined the company in 2010 specifically to take on the role of managing the open-source aspects of the Second Life viewer and managing the relationship with third-party viewers.

  • He came to Linden Lab out of a desire to do something “fun” after working in the telecommunication arena, notably with voice over IP systems (VOIP), which he defines as being “really interesting technology with some really fascinating challenge”, but in terms of it being fun, it really didn’t do what I wanted it to do.”
  • For the first two years of his time at the Lab, he was primarily focused on the open-source viewer work and in refining the overall viewer maintenance process, before his role started expanding to encompass more and more of the engineering side of Second Life.
  • When work on Sansar started in earnest, he pro-actively campaigned within the Lab for the role of  Technical Director for Second Life, working to build a team of technical staff around him who all shared a passion for Second Life.
  • In 2019 he was promoted to Vice President, Second Life Engineering (Vice President of Engineering following the sale of Sansar in early 2020), and joined the Lab’s management team alongside Grumpity and Patch Linden (see: Linden Lab’s management team expands: congrats to Grumpity, Patch and Oz).
  • Together with Grumpity and Patch, he forms what Grumpity calls the “troika” overseeing Second Life’s continued development.
  • Classifies his attraction to working with Second Life as perhaps falling into three core areas:
    • The open-source nature of the viewer and being directly involved with how SL users are using the viewer and what they do with it – which can often times take the Lab entirely by surprise.
    • The challenge of trying to implement new technologies alongside of (rather than simply replacing) older technologies.
    • Working with the operations team and others to ensure SL constantly evolves without (as far as is possible) breaking anything – a process he refers to and rebuilding the railway from a moving train.
  • Note that his avatar appears bald in the Meet the Lindens publicity shot at the top of this article, as he and his team participated in the 2020 Bid a Linden Bald event to raise money for RFL of SL, and has the team raising the least, that had to spend a month in-world sans hair.

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His Team

Has it Expanded Since the Sale of Sansar?

[Video: 4:47-5:48]

  • He did persuade a number of people to move back from Sansar to Second Life [those known to have moved back at the time were Runitai Linden (graphics) and Maestro Linden and Monty Linden (engineering), although they obviously may not be the only people to move / move back to work on Second Life].
  • Hiring of new staff has also continued [notable within this are Ptolemy Linden and Euclid Linden (graphics) and at least one Android development specialist].
  • At the time of the event, also looking to hire a further systems engineer working on the back-end Linux systems.

What Impact has the Pandemic Had?

[Video: 6:02-8:07]

  • “Pretty minimal”
  • The Engineering and Operations teams and his developers were already “pretty distributed”, with some of the teams working out of three of the Lab’s offices – Seattle, San Francisco and Boston – but around one-third to half of the total staff reporting to him (Oz included) have generally worked from home as “Moon Labbers” [the “Moon Lab” being LL’s term for remote working].
  • So teams already very familiar with remote working, operating across time zones and holding meetings in SL, as well as tools like video chat, and the transition for the rest has been “pretty much” seamless.
  • Probably the biggest impact is that the team isn’t getting together for their summer meet-up where they socialise and lay plans for future work on SL.

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Cloud Uplift

Why Is It Being Done?

[Video: 9:00-13:01]

  • Historically, Linden Lab has operated its systems and services the “traditional” way: dedicated hardware, and infrastructure running in dedicated facilities [at one time three data centres, but for the last several years a single co-location (co-lo) centre in Arizona].
  • Actually had to develop a lot of the methodologies the company now uses to manage all of the SL services simply as a result of the speed at which the platform initially grew, building capabilities for which there were no “standard” solutions.
  • Time has moved on, and Amazon and others have developed the means for systems and services to be run / provisioned through the cloud. These services allow Linden Lab to leverage a range of options and capabilities in a number of ways.
  • A particular aspect of the move is that LL no longer has to invest time, effort and money into hardware and infrastructure, but can essentially hand these off to AWS, allowing them to concentrate on SL’s operations and development.
  • With hardware in particular, it has been a number of years since the Lab upgraded their servers, so transitioning to the cloud avoids an expensive capital expenditure in new hardware, and similar expenditures in the future.  For example:
    • In the current environment, if the Bake Service [a collection of servers use by the Lab to generate and manage avatar appearances and ensure they are consistent across viewers] needed upgrading to more powerful servers, LL would have to acquire, test and implement that hardware, and then transition the Bake Service to it.
    • Running via the cloud means picking the required hardware from a catalogue provided by Amazon, who then take care of the heavy lifting to ensure the Bake Service works as required on the selected hardware.
  • Overall, the priority of the work is such that the three goals Oz has set himself : Uplift, Uplift, Uplift.

How is the Uplift Progressing?

[Video: 16:46-19:05]

  • It’s stressful but going well.
  • All of the inventory databases were successfully moved several months ago – twice, in fact: first to the cloud, then to a different type of cloud server. This work was completed so successfully, users were not even aware of any change.
  • The intermediary service sitting between the inventory database and the viewer was also successfully transitioned to AWS. It has also been running for “some time now”, again without users noting any difference.
  • A lot of the back-end services that users never directly interact with have also been successful transitioned
  • There is still a lot of work to do, but the plan is to have Second Life “out of the co-lo by the end of the year”.

Continue reading “SL17B Meet Oz Linden – a summary with video and audio” →

Name Changes update: new last name options released

Posted on by Inara Pey
© Linden Lab

On June 16th, I reported on the announcement that the first set of last names for the Premium Names Changes capability would be “retired” (i.e. removed from the list of options) at the end of Wednesday, June 24th, 2020.

Those names: Alpaca, Covfefe, Damballar, Float, Jazzhands, Mainsail, Nimble, Piggins, Plumday, and Yeetly – have all now gone from list of available last names.

They have, as of Thursday, June 25th, 2020, been replaced by a new set of names that have been added to the list of available last names. These are:

Vortex – Fluffpaw – Sassypants – Amethyst – Bloodrose – Aurelia – Starlight

In addition, and as announced by Linden Lab at the launch of the above last name options, there are three additional last names added to the list to mark Second Life’s 17th anniversary theme. These are:

Wayfarer – Rover – Wanderer

These three names will only remain available through until the name round of updates, at which time they will be retired.

Name Changes was introduced in April 2020, providing Second Life Premium subscribers with a fee-based ability to change both the first name and last name for their avatar / account.  If you are unfamiliar with the capability, you can read more here: Second Life: the return of last names, and some notes.

 

Indie pop musician showcases Second Life music video

Posted on by Inara Pey
Katie Dey (l) released Dancing, a track from her new album myData on June 24th, 2020, which uses a machinima recorded in Second Life, filmed by Devi McCallion (r)

Katie Dey, an Australian indie pop musician whose music covers the genres of experimental pop, psychedelia, and bedroom pop, is set to release her fourth album on July 24th.

Announced by Fader magazine, myData is described as:

An album-length exploration of a long-distance relationship that unravels into an epic about love, connection, and all the strange, unruly factors that surround those things, from capitalism to sex to internet servers. 

– Shaad D’Souza, writing in Fader

However, what is particularly interesting about the album is that the first track to be released from it on June 24th, 2020, and entitled Dancing, features a music video shot entirely in Second Life.

The video has been written and directed by another indie pop singer, songwriter and producer, Devi McCallion – perhaps most famous for her association with Black Dresses – with the assistance of Sofa (yogurt 200). Both the song – seen as something of a “striking new sound” for Dey – and the the video, are already garnering a positive response.

I’ve no idea if Katie Dey is a regular Second Life user, but she certainly appears familiar with some of the technical challenges in producing a video of this kind, commenting to D’Souza that:

This video was made entirely in Second Life, and I hope when people watch it they think about just how much work it would take to do that. If you’ve ever played that game you know how difficult it is to even control the camera, let alone create a whole world, with such incredible characters, such breathtaking cinematography.

Created remotely, across countries, in a pandemic, on a dying laptop, their lives in utter chaos, the world in chaos… I hope people cry about these beautiful characters, and then cry about the beautiful humans that put so much love and care into creating them. Anyway, the song is about dancing. Like, metaphysical dancing, I guess.

– Katie Dey to Shaad D’Souza for Fader

Video maker Devi McCallion, however, does appear to be something of a Second Life user. In May 2020 she hosted her own first-ever DJ set in-world, which can be seen on her You Tube channel, and some of her other videos contain elements that may have been filmed in-world as well.

I reached out to Brett Linden to enquire if Linden Lab were in any way involved in the video’s development – but it was apparently produced entirely independently.

I would love to say that we were involved, but we weren’t! It was completely organic and a pleasant surprise to us.

– Brett Linden, Senior Director, Marketing, Linden Lab

Catch the video below – my thanks to Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg for the pointer.

 

The maps (and more!) of Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery: Second Life Maps

When listening to the SL17B Meet the Lindens Session with Patch Linden, I was given cause to recall Juliana Lethdetter’s outstanding Maps of Second Life, on display at her New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery.

It’s a place I last wrote about long ago in the dim and misty days of 2012 (see: Charting the growth of Second Life), and so has been long overdue for further coverage in these pages.

New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery: Second Life Maps

For those unfamiliar with this particular gallery, it is a labour of love that brings together just about every style of map of Second Life that has ever been produced – and provides a wealth of information besides.

The maps start from the earliest days of Second Life – 2002 – and run through to almost the present. It encompasses “official” maps, those produced by SL cartographers depicting the Second Life Mainland continents, and specialist maps charting air routes, airports, the SL railways, specific estates. Not only are they informative, some stand as works of art in their own right, as with the map of Nautilus, below.

New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery: Second Life Maps

Alongside of the maps is a veritable treasure trove of information that any Second Life historian is liable to fine mouth-watering, as well as a certain amount of practical information poking at the technical intricacies of the platform. You can, for example, look back to 2007 and see why Anshe Chung became the first “SLebrity”, appearing on the cover of CNN’s Business week as her Dreamland “empire” as it stood at the time shown in all its glory. Or you can take a peek at Second Life as it stood in March of that year – a time when it had in total roughly the same number of private and Mainland regions as Mainland has on its own today.

Elsewhere, you can look back on Second life Birthday celebrations of the past, the gallery featuring SL12B, one of the celebratory events organised entirely by residents and referred to as the Second life Birthday Community Events (2012 through  2018), when Linden Lab completely stepped back from direct involvement in the event’s annual planning and execution. Or you can catch up on the very latest acquisitions for the gallery, such as Rydia Lacombe’s map of SL railways I recently wrote about (see: Mapping Second Life’s mainland railways).

New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery: Second Life Maps

The latter underscores the point that this is a living museum / exhibition. Since my original article on the gallery, Juliana has continued to curate and grow the exhibits on display, growing to incorporate further items of interest new locations in Second Life, as well as retaining those special items of SL history like the guide to the legend of Magellan Linden.

Thus, as well as the railway map noted above some of the elements that have been added since my last piece include a display of other map resources in Second Life, which includes information on David Rumsey’s excellent collection to physical world maps (see: If maps are your thing, Rumsey’s the king!), while maps and images of Bellisseria ensure the gallery is right up-to-date with the growth of Second Life continents.

New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery: Second Life Maps

What makes this exhibition especially worthwhile is the sheer depth of information presented. Individual maps / displays are presented around the walls of the gallery with large information panels alongside or under them, complete with citations, while gear icons provide further access to information – note cards, landmarks, links to external web pages, and so on. All of which makes this a first-class practical resource.

If you’ve never visited the New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery, then regardless of your level of interest in Second Life history or maps in general, I really cannot recommend it enough. It is guaranteed to captivate, and is a genuinely educational visit. And while there, please do use the books on the landing point to visit other points of interest in the region.

New Kadath Lighthouse Art Gallery: Second Life Maps

SLurl Details

SL17B Meet Patch Linden – a summary with video and audio

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab
On Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020 at the SL17B celebrations, the second of five Meet the Lindens sessions was held, featuring Patch Linden, the Lab’s Vice President of Product Operations.

The following is a summary of the session covering the core topics raised, with selected audio extracts. The notes provided have been taken directly from the official video of the session, which is embedded at the end of this article. Time stamps to the video are also provided for ease of reference.

Note that this is a summary, not a full transcript, and items have been grouped by topic, so may not be presented chronologically when compared to the video.

Audio extracts, where included, have been cleaned-up and balanced to remove pauses, repetitions, etc.

 Table of Contents

In places, information that is supplementary to Patch’s comments is provided in square braces (.i.e. [ and ]) are used in the body text below to indicate where this is the case.

A Note about the New Linden Homes Theme Announcement

The session included discussion (notably in the last 15 minutes) on the new Linden Homes theme unveiled at SL17B immediately after Patch’s Meet the Linden Session. These elements of the session are not reported here simply because people can now see the theme for themselves. Instead, I refer readers to Second Life: looking at the new Linden Homes Stilt theme in this blog.

The Linden Stilt Home preview region at SL17B – see Second Life: looking at the new Linden Homes Stilt theme for more

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About Patch

  • Originally a Second Life resident and business owner who joined the platform in 2004, and became a Linden in 2007.
  • Initially worked as a support agent and then as a support liaison. From there he moved to the Concierge team, eventually becoming that team’s manager.
  • Shifted focus to the role of Operations Support Manager for a year, then moved to the Product group, the team responsible for defining the features, etc., found within Second Life.
  • At Product he developed the Land Operations team, which includes the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW).
  • In 2018, he established the company’s support office in Atlanta, Georgia.
  • In 2020 he oversaw the move to larger office space in Atlanta, although the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic means the new premises have yet to be used.
  • In 2019 he was promoted to Vice President, Product Operations, and joined the Lab’s management team alongside Grumpity and Oz Linden (see: Linden Lab’s management team expands: congrats to Grumpity, Patch and Oz).
  • Together with Grumpity and Oz, he forms what Grumpity calls the “troika” overseeing Second Life’s continued development.
  • In his management team role, Patch continues to oversee all of the Lab’s user support operations (some 5 teams), including the LDPW.
  • Despite his longevity at the Lab, his is not the longest-serving Linden, nor is he the “oldest” resident-turned-Linden.

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Working with the Pandemic

[Video: 3:07-4:48]

  • His teams have not really been impacted by the pandemic. LL is a remote-friendly company.
  • As a result the company has always thought outside of the box in leveraging their own product as a work tool – running team meetings in-world, etc., – as well as running more “traditional” tools like Slack, Discord, etc.
  • Patch himself started at the Lab as a remote employee, and worked as such for around a decade prior to developing the Atlanta office.

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What are the Most Significant SL Changes You’ve Seen?

[Video: 5:19-8:17]

  • Changes in avatar appearance – particularly when looking back at old snapshots.
  • The arrival of different types of new content.
  • Adding Voice to Second life [2007], which was probably one of the “bigger ground-breaking changes for Second Life as a virtual world”.
  • Admits to have probably having forgotten more than he can remember, and even today is still learning – such as only recently discovering the ability to completely disable the viewer’s UI in world view [CTRL-SHIFT-U (or ALT-SHIFT-U for Firestorm) – also toggles the UI back on].

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Bakes on Mesh and Personal Business

[Video: 8:27-9:40]

  • As a resident, used to run a fashion business for male avatars.
  • Still has the inventory, but has not updated the clothing styles in years.
  • Has “tinkered” with Bakes on Mesh to see if it works with his system clothing designs, but does not intend to convert them for use with Bakes on Mesh and flood the market, as styles now too old.
  • Has found the “playing” with Bakes on Mesh to see what does / doesn’t work with older system clothing to be interesting.

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Bellisseria and Linden Homes

What is the Most Popular Linden Home Theme?

[Video: 11:21-13:05]

  • Probably the Victorian theme, although the Log and Houseboat themes run it a close second.
  • It’s hard to separate into “most popular” as the demand for all of the themes has been equal. For example, even through the Traditional theme are currently fully occupied [and presumably no plans for further deployments at this time] – there is still demand for them.
  • The 4,400 introductory release of Log Homes was filled quickly. Since then, the Monday / Wednesday / Friday region releases have been taken up almost as soon as they are made available.

Plans to Link Continents / Retire Old Linden Homes

[Video: 13:13-16:03]

  • [Note: Bellisseria already now links Sansara and Joegeot.]
  • As the Linden Home continent(s) continue(s) to be built out and possibly be split up for diversity), then it / they may well continue to connect continents.
  • However, as this is done, LL wants to ensure that continents are connected where it makes sense to do so.
  • Overall plan is that as the new continent(s) gain occupancy, to eventually start shutting down the old Linden Home mini continents or at least compressing them, to free-up resources.
  • This point hasn’t quite been reached, as there is still occupancy across the mini continents either because people are waiting to try to obtain a new home of their choice, or because they may not actually be aware of the new home, depending on their log-in frequency.
  • However, even with the old style Linden Homes being retired in time, their themes may not necessarily be forgotten.

Was the Popularity of the New Homes Anticipated?

[Video: 18:04-20:16]

  • Knew they were going to be “super popular”, so tried to put out as much as possible without overly delaying the project as a whole.
  • Striking the balance is hard: on the one hand, foreknowledge of popularity dictates making a bigger initial offering – but how big? On the other, delaying the deployment means sitting on something that people could otherwise be enjoying.
  • As it was, in April 2019, he felt there was sufficient quality and options in home to launch the product. This has allowed LL / LDPW to continue to improve the overall process of provisioning and deploying Linden Homes.
  • This is reflected in the major release cadence from 700-1,000 in initial releases to 2,800 and then 4,400. When it comes, the Stilt Homes initial release will likely be 4,000-5,000 units.

Continue reading “SL17B Meet Patch Linden – a summary with video and audio” →

Second Life: looking at the new Linden Homes Stilt theme

Posted on by Inara Pey
The new linden Stilt Homes (r-l) Tortuga, Havana and 2-storey Lauderdale

On Tuesday, June 23rd, while speaking at the SL17B Meet the Lindens event, Patch Linden announced the next theme of Linden Home that is being lined up for release: Stilt Homes, designed to be placed in coastal setting, their stilts allowing them to sit on land, over water or between the two.

Once available – the new houses are currently only available for preview at SL17B – will again come in four styles, and will occupy 1024 sq m parcels. When they are released, they will become the sixth type of new Linden Homes to be made available over the last 18 months, with two further themes already in preparation.

The new theme is … stilt homes. They take their inspiration from south-eastern US geographical areas that basically are Floridian shore-side stilt home communities that tend to pop-in in low-lying and potentially even hurricane prone areas. Generally, they’re fairly brightly coloured; they have fairly good-sized open concept floor designs, and we’re going to offer them in three different variants. There will be an over water variant of the home, a partial version of the home that could rest over land and water. and there will be an inland version of the home, all on stilts no matter what because – you know – when the hurricane comes though you certainly don’t want to be on the ground when the flooding happens!

– Patch Linden, SL17B, describing the new Linden Home theme

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The new theme comprises the following styles of home:

The Lauderdale: a two-floor unit with two large down stairs rooms, open with front door opening to a full length front porch with roof over, and sliding doors to the rear opening to a rear deck-come-dock. Central stairs lead up to an enclosed landing area with bedrooms either side, one with views to the front and rear, and the other with views to the front and side and sliding doors to a large verandah with roof over at the rear of the house.

The Havana: is single-storey 3-roomed, cross-shaped house with central front-to-back room providing access to front covered porch and rear covered deck. One side room also offers access to the deck-come-dock, and with windows to front and side aspect. Remaining room has windows to front, rear and side aspects.

The Santiago: a two-storey house with ½-porch with verandah over to the front, and an open-plan ground floor presenting space for two rooms, the larger of which has a bay window to the front and sliding doors to the rear opening onto full length deck, sans dock. A dog-leg staircase leads up to a central landing with sliding doors to the front verandah, and two bedrooms. The first bedroom is a full front-to back room with windows to the front and rear. The second bedroom has windows to the front bay and side aspect, and sliding doors serving a rear private verandah.

The Tortuga: a single-storey house with offset main room to one side with front door to a small covered front porch and sliding doors to the rear deck-come-dock. A second room, also with access to the deck / dock opens off of this, together with windows to the rear / side aspect. A small room sits to the front of the house with windows to the front aspect.

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The theme itself has been a lot of fun to design and develop. We took a lot of plant life from that area and created it to be true to that geographical zone of the United States as well as varying out transportation capabilities between road and dock as well as waterway and such. And the thing I’m particularly excited about is that the home that are over water will marry up to and against regions that are also specific to houseboats. So this is going to give us a new ability to segue from area to area between the stilt homes portions of the continents to also adding on more houseboat regions out and around these continent sections that we’re planning on putting out. 

– Patch Linden, SL17B

A view of an “inland” group of Stilt Homes – Santiago to the left, Lauderdale centre

All four styles of home look like they can be used over land or water; those over land appear to have steps down to the ground from the front porch, with perhaps room to squeeze a car under them. As Patch notes the landscaping is tropical coastal and modelled on that of Florida. The houses with water parcels are either connected by sun washed board walks back to dry land and which can also provide social spaces, or – at least in the demo region – sit entirely surrounded by water, which is an interesting approach.

There is something of the Traditional Homes look to these stilt homes, so much so, that with a casual initial glance, you might be forgiven for thinking that they are “traditional homes on legs”. However, once examined, it becomes clear this similarity is more passing than anything else; something that gives these houses something of a hook into past Linden Homes designs whilst also  – thanks to the large deck spaces and mix of land / water locations – being something completely unique.

The “offshore” Stilt Homes at the SL17B preview region – Havana in the foreground, and Lauderdale towards the centre

Given there desk and docks, the theme also appears to have the largest general footprint of the Linden Home released to date, which might cause problems for those wishing to moor a large type of boat alongside one. Even so, I have to admit that this is the first theme that – once available – might tempt me into giving up my houseboat and trying to snag one that sits in its own “offshore” parcel. Although that said, it would be nice to see a theme that isn’t another aspect of Americana – the rest of the world has house styles to offer, after all!

SLurl to Preview Region

(only available while the SL17B regions are live)