Category: Linden Lab

A further look at Tilia and their new client, Upland

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab / Tilia

In preparing my piece on Tilia and the changes coming to US dollar transactions related to Second Life (see: Tilia Pay to handle all Second Life USD-related transactions), I had the opportunity to take a look at the updated website for Tilia Inc., Linden Lab’s wholly owned subsidiary.

For those who may not be familiar with it, Tilia Inc, was established by Linden Lab in 2014, and focused on payments and the compliance work associated with operating virtual economies, including Second Life and Sansar. And now, as shown within the updated Tilia website, it is to provide its services to its first client not to have a direct link to Linden Lab, the property trading game Upland.

For those unfamiliar with Upland (I was until I looked them up), available via browsers and on Android and iOS, it is a trading game in which players buy, develop, sell and / or trade virtual properties that are based on real-world addresses.

The Upland… mascot(?)

Currently focused on the city of San Francisco, Upland is built on the EOS blockchain protocol. It entered a closed beta in June 2019, which ran through until the end of that year. During that period, the company added their own virtual currency – UPX – in August of that year, which users could collect as a reward and in return for collecting properties.

At the start of 2020, the game entered an open beta available to any wishing to play it, and added the ability for users to purchase UPX using selected cryptocurrencies.

The partnership with Tilia means that from later in 2020, Upland will be adding the ability for users to trade their virtual properties (and, I understand, goods associated with those properties) for fiat money (this is, US dollar values), through the Upland marketplace and to cash-out those US dollars, with Tilia Pay being the mechanism by which they do so.

In add the use of fiat money is seen as providing a further layer of value to the game, as Upland’s co-founder Dirk Lueth explained to VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi in an article that went to press while I was drafting this piece:

By using fiat currency, Upland can stay in compliance with money transmission regulations in the U.S. And in this way, players can actually own the digital goods and properties they buy in Upland … If the game ever shuts down, the players will theoretically be able to take their property and move it elsewhere, in contrast to other games where players don’t really own the objects that they build or trade.

It is Tilia’s ability to provide services fully in compliance with U.S. regulatory requirements, including anti-money laundering, sanctions monitoring, and fraud prevention that could well make it a popular potential partner among companies offering their users to buy / sell virtual goods, as it provides said companies with the ability for their users (and themselves ) to profit in real terms from such virtual transactions.

I’d actually first speculated on the potential for Tilia being used by companies other than the Lab itself back in November 2015. It was was a subject I returned to again in July 2019, again referencing comments made to me in 2015 by the Lab’s former Director of Global Communications, Peter Gray:

Peter’s [2015] statement struck me as interesting in that its structure seemed to suggest that supporting Second Life and Sansar (then still “Project Sansar”) was part of, but also separate to, the overall goal of presenting Tilia as an entity focused on providing a robust payments and compliance system for operating (and managing) virtual economies to third parties.

– This blog, July 2019

More recently, Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg made it clear we would be seeing a growing client list for Tilia at a couple of public events, include the 2020 VWBPE Above The Book session in commenting about Sansar’s future, he also referenced Tilia.

We’re partners with them [Wookey Project Corp] because they’re using Tilia for payments / payouts just like Second Life is doing, and Tilia will have more and more customers over time. We have several of them lined up to be integrated to get those payment services.

– Ebbe Altberg, March 2020

As such, it will be interesting to see who else opts to leverage Tilia / Tilia Pay in support of their platform / game / product in the coming months / year.

In terms of Tilia itself, the website offers a view of the management team – perhaps the first since Vick Forcella helped me with digging into the early days of the company as a Linden Lab subsidiary in November 2015.  Back then, Tilia’s management team was pretty broad, encompassing multiple members of the Lab’s management team, and a small board of three.

Today, the management team is down to three people – Aston Waldman (the Lab’s CFO), Emily Stonehouse (the Lab’s Chief Compliance Officer) and Ray Johnson (the Lab’s VP of Engineering). Aston Waldman is also a member of Tilia’s board, alongside of Kelly Conway (Linden Lab’s former General Council), and fintech compliance and product leader Ben Duranske (the only “non-Linden”, so to speak).

The Tilia Management team and board. Top: Aston Waldman (Tilia CEO and board member as well as Linden Lab’s CFO); Emily Stonehouse (Chief Compliance Officer at Tilia Inc and LL); Ray Johnson (VP Engineering for LL and Tilia) – the management team. Bottom: board members Kelly Conway and Ben Duranske

Also included on the site are a couple of press articles that cover the threat of money laundering through on-line games, helping to further explain the value of services such as those provided by Tilia, and both of which make for interesting reading.

I’ll continue to report on Tilia as news becomes available.

Related Links

 

Second Life: Tilia Pay to handle all USD-related transactions

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

In July 2019, Tilia Incorporated, a wholly owned subsidiary of Linden Lab, officially took over the management of activities such as processing credit out of second Life (that is, withdrawing funds as US dollar balances the platform), and and US dollar balances held by Second Life users (see: Tilia has officially launched operations with Second Life*, August 2019).

Now, in an expansion of Tilia’s role with Second Life, Linden Lab has announced that as from Monday, May 26th, Tilia Inc, via its Tilia Pay service, will be managing all US dollar transactions related to Second Life, including those involving conversion of funds to other currencies.

This means that, as from Monday, May 26th, anyone:

  • Making a payment through one of their indicated payment methods – credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Skrill (as indicated on their Second Life account), such as purchasing Linden dollars.
  • Adding a new payment method to their Second Life account.

Will be consenting to the Tilia Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

The change is being driven to both comply with regulatory requirements across a number of U.S. states and to leverage he enhanced fraud and money laundering safeguards that Tilia Pay provides.

The important things to note here are:

  • All Second Life users should be familiar with the Tilia Terms of Service (and Not just those who have either a US dollar balance associated with their account and / or cash-out money from SL).
  • Users will not be explicitly asked to confirm their agreement with the Tilia ToS / Privacy Policy. Rather, when paying with a payment method (e.g. credit card) or adding a new payment method to an account, a users will see text stating that by proceeding with the transaction, they are agreeing to both the ToS and Privacy Policy.
  • This move does not:
    • Introduce any new fees.
    • Require users to submit any additional information to Tilia Incorporated or Linden Lab.
    • Change how L$ transactions are conducted in the Viewer or in the Marketplace.

Readers are asked to read the Lab’s official blog post on the change for further information relating to it. In addition, questions or concerns should be directed to the forum thread on the matter – questions cannot be officially answered through this blog.

Related Links

Lab Gab 23 summary: meet the EEP team!

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 23rd edition of Lab Gab live streamed on Friday, April 24, featuring Rider Linden, Ptolemy Linden and Euclid Linden, who between them form the core team behind the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP), officially released by Linden Lab on Monday, April 20th.

The official video of the segment is available via You Tube, and is embedded at the end of this article. The following is a summary of the key topics discussed and responses to questions asked.

Rider Linden is a Senior Software Engineer who has been with Linden Lab for just over five years – although his familiarity with Second Life goes back beyond that, as he is one of the many personnel LL have recruited from the ranks of Second Life users. He was responsible for initially defining the EEP project. He then went on to develop the viewer controls for EEP, taking considerable feedback from users along the way, as well as working with the rendering team during the project’s development. More recently, he has transitioned over the the simulator team, working on that side of the SL and routinely attending the Simulator User Group meetings.

Ptolemy Linden and Euclid Linden are more recent hires at the Lab, both are working on the rendering side of Second Life. Both have been Lindens for around 6-7 months, and have really cut their teeth as Lindens whilst working on EEP. Neither was a resident prior to joining the Lab, and both are now looking forward to tackling more graphics-related work within the viewer.

Euclid, Rider and Ptolemy Linden will be joined Strawberry Linden to discuss EEP

What Is EEP?

EEP is a set of environmental enhancements for Second Life that supersede th use of Windlight XML files. The primary aim of the project was to make lighting / atmospheric / water environments easier to create and use within Second Life and extend the ability to customise them to the parcel level. In brief EEP:

  • Uses environment objects that you can keep in your inventory and / or share with others – including selling (subject to the SL permissions system) via in-world stores and on the Marketplace.
  • Provides parcel-level control of environments.
  • Allows up to four different, independently controlled sky layers.
  • Allows custom textures for the Sun, Moon and clouds.
  • Provides an extended day cycle of up to 168 hours (thus allowing a 7-day, 24-hour day / night cycle to be defined, for example).
  • Means that as environments settings are simulator-side, and so by default are automatically seen by anyone using any EEP enabled viewer on entering the region / estate / parcel.
  • Still allows the use of “personal” settings seen only be the use applying them, for the purposes of photography, machinima, etc.
  • Provides additional LSL controls for environments.

EEP Q&A

Unresolved Issues

EEP was promoted to release status with 75 issues on the viewer listed as “unresolved” (viewer version 6.4.0.540188). Will LL continue to work to resolve these?

  • LL was focused on clearing what were considered to be major / severe issues with the system before releasing.
  • Remaining issues are viewed as annoyance / edge cases rather than things that prevent EEP from being used. These will be cleared up as time allows, but not within what might be considered a dedicated EEP project at this point in time.
  • The exception to this will be any issue which proves to be a continuing problem for users in trying to use EEP, and which becomes a source of widespread forum complaint and / or the subject of bug reports.

Can the EEP UI Elements be Reduced in Size?

Several of the EEP UI elements take up a lot of screen real estate. Can these be reduced in size in future viewers / altered so that they can be resized by users?

  • There is a wider project at the Lab to revisit a lot of the viewer UI.
  • The EEP UI elements will like fall under this work.

Can EEP Settings be Applied via a Drop-down List, Rather than Attached?

  • No, as they are contained in inventory assets.
  • However, there is another broader than EEP project to look at inventory in general, and providing the means for users to preview EEP items which may, as it matures, help.

Does EEP Affect Teleports / Region Crossings?

(Asked as a result of the April 21st issues, which were not EEP related, but part of wider Internet issues within the United States).

  • Not at all.
  • The simulators have been supporting EEP for over a year thus far.
  • The additional data carried through  TP  / region crossing due to an applied EEP asset is minimal.
  • Transitions in EEP are handle very fast, and shouldn’t interfere with physical region crossings in vehicles [it has been noted at Simulator User Group meeting that if you are travelling fast enough to pass from region to region to region before EEP can fully transition from the first the the second environment, it will skip the second and go directly to rendering the third].

Further Information on EEP

Does EEP Work on TPVs?

  • As the code is adopted by them, yes.

Will In-World Objects Need Updating to Look Right Under EEP?

  • A lot of time has been spent by the Lab trying to ensure that EEP renders objects as closely as possible to how they look under Windlight.
  • It’s note entirely one-to-one in all situations, and there may be some subtle differences. However, the hope is that for the majority of objects, EEP shouldn’t present a significantly different look.
  • If there are significant breakages in how some object look, the request is for creators to raise a bug report JIRA on them (and provide a sample to the Lab, if possible / requested).

How Can EEP Settings / Object be Created? Can they be Sold?

  • EEP settings / assets can be created in inventory with EEP-enabled viewers and experimented with.
    • For EEP viewer, the Library includes a group of settings (Library → Environments) that can be copied to Inventory and then edited and experimented with / used.
Creating a new EEP asset via the + button (1) or via right-clicking on the Settings folder and the selecting the required asset type from the create menu > My Settings option (2)

Can I Use My Old Windlights with EEP?

  • Windlight settings cannot be used directly with EEP. Windlight used XML files external to the viewer; EEP uses settings contained with SL inventory assets.
  • Windlight settings can be imported into EEP however.
Use the Import button in the edit floater to open a file picker and select the windlight to be imported

Will There Be More Rendering / Graphics Improvements for SL?

  • Rendering enhancement are on-going (e.g. via the Love Me Render project, which periodically releases RC viewers with rendering updates and fixes).
  • Id there is something specific you would like to see, please raise a feature request for consideration.

WILL SL Ever Have A New Rendering Engine?

  • Second Life cannot really adopt a commercial rendering engine, as the platform is too highly adopted to the user-generated content in-world.
  • However, as noted, it is actively being worked on for improvements, and this includes removing legacy code where it is no longer required.
    • An example of this is the EEP viewer code removes the ability to turn off the basic shaders in the viewer.
  • There are certain imperatives that are driving some system changes related to the rendering engine – such as Apple discontinuing support for OpenGL.
  • Trying to re-engineer SL to use a commercial engine also simply doesn’t make sense, as it would mean “throwing away” all that has been developed so far and practically re-engineering SL from the ground up.

 

Lab Gab 20 summary: Second Life cloud uplift & more

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 20th edition of Lab Gab live streamed on Friday, April 3rd, featuring Oz Linden, the Lab’s Vice President of Engineering and a member of the company’s management team, and April Linden, the Lab’s Systems Engineering Manager. They were appearing to primarily discuss the work in transitioning Second Life to commercial cloud environments. Ekim Linden had also been scheduled to appear, but was unable to do so.

The official video of the segment is available via You Tube, and is embedded at the end of this article. The following is a summary of the key topics discussed and responses to questions asked. Note that the first half of the video is related to the cloud uplift, and the second half to broader engineering-related questions.

April Linden has some 20 years of experience in systems engineering, and is genuinely passionate about Second Life. She first became involved in the platform in 2006 as a resident (and is still extremely active as a resident). She joined the Lab in 2013. She worked within the systems engineering team, and was promoted to her current position of Systems Engineering Manager, Operations, some 18 months ago. For her, the great attraction of the platform has been, and remains, the empowerment it gives people to express themselves positively.

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, a role that fully engaged him during the first two years of his time at the Lab. His role then started expanding to encompass more and more of the engineering side of Second Life, leading to his currently senior position within the company.

Both are genuinely passionate and enthusiastic about Second Life and its users.

The bunny and the wizard who bring us Second Life: April Linden (Systems Engineering Manager, Operations) and Oz Linden (Vice President, Second Life Engineering)

The Cloud Uplift

What is It?

[5:40-9:45]

  • Cloud Uplift is the term Linden Lab use for transitioning all of Second Life’s server-based operations and services from their own proprietary systems and services housed within a single co-location data centre in Tucson, Arizona, to  commercial cloud services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google.
  • The process of moving individual services to the cloud is called “lift and shift” – take each element of software, making the required adjustments so it can run within a cloud computing environment, then relocate it to cloud infrastructure and hardware in a manner that allows it to keep running and avoids disruptions that may impact users, and continues to run exactly as it did prior to the transfer.
  • The current plan is to have all of this work – up to an including moving all of the SL region simulators – to cloud services by the end of 2020.
  • Numerous services have been transitioned to date.
    • The Lab generally prefers not to discussion which specific services have been moved, to prevent users seeing the move as a placebo reason for issues they may be encountering, thus biasing their bug reports.
    • However, one service that is known to have moved is the inventory (asset) database, so that all users’ inventories are obtained via the cloud, and not from a dedicated asset cluster within the Lab’s co-lo facility.
  • With the services that have moved, the Lab has seen noticeable improvements in performance, partially as a result of cloud services using more recently / more powerful hardware configurations than the Lab can run without making a major new capital expenditure in equipment (which the uplift is intended to avoid).
  • A practical advantage of cloud operations is the ability for LL to scale services to meet demand.  The recent increase in users logging-in to SL, for example, placed a strain on the services that feed the CDNs that in turn deliver the majority of asset data to users (mesh data, textures, sounds, gestures, clothing, etc.). These services we then able to dynamically scale to an increased number of nodes to handle the load, something LL would not have been able to do without first sourcing, installing ans configuring the required hardware.
Oz and April with Strawberry Linden (c)

What Improvements Might Users See from the Uplift?

[9:48-14:42]

  • Between now and the end of 2020, no appreciable different should be observable to users.
  • The move is initially being made to a single AWS centre, so things like ping times to regions (once they are moved) shouldn’t change.
  • In terms of reducing simulator-side lag, the answer is unclear, as simulators have yet to be tested – this is due to start with simulators internal to the Lab Soon™. This will enable the Lab to begin to get real numbers in terms of simulator performance.
    • It is believed that simply moving simulators to the more recent, more powerful hardware used by cloud services should on its own result in a modest improvement in simulator performance.
    • That said, the outcome of performance adjustments in distributed environments is “really, really hard to predict”.
  • Longer-term, as the Lab is able to start exploiting the advantages of being in the cloud, there is confidence performance will improved in various areas.
    • For example, if simulators can be distributed in accordance with the geographical locations of their primary audiences (e.g. simulators that tend to get the majority of their audience from South America being located in South America), then this could reduce network time in connecting to them for those audiences, and so help boost performance as seen by those users.
    • While this is a longer-term goal for the cloud migration (it’s not going to be there from “day 1”), it is a part of the motivation to make the transition.

How will the Lab Handle Costs?

[14:45-18:40]

Sidebar note: cloud services typically bill based on demand and usage. This has given rise in some quarters to concerns / beliefs that LL could find themselves facing unexpected large bills for hosting.

  • Two answers: the first is nothing is ever certain.
  • The second is, the Lab, with April and Ekim in particular leading the effort, put a lot of work into modelling their likely operations and costs when using cloud services and infrastructure.
    • This work involved a lot of assumptions on how LL anticipated their costs would look based on how the planned to operate SL in a the cloud.
    • This model was then put to both AWS and to an independent, outside consultancy with expertise in advising clients on the use of cloud-base service provisioning, both of who gave positive feedback on the approach the Lab would be taking and the likely costs involved.
  • Further, the fact that SL isn’t a service that dynamically expands under use. All of its services are operating 24/7, so the costs can be readily calculated and pretty much consistent, therefore, the dynamic surges that can lead to high service bills don’t actually apply.
  • While there are some back-end services that can leverage dynamic hardware use in times of heavy load, these are in the minority (all of SL’s back-end services account for only 15% of its server fleet), so again, dynamic increases in hardware use for those services that can leverage it, are not going to be massively excessive.
  • As such, and allowing for answer (1), the Lab isn’t overly concerned about costs spiralling.

Will There Be Cost Saving that Can Be Passed to Users?

[18:41-19:54]

  • Unfortunately, the engineering teams are not responsible for determining fees charged to users.
  • More practically, it is not going to be possible to make any informed judgements on costs to users until the Lab has had the opportunity to see how actual operating costs compare with their predicted costs model.
  • Further, it is not anticipated that any cost savings will be made in the first 1-2 years of cloud uplift, so any decisions on if and where to reduce costs to users won’t be made for a a while to come, and those involved in making such decisions are not in the engineering teams.
Pages: 1 2

Sansar’s sale and Tilia Inc: Ebbe Altberg reveals more on both

Posted on by Inara Pey

Speaking at the Above the Book session at the 2020 Virtual Worlds Brest Practices in Education conference on March 26th, and again during the Lab Gab episode 19 segment that aired on Friday, March 27th, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg revealed more about the about the sale of Sansar and the future of that platform. Also during the VWBPE session, he revealed something of the future path for Tilia Inc, the Lab’s subsidiary company.

The following is an amalgam of his comments during both sessions, complete with a quotes, audio extracts from the VWBPE Above the Book session, references to source material and supporting links.

Sansar’s Sale

Summary

The decision to sell Sansar came, at least in part, from the recognition that as a platform, it lay at a very different stage of its evolution compared to Second Life, requiring different investment and resourcing¹.

With the decision made, the Sansar team were apparently given the freedom to attempt to raise money / seek interested parties in order to keep the platform going (hence, perhaps, Ebbe Altberg’s February 12th comment that the former Sansar team were involved in discussions concerning the platform’s future – see the quote in Sansar: lay-offs, rumours, and confusion, February 12th, 2020)².

As it is, with the sale of Sansar, some 30 members of the team have (so far?) received offers to join Wookey Project Corp, and as of the March 27th Lab Gab session, “a bunch of them” are back to work¹. In support of this, I noted in a recent blog post that Sansar’s Community Manager, Galileo, appears to already be part of the Wookey Sansar team, having posted the Sansar blog post referenced below. Further, both Sheri Bryant and Julia Munck, formerly Sansar’s General Manager and Sansar’s VP of Product respectively at Linden Lab, have departed the company – presumably to join Wookey Project Corp.

It appears that the focus for the platform will potentially remain on it being a platform for large scale virtual events in the music / entertainment sectors, and that both desktop and VR support will be continued – although obviously, strategy and direction are now the remit of Sansar’s new owners.

Linden Lab will remain a “partner”, inasmuch as Tilia will continue to be used for Sanasr Dollar transactions and fiat money payouts (see more on Tilia below)¹ ².

Ebbe’s Comments – VWBPE Above the Book

To make the long story short about Sansar, we at Linden Lab decided to sell it and to give the team the chance to go raise funds and go it alone. I think it’s easier for them to go raise money as a separate stand-alone company rather than as a part of Linden Lab. Second Life is a very established, profitable, product and we kind-of had a start-up inside of an established, profitable company. And it was actually easier for them, I think, to raise money as a standalone, rather than as a part of Linden Lab.
So … the staff that worked on Sansar are all getting offers by the new entity to come back and start working on Sansar again, and I think they’ve started this week, so I’m super happy that the product and the technology and the team all get a chance to continue … and it makes it easier for Linden Lab and Sansar to both succeed, I think, going forward. I’m happy for the way things ended up in the end.

References

  1. Lab Gab – 0:40-3:00.
  2. VWBPE 2020 Above the Book – 49:55-51:47.

Additional Links

Tilia Comments

We are all likely familiar with Tilia Inc., Linden Lab’s subsidiary that handles all micro-transactions and payments /payouts related to Linden Dollars and Sansar Dollars, and which manages the Lab’s compliance with regulations relating to its role as a Money Transmitter / Money Services Business (MSB).

Tilia officially launched on Thursday August 1st, 2019, having been formally introduced to SL users in July 2019 – although as I noted at the time, SL and Sansar users may have had some awareness of its existence as the Tilia Inc., logo had been on both the SL and Sansar web pages related to L$ and S$ account purchases and Sansar account management for some time. For my part, I’d been speculating about the company since November 2015, and did so again in July 2019, when I noted that Tilia appeared to be geared towards providing its services to other companies.

I first ruminated on Tilia being a means for Linden Lab to offer virtual economy solutions in July 2019, as a result of the (fairly obvious!) clue on the Tilia home page

Whilst speaking at the VWBPE Above the Book event, Ebbe indicated that with the sale of Sansar, Wookey Project Corp is effectively Linden Lab’s first customer for Tilia’s services, as the latter will continue to provide payment / payout capabilities for those using Sansar and the Sansar Dollar.

In addition, he also indicated more customers for Tilia are on the way:

We’re partners with them [Wookey Project Corp] because they’re using Tilia for payments / payouts just like Second Life is doing, and Tilia will have more and more customers over time. We have several of them lined-up to be integrated to get those payment services.

No specific details on which companies are planning to use  Tilia, I’ll hopefully have more as they are announced.

Lab Gab 19 summary: Ebbe & Brett; LL, SL, Sansar & more

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 19th edition of Lab Gab was live streamed on Friday, March 27th, featuring Brett Linden, the Lab’s Senior Director of Marketing, and linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, who were invited to discuss the Lab’s response to the SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic and talk about Second life in general.

The official video of the segment is available via You Tube, and is embedded at the end of this article. The following is a summary of the key topics discussed and responses to questions. Note that the last 15 minutes of the video is something of an advert for the Linden Lab sponsored Mankind Tracer concert being held on Sunday, March 29th, which is not a part of this summary.

Sansar Summary

[0:40-3:00]

  • The decision to sell Sansar came, at least in part, from the recognition that as a platform, Sansar is at a very different stage of its evolution compared to Second Life, requiring different investment and resourcing.
  • Some 30 of the original team have received offers to join the new entity running Sansar (Wookey Project Corp), and “a bunch of them” are already back at work.
  • It appears that the focus for the platform will potentially remain on it being a platform for large scale virtual events in the music / entertainment sectors, utilising the platform’s ability to instance events for “many thousands” of attendees. Also, desktop and VR support will both likely be maintained.
    • However, the overall strategy and focus for developing Sansar is now obviously up to the new owners.
  • Linden Lab will remain a “partner”, inasmuch as Tilia will continue to be used for Sansar Dollar transactions and fiat money payouts, with Tilia also due to gain more customers in the near future..

Coronavirus Related

Dealing with the Virus

[3:00-7:48] plus as timestamped below.

  • On a set of personal notes,Ebbe, Brett and Lab Gab’s host, Strawberry Linden have thus far avoided infection (like the rest of the Lab’s staff they are working from home), but obviously, they do have concerns about the virus and its potential to impact family and friends.
  • Linden Lab is fortunate that it is exceptionally well geared towards remote working (many staff worked from home as a matter of course well before the current pandemic, and that’s been the way since the company’s formation).
  • It is not anticipated that Second Life should experience significant service interruptions due to the current health situation.
  • A comment that has been used among LL staff during calls and virtual meetings has been, “stay safe, stay virtual”.
  • [14:53-17:04] Users can help ease unnecessary stress on SL / LL staff by avoiding squabbles and upsets that can result in unnecessary abuse reports, etc., and by providing help to one another to lighten calls to support staff, as well showing support / friendliness to new users.
  • [27:55-29:33] All LL offices are closed. The co-lo data centre is open for access, if required, but all co-lo work is actually outsourced.

Usage and Concurrency

[7:48-11:09]

  • The last several weeks has seen a resurgence in the number of returning users (those who have not logged-in to SL for some time) as well as a rise in new users accessing the service.
  • New registrations are up by some 60%, with a rise in concurrency of around 10% overall.
  • These rises particularly correspond with cities, regions and countries where a lock-down is ordered.
  • Established users are encouraged to be kind and support incoming new and returning users, given they are likely trying to deal with the anxieties of the current situation.

Absolutely. We’re seeing quite [an] interesting resurgence of returning users, as well as new users coming in to explore Second Life. We see registrations up over 60% and concurrency’s up north of 10%, and we’re just a week or so into people being locked up. We can actually see countries and states that imposed strict stay-home policies, we see a corresponding jump in people in those markets jumping into Second Life.

– Ebbe Altberg, Lab Gab, March 27th

  • LL is not focusing any new features / activities specifically for those coming into SL as an alternative to watching television, playing games, etc. They are constantly working to increase registrations and user retention outside of any crisis.
  • The company is heavily committed to the the cloud uplift to AWS  / Google through until the end of the year, so there is not a lot of available resource to take on major new initiatives. This work will likely take the majority of the Lab’s technical resources through until the end of the year (see below as well).

Region Owners Impacted by the Virus & Assistance from the Lab

[17:10-18:54]

  • Contact support – see also: Region owners impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic encouraged to contact LL.
  • LL has no wish to see regions go under because holders are experiencing hardship as a result of result income at this time. however, the company also cannot afford to just give across-the-board reductions in tier.
  • Where cases can be explained  / discussed / explored, Linden Lab will try to do what they can and is taking a “human, compassionate” approach to people’s needs”.

Supporting Businesses and Education

[18:59-27:50]

  • Linden Lab has been “inundated” with requests from educators, businesses, etc., on whether Second Life can provide support for them.
  • The volume has been such that LL has had to re-assign resources to help deal with the incoming requests. There has also bee a certain amount of media attention on what Second Life can offer – the UK’s Daily Telegraph ran a paywalled article on SL and remote working on March 26th, for example)
  • It takes time to bring organisations in: understanding their requirements, getting them into SL, ensuring they have the required in-world facilities, etc.
  • In addition, LL have been carefully crafting a media campaign to raise awareness of SL as a place for socialisation and discovery. These have been garnering high rates of click-through that may be contributing to the upswing in registrations.
  • For the business side  – remote working, conferences, meetings, etc.,  – the Lab launched a micro-website and an accompanying updated FAQ promoting Second life as a working environment (see also: Second Life: support for remote working & reduced education / non-profit fees – updated, March 16th). This provides access to a series of seven turnkey region solutions for business use, comprising single and multi-region settings, capable of handling up to 350 avatars, with individual regions intentionally optimised such that they can comfortably and consistently handle 75 avatars apiece without becoming stressed.
4- region Town Hall
The Lodge
Horizons Community Centre
Futuristic
The Dino
Conference Room
Auditorium

The seven new turnkey business/ meeting environments provided by Linden Lab.

  • Education is still very much a factor in Second Life as well, with the platform again seeing an uptick in interest from educational organisations.
    • Various schools and universities can be found in the Destination Guide, and some have been active in SL for over a decade.
    • More are not publicly visible as they operate gated access for staff and students only.
  • Organisations such as CNDG are using Second Life for teaching / simulations in what is referred to as an “ambitious long-lasting run in SL”, with up to 10,000 students involved with Second Life experiential teaching modules.
  • Training also forms a part of learning in SL. For example, many nurses and medial staff have received simulation training within Second Life.
  • LL is committed to continuing to support educational use cases and make it easier for educational organisations and students to take advantage of what SL can offer.
  • Second life is also the focal point for the annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference.

Other Topics

Book Club and Showcase Streams

[11:10-14:43]

  • Despite the cloud uplift work, Linden Lab did announce two new two new initiatives on the marketing side:
    • The Second Life Book Club will launch on April 8th and a monthly event. A spin-off from the Draxtor Book Club hosted on Sansar, the Second Life Book Club will feature Draxtor Despres in conversation with authors from around the world, with the first instalment featuring Matt Ruff, Ken Liu, SL Huang, CB Lee, and a possible additional guest.
    • Showcase Streams will be a series of spontaneous “drop in” video streams that will aim to spotlight the many music, art and cultural events in Second Life.
  • Outside of the current pandemic, a reason for implementing initiatives like these is that the Lab has seen an uptick in interest in second Life as a result of the their social media engagement and the success of formats like Lab Gab in capturing non-SL users’ interest.

Name Changes

[29:41-30:52]

  • Most recently subjected to an internal pile-on test (stress test with mass use of a capability, in this case by LL staff) to uncover any previously missed bugs or issues.
  • Could now be just “a very few weeks” away from launching.

iOS Mobile Companion

[30:58-33:11]

  • Lots of activity.
  • Must be understood this will primarily be a communications tool (e.g. IMs, group messaging, etc., but not local chat or in-world presence / 3D view initially).
  • Now very close to Alpha status, which may only be for internal testing, and the path from that to initial release isn’t currently clear (iOS apps are subject to Apple strictures, among other things).
  • Work has now started on the Android version of this companion app as well, and the hope is this will quickly catch-up with the iOS version.

Future Plans / Updates

[36:10-39:27]

  • For 2020, the cloud uplift. This is occurring on a service-by-service basis on the back end (e.g. log-in service, web services, group services, etc.).
  • Transitioning the simulators will be a huge undertaking.
  • Some services have seen significant performance improvements following their transition, just because services a moving to more up-to-date hardware and newer infrastructure.
  • Because of this, 2020 will not be a major SL feature release year beyond what is already stated as being in the works (e.g. EEP, Name Changes, Premium Plus, mobile companion). Anything else will be subject to resources being available.
  • Note that more on SL tech and the uplift will be featured in the April 3rd Lab Gab which will feature Oz Linden, VP of engineering and members of his teams.