Category: News-Opinion

Lab announces Oculus Rift DK2 project viewer available

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday May 21st, Linden Lab publicly released the Oculus Rift project viewer, offering initial support for the Oculus Rift DK1.

Things have moved on since, most notably with the release of the Oculus DK2, versions of which the Lab received in July 2014, and have been using to update the project viewer to provide DK2 support.

Oculus Rift: Lab launches project viewer with DK2 support
Oculus Rift: Lab launches project viewer with DK2 support

On Monday October 13th, the Lab announced that the updated version of the viewer is now available.

The blog post announcing the update reads:

A few months ago, we released a Project Viewer that made it possible to use the first generation Oculus Rift development kit (DK1) anywhere in Second Life.

Since then, Oculus Rift has released a second generation development kit, DK2. The new hardware offers an even more immersive experience when used with Second Life – there’s less likelihood of feeling motion sick thanks to the motion-tracking features, and less of the “screen-door effect” on the visuals, thanks to higher resolution and brighter display.

We’ve integrated the DK2 with Second Life, and today are releasing a new Project Viewer so that virtual reality enthusiasts with the DK2 can use it anywhere in Second Life, just as DK1 users can.

Unfortunately, though, there are still some bugs impacting the experience, which we won’t be able to fix until we receive the next SDK from Oculus Rift. Because Second Life uses OpenGL in its browser, we cannot support direct mode in the Rift until Oculus releases a version of the SDK that supports that.

In addition, juddering is an issue (as it is with most DK2 demos).This can be significantly improved on Windows by turning off Aero, which allows the Rift to use its full refresh rate rather than being limited to the refresh rate of the primary monitor. This refresh rate is a major factor in the judder and turning off Aero can significantly improve your experience.

We’ll continue to fix bugs and improve the experience as quickly as we can once we get the next SDK, but in the meantime, we wanted to get this Project Viewer out into testers’ hands. If you have an Oculus Rift development kit, you can download the new Project Viewer here.

The update includes an expanded HMD configuration panel, which can be accessed via Preferences > Move and View > click on the Head Mounted Displays button.

The expnaded HMD configuration panel
The expanded HMD configuration panel

As with the original project viewer, this configuration panel can also be accessed via a dedicated toolbar button.

The release notes for the viewer include some additional hints and tips:

  1. In Windows 7 turn OFF Aero (go to Windows Basic setting in the “Personalize” right-click menu on the desktop).
  2. In the Windows display settings, adjust the refresh rate on the DK2 to 60hz rather than 75hz.
  3. Make sure your Oculus config runtime and firmware are up to date.
  4. Make sure the power cable is plugged in to the Rift.
  5. If using an NVIDIA card, update to the latest drivers, which have some Oculus/VR specific optimizations.
  6. Turning on Triple buffering in the NVIDIA control panel may help in some cases. Results may vary.
  7. To increase framerate try reducing the Second Life Viewer draw distance and/or disable Shadows and the Ambient Occlusion.
  8. On the HMD setting panel in preferences try experimenting with turning low persistence mode on and off. We’ve found that is some cases it can exacerbate ghosting and jitter.
  9. If you’re in Mac OS X, it is recommended that you exit HMD when uploading files, such as images or models. There is currently an issue that can get your viewer stuck in a bad state if you attempt to upload files while HMD Mode is enabled.

Key Controls

  • Enter HMD mode – CTRL + SHIFT + D
  • Align to look – Q
  • Center Mouse Pointer – Z
  • Action key – X
  • Camera Mode – M (Press multiple times to cycle through 3rd Person, HMD Mouse look, and 1st Person modes)

The blog post from the Lab also includes the video released at the time the original Oculus Rift project viewer was launched.

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SL tax information processing: Lab comments on recent delays

Posted on by Inara Pey

Since November 2013, the Lab has been attempting to operate in compliance with US Internal Revenue Service requirements by ensuring those Second Life users meeting “certain transaction thresholds” have filed required IRS documentation with the Lab (whether or not they are US residents).

News of this move first broke via an SL Universe forum thread, and was subsequently followed-up by bloggers such as Ciaran Laval and myself, and by the Lab also blogging on the matter.

As the tax and documentation requirements continued to cause some confusion, clarification was sought from the Lab, and additional documentation was published in February 2014 to further help people understand the requirements and how to comply with them. However, as the year has progressed, there have continued to be occasional issues with people actually getting the required paperwork processed by the Lab, affecting their ability to withdraw funds.

As reported by Ciaran Laval at the start of October, some people have once again recently  encountered delays in seeing their submitted documentation processed by the Lab. His post prompted a reply from Pete Linden, providing some insight into why delays are occurring:

Due to a significant volume of payout request in recent weeks, payout requests may take longer to process than expected. We apologize for the delay, and we are working hard on clearing the backlog and process requests as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we advise residents to please address any specific questions through their Support cases. We appreciate the cooperation and patience from all residents, and hope to have payout request processing times back to normal soon.

As Ciaran notes in following-up on Pete’s comment, it’s not clear why there has been a significant volume of payouts recently, although he suggests that it could be tied to the recent changes to the Lab’s Skill Gaming policy, which may have caused an increase in the number of people filing payment information with the Lab in order to engage with skill gaming regions.

Whatever, the reason, the Lab is aware of the situation, and hopefully taking the necessary steps to ensure delays are minimised and, as Ciaran states, “everything will be back on track in the near future and normal.”

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Lab announces “viewer-managed Marketplace” on the way

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeDuring the TPV Developer meeting on Friday October 10th, the Lab announced that there will be changes coming in 2015 to how merchants interact with the SL Marketplace.

These changes are in part the result of the Lab working to resolve outstanding issues around Direct Delivery, including the fact that not all use cases for Marketplace sales could be solved through Direct Delivery, but still require the use of Magic Boxes.

Brooke Linden was on-hand at the meeting to provide and overview of the forthcoming changes – which are unlikely to be implemented in full until the end of the first quarter of 2015, although broader testing with them is set to commence towards the end of October or in early November 2014.

The new functionality is discussed in detail in the October 10th meeting video. The following notes are intended to provide a general overview of what is planned,  and includes audio of key statements from Brooke for reference.

The major aspects of these changes will be:

  • The changes are being referred to as “viewer-managed marketplace”, or VMM
  • Items for sale on the Marketplace will not longer be stored on the Marketplace servers – they will remain in the merchant’s inventory (so there will not longer be any need to upload stock to the Marketplace)
  • There will be a new panel (as yet apparently unnamed) within the viewer. This will replace the Merchant Outbox and provide merchants with more information on their stock (e.g. information on whether or not an item is listed, stock levels on No Copy items, etc), and allow them to carry out the following Marketplace tasks from within the viewer:
    • Create new listings with stock
    • Associating inventory to an existing listing
    • Remove items from a listing
    • Unlist goods entirely.
  • (Note that other Marketplace activities will still require logging-in to the SL Marketplace web interface as is the case today.)

Brooke Linden provides an overview of the upcoming changes to the Viewer and the SL Marketplace

As a part of these changes, there will be a migration process, which the Lab hopes to make as smooth as possible. This will involve updating current Marketplace listings so that they correctly point to the inventory servers (rather than the inventory store on the Marketplace servers), and which will return items to the merchant, where they will be visible in the new Marketplace panel.

The plan is to make the migration process as automated as possible, with migration times scheduled with larger merchants as stores and listings will be temporarily unavailable during the migration process. However, for those who prefer, their will also be a manual migration process.

Brooke Linden on the migration process once the new functionality starts rolling-out in 2015

As noted above, the Lab is looking to deploy the new functionality around the end of the first quarter of 2015. In the meantime, a project viewer with the new panel will be deployed, most likely before the end of October, and it will be possible to under take testing on the new capabilities on Aditi (the Beta grid) starting wither towards the end of October or in early November.

Testing will initially involve those merchants who have been involved in providing input into the development of this new functionality, together with TPV developers. However, the plan is to then broaden it out and invite other merchants into the testing to generate broader feedback and input. Following the Aditi testing and feedback, there will be a beta phase using the production Marketplace prior to a full migration / switch-over.

Full updates on the changes will be forthcoming through future meetings as well as, hopefully, via a Lab blog post at some point in the future.

Ebbe Altberg: a Designing Worlds special

Posted on by Inara Pey

A reminder that on Monday October 6th, 2014, Designing Worlds will be broadcasting a special edition to mark their 250th show under both their current title, and their previous name of Meta Makeover. To mark the event, the show’s hosts, Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin, will be interviewing none other than Linden Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, more familiarly known in-world as Ebbe Linden.

Running to almost 100 minutes, the show covers a range of subjects including upcoming improvements to Second Life, the new user experience, Ebbe’s experiences since joining the Lab, the importance of community, IP protection, the man himself, and, of course, the Lab’s next generation virtual worlds platform. So it is not something to be missed, as the teaser to the programme demonstrates.

The show will be available via the Designing Worlds channel on SL Artist, Treet TV, and Aview TV from 14:00 SLT.

For those who can make it, there will be a screening at the Designing Worlds studio at the same time.

I’ll have a full transcript of the core interview available through these pages following the broadcast for those who would prefer to read what was said.

Lab updates on viewer changes and CDN

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeThe Lab has issued a blog post outlining some of the current improvements being made to Second Life.

Regular readers of my weekly SL project updates will already be familiar with the work referenced in the blog post, which focus on the changes being made to the viewer’s log-in screen, the removal of the viewer’s reliance on the GPU table when initially setting graphics preferences, the ongoing deployment of support for using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for texture and mesh fetching, and an announcement of the upcoming HTTP pipelining viewer, which should offer some significant improvements in people’s SL experience, as well as including further adjustments to leverage the CDN.

Commenting on the new benchmark viewer, which will eliminate the need for the GPU table, the Lab’s blog post states:

This is a new way of figuring out the best default graphics settings. Maybe this has happened to you: you got an awesome new graphics card, fired up SL… only to discover your graphics settings are set to Low, and can’t be changed? No more! This Viewer does away with the old GPU table and instead uses a quick benchmark measurement to detect your GPU to assign appropriate default graphics settings on startup. The settings on shiny powerful hardware should really let that hardware shine. Get a Project Benchmark Viewer today and help us gather metrics!  Please file bugs in JIRA if you find them.

The new log-in viewer is currently the only release candidate viewer sitting in the viewer release channel. As such, it is liable to be promoted to the de facto release viewer in the near future – probably in week 41 (week commencing Monday October 6th), assuming the statistics for it haven’t shown up any issues.

As the Lab’s blog-post indicates, this viewer is being introduced as a result of several months of A/B testing with the current viewer log-in screen. This testing appears to show that new user retention is some 3-5% better when incoming users are presented with the updated viewer’s log-in / splash screens than when compared with those for the current version.

For those interested in finding out how the new viewer differs from the current version, I have an overview of the new version already posted.

The log-in / splash screen in the login RC viewer seen by users who have previously logged-in to SL
The log-in / splash screen in the login RC viewer seen by users who have previously logged-in to SL

A point to note with the log-in screen changes is that they do not impact the widgets, etc., used by TPVs. Therefore, these changes shouldn’t force those TPVs using their own log-in splash screens to replace them with the Lab’s updates.

The final two aspects of the Lab’s blog post are the deployment of the CDN, which is currently for texture and mesh fetching, and which I’ve also extensively documented through my week SL project updates. At the time of writing, the CDN is available in ten regions across the main grid: Denby, Hippo Hollow, Hippotropolis, Testsylvania, Brasil Rio, Brocade, Fluffy, Freedom City, Rocket City or Whippersnapper. However, more regions will be added as time goes on.

There is no requirement for any special viewer in order to get an idea of the faster downloading of textures and meshes users should witness on entering any of these regions (there may be some rare instances where things are a little slower if you happen to reside closer to one of the Lab’s data centres than to your local CDN node, but these instances are likely to be very rare). However, once the CDN service is available across the grid, it may see a final viewer-side update as a part of final fine-tuning, and well as potentially being extended to include the delivery of other viewer-consumable assets.

The HTTP work, which has been ongoing for the last couple of years and very much a focus of Monty Linden’s work, is something I’ve also reported upon through my weekly SL project updates. This should have some general improvements on performance, both with texture and mesh downloads through the CDN, and with other HTTP-specific SL services. This viewer code is allegedly so fast, the Lab refer to it internally as the “weaponized viewer”.

The benefit of the CDN and the HTTP viewer code – which TPVs are being encouraged to adopt as quickly as their merge / test / release cycles allow – is summed-up in the closing comments on the Lab’s post:

Separately, each of these will improve texture and mesh loading performance, but put together, you should really see some exciting improvements in how long it takes to load new areas and objects – making touring the many fabulous places in Second Life you have not yet visited even better!

Those who have been independently testing both the CDN and the pipelining viewer (in a pre-project viewer release state) have been reporting that results with either / both are impressive. Check Shug Maitland’s comment on this blog, for example, after she tried the CDN regions with a current viewer.

Lab issues Skill Gaming Policy enforcement notice

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeMonday September 1st saw the Skill Gaming policy come into effect. However, as the application process has apparently been slow-going, those who had submitted an application to become Operators and / or Creators of Skill Games were permitted to continue to operate as such, even if they had not received formal approval on their application from the Lab.

However, on Monday September 29th, the Lab issued a further updated on Skill Gaming, stating that as from Saturday November 1st, enforcement of the updated Skill Gaming Policy will come into effect – and will include anyone with an application currently pending with the Lab.

The blog post reads in full:

On September 1, 2014, the updated Skill Gaming Policy for Second Life went into effect. As a reminder, this policy allows for skill gaming activity in Second Life, but establishes that only approved Creators may make skill games with L$ payouts, only approved Operators may run them, and they may only be run on designated Skill Gaming Regions, where access is restricted to those who meet certain qualifications.

As our FAQs explained, applicants to the program who submitted their applications prior to the September 1 deadline have been permitted to continue their skill gaming activity while their applications are reviewed.

Beginning November 1, 2014, the enforcement of our Policy will apply to all Residents, including those with pending Skill Gaming applications that await Linden Lab review and approval. As of that date, any objects or regions found in violation of our Policy will be taken down. We strongly encourage all applicants to submit any outstanding materials for our review as soon as possible so that their applications may be processed before the deadline.

From the start, we’ve seen strong interest from Residents seeking to become approved skill gaming Creators and Operators. You can find the current list of approved participants here, and we’ll continue to review applications as quickly as possible to expand that list. If you would like to apply to become an approved skill gaming Creator or Operator, you can do so here.

The third paragraph is key to this announcement, as it suggests that the delay in processing applications may be as much down to a failure to supply required information to the Lab as with any internal delays in processing applications on the Lab’s part.

Therefore, if you have submitted a request to the Lab and have not received approval, now might be a good time to check to see whether you have missed any requests from the Lab to supply additional or missing information, or to touch base with them to ascertain the current status of your application.

In the unlikely case that anyone has been attempting to continue to operate or create games of skill without having made a suitable application, or who has been delaying submitting an application,  now might also be the time to do so. Please refer to the EchoSign application form.

A small aside in to this is that while the Lab indicates “strong interest” from people wishing to become approved Creators and / or Operators, there have been no updates to the list of Skill Gaming Approved Participants, which is linked-to in the Lab’s blog post, the only operators and games having been listed on August 21st. It will be interesting to see if this announcement yields further additions to the list.

In the meantime, you can keep abreast of the Skill Gaming Policy changes through the links below.

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