Update May 21st: This maintenance window has been postponed.
On May 15th, Linden Lab gave warning that there will be a period of scheduled maintenance on Thursday May 22nd which will see log-ins suspended for around one hour, from approximately 07:00 SLT.
[Posted 2:15 PM PDT, 15 May 2014] The Second Life Service will be closed for logins for approximately one hour on Thursday, 22 May beginning at 7am PDT.
Residents in world will not be logged out, but will experience loss of supporting services such as search and inventory. New logins will not be accepted, and Residents in world should not attempt to transfer or manipulate L$ or valuable (no-copy) assets until the ALL CLEAR is given.
As always, if the scope or the schedule of the work changes, we will update this post.
Please bear the above in mind, and keep an eye on the Grid Status Page for updates on this announcement,
Some of the new avatars as they appear in the selection screen of the new user sign-up process
Update May 16th (2): Following a tweet I made directed at Ebbe Altberg on the NO MOD nature of the base avatar shapes, he responded with the following:
My apologies for taking a while to post this. My ISP and WordPress have a periodic battle in which my access to this blog is at best limited. The battle was rejoined today, leaving me with severe access issues.
Update May 16th (1): While there are limitations with the new mesh avatars, they can also look very good as photographic models, with suitable inventory items and windlight settings. Caitlin Tobias demonstrates this with a series of very eye-catching images, which are well-worth a look at.
On Thursday May 15th, Linden Lab launched their line of new mesh avatars. In all, 24 avatars are were made available, both for new users signing-up to Second Life, and through the Avatar Selector for those already using SL.
The blog post announcing the new avatars reads in part:
Today, we’re updating Second Life’s default avatar options with 24 brand new mesh avatars. You may have spotted a sneak peek at a few of these as Lindens tried them out recently, and starting today, you can start using them yourself!
These avatars are designed to give new users a more appealing set of choices as they start their time in Second Life. Based on the most popular avatars picked at registration, these new options are much better-looking and take advantage of technology incorporated into Second Life over the past year (like fitted mesh and materials) for a more modern feel.
Currently, the avatars are largely limited to human forms, but are ethnically diverse. I use the terms “largely” and “human forms” as twelve of the new avatars are listed under the “Vampire” heading – although given one looks a tad more Lycan than vampiric, another is more demon than anything, and two have a decidedly zombie look to them, I’ve perhaps have gone for “Horror” to describe this set of avatars.
The “Vampire” avatars – although “Horror” might have been a better title (click to enlarge)
Being mesh, there are inevitably some caveats around the new avatars. Facial expressions, for example, are fixed, and old-style system clothing won’t work with them and they are NO MOD – or at least the four I tried all were. This means you cannot edit the shape using the sliders without swapping the base shape for something which is MOD.
Two of the avatars – the demon and the Lycan – come with AOs, and it’s shame a little effect wasn’t put into providing the rest with a starter AO, if only to get rid of the newbie duck walk. While the latter is a lot better than it once was, it’s still pretty ugly to see.
Two of the new mesh avatars; “Alicia” and the werewolf (which is also a pretty good approximation for how I feel before the first mug of coffee for the day…)
In terms of overall looks, the avatars are a mixed bag. That they may have been designed to “take advantage of technology incorporated into Second Life …. (like fitted mesh…)” seems to be something of non-sequitur for new users, given they are NO MOD, and thus require the base shape swapping out to allow for some degree of shape customisation, as mentioned above. While this isn’t a major issue per se, it still might lead to some confusion among newbies as to way they can’t customise the shape, height, etc., of their avatar while others can.
For my part, I confess there’s nothing within this set which would divert me away from my current avatar and her look, and I’d say that overall, the avatars may well be mesh, but they’re not particularly attractive for being so.
Episode 18 of The Drax Files Radio Hour features the third part of Draxtor’s chats with Linden staffers. Alongside of this is an interview with one with Aleks Altberg (son of LL CEO Ebbe) and another with Karl Krantz, organiser of the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference taking place on May 19th-20th.
As well as being available on the show’s website and on Stitcher, the show is also on YouTube, and it is to that recording (embedded at the end of this article) any timestamps given in the text refer.
Brendan Iribe’s “fireside chat” with TechCrunch co-editor Matthew Panzarino at the recent TechCrunch Disrupt New York event (May 5th-7th), pops-up in the early part of the show. During the chat (which I muse upon here), Iribe outlines a potential future for VR is a (very loosely defined, in terms of purpose and use) MMO / metaverse of virtual environments. This is not a vision that he sees coming about in the next year or two – Iribe couches his frame of reference around a decade hence, at a time when he sees VR / VWs having wider acceptance and the technology itself has had time to further mature (particularly some of the associated hardware) and become more broadly accepted in daily life.
Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR CEO, talks to Matthew Panzarino at Techcrunch Disrupt NY (image via Techcrunch)
Surprise is expressed in the show that SL seems to be “unknown” or “ignored” by Iribe and others. I don’t think this is a valid assumption. Cory Ondrejka not only works at Facebook, but he was involved in the Oculus VR acquisition and he’s hardly blind to Second Life, having co-founded it.
Rather I’d suggest the reason SL isn’t mentioned comes down to something that appears to be missed in the discussion: the fact that Iribe is talking in terms of something a decade hence, and possibly something likely not built entirely by any single organisation, although FB is obviously well-placed to help build things. Perhaps more to the point, FB could position itself to provide core elements of the backbone – such as transaction services, identity services, and so on, thus becoming a gatekeeper to this new environment, much as Philip Rosedale wants to position High Fidelity in his vision of things.
As such, by the time the brave new digital world painted in Iribe’s broad brushstrokes actually arrives, it will likely be something that is so beyond comparison with SL that the latter is not seen as having relevance in discussions. In this, it’s not so much down to Iribe and others to point to SL and say, “look, this is the idea!” It is for SL to find wider relevance in the scheme of things.
The interview with Aleks Altberg commences at 16:18 into the show. A lot has been documented by Ebbe himself about Alek’s involvement in SL (perhaps first in this very blog in a comment he left just after starting at LL, then later during his VWBPE address), so it’s good to hear from him first-hand about his experiences with the platform and his thoughts about it.
Aleks reveals it was his father who indirectly go him interested in SL after he found his Dad using it. From here, his tale is probably familiar to many SL users – passing the time flying around, exploring, meeting people and only gradually unlocking the deeper secrets of SL – object creation, building, and so on, over time, which in turn led him into scripting and thus into SL commerce.
In discussing getting more people engaged in SL, Aleks offers-up an interesting “five-step” plan, which includes basic control orientation and some initial content building. It’s not a bad approach – but in some respects, it has been tried, albeit it not in quite the way he suggests, and hasn’t always worked.
He’s also less-than-convinced that trying to help people connect to things in SL which (might) interest them will work. He actually has a point – not everyone who comes to SL really knows what they’re looking for. Equally, there is no guarantee that anything which may have enticed someone into SL becomes the reason for them to remain engaged in SL.
However, I’d still suggest that many who come to SL do so because they have heard of something or seen something which has piqued their interest, and so attempting to find the means to connect them to that interest / point of curiosity (and others similarly engaged), then letting them discover everything else over time, is potentially more beneficial than appearing to say, “here’s all that SL can do – now go forth and do it!”, and shouldn’t be completely dismissed.
Karl Krantz, founder of the SVVR Meet-up (image courtesy of Road to VR)
Karl Krantz is interviewed at 26:12, where he discusses the SVVR conference and expo, which he admits to being an attempt to get the more affordable aspects of VR “away” from the gaming environment and open them out to more widespread interest / opportunities. The conference will take place at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California on May 19th / 20th.
Those in a position to attend can get $100 off the price of admission (reducing it to as little as $250) by using the code “drax2014″ (or indeed, “nwn2014″ if you are an NWN reader) when registering. They can then get to hear the likes of Palmer Luckey (Oculus VR), Philip Rosedale, Ebbe Altberg, David Holtz (Leap Motion), Ben Lang (Road to VR) and others.
Krantz is also no stranger to SL, and offers some interesting commentary on the platform – including the need for the Terms of Service to be redressed (which is being worked upon internally by the Lab). He’s also very positive towards LL being able to position themselves to capitalise on any VR wave which may emerge, although his comments on the ToS and on issues of performance caveat this particular view somewhat.
More particularly, he suggests Linden Lab might be better served in moving away from being solely a platform provider and focusing on providing the core services – the transaction system and Linden Dollars, the identity management service, the marketplace, etc. and then opening the rest of the platform out for development and operation by others and folding-in OpenSim. Again, this is pretty similar to the High Fidelity approach, and it could have some merit to it; the problem being how the Lab pivots away from its current operating / revenue model to this kind of approach without actually hurting itself financially in the process or causing mass disruption to SL as it is operated today.
Enkidu Linden is an Engineer Manager for Platforms at the Lab, and Drax had the opportunity of interviewing him during the Santa Cruz meet-up, as we hear starting at the 34:38 mark. Aside from his work with the transactional elements of the platform, Enkidu reveals an interesting approach to how we relate to our avatars and express ourselves through our avatars.
Where many of us seek to build our avatar as – for want of a better term – a singular focal point of our identity in terms of looks, appearance, etc., and through while we can express ourselves, Enkidu comes from the opposite end of the spectrum, using many different avatar forms to express facets of his personality and interests. He’s certainly not alone in doing this; I have a couple of friends who routinely shift their avatar form as a means of self-expression. Even so, it’s and interesting reflection of the diverse ways in which we can define a means of identity and connection with others.
In terms of Lindens and their time in-world, Enkidu points-out that staff at the Lab, being geographically diverse in their locations (east and west coast, north and south), do spend time in-world attending various meetings in non-public regions and also spend time elsewhere (presumably using their Alts prior to Ebbe lifting the ban on staff using their “official” accounts for in-world roaming). In this, he notes, “Our job is to make sure the people in Second Life can have the experiences they want to have. If we never have those experiences ourselves, how can we understand what they are?”
This is a wide-ranging discussion which tackles, or at least touches upon, a fair few areas. Those who have ever wanted to understand more about Linden Dollar transactions, the LindeX and exchange rates (and how the latter in particular keep the SL economy stable) would do well to listen to Enkidu’s description – in totally none-technical terms – of how things flow together and the wheels turn.
As a former government employee, Enkidu offers some observations on our relationship with government and our relationship with the Lab, some of which indirectly echoed Ebbe’s own Forum-made observation of the Dunning-Kruger effect which can shape some reactions to the Lab’s stewardship of SL. it’s an observations which is, at least sometimes and in certain ways, hard to dispute.
All told, another fascinating discussion with a Lab staffer, albeit one somewhat different to those in the last two shows.
Not much to say in summary this time around, other than the interviews are once again excellent.
In a wide-ranging discussion at the TechCrunch Disrupt New York event (May 5th-7th), Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe has spoken about why the company the Facebook acquisition was a good thing, and has described a desire expressed without both companies to make VR a social experience for a billion users, perhaps in the form of a MMO.
The discussion – described as a “fireside chat” with TechCrunch co-editor Matthew Panzarino – is available as a video in a Techcrunch article. It was followed by a backstage interview with TechCrunch’s Josh Constine.
Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR CEO, talks to Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch Disrupt NY (image via TechCrunch)
in discussing the attractiveness of the deal for Oculus VR, Iribe indicates that one major consideration was the fact that the company was offered the opportunity to more-or-less continue to operate fairly independently of Facebook, a-la Instagram. Another was that Facebook were prepared to provide Oculus with access to their enormous technical capabilities and services, while offering Oculus the ability to practically cherry-pick which of them they’d like to leverage.
The majority of the conversation, however, focuses on the development of an immersive, VR-focused “MMO” (a term used interchangeably with “virtual worlds” and “metaverse”) with a billion users world-wide. “Metaverse” is a term which has been used by the Oculus team in the past, indicating that they’ve held aspirations in that direction and beyond the gaming market, and Iribe frankly admits that having Facebook behind them immediately means that Oculus VR has a huge network behind them – not only in terms of infrastructure and tech, but in terms of users (1.2 billion of them), which could very much help speed up adoption and acceptance of VR. Commenting at around the 4:35 mark, Iribe states:
We know with Oculus, with a virtual world, if you’re putting on this pair of glasses and you’re going to be face-to-face communicating with people, you’re gonna be jumping in and out of this new set of virtual worlds, this is gonna be the largest MMO ever made. This is going to be an MMO where we want to put a billion people in VR. And a billion person virtual world MMO is going to require a bigger network than exists today. Why not start with Facebook and their infrastructure, and their team and their talent that they’ve built up?
While this is not a short-term goal – the figure of around ten to twenty years is mentioned when discussing how this will all come about. Iribe also notes that there has to be something of a further upscaling of computing power in order to make it all happen, as well as the technology needing to become less cumbersome and intrusive and more readily acceptable and wearable. He suggests it should look more like a set of sunglasses – a direction several VR companies are already heading in.
Exactly how this billion-user environment will come about and what form it will take is unclear. Towards the end of the video, Iribe wisely points-out that VR is still in its infancy, and that it’s hard to predict precisely where it will lead or the impact it will have. However, it seems from his comments that the “MMO / Metaverse” Oculus VR are considering isn’t a single platform (although they see Facebook’s users and network as a good starting-point, as mentioned), but potentially a range of interconnected worlds / environments.
An interesting aspect of the discussion around the MMO / Metaverse concept is that Iribe in some respects echoes much of the work that is going on at High Fidelity. He mentions that one of the attractions Facebook held for Oculus was that it already operates a complex payment system (worth around $3 billion in revenue), which negates the need for Oculus to have to develop one – a problem High Fidelity is still mulling over. More particularly, at some 12 minutes into the video, he describes the working going on at Valve in terms of development avatars and projects this work into the future where he sees avatars have head tracking capabilities, can mimic facial expressions and carry people into the Uncanny Valley – a path High Fidelity are already walking, and would appear to be a good deal further along.
In the backstage interview with Josh Constine (embedded below), Iribe also talks about issues of trust and identity security, and having the confidence that as you move between apps and environments, you maintain control of what aspects of your identity are exposed. This is another issue which has very much been at the forefront of High Fidelity’s thinking with regards to a metaverse of virtual worlds.
Towards the end of the discussion, Iribe mentions the fact that Oculus VR are now starting to work more closely with the education sector in a drive to expand the whole VR ecosystem.
There are probably very few people in SL who have not heard of MadPea; they’ve been responsible for some of the most engaging and interactive games, hunts and gachas in Second Life. I’ve covered some of their work in these pages, notably their magnificent Room 326, (which continued through their Mad City installation on Da Vinci Isle), and their fiendishly fun Carneval. The team have also been featured in an edition of The Drax Files.
For most of the past year, the team has been focused on their next major undertaking, an immersive, interactive HUD-based game called UNIA, which is spread across two regions and is – I can say with some authority, having been taken on a guided tour of the installation by MadPea’s leader, Kiana “Queen Pea” Writer and development team member (and good friend) RAG Randt – utterly stunning and completely involving.
I don’t want to give too much away as to the plot, but suffice it to say, it is part horror story (or nightmare story, given its origins), part puzzle solving, part mystery, and more. Players will be able to engage in the game either individual or work in co-operation with others (or even both, depending upon how events unfold), and will interact with creatures, NPCs and things not normally of this world as they attempt to resolve what is going on and discover the truth.
From the moment someone arrives in the little town of Molimo, they are in for one hell of a time (literally and figuratively!), in a game which features settings designed by the likes of Bryn Oh, Rebeca Bashly, BlueSean Yiyuan and Silex Zapedzki, and Jaimy Hancroft, as well as the MadPea team themselves, with huge amounts of dedicated scripting by the team and purpose-built animations from Abranimations.
The reason the game has taken so long to develop is that it really pushing the envelope within Second Life in terms of capabilities and gaming mechanism, and even now, Kiana and the team estimate there is still around two or three months work required in order to bring UNIA to life. However, a major spanner was thrown into the works fairly early on in the scheme of things.
The Farm, one of the settings for UNIA
As the game was being developed, so MadPea lost their sponsor. Developing something as immersive and involving as UNIA doesn’t come cheap: the cost of the two regions on which it is set runs to $731.60 a month (incl. VAT at 24%, levied as a result of Kiana’s real-life location in Finland). The team have been able to offset some of the costs through other ventures and activities – including running additional hunts and gacha fairs, and well as via donations through Mad City. The problem here is, of course that time spent on developing hunts, etc., is time taken away from UNIA, slowing down its completion. Also, Mad City is set to close at the end of May 2014.
In order to try to keep things going, MadPea launched a fundraiser at the start of May, hoping to encourage SL users and their patrons to help contribute to bringing UNIA to life.
“I have been struggling with this for a while in my mind.. Should I do a fundraiser for UNIA or not?” Kiana says. “After several players contacted me asking where they could donate, I thought that ok, let’s go ahead with this, there’s nothing I have to lose.”
Visiting Grandma …
The funding effort is being run via GoFundMe, and aims to raise $4,389.00 for the development and upkeep of the game, with some $1,500 of that target having been achieved at the time of writing. People are free to donate whatever they are comfortable with giving, but pay $50.00 and you’ll receive an exclusive UNIA outfit for your avatar; pay $500, and you’ll receive an exclusive tour of UNIA by Kiana, early access to the game, a free HUD, weapons and outfits.
If the fundraiser is successful, and UNIA does open to the public, then there is the potential for even more, “This is only part ONE,” Kiana said during my tour, “Part two is [going to be] taking place all over the grid.”
The house on the hill (by Kiana Writer)
Having spent two hours in UNIA with Kiana and RAG, I can say that this is something that could be very unique in SL, and offer an astonishing level of immersion and engagement. If you’ve experienced past MadPea activities and events, you’ll know just how inventive and imaginative they can be. So why not hop over to the funding page and offer a payment? In doing so, you’ll be helping to open the door to even more fun you can enjoy.
The 17th edition of The Drax Files Radio Hour more-or-less carries on where episode 16 left off, with more interviews and comments from Linden Lab staffers, gathered when Drax dropped-in on a group of them as they camped-out in Santa Cruz one Friday afternoon.
Prior to this, there’s another Leap Motion giveaway, and mention of forthcoming updates to OnLive’s provisioning of SL Go. there’s also usual chin-wagging about HMDs, and details of an offer for those who can attend it to get $100 off registration for the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference and Expo, which takes place at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California on May 19th / 20th. Simply use the code “drax2014” (or indeed, “nwn2014” if you are an NWN reader) when registering, and get to hear the likes of Palmer Luckey (Oculus VR), Philip Rosedale, Ebbe Altberg, David Holtz (Leap Motion), Ben Lang (Road to VR) and others.
As well as being on the blog post and Stitcher, the show can also be found on YouTube, and I’m using that recording in the timestamps below. The recording itself is towards the end of this piece.
For those who want to cut to the quick, the core interviews commence at 20:25 into the podcast. This is an absolute “must listen” portion, although the sound quality isn’t brilliant in places, for which Drax apologies up-front (one of the pains of recording in an outdoor, windy environment). Nevertheless, sound issues shouldn’t necessarily be an issue for skipping over this part of the show, in which the likes of Baker Linden, and Hoz Linden from the development side of things (Hoz is a development team manager), and members of the finance team discuss the complexity and intricacy involved in running and maintaining an environment as complex as Second Life.
Baker Linden is well-known among those familiar with the dev side of Second Life and who attend the Simulator User Group and the Server Beta User Group, both for the work he carries out. His current major project being Group Ban lists, providing the means by which troublemakers can be banned from re-joining groups with open enrollment (think estate bans, and you’ll get the picture). He’s a popular figure among users, and known for his mischievous sense of humour. A server-side trouble-shooter, he’s also undertaken major fixes for large group loading issues.
Both Baker and Hoz note that as SL is community driven, it’s important to give those managing communities the tools with which they can manage things more efficiently. The group ban and group load work are considered major elements in this, with the former being voluntarily picked-up by Baker in 2013 after reading JIRA VWR-29337.
Group bans: provides the option to ban troublemakers from a group. It involves some significant changes to the server-side of SL, as well as updates to the viewer itself. Key among the latter is an additional sub-tab (currently called “Banned Agents”) in the Members tab of the Group floater. This displays a list of those banned from a group, and provides a means of applying individual bans (which can also be applied via other means) or multiple bans, and to unban a person.
The discussion covers some of the difficulties the Lab faces with maintaining Second Life (server and viewer – with Drax drawing an analogy through plumbing: when something major goes wrong with the plumbing in a house, it’s not exactly feasible to rip it all out and start over, so the plumber has to work through how things work, where things go and what needs to be done to fix things with minimal disruption (or additional breakage to the house) – which is pretty much how LL’s devs have to work.
This is in some ways illustrated by the comments made about fixing group chat [26:29]. There is currently a project that Simon Linden is working on to better optimise elements of group chat, which has been getting some regularly testing on the Aditi (Beta) grid by both the Lab and users. The code for this looks likely to be fully deployed to the back-end chat servers in week 19 (commencing Monday May 5th). It won’t resolve all of the issues associated with group chat, but it should see some overall improvements.
Both Baker and Hoz note that any significant overhaul of the chat system would require significant investments in time, manpower and money – and that even then, while they may end up fixing an obvious problem, the nature of the SL services are so intertwined, that it is not always possible to simply remove a block of code or a service and simply replace it with something else without running the risk of doing far more harm than good. It is this complexity, coupled to both a cost / benefit analysis of what can be achieved in a given time frame over what might be achieved, and an analysis of the potential for content breakage (itself no small concern), which generally tends to result in the Lab opting not to work on issues which users may see as being something which is an “obvious” fix, rather than any capricious refusal to do so.
Hoz passes some thoughts on perceptions about Linden staff engagement in SL, noting that he doesn’t spend much time in-world, he is nevertheless passionate about the creative processes in SL and how they’re leveraged by users. He also notes that, realistically, given the number of hours available to them, many Lab staff are focused on running the company and the grid rather than spending a lot of time in-world. Baker admits to being a Second Life user prior to joining the Lab, and quite possibly a rowdy one at that, which goes a long way to explaining his very evident enthusiasm for the platform.
The second part of this interview [31:09] sees Hoz take the opportunity to again re-iterate that while the Lab may not do everything users want, or may not appear in-world a lot of the time doesn’t mean they lack passion for, or interest in, the platform or its users. This discussion moves on through subjects such as the JIRA (and the misconceptions that surround it), and as such, is one of the richest pieces of information anyone who wants to understand what really goes on at the Lab, rather than making assumptions, should take eight minutes of their time to listen to what Hoz has to say.
From here, the conversation switches to Bacon and Saeros Linden [46:40] , both of whom work in the finance team. Bacon has the job of testing the entire transaction management / payment system by going out and purchasing SL goods, purchasing land, making tier payments, buying Linden Dollars, etc., while Saeros works on the code for this side of the platform.
Bacon Linden tests all aspects of the transaction system, whether it’s buying goods in-world or via the Marketplace, buying land, paying tier, purchasing L$, making premium membership payments, paying in L$ or via PayPal or credit card, and so on (image courtesy of Draxtor Despres)
Again, the fascinating elements of this conversation are the extent of the testing involved, which encompasses interactions with the third-party companies responsible for processing the likes of credit card payments on the Lab’s behalf, as well as all the internal mechanisms use by the Lab for user / user transactions. Again, for those with an interest in how the various aspects of SL actually work, this is another discussion where much is revealed, particularly LL’s dependence upon external service providers which may not always be understood – or readily acknowledged at times. As Bacon points out, the Lab isn’t only subject to these services where handling certain payments are concerned, they really are also subject to any issues these services may suffer as well.
The range of the discussion here is as fascinating as that with Baker and Hoz, demonstrating again that the folk managing and running the platform actually do have a greater appreciation of the platform and how it is used than we might actually credit – although that doesn’t necessarily mean that do get everything right, as the frank discussion on recent issues relating to transaction history page updates, and the step being taken to correct matters, reveals.
The show rounds-out with Da5id Abbot discussing Fantasy Faire 2014 [55:33] – which, if you haven’t visited already, please make sure you do!
Another great show, and the interviews here are simply superb and more than worth taking the time to listen to. It’s very easy to build-up preconceptions and make assumptions about the Lab and its relationship to both Second Life and its users, particularly when we distance ourselves from the Lab as much as they have in the past appeared to distance themselves from us.
As such, and as I’ve already mentioned a couple of times, the interviews presented here should help redress the balance somewhat. For my part, and while I make a point of attending as many in-world meetings with Lab staffers as I can (up to five a week), the conversations were still an eye-opener for me in several respects, and I really cannot recommend both this segment and episode #16 of The Drax Files Radio Hour enough.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 