Category: News-Opinion

Previewing Lab Gab with Izzy Linden & the return of the Solution Provider Directory

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The next edition of Lab Gab will be live streamed on Friday, May 22nd at 10:00 SLT (18:00 UK; 19:00 CET). For those who have not seen the official blog post about it, the segment will feature Izzy Linden of the Second Life land team.

Izzy has been with the Lab for some 13 years, working with the Land Team in various roles. Most recently he has apparently been working on a new Solution Provider’s Directory, which will be a core part of time on the show.

For those unfamiliar with it, the Solution Provider’s Directory formed a part of the Second Life Solution Providers Programme, this provided the means for businesses and organisations seeking specific skills – scripting, building, etc., – to make contact with individuals or companies / organisations providing such capabilities. At its height, the original solution provider programme included general users active within Second Life through to “gold” solution providers – those who had formalised their status (e.g. as a company of some form).

Izzy Linden with Lab Gab host Strawberry Linden

The original Solution Provider programme comprised a dedicated micro-site on the “old” Second Life web properties, and was supported by an in-world group and mailing list (SL Dev), a dedicated in-world region, and a series of SL wiki pages. However, it entered something of a decline from around the start of 2010 onwards, and in May 2012, the Lab announced the programme was to be wound down – see: End of the road for the SL Solution Provider Programme).

Since then – as far as I’m aware, the Solution Provider Directory has lain largely dormant, but as the Lab Gab announcement notes, it is now being revived (and in fact has two “full service” providers already listed), apparently driven in part by the number of business enquiries Linden Lab has received as a result of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Exactly whether or not this means LL will attempt to revive the broader aspects of the old Solution Provider Programme – direct links to relevant micro-sites such as connect.secondlife.com to better surface information on solution providers, together with a mailing list / in-world group and and supporting region, etc., – remains to be seen (although I’ve dropped a question or two on this ahead of the programme!).

If you have any questions for Izzy about concierge work, the Land Team and / or the solution provider programme, you can submit your own questions via the Lab Gab Google form.

As usual, the programme will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, or Periscope, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a summary of the video (and the video itself) available soon after the the broadcast, for those unable to watch live.

Pending the cloud migration, LL report limited availability of new regions

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Thursday, May 14th, Linden Lab reported something that may be a little unexpected: they’ve “run out” of land – or more correctly, they are at the maximum capacity of simulator servers they can host within their current co-location facility in Arizona. This means that for the short-term future, there is only limited availability of “new” regions directly from the Lab.

The primary reason for this is, according to LL, an unexpected increase in demand for “new” regions – possibly as a result of the result of former users and increased interest with / involvement in Second Life as a result of the current pandemic situation.

While the Lab could overcome the issue through the purchase of new hardware and previsioning it through a suitable data centre, this would still require a significant amount of expenditure and work. Given that we’re potentially mid-way through the work to migrate all of the Second Life services to AWS / Google cloud infrastructure (with the migration of simulators still to come), this is time, effort and money the Lab would – understandably – avoid, as it would only be for a relatively limited period of time.

With regards to both the cloud migration and this situation, the Lab notes:

As we’ve discussed previously, Second Life is in the process of migrating from our existing dedicated servers to a cloud hosting service. That migration has already moved a number of the most important services and databases, but we are not quite ready to host simulators in the cloud. We have a crack team working on that and are making lots of progress, but there are significant changes needed to make sure that we can provide the performance, stability, and security required. When that process is complete we will have a nearly unlimited region capacity, but until then we are constrained by the size of our existing server fleet.

While our migration project has been underway for some time, even our most optimistic business projections did not anticipate a surge of the magnitude we have seen in recent weeks for additional regions. While we planned for growth driven by improvements to Second Life and other factors, we didn’t expect demand to be created by a global pandemic.

As a result, we are in the unfortunate position of hitting the maximum capacity of our “old” servers until the “new” cloud servers are fully operational.

– Linden Lab, Limited Availability of New Second Life Regions, May 14th, 2020

The availability of new regions directly from the Lab will, for the time being be dependent upon the number of regions returned to them, and is likely to remain so until such time as the cloud uplift work has been completed – which the Lab estimates will be in early autumn 2020.

Note that this situation shouldn’t immediately impact things like parcels currently available for sale / auction on the mainland, or the sale / rental of parcel available on private regions already in-world, although it may come to do so if the demand for land (rather than entire regions, Full or Homestead), runs at a similarly high rate through the next few months. Elsewhere, it is liable to impact on any expansion plans private estates may have, and possibly result in a slow down in any growth of Bellisseria.

You can find out more about options for obtaining land during this shortage of new regions by reading the Lab’s blog post in full. There’s also a forum thread available for those wanting to discuss the matter and hear back from the Lab.

Second Life Premium Plus roll-out postponed

Posted on by Inara Pey

I was unable to get to the Web User Group meeting on Wednesday, May 5th, and it is taking a while to catch up with things. However, one item of discussion that I’ve been made aware of  – with thanks to Lucia et al – is that of Premium Plus.

This is, as most know, the new subscription level, placed “above”, so to speak, that of Premium, that Linden Lab have been working on.

No specifics as to what it might include have to date been released, making it the subject of much speculation in forums and at things like the Web User Group meetings, but it had been indicated that the roll-out of Premium Plus would follow some time after the deployment of Name Changes, which happened in early April (see Linden Lab announces “the return of last names”, and some notes).

Indeed, updated server-side support for Premium subscriptions – including Premium Plus – have already been deployed, and updates to more easily handle data relating to subscription benefits have also been made to the viewer, and will filter out to  TPVs over time.

However, the plans for the formal deployment of Premium Plus have now changed, as first revealed at the May 5th Web User Group meeting; the change, and the reasons for it were further confirmed to me by Grumpity Linden on Tuesday, May 12th.

We have made the decision to delay the deployment of Premium Plus based on two key factors:

  1. We want to be focused on our Uplift project (move to the cloud) and to minimize distraction for our development, QA, and Ops teams. While we’ve laid a lot of groundwork, quite a bit more still remains to finish Premium Plus.
  2. The pandemic has brought a lot of financial uncertainty to people all around the world and we know many of our Residents have been hit hard.

We are very happy that SL has provided an outlet for people where they can connect, escape, engage safely, and earn a living or supplement their income as well. But we also realise that introducing a higher-priced service level in this time would be really ham-handed.

– Grumpity Linden, May 12th, 2020

As to when might we see Premium Plus – or something like it – made available? Grumpity continued:

I don’t know that there’s a whole lot more to say. I can’t promise a time line, but early 2021 is reasonable to expect. If we find ourselves in a position to move up that time line, we’ll certainly explore that. Without any actual plans to that effect, we may find, for example, that a different type of service level than Premium Plus is a better offering for the times we find ourselves in come Fall.

Given the current global economic  / income environment,  delaying the deployment of the new Premium level is a sensible move, for the reason Grumpity states. As and when there is further news on Premium Plus, I’ll endeavour to provide an update – and in a more timely manner!

Adult Swim special streaming event in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Adult Swim

In what has to be the most curious event to reach Second Life is a while, Linden Lab has teamed up with Adult Swim, the American adult-oriented night-time programming block of the children’s basic cable network Cartoon Network to stream four episodes of The Shivering Truth at a special in-world event.

For those not familiar with it, The Shivering Truth is a stop-motion animated surrealist anthology sketch comedy television series, featuring the voice talents of creator Vernon Chatman, together with cast members such as Janeane Garofalo, Trey Parker, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Zack Pearlman, Maria Bamford, Conner O’Malley, David Cross, Martha Plimpton, and Peter Serafinowicz.

The Second Life event will take place on Friday, May 8th, 2020, starting at 16:00 SLT. It is to comprise two episodes from the first season of The Shivering Truth, followed by two episodes from the show’s second season, which will start airing in the United States on Sunday, May 10th, 2020.

The in-world streaming will take place in-world at a special location created for the event, with the Lab noting:

During the event, you can chat with fellow fans of the show and other special guests as you experience the show together for the first time in the virtual world. Free limited-edition virtual gifts and mementos will also be distributed during and after the show — just look for the “Free Gifts” kiosk near the front entrance.

– Exclusive Adult Swim Second Life Event, Linden Lab, May 5th, 2020

The showing is open to anyone to attend – details below – however, those attending will need to be running the special CEF (Chrome embedded Framework) viewer issued as a release candidate on Thursday, April 30th. This viewer will help with streaming content on more sites in general, with the Lab further noting:

The event also marks the first media partnership utilising the new limited-release Second Life Viewer, which enables content creators and entertainment companies to broadcast live video events to virtual world audiences. In the future, you may see several new forms of entertainment including movie and TV premiers, live concerts, and artist/fan meet-and-greets. We’re very excited to partner with Adult Swim for the début of this new feature, which we plan to integrate into the main Second Life Viewer release in the coming weeks.

– Exclusive Adult Swim Second Life Event, Linden Lab, May 5th, 2020

Those wishing to be a part of the event can do so as follows (again, as per the Lab’s blog post):

  • Download the CEF RC viewer and install it ahead of the event. Note that other viewers will not  be compatible with the live stream during the screening event.
  • On the day of the event, this link can be used to teleport to the venue from 15:30 SLT. Early attendance is recommended, as seating is extremely limited.

For those unable to make the premier, the programme will be repeated hourly through until 21:00 SLT on Friday, May 8th.

To help promote the event and steer non-SL users to the in-world venue, the Lab has launched a special Second Life landing page focused on it, and which provides further information on the event and the sneak peek video of the venue, embedded at the end of this article.

The banner for the Second Life landing page created for The Shivering Truth event

The choice of Adult Swim to premier a new service / option that is clearly intended to appeal to an audience of potential interested partners from outside Second Life is an interesting one.

Certainly, similar events held in Sansar (notably around the Star Trek franchise, which have seen cast members from the various Trek incarnations, as well as writers and other backstage crew, mixing it with users and fans at meet-and-greet / QA sessions, proved to be an popular means of drawing people into that platform – if not necessarily retaining them as engaged users. So it will be interesting to see who else the Lab has lined up for such events / streaming activities like this is the future, and what the response is among SL users and non-users alike.

Related Links

Second Norway: the future is bright

Posted on by Inara Pey
Second Norway, March 2020

Following my March pieces on Second Norway and Sailors Cover East and the issues of their respective futures (see: Second Norway & Sailor’s Cove East: rumours & statements – March 23rd and Second Norway and Sailor’s Cove East – status update – April 3rd), I was contacted by Vanity Bonetto, CEO of Luxory and Willowdale Estates, asking if I could put her in contact with Ey, as she had an interest in taking on Second Norway.

Given that Vanity has been able to take over a number of smaller SL estates that have got into difficulties over the years and then turning them around (she took over Willowdale some two years ago when it was just 30 regions – today it comprises some 250 regions), I was only too happy to handle introductions and then get out of the way and let them discuss matters.

Discussing Second Norway’s future with Vanity (l) and Ey (r)

Those discussions have now led to a positive outcome, and I’m happy to be able to provide a further update on all that has happened /  will be happening (although those reading Ey’s Bad Elf blog will already be aware of the situation 🙂 ).

In short, all regions in Second Norway will be continuing, but under the management of Vanity and the Luxory team, with Ey, Mialinn, SlaYeR joining them. Going forward, they will be managing the Second Norway Airport and the social community aspects of the estate.

I hope that before long Mialinn, SlaYeR and I can invite people to fun nights in the SN club with DJs, quizzes and general jibberish talk, just like in the old days.

– Ey Ren

To directly support the land management aspects of the estate, Vanity is bringing on a dedicated team of sales and support agents.

One of my experienced sales team members will be leading things. It takes around four weeks for new agents to get up to speed with our processes, so the new team will have time to learn while we’re redeveloping parts of the estate.

– Vanity Bonetto

For the present, the estate is to be split into two working parts. Note that this is not an actual physical divide in the regions, but rather a means to differentiate areas in terms of the work that will be taking place. Under it, the southern regions, which include places such as Bryggen, the stave church and Second Norway Airport (SNO) will initially remain largely unchanged, with the airport re-opening for business.

The development plan
Meanwhile, the northern regions will undergo an overhaul by Vanity’s landscaping team. This work will be extensive, and requires those residents in them to at least temporarily relocate. It’s a hard thing to do, but one seen as necessary; however, incentives will be offered to encourage people to return once the work has been done. The redevelopment also means that the estate’s regional express train tracks will be removed – but the system will return once the work has been completed.

It’s the only way to upload new terrain files – but we will extend special offers to all current and former residents so that it will pay out for them and make it worth to return to Second Norway in some weeks.
The island to the north will be updated, and over time we’ll offer more to the east and then progress south and demand requires. These island will be of different shapes and sizes. There will be multiple parcels close to the airport while the regions in the north, east and south will offer more privacy.

– Vanity Bonetto

To help with the transitioning, some of the current Second Norway residents have been shown the new designs for the regions that Vanity’s team have been putting together in the Luxory Estates “Lab regions”, and the feedback has been positive.

An example of the new Second Life regions under development at the Luxory lab regions. Note the tall columns are the rezzer systems for deploying each island’s features

A further benefit of the transfer of ownership is that the remaining 17 regions of Sailor’s Cove East can be retained, although not as they currently are. Rather than competing with the 24 regions Patrick agreed to take over, these regions will now be relocated to Second Norway and form a part of the redevelopment work.

As it is, the transfer of ownership from Ey to Vanity and Luxory estates was concluded on Friday, April 24th. The path is now clear for the work in overhauling the northern regions to commence, and for Ey and his team to start on a new chapter in the history of the Second Norway Airport and the social aspects of the estate.

I am relieved and happy that Vanity has agreed to take ownership of Second Norway …  I would like to express my gratitude towards the residents who have been living in Second Norway for years and have been very good sports when it comes to these changes.

– Ey Ren

On my part, I’m happy to see the Second Norway / SCE situation resolved so positively, and I particularly look forward to further covering the work at Second Norway. My thanks to both Vanity and Ey for keeping me in the loop on matters, and for spending time with me on April 27th.

Sources

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.