Category: News-Opinion

Lab announces Sansar’s closed alpha officially under-way

Posted on by Inara Pey
Th obligatory Sansar promo image :) (please can we have some new ones?) - Linden Lab
Th obligatory Sansar promo image 🙂 (please can we have some new ones?) – Linden Lab

On Tuesday, August 18th, and running a couple of weeks behind schedule – such is the way with new projects – the Lab has officially announced they’ve invited a small number of content creators to try-out their Next Generation Platform for virtual experiences, currently code-named Project Sansar.

The announcement, which appears a press release on the Lab’s corporate pages, reads in part:

Slated for general availability in 2016, Project Sansar will democratize virtual reality as a creative medium. It will empower people to easily create, share, and monetize their own multi-user, interactive virtual experiences, without requiring engineering resources. The platform will enable professional-level quality and performance with exceptional visual fidelity, 3D audio, and physics simulation. Experiences created with Project Sansar will be optimized for VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, but also accessible via PCs and (at consumer launch) mobile devices. Users can explore and socialize within Project Sansar experiences through advanced expressive avatars, using text and voice chat.

Drawing on more than 12 years of unique experience running Second Life, the largest-ever user-created virtual world, Linden Lab will make it fun and easy for Project Sansar users to create social VR experiences, eliminating the complicated challenges that today limit the medium to professional developers with significant resources. Project Sansar will allow creators at all levels to focus on realizing their creative visions, without having to worry about issues such as hosting and distribution, multi-user access and communication systems, virtual currency and regulatory compliance, and other challenges associated with creating, sharing, and monetizing virtual experiences today.

As has been widely reported, the initial testing will be focused on Autodesk’s Maya® software for content creation and upload to Sansar, although the Lab have also announced that they intend the platform to operate with a wide range of content creation tools such as such as 3D Max, Sketchup, and Blender, with file format support for OBJ and FBX, and others.

Sansar alpha testing is focused exclusively on Maya - however, the Lab intend the platform to support a wide range of 3D content creation tools as work progresses
Sansar alpha testing is focused exclusively on Maya – however, the Lab intend the platform to support a wide range of 3D content creation tools as work progresses

During the alpha, the invited creators will be encouraged to “use each other’s games and other invented environments, trade feedback, and tweak their own work.” They’ll also have to be patient, with Ebbe Altberg having previously warned they may face having content deleted, removed or otherwise altered as the Lab continued to adjust, change, tweak (and bash?) what is still a very new platform that has a good way to go before it reaches something ready to have a lot of people pile on to it and play with it.

That said, if all goes according to plan, the alpha will slowly be opened out over time to include more creators, the Lab’s own announce noting:

In the coming months, Linden Lab will welcome additional creators and content partners to Project Sansar as new features are added to the platform and testing expands.

The emphasis on “content partners” is mine, as I do wonder precisely what it means for the direction Sansar will be taking, particularly given the differentiation given the term from “creators”.  More thoughts on that to come.

In the meantime, The Verge has been quick off the press in following-up on the Lab’s announcement, with a short piece entitled The VR successor to Second Life is inviting its first testers, which is in some ways an unfortunate title, as it does carry a certain implication that Second Life is perhaps no more. This view is perhaps further enhanced by the use of the past tense when referring to the platform, even though there is a nod to the fact that Sansar will run “alongside” SL.

VentureBeat, to name one other following-up on the Lab’s press release, has a similarly brief article in its GamesBeat section, Second Life creator Linden Lab starts testing its virtual-reality world: Project Sansar, which focuses on the core points of the press release.

For those wishing to catch-up on what I believe to be the core statements and information around Sansar, as gathered from cited sources, please refer to my July Sansar Summary.

Also, be sure to take a look at uploadVR’s very excellent conversation between Nick Ochoa and Ebbe Altberg on Sansar, which I reviewed at the start of August, and am embedding here again for reference.

 

A Bright Canopy set to open over Second Life and OpenSim

Posted on by Inara Pey

BC logoBright Canopy, the new streaming service, which allows users on low-end computers to access both Second Life and OpenSim has announced it will officially launch on Saturday, August 29th at a single monthly subscription price, which for the first 90 days (at least) will be $17.00 a month.

The service, which was established by SL users Bill Glover and his wife, Jeri (known in-world as Chaos Priestman and Beth Robbani respectively in-world),  arose directly as a result of the May 2015 closure of the SL Go streaming service provided by former on-line streaming games supplier, OnLive. What’s more, and on a personal note, I’m pleased to be able to say that this blog had a hand in bringing things about – although my involvement as a beta user hasn’t been as extensive as I’d hoped.

As a result of the cessation of SL Go as a result of OnLive’s decision to sell, I ruminated on the potential of the Lab running a streamed SL service through Amazon AppSstream. This caught Bill’s eye and imagination, prompting him to comment:

Let’s just do it ourselves! You really got me thinking. I’d can launch a service right now if I get enough folks for Beta.

Bill and Jeri Glover: heading the Bright Canopy team, and long-term Second Life users
Bill and Jeri Glover: heading the Bright Canopy team, and long-term Second Life users

Things further progressed when I wrote about Nebadon Izumi’s work in getting the viewer and OpenSim delivered over AppStream.  My article prompted Nikola Bozinovic, founder and CEO of Frame, a cloud-based service focused on delivering Windows applications to users,  to suggest his service could be used to deliver Second Life through the cloud.

Bill and Nikola quickly got their heads together, and within 24 hours, they had their own proof-of-concept running, delivering the official SL viewer over Frame via Amazon.

Bright Canopy streams SL and OpenSim directly to your web browser, offering those on low-specification computers to enjoy the full graphic richness of both platforms with (allowing for network vagaries) low latency
Bright Canopy streams SL and OpenSim directly to your web browser, offering those on low-specification computers to enjoy the full graphic richness of both platforms with (allowing for network vagaries) low latency – note the data, bottom left (via Bright Canopy)

Not long after that, and with the support of SL and OpenSim users, a small alpha test commenced, which expanded to an invite-only pre-launch beta, which again in turn gradually opened its doors wider and wider as time as progressed and issues dealt with.

Nikola Bozinovic, founder of Frame, who extended an invitation to try the service as a possible means of accessing Second Life (and other grids) from the cloud
Nikola Bozinovic, founder of Frame, who extended an invitation to try his service as a means of accessing Second Life (and other grids) from the cloud – and thus paved the way for Bright Canopy to deliver

While operating as independent companies, the synergy between Frame and Bright Canopy has been impressive, with the former working hard to ensure the latter can provide a scalable, robust service, as Bill has worked to ensure the viewer behaves itself when streamed and can support the services users expect – notably voice.

“Frame is excited to provide infrastructure support to make projects like Bright Canopy scale globally,” Nikola stated during the official launch announcement. “Bill has captured the imagination and the energy of the Second Life community. We’ve been impressed by the cooperative and open approach of the Bright Canopy team.”

One of the core benefits of running with Frame, is the company has an established track record in delivering Windows applications over cloud services (indeed, in June 2015, Frame closed a further US $10 million round of funding, such is the scope of interest in their approach). This means they have the technical expertise to be able to help Bright Canopy scale over time, and to offer the kind of delivery speeds users expect (local network vagaries allowing). The company already has a global presence itself, notably utilising Amazon’s backbone, with points of presence across the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.

Initially, Bright Canopy ran using only Frame’s presence in California. Even so, and for many in the USA and Europe, results were impressive. Later, Dublin was added to the mix, offering greatly reduced latency to beta users in Europe.  With the launch on August 29th, Bright Canopy will additionally leverage Frame’s presence on the US East Coast to again enhance the service.

One of the key aspects of Bright Canopy being partnered with Frame is that the latter already has multiple points-of-presence with Amazon around the world - so Bright Canopy can leverage these as global demands requires. At launch, Bright Canopy runs out of California, serving the USA, and Dublin, serving Europe
One of the key aspects of Bright Canopy being partnered with Frame is that the latter already has multiple points-of-presence with Amazon around the world – so Bright Canopy can leverage these as global demands requires. At launch, Bright Canopy runs out of California, serving the USA, and Dublin, serving Europe

The new monthly pricing plan, which will completely replace the hourly plan used during the beta period, has initially been set at US $17.00 a month for the first 90 days. However, Bright Canopy warn that this may be subject to increase – although they hope very much to avoid this.

The problem here is that Bright Canopy is currently being provisioned via Amazon’s Spot Instances. Normally, these are the most cost-effective way to deliver a service, but they have lately been subject to an insane bidding war, resulting in massive price spikes.

This means that Bright Canopy need to watch the situation very carefully, as Bill explained in the launch announcement:

Our early bird price is going to be an experiment for 90 days. If you’ve been following the blog, you know we’ve seen price fluctuations on the back-end, and we still need to watch actual usage of the service. $17 is a sustainable price if the instance costs return to their typical, historical values. It is not a sustainable price with the current spike in instance price. We may need to get creative with how we split instances, or we may need to raise prices. We intend to remain transparent as always and will keep you posted. Our goal is to continue to maintain a sustainable, affordable service.

If a price increase is required, it will be announced when Bright Canopy have had an opportunity to assess the best way forward, and with sufficient time for users to determine how they’d like to proceed.

Continue reading “A Bright Canopy set to open over Second Life and OpenSim” →

Come gather, remember and celebrate the life of Lumiere Noir

Posted on by Inara Pey

lumiereFurther to the sad news of the passing of the Ivory tower of Primitives founder,  Lumiere Noir, Avi Arrow has announced there will be a special Remembrance and Celebration at the Tower in his memory, commencing at 13:00 SLT on Sunday, August 16th.

Ave’s notice reads in full:

A *Remembrance & Celebration* gathering for Lumiere Noir will be held at 1:00pm (13:00) SLT on Sunday 16th of August at the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Natoma/210/164/28 (G-rated) . Bring fondest of memories and dancing shoes.

Lumiere’s passing has been felt right across the grid, such has been his influence on so many over the years, and tributes continue to be paid via his Second Life web profile, and remembrances passed to Avi for display at the Tower itself.  Xiola Linden  posted a brief message on behalf of Linden Lab on Friday, August 14th, in which he was again noted as a friend. colleague and mentor to so many.

Image: Lumiere Noir attending the awards ceremony for  the Imagine Challenge, part of the UWA’s 2010 3D Art & Design Challenge, and at which he addressed the audience and the winners as the ceremony’s Special Guest, having also served on the judging panel. Read more here – including the text of his speech which, in typical Lumiere fashion, was insightful and ahead of the curve. His words  resonate as strongly today on the subjects of virtual art and virtual spaces as ever they did in 2010, such was his vision. (with thanks to the UWA and Jayjay Zifanwee).

Lumiere Noir: Remembrance and Celebration – The Ivory Tower Library of Primitives, 13:00 SLT, Sunday, August 16th, 2015.

 

Con-Fusion about education in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Incorrect thinking: just because a campus region is empty of other avatars doesn't necessarily mean it is "abandoned" (image: UWA campus, Second Life)
Incorrect thinking: just because a campus region in Second Life is empty of other avatars doesn’t necessarily mean it is “abandoned” (image: part of the UWA campus, Second Life)

Second Life (with a nod to the Lab’s Project Sansar) has enjoyed some reasonably good press of late. We’ve seen articles in the likes of Xconomy.com. Variety Online, Re/code, Gamasutra – good golly, Miss Molly, even Moviepilot is getting in on the act.

However, there will still be pieces out there which reflect poorly on matters. Not so much where Second Life is concerned, but on their authors. Such is the case with Patrick Hogan’s piece in Fusion, which John (Johannes1977 Resident) pointed me towards via e-mail.

The title of the piece is enough to set the overall tone: We took a tour of the abandoned college campuses of Second Life.

Patrick Hogan: writing to underline a preconception
Patrick Hogan: writing to underline a preconception?

As one might expect from such a title, this isn’t a reasoned discussion of the whys and wherefores, both good and bad, on the use of Second Life for educational purposes. There is no mention of the work of universities such as Texas A&M, as featured in episode #19 of The Drax Files World Makers, or that of the University of Western Australia. There is no highlighting of the struggle schools, colleges and universities faced as a result of the axing of the education discount or the resurgence of interest following its re-introduction; indeed Mr. Hogan demonstrates he’s not even aware there is an educational discount.

Similarly, no insights are given into how the platform has been used to assist with medical training among nurses and surgeons alike.  There is no pointer to the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) run by the  Universidad de San Martín de Porres (USMP) in Perú, now in its third year, which helps Spanish-speaking educators get started with Second Life simply because it is in demand as a platform for education, and so on.

Nor, frankly should we expect there to be any such discussion, because Mr. Hogan doesn’t appear to be so much interested in Second Life as he does about underlining his own misconceptions about the platform which, like his opening comments, seem to be firmly rooted in 2007.

So does this mean we should ignore what he has to say? No, not at all. Looking through his other articles, Mr. Hogan seems to prefer to skim his subjects with the aim of offering something of a lighter look. As such, he may well be open to gaining a little more educated about this particular topic.

Certainly, and with a view to addressing the readership of the piece, its subjective nature and the misconceptions evident within it should be corrected, starting with the false premise of the piece itself (an “empty” region is in no way indicative of it having been “abandoned”).

These arre not the educational uses of virtual worlds Mr. hogan was looking for...
These are not the educational uses of virtual worlds Mr. Hogan was looking for…

Of course, had he really been interested in his subject, Mr. Hogan could have contacted the Lab, asked a few questions, received some pointers towards various education-related organisations and communities, and been on his way and filling his little corner of Fusion with relevant observations, positive or negative.

But he didn’t. He preferred the lazy route, walking the same, tired furrow that’s all too familiar and boring. His article even manages the obligatory reference to porn that is considered de rigueur for such pieces (check the title byline).

That he does opt to walk this line is really to his detriment, rather than it being any reflection on those who use Second Life or the platform itself.

MadPea announce new strategy in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
MadPea: shifting the emphasis towards games like Blood Letters, The Collection and Buried
MadPea: shifting the emphasis towards games like Blood Letters, The Collection and Buried

There come certain points in life when we have to do a little re-evaluation of who we are and where we are going. After some discussions within the team, we came to the conclusion that we are stopping the UNIA development on THIS platform.

These are the opening words from a heartfelt post from Kiana Writer, founder and Queen Pea of the prolific MadPea Productions.

Entitled MadPea Changes its Strategy, the post, which appears on the MadPea Productions website, rather than their wordPress blog, announces a change in direction for the team in light of the sheer hard work, blood, sweat and tears they collectively invested in UNIA, as they continue to develop immersive games for Second Life.

UNIA lis an incredible achievement, and will remain active in SL: but it is unlikely to see further significant development as the MadPea team refocus
UNIA lis an incredible achievement, and will remain active in SL: but it is unlikely to see further significant development as the MadPea team refocus

As Kiana notes, UNIA was a massive undertaking for all concerned, which came a no small cost, some US $12,000 to put together and over two years to develop. Plus, as Kiana states:

During the development for UNIA we lost our sponsor and exactly 19 people from the huge team, including our lead developer for MadPea of several years,” Kiana explains. “Still we struggled with a smaller team and big expenses to bring it out because our vision had not changed: We needed to show what was possible to do on this platform.

Given this, and while UNIA continues to gain new players on a weekly basis and continues to excite and enthral, it’s really hard to justify such an enormous effort on an ongoing basis, and Kiana goes on to indicate in her post:

With our current resources we could do either one of the two things: Continue developing the UNIA saga or put our focus on smaller adventures such as BURIED and The Collection. Making smaller adventures takes us around 2 months while UNIA 2 would be at least 6 more months of waiting.

So it is that going forward, MadPea will be focused on “smaller” games (I use the quotes as such is the all-encompassing, grid-wide nature of many of their games, nothing MadPea does is ever really “small”), which can be developed over shorter times scales. In particular, such games will allow MadPea to better collaborate with and help promote businesses and content creators in Second Life, just as The Collection is right now, and both BURIED and Blood Letters.

In 2014, Blood Letters allowed us all to don fedoras and rain coats and adopt the roles of PIs on the trail of a murderer
In 2014, Blood Letters allowed us all to don fedoras and rain coats and adopt the roles of a PI (or is that PEA-I?) on the trail of a murderer

In this regard, Kiana indicates that the rest of 2015 is already mapped out by the team.  The Collection (which I recently looked at here), will run through until the end of September, prior to making way for a new game starting in October and in time for Halloween (dare I mention…. Peatonville?).

To me, the decision from the team makes absolute sense. While UNIA was and is undoubtedly a magnificent achievement, Second life at times doesn’t really lend itself to projects of that scale or depth. However, games like The Collection, BURIED and Blood Letters not only allow MadPea to achieve their goal of collaborating with others more readily, they also enable the team to experience a greater degree of satisfaction in seeing their creations come to life and be enjoyed by others.

The Collection is available now for all those wishing to solve a mystery with a decidedly musical bent
The Collection is available now for all those wishing to solve a mystery with a decidedly musical bent

My only question to Kiana is, why the emphasis on UNIA’s development ceasing on “THIS platform” (i.e. Second Life)?  Is there yet more news to be a-coming? :D.

The passing of Lumiere Noir

Posted on by Inara Pey

lumiere-1_001News is spreading of the sudden passing of Lumiere Noir, the man behind the Ivory Tower of Primitives, who died suddenly on Monday, August 10th, 2015.

Famous for his “Black Spy” avatar, Lumiere joined Second Life at the end of 2003, and originally built the Ivory Tower of Primitives on Noya. Later during 2004, a branch of the Tower was established on Natoma, functioning alongside the original until that was demolished in 2006.

A self-guided, self-paced tutorial and library to in-world building in Second Life, the Ivory Tower has been – and remains – an essential reference centre to all who treasure the art of in-world content creation.

By founding it, Lumiere extended his physical world abilities as a teacher into virtual spaces to great effect and the benefit of others. In Second life he was known as an open friend, excellent mentor, and for his sense of fun the good-natured mischievous twinkle in his eye.

As per the notices placed out around the Tower, objects of condolence from those who knew him should be passed to Avi Arrow, who will place them out.

To Tosha Tyan, his partner in Second Life, and to his family and friends in the physical world I offer my condolences at this time.  Lumiere’s presence and influence will be sadly missed right across Second life by all who knew him, or came into contact with him.

Lumiere's legacy to all in Second Life: The Ivory Tower of Primitives
Lumiere’s legacy to all in Second Life: The Ivory Tower of Primitives