On Wednesday, September 16th, 2015, Linden Lab issued a blog post advising people who use a credit (or debit) card to make payments directly to Linden Lab, to update their Second Life payment information.
This is due to the company transitioning to a new payment system. The advice is particularly pertinent for any users who have not recently added or updated their payment method as the post notes:
Second Life is transitioning to a new payments processor for credit cards. If you use a credit card for Second Life payments and have not added or updated your billing information since July 7, 2015, we strongly encourage you to re-enter your information to avoid any potential disruption of services. If you use PayPal or Skrill for Second Life payments, no action is needed.
Updating your payment information is relatively simple:
Under How You’re Paying, select the payment method of your choice.
If you wish to re-use the same credit card already filed directly with the Lab, you will need to Remove it first, and then re-add the details.
Make sure you also indicate to payments which are to be charged to the card by clicking on the Change option and checking the required check boxes.
To re-use existing card information filed with the Lab, you will need to Remove the card details first, and then re-add them. When adding card payment information, make sure you also define the payments which are to be charged to the card through the Change option.
When you have updated your payment information, you should see a banner notice at the top of the Billing Information page telling you this is the case.
As noted in the Lab’s blog post, you may notice a small authorisation charge made against the card you register. This is a common means of authenticating billing information, and the charge will be reversed / cancelled by you bank of credit card issuer, so the money is refunded to you.
It is not clear exactly when the transition to the new payment system will take place / be completed (or indeed, if it has already been completed). However, if you do have a credit / debit card registered with the Lab which you have not recently updated, it would be best to do so sooner rather than later to avoid any possible hiccups with payments.
Linden Lab has launched a photo call in the run-up to the Halloween season in October, and it is one with a slight twist. rather than offering cash prizes, selected entries could be used to help promote Second Life Halloween activities, etc. to residents via e-mails and banner ad campaigns, and perhaps even social media.
Do you like to dress your avatar up in costumes – travel the haunted spots all over Second Life, and generally run amok during this time of year? Why not show off your fun with images?
Share your pic on our Official Flickr Page with the tag “SLHalloween2015” so that we can see all of your amazing works. You may submit as many as you like between now and September 28th, 2015.
We’ll showcase the chosen image(s) in an email to Residents, as well as in some banner campaigns. We’ll let the chosen image creators know via Flickr and ask for an avatar name for the credits.
An example of the use to which images submitted in the 2015 Halloween photo call might be put (image courtesy of Linden Lab)
There are obviously some basic requirements for entries to be considered – they should be appropriate for audiences of all age ranges; they should be taken in-world and free from additional text and logos, for example. The Lab also suggests taking a picture that tells a story might help make an impression.
This isn’t a contest per se, and shouldn’t be taken as such. It is, however, an opportunity for users to get into the Halloween spirit and perhaps have their avatars immortalised n a Second Life campaign. Those wishing to take part should, as the announcement notes, simply submit their images with the SLHalloween2015 tag to the official Second Life Flickr group.
Is there a Link between Project Sansar and “Created Reality”?
Ciaran Laval and I have been using Twitter to further ponder a domain registration in the name of “createdreality.com”. It was originally taken out in June 2013, which under the usual two-year registration policy means it possibly expired around June 3rd, 2015. However, on July 9th, 2015, it was renewed through Ascio Technologies, the company used to register the projectsansar.com domain.
The domain registration renewal followed a trademark registration submitted to the USPTO by the Lab for the name “Created Reality”. This occurred on May 22nd and is summarised here.
The timing of both is possibly interesting, given the domain name had been allowed to lapse (although this could simply have been admin oversight), and the trademark filing came 2 weeks after Lab had confirmed “Project Sansar” to be the new platform’s code-name, thus ruling out “Created Reality” as simply being an alternative code-name for the platform.
The domain createdreality.com was registered through the same service used to register the projectsansar.com domain
So, does this mean “Created Reality” is the new name for the Lab’s Next Generation platform? Well, maybe – but maybe not.
On the one hand, it is interesting that the Trademark filing came after the code-name for the platform had been decided. However, this isn’t necessarily indicative of anything; the Lab could simply be covering the bases as they consider various names for the new platform.
More to the point, while the name “Created Reality” may doubtless describe the platform’s function in presenting spaces where people can create their own virtual realities, it does actually read rather, well, bland.
The createdreality.com domain administrator: Linden Research (Linden Lab)
Countering this, however, is the idea that the new platform is apparently geared towards being a “white label” service in which in which creators can build their own branded spaces, and then promote / market them directly to their potential audience, complete with sign-up portal, etc.
As such, the users of the environments created on the platform are perhaps more likely to know the environments by their various names, rather than collectively by the name of the platform on which they run. Thus, the platform’s name might be less front-and-centre than is the case with something like Second Life. Although that said, I’d personally like to see something a little more dynamic by which to know the platform.
Right now, the Lab is saying little on the subject of “Sansar” or “Created Reality”, with Peter Gray only informing me that the platform’s name is still “being determined”.
However, if we place the “Created Reality” trademark alongside the one for “Sansar” – the latter being quite distinct from the trademark filed for “Project Sansar” – it would seem we have a couple of the names the Lab have been ruminating on for the platform’s eventual title. Could there be more lurking out there in the form of trademarks and / or domain names?
Saturday, September 12th marks the start of the 2015 Stand up 2 Cancer (SU2C) campaign in Second Life, and the venue schedules are shaping up nicely. I previewed this year’s campaign, at the end of August, so feel to treat this as a small update / teaser.
This year builds on the 2014 début event, which saw L$ 1.5 million raised over 4 days, and will see more than 150 performers, DJs and tribute bands perform at around 40 venues across Second Life in two weeks of music and fund-raising to assist the ground-breaking work of Stand Up 2 Cancer. Activities commence on Saturday, September 12th and run through until Sunday, September 27th, all brought together through the leadership of Still Braveheart, who pioneered the 2014 inaugural weekend.
The Dirty Grind over Jasmine’s Hollow will host multiple events across the 2 weeks of SU2C fund-raising
As I noted last time around, the focus this year is not only on a much broader time span for fund-raising, but it is also looking to support far more of SU2C’s work by splitting donations between SU2C’s activities in Canada, the UK and the USA. In addition, people will be able to donate directly to SU2C’s work in through three countries by following the special donation links available at all participating venues if they’d prefer to pay direct, rather than via in-world L$ donations.
Obviously, with so many performers and venues participating, listing them in a blog like this is impossible – so do please keep a track of the SU2C in SL event schedule on Google, and via Stills’ own blog, which will have daily events, times and LMs to venues as things get under-way, as well as all the very latest news. However, to help whet appetites, here is a small sampling of what is to come (note schedules subject to possible last minute change).
So, do please keep an eye on Still’s blog for the full schedule of events, together with the Google calendar, and who knows – we might bump into one another at one of the venues! If so, do please say hello.
About Stand Up 2 Cancer
SU2C takes an innovative approach to ending cancer by focusing on forming “dream teams” of doctors and researchers who are directly involved in leading-edge cancer research and treatment, and then undertaking aggressive research programmes. 100% of all donations made through SU2C goes directly into funding cancer research and treatment and paying for these teams; none is lost to “administrative costs” or put aside for CEO or executive salaries, etc.
Such is the success of this approach that as of 2014, and in the USA alone, SU2C has raised over $261 million in seven years. This money has all be used in directly supporting 141 clinical trials of possible cancer treatments, involving 750 scientists and 5,000 cancer patients, and which have spanned 112 US institutions.
On Saturday, September 5th, Bright Canopy held an in-world meeting and their island in Second Life to discuss recent events regarding the Bright Canopy service (you can read the background here).
In particular, the aim of the meeting was for the Bright Canopy team to share what they’ve learned since moving to launch the service on August 29th, and discuss the options needed to make the service sustainable going forward.
Both Bill and Jerri Glover (Chaos Priestman and Beth (Bethsael) Robbiani in SL) were present at the meeting, which was held in text, and a transcript of the chat log is available on the Bright Canopy website. What follows here is a high-level summary.
The meeting opened with Chaos providing some historical context of how Bright Canopy came into being, paying particular attention to how the service is structured, as this is important to grasp. In summary:
Bright Canopy manage the service and take the viewer and tweak it to run as a part of a cloud service
This delivery via Amazon is facilitated by Frame, a company with considerable experience in provisioning optimised Windows applications to users via the cloud.
All of this obviously involves costs – most notably with both Amazon and with Frame. In order to minimise the costs with Amazon, the most efficient means to provision Bright Canopy is using Amazon’s Spot Instance pricing mechanism. Since its introduction, this has generally pitched at around US $0.12-$0.15 per hour for g2.2xlarge server instances.
Unfortunately, at the start of August 2015, the Spot Instance pricing for the server instances started spiking, first in Ireland, then in both California and Virginia – the three Amazon POPs Bright Canopy would be using via Frame. These spikes meant that instance costs ballooned from under US $0.25 an hour to anywhere between $1.00 and $8.00 depending on the location.
Ireland was the first of Amazon EC2 centres used by Bright Canopy to be affected by sharp rises in Spot Instance pricing at the start of August
“Our business model was based on Amazon’s Spot Instance prices remaining below $0.25 as they had since they were introduced,” Chaos explained. “That’s just the cost of the instances. That doesn’t include Frame being paid or Bright Canopy being paid … This [spiking] broke our business model, but it looked like a temporary spike. We decided to continue with the planned launch. We believed the prices would come back down.”
To try to counter the unpredictability of the Spot Instance prices, Bright Canopy moved to Amazon’s On Demand pricing. This is far more predictable than spot Instance, but comes at a premium – US $0.80 an hour – leaving the service losing money.
“We hoped that usage would even out in such a way that we would lose money slowly enough to maintain our course until we could build out a solution that cost less on the back-end,” Chaos said of the move. “In the meantime we also hoped the Spot prices would come back down and give us some relief.”
The California Spot Instance pricing also started showing considerable volatility at the start of August 2015
Following launch, however, user behaviour changed quite dramatically. People were spending much longer periods logged-in, both increasing costs and forcing the use of even more server instances.
“It became clear that we could not sustain the losses,” Chaos said. “Usage was just not the same as we had seen in Pre-release. We expected a difference, but we didn’t expect such a huge difference. We agreed to pull the plug and rethink things.”
More recently, the Spot Instance prices in the USA have showed signs of settling down once more. However, it is still too soon to know whether this is an indication that prices are resuming their pre-August levels, and Ireland has certainly remained volatile.
Like Ireland and California, Virginia, Bright Canopy’s newest POP with Amazon, also experienced enormous volatility in pricing which has – like California – only recently showed signs of stabilising. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee this will remain the case
So what does this mean for the service?
Most immediately, it means that the service will not be back up for Monday, September 7th, the date Bright Canopy had indicated as being the earliest by which it might be resumed. Instead, things remain in what Bright Canopy is calling a holding pattern until such time as a consensus has been reached on the best, most sustainable means of moving the service forward for the benefit of those needing it.
“We have worked with Frame on a proposed plan that we would be able to offer to a limited number of people at first,” Chaos said. “We have not come to an agreement yet on all of the details of that plan. If and when we do, please understand that this is just a stopgap so that the people who most need the service will have an option.”
This approach is intended to meet at least some of Frame’s costs (who up until now, as with Bright Canopy, haven’t received any income from the venture), as well continuing to meet Amazon’s charges. Bright Canopy will continue to work on the service unpaid, but will have to step back from 24/7 support and response and for the timing being to providing responses to questions and support requests within 24 hours.
The main presentation was followed by a Q&A session, which covered a number of topic areas, and I recommend those interested read the transcript in full to see both questions and answers.
The above video has been gaining attention since first appearing on You Tube at the end of August. It’s advance promotion for a new virtual worlds platform called Sinewave.space, built using the Unity 3D engine, and which may be opening its doors to initial users in December 2015.
The company behind Sinewave.space is Sine Wave Entertainment, a name which may be familiar to many Second Life users, given it is also the company behind the highly successful Sine Wave animations brand in-world.
Spearheading the work is Sine Wave’s CEO, Adam Frisby, a man who has considerable experience with virtual world platforms, having been one of the founders of the OpenSimulator project. In Second Life he is probably better known as Adam Zaius, the man behind such ventures as Azure Islands and the DeepThink virtual worlds development agency, which operated in both Second Life and OpenSim.
Adam Frisby is perhaps more recognisable to many in SL as Adam Zaius
Nor are Sine Wave Entertainment new to the virtual worlds market. They’ve built and operated a number of virtual world spaces themselves, and they’ve produced virtual world spaces on behalf of clients, with all of their products created using the Unity 3D engine.
Perhaps the largest of their own environments is Wet.fm, a music-focused virtual environment claiming some 400,000 “live audience members”, 120 artists and some 600 music events held to date.
Chief among client-oriented spaces the company have developed is Flybar, a “multiplayer social game and on-line cinema for [the] globally distributed Spanish language soap opera Cuéntame cómo pasó“, and which claims 1.2 million unique visitors since 2012, together with the Gojiyo virtual world / platform The latter was originally developed for India’s Godrej Industries and boasts 1.7 million registered users. It also appears to have what might be called associated games or spin-offs, such as Jiyopets.
Sine Wave are responsible for the India-based virtual world, GoJiyo, for Godrei Industries, and which boasted 1.7 million registered users
Reading the available information about sinewave.space, it’s interesting to note the similarities in approach between it and Project Sansar. For example, both platforms are intended to be white label environments in which creators can build their own branded spaces, and then promote / market them directly to their potential audience, complete with sign-up portal, etc., without that audience necessarily being aware that the space they are entering is part of a platform providing many such spaces / experiences.
Further, both companies indicate the spaces within each platform could potentially be of unlimited size (Sine Wave indicate bandwidth, and Linden Lab the physics simulator, as being the only practical limitations to “land size”); both platforms will offer a mix of “in-built” tools as well as support for a broad range of 3rd party tools for content creation – although Sine Wave would appear to be significantly further down the road in this. Sine Wave and Linden Lab also appear to be steering a similar course in terms of offering central user account management, virtual goods marketing, etc., which can be used across multiple environments running on their platforms.
Sine Wave are offering a content creation tool chain which includes an advanced animation / gesture system and, as illustrated above, a “humanoid resizer” tool, designed to allow mesh clothing sized for “popular avatar skeletons” to be automatically resized to fit the primary Sinewave.space avatar skeleton
Which should not be taken to mean I think the two are in any way connected – I don’t. Rather, I find it interesting that two companies, each with their own approach to building and running immersive 3D spaces, have arrived at a similar conceptual approach as to how to build a platform aimed at being flexible enough in design and implementation to appeal to a wide cross-section of potential use-cases, without necessarily tying creators / clients / partners – or indeed, users – to a single branded environment.
Obviously, there are differences as well. For example, Sine Wave have indicated that among the worlds running on Sinewave.space will be a number of their own spaces – such as the aforementioned wet.fm, which is due for a re-launch under the sinewave.space banner in the near future – with the Sine Wave portfolio listing a number (all?) of such spaces which might be candidates for inclusion.
Sine Wave also produce Convvirt, a business-oriented space built on Unity 3D. Whether it is to form a part of the overall Sinewave.space “federation” of virtual worlds is unclear, but it is listed as a part of the also listed under the Sine Wave portfolio bearing the Sinewave.space brand, so one assumes so
Sine Wave also have the advantage of building on an engine – Unity 3D – with which they have many years of experience of both operating and using to build virtual spaces, rather than starting entirely from scratch. Lessons learned from past efforts can be put directly to use. They are also well-versed in the tools an capabilities contained within the engine without having to go through an internal learning curve as a part of the development process, and they have experience in combining the tools within the engine with their own tools – motion capture, animation, etc. – to present creators with an integrated tool chain.
As it is, and as noted earlier, Sine Wave are seeking content creators – region designers, clothing designers, animators and gesture designers, vehicle builders, and more – and in doing so, they’re offering those signing-up a 70/30 (in the creator’s favour) revenue split on all content sold within the platform’s worlds when they are opened to users. Those interested should follow the above link to find out more.
It’ll be interesting to see how sinewave.space develops over the coming months, both independently as with Project Sansar as a possible frame of reference (and even vice-versa), and I hope to be able to provide updates on progress through these pages.
Note; this article was largely drafted prior to show #84 of the Drax Files Radio Hour podcast, in which Drax talks to Adam Frisby about Sinewave.space. You can hear the conversation starting at the 34:30 mark, with an introduction by Drax.
On Wednesday, September 16th, 2015, Linden Lab issued a blog post advising people who use a credit (or debit) card to make payments directly to Linden Lab, to update their Second Life payment information.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 