Category: News-Opinion

Altas Obscura offers a clear-eyed image of Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Second Life has been enjoying something of a positive resurgence in the media in recent months, and with May now passing us by, and June and SL’s 12th anniversary  sitting just over the horizon, it is inevitable that there will be more media coverage forthcoming on SL as the Lab’s media team crank things up.

Eric Grundhauser: touring Second Life with Ziki Questi
Eric Grundhauser: touring Second Life with Ziki Questi

One of the first out of the gate in this regard is an article in Altas Obscura, which describes itself as the definitive guide to the world’s wondrous and curious places. Penned by Eric Grundhauser, Forgotten Wonders of the Digital World offers a positive insight on SL with a novel twist.

Rather than asking a few questions of the Lab or relying on images grabbed from Flickr and cobbled together with a little staggering around in-world, Eric Grundhauser is, with the assistance of the Lab, able to gain none other than Ziki Questi, photographer and blogger (together with her partner Kinn), to act as his guide to all that is, and can be found, in-world.

The result is an engaging and informed piece which neatly encapsulates SL’s history, presents an assured view of the platform devoid of the usual clichés and asides, and which focuses on the rich tapestry of content which can be found in-world – role-play, art, personal spaces, with even the broader uses of the platform touched upon, such as the US Army’s use of SL (and OpenSim) to help service personnel deal with PTSD. What’s more, with some of the images supplied by Ziki, the article looks good as well (Mr. Grundhauser’s own snaps aren’t too bad, and kudos to him for taking them, rather than seeking to raid an archive from 2008 or so!).

Ziki and I are a lot alike in terms of taste, so for me it was good to see Roche,  A Petrovsky Flux and Haveit Neox’s City Inside Out referenced in the article, with Insilico, Kowloon and The Far Away – which Ziki herself rescued from oblivion and now curates – also getting a mention (and photographs).

Roche, a favourite of mine, and featured in the Atlas Obscura article
Roche, a favourite of mine, and featured in the Atlas Obscura article

Such is the impact of his time in Second Life exploring with Ziki and Kinn, Mr. Grundhauser willingly re-evaluates his thinking about the world, while remaining open and honest:

To be honest, when I decided to delve into Second Life, I half-expected to find a dying world of outsiders and bronies gleefully recreating pornographic impossibilities. But that simply doesn’t seem to be true. What I found, and mind you, I was only able to visit a strikingly miniscule portion of the available spaces, was that Second Life is still a fascinating and vital world that is constantly changing and pushing the boundaries of what a virtual space can be…

More telling I think, is the somewhat widespread perception that Second Life is no longer an active digital playground. The Grid is still a vital and evolving space that hundreds of thousands of users create and evolve each day.

Nor is “the sex thing” shied away from – kudos again to Ziki for being open on that subject as well, and the fact that – just as in the physical world and the Internet as a whole – there is an awful lot of it in SL. But as Eric Grundhauser demonstrates very ably – with or without established guides – just because there is a lot of sex in-world, it doesn’t bean it’s the be-all and end-all of the platform. As he notes when describing the diversity of activities and those using SL:

Doctors, universities, hobbyists, sci-fi fans, artists, and inexplicable curiosities can all be found operating in SL, by those willing to look.

Well done to him for making the effort to delve into SL and spend time exploring and getting to know at least a couple of residents, rather than simply taking the hoary old trail of slapping a few outdated headlines (and images) together in an attempt to underline a preconception.

All told, a good, light read.

Related Links

With thanks to Ziki Questi for the advanced notification that this article was upcoming.

Lab warns: Facebook upload problems possible

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeFacebook recently implemented changes to the API which Linden Lab (among others) use to allow snapshots to be uploaded to Facebook from the viewer via the SL Share capability.

In response to this, as as I noted in my TPV Developer Meeting report on April 11th, the Lab made changes to SL Share itself to comply with Facebook’s update. These don’t involve and functional changes to SL Share or the way you go about uploading snaps, etc, to Facebook, and it had been hoped that the whole process of changing from the “old” to the “new” API would be completely transparent to SL users.

Unfortunately, Facebook seem to be lagging behind in actually migrating applications using the API to the updated version, and as a result have indicated that some of the applications (like SL Share) might encounter some disruptions as the switch-over occurs.

Because of this, Linden Lab have issued a warning to those using SL Share for Facebook uploads that there might be temporary problems with the service. The notice, which came in the form of a technology blog post, reads in part:

This means that when using SLShare (updating status, photo uploads, and check-ins from the Viewer) you may experience some temporary problems. Please be assured that we are aware of this and any issues you encounter should be resolved once the migration period is complete.

Thank you for your patience!

Note that potential problems might occur with any viewer using the SL Share capability to upload to Facebook, and not just the official viewer. So if you are using a TPV with the capability, please keep this in mind.

The SL Share to Facebook allows you to upload images, provide status updates, etc., directly to your Facebook account - and has proven very popular among the large numbers of SL users who are willing to connect their SL and Facebook accounts
The SL Share to Facebook allows you to upload images, provide status updates, etc., directly to your Facebook account – and has proven very popular among the large numbers of SL users who are willing to connect their SL and Facebook accounts

For those unfamiliar with the Facebook upload capability, it can be accessed either via a dedicated menu / toolbar option in those viewers supporting it, or via the unified snapshot floater (again, in those viewers supporting it). It allows those with a Facebook account to send updates on where they are in SL and what they’re doing, upload snapshots, complete with pre-processing filters. There’s also a Friends tab in the Facebook floater, but this hasn’t been defined in the Lab’s Knowledge Base article on the capability, as I don’t use Facebook, I’ve not been able to confirm it’s use. I assume its a method of connecting to other SL friends you have who also use Facebook.

Related Links

Oculus VR confirm: consumer headset to ship Q1 2016

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday, May 6th, Oculus VR confirmed the consumer version of their headset will commencing shipping in the first quarter of 2016, with pre-ordering due to start later in 2015.

The news broke via a press release from Oculus VR, and Tweets from Oculus VR, Palmer Luckey, and the company’s Vice President of Product  Nate Mitchell (shown on the right).

The announcement ends months of speculation on when the consumer version of the headset might be available, with many originally predicting it would be ready for Christmas 2014 and then Christmas 2015. Despite such speculation, Oculus VR has always carefully avoided mentioning any approximate idea release dates. As I reported in these pages, even as recently as November 2014, Oculus VR Brendan Iribe was playing down any idea of any (then) near-term release of the headset:

We want to get it right. We really do. We’ve gone out there and we’ve set this bar and said, “we are going to get it right, and we’re not going to ship until we get it right” … We’re getting very close … We want it to be a beautiful product; there’s no reason it can’t be a beautiful product … so we still have a way to go, and we’re still working on a number of things, but we’re getting much closer. We like to say it’s months, not necessarily years, away [but] it’s many months, not a few months.

Click for full size

That something might be afoot by way of announcements was initially hinted at in a May 5th Tweet in which Palmer Luckey commented I love it when a plan comes together!

This brought an inevitable run of replies, many seeing it as a hint about the Oculus CV1 (as the consumer version of the headset has sometimes been referred to), including the humorous response seen on the right regarding the headset’s form factor.

Details of the headset are rather scant in the announcement and the images a little on the dark side (I’ve lightened the contrast on them below), with the release merely stating:

The Oculus Rift builds on the presence, immersion, and comfort of the Crescent Bay prototype with an improved tracking system that supports both seated and standing experiences, as well as a highly refined industrial design, and updated ergonomics for a more natural fit.

No details on pricing or quite when in 2015 people will be able to start pre-ordering the headset, and there are certainly no details on the technical aspects of the headset. However, one potentially interesting aspect of the announcement has already sparked some speculation, as it refers to the upcoming release as, “a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality”. This has prompted Techcrunch to comment:

There’s no mention of a third-party computer necessary to power the Rift, which previous Oculus developer kits required. That means the Rift might ship with a game console-esque device to handle computing for the headset. An all-in-one box could make virtual reality much more accessible to consumers, especially those who don’t own a high-grade gaming PC.

A front view of the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)
A front view of the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)

In terms of specification, the announcement was equally enigmatic, stating, “we’ll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift”, with the last part of this statement leading Techcrunch to also speculate whether Oculus VR might also announce a line of in-house developed games to go with the launch.

Given the backgrounds of many of those involved in the company, such an idea might not be wild speculation. As it is, it is already known that Oculus VR is helping to develop immersive movie experiences. Furthermore, in February 2015 it was confirmed that Facebook is developing VR apps, with Chief Product Officer Chris Cox saying that experiences as varied as flying a fighter jet to sitting in a Mongolian yurt would serve as inspiration, and describing the technology as “sending a fuller picture … You’ll do it, Beyoncé will do it”. Ergo, Oculus VR-branded games are not beyond the realm of possibly.

What the announcement does more-or-less mean is that unless something unexpected happens, the Oculus Rift will definitely be available after HTC / Valve have started shipping their own Vive headset, which looks set to hit the market around the same time as Samsung’s  (Oculus-enabled) Gear VR2, towards the end of 2015.

A view from under the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)
A view from under the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)

While there has been a lot of hype about the possible demand for what is effectively a first generation headset from Oculus VR, there have also been some notes of caution sounded in some quarters. As gamesindustry.biz notes, Ben Schachter, a Macquarie Research analyst wrote to Facebook investors, stating:

While there is not yet any info on pricing or available units, we expect relatively small number of units and think that the initial device will be supply constrained. We think that the early versions of the device will be more about showing what is possible from gaming and other entertainment genres, and build demand for later versions of the device.

Mr. Schachter isn’t alone. While price may no longer be a limiting factor in obtaining a headset, Jacki Morie, herself a VR pioneer (and whose work has been featured in this blog a number of times) recently warned that care should be taken in how the potential for VR is promoted, in particular pointing to things like an Oculus VR sponsored art contest as a means to send out completely the wrong message about VR to a wider mass market audience and potentially damaging the technology’s credibility as a useful tool.

I actually doubt the wheels will seriously come off the cart with VR this time around, bad marketing campaigns and the like notwithstanding, although Jacki clearly has a point about getting the right message out there in the first place. However, I do tend to think that Mr. Schachter’s comment about the build-up of demand is well put. VR will profoundly alter many ways of doing things for all of us in time; but the the speculation and hype that will not follow Oculus VR’s announcement aside, it’s still going to be a few years or so before we see VR as being as ubiquitous a piece of technology in our daily lives as we do the mobile ‘phone today.

Lab confirms: Sansar is the new virtual platform’s interim name

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL logoOn May 3rd, I posted about the speculation circulating concerning two trademarks the Lab registered in April 2015 for “SANSAR” (US serial no 86593259) and “Project Sansar” (US Serial no 86593254), and whether there might be related to the Lab’s Next Generation Platform for Virtual Experiences.

At the time I indicated that I’d already approached the Lab on the matter, but has not received any feedback, I also pointed out that in October 2014, the Lab registered the domain name “projectsansar.com”.

The Lab have now responded, both directly to myself, and via Twitter.

In is e-mail I received on Tuesday, May 5th, Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global communications said:

Hi Inara,

Project Sansar is the internal code name we’ve been using for the new platform, and we do plan to use that name externally in its early stages (like the invite-only alpha we begin this summer). However, this is just the project name, and we anticipate changing it prior to launching the platform to everyone.

best,
Peter

Shortly after I received the e-mail, the Lab also tweeted:

Confirmation of NGP's interim name via a Tweet and an e-mail
Confirmation of NGP’s interim name via a Tweet and an e-mail

That the name might be more an interim measure than a final operating name seemed to be indicated by the fact the domain name registration took place in October 2014, around the time the Lab was starting to indicate they had an internal name for the project. However, speculation as to the final name was understandable, given the trademarks were filed in April 2015 – although this obviously also converges with the Lab’s plans for a closed alpha to start-up later in the year, and so also fits with the name being the codename for the product.

I do still have some questions on the matter with the Lab; should I gain further replies, I’ll of course publish them here.

Is Sansar the name of the Lab’s new virtual experiences platform?

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL logoFor the last several days, speculation has been circulating on whether the name SANSAR might be the name of the Lab’s new next generation platform for  virtual experiences.

Speculation first came via a post made to the SL Universe forums, and has since appeared on both the Profile feeds and forums, relating to trademarks filed by the Lab on April 10th, 2015, namely:

In addition, in October 2014, Ascio Technologies, Inc., filed a domain name registration for projectsansar.com listing Linden Research as the Domain Administrator.

As has already been indicated in some of the responses to the forum posts referring to the trademarks, Sansara was one of the early names considered for Second life (being derived from Samsāra, which occurs in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and, perhaps more particularly where SL is concerned, was used by Hermann Hesse in his 1922 novel Siddhartha as a reference to the “world of illusion”), and currently lives on as the name of SL ‘s oldest and largest mainland continent. Whether “SANSAR” is a play on this is unclear – it might just as easily be an acronym.

Within Second Life, Sansra refers to the oldest and largest mainland continent. The word was also considered as one of the possible names for SL back when the Lab was first working on things
Within Second Life, Sansra refers to the oldest and largest mainland continent. The word was also considered as one of the possible names for SL back when the Lab was first working on things. whether “SANSAR” as used in the the new trademarks filed by LL is a play on this is unclear

The description of both trademarks is identical, and for those preferring to read it in a single pass rather than via the filings with the US Trademark office, it can be found on the Legal Force website, from which I’m quoting below:

Entertainment software, namely, software that is used for providing multi-player access to an on-line game environment; computer game software; virtual reality game software; computer graphics software; software that is used for providing multi-user access to an online 3D virtual environment; computer 3D virtual environment software, namely, software for use in creating, manipulating and participating in 3D virtual environments.

Advertising and marketing services, namely, developing and distributing electronic marketing materials.

Online financial services, namely, offering a fictional-dollar-denominated credit card to charge online purchases.

Communication services in the nature of text messaging and electronic mail services used in playing on-line computer games; communication services in the nature of text messaging and electronic mail services used in an online virtual environment.

Entertainment services, namely, providing an on-line computer game by means of communications networks; entertainment services in the nature of providing an on-line multi-player electronic computer game; entertainment services, namely, providing an on-line computer game that may be accessed by means of communications networks.

Computer services, namely, hosting an on-line 3D virtual environment featuring a wide variety of user-defined subject matter and hosting an on-line 3D virtual environment featuring a wide variety of user-defined subject matter that may be accessed by means of communications networks; design and development of multimedia and three dimensional virtual environment software.

Most of this reads pretty much as description for Second Life – so the applicability for a new virtual experiences platform is fairly obvious, and hence the speculation that is circulating.

However, what really does pique interest in this description  – beyond whether or not it pertains to the Lab’s new platform – is not the description of the environment, but the description of “online financial services”. The Lab has already indicated that Linden Dollars would be supported on the new platform, however, the description of a fictional-dollar-denominated credit card to charge online purchases suggests a new mechanism by which good and services within the new platform can be purchased, and by which the Lab might generate revenue.

Whether the name reflects the actual name for the Lab’s new virtual experiences platform or purely an interim project name (or even both, as may be the case given the two trademarks), is unclear. Sansar itself is a popular name for organisations related to the Asian continent (including SANSAR, the South Asian Network Supporting Awareness and Research based in Canada), so brand recognition, if this is to be the name, might be interesting in some quarters.

I approached Linden Lab for a comment on the matter, but have yet to receive a reply. Should one be forthcoming, I’ll update this article.

With thanks also to Ziki Questi

VMM meeting May 1st, 2015 – video and transcript

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Friday, May 1st, Brooke Linden chaired a Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) feedback meeting to address any issues so far uncovered during the current beta testing and answer questions from Merchants.

The meeting was recorded by Chakat Northspring, and the video is embedded below, with a transcript of the Q&A session. My thanks, as always, to North for providing the video. The transcript picks-up after Brooke has made her opening comments thanking people for their attendance, etc. Questions / comments from attendees are show in italics, timestamps are provided at the start of replies so that those interested can jump to the relevant part of the video and list to the answers directly.

Note that during the meeting, there were some questions which were returned to as a result of additional comments. Where this is is the case, either: a) the question is given in the transcript at the point at which the major discussion on the subject took place, or b) subsequent comments and replies have been listed at the point at which the main answer to the question was given.

[01:34] Brooke Linden (BL): So I’m going to go over a little bit of how it works, and talk to you about some of the decision-making process and then I’d mainly like to focus on people who have experienced VMM and get feedback from them on the process and how it’s working for them, and then we can deal with high-level concerns.

So, what we had been doing with Direct Delivery is having people put items into a Merchant Outbox, which sent inventory items to the Marketplace, and then Merchants would then list those items, and those items would get delivered to their customers in-world. With Viewer-Managed Marketplace, we are getting rid of an extra step … and we are allowing deliveries to occur directly from the Merchant’s inventory.

Many of the Merchants we talked to are storing copies of the items they’re selling in the Marketplace in their inventory. Some of them are doing this in box form due to concerns over inventory sizes; and one of the things we did do is we spent a lot of time talking to out internal groups that have worked on and maintained large inventories for some of our customers to evaluate whether or not there was risk involved in increasing the size of some existing inventories.

The feedback we got from them is that the problems aren’t necessarily with large inventories, they are with situations where somebody has 10,000 folders or objects at the root of another folder [aka a “flat” inventory structure]. Now there are a handful of people on the Marketplace who have this many listings, and we’ll be working with them to help make sure that their old listings that are no longer in use get deleted.

One of the things that we changed with Direct Delivery is that we made it much easier to delete listings; so now if you want to delete a Direct Delivery listing, it will put your inventory back into your unassociated items folder, so you can return it to yourself in world … One additional thing we did as a part of Viewer-Managed Marketplace as a result of feedback … is that when an item runs out of stock [No copy items], it needs to be removed from the Marketplace … so we have changed the behaviour in Viewer-Managed Marketplace to unlist items that run out of stock.

We basically tried to fit-in related issues that made sense with the change to VMM. And one of the things we also did was to meet with some Merchants to talk about versions, and how they want to manage those versions, and how they typically manage them in their inventory. and we worked to create a hierarchy in the viewer-Managed Marketplace to support the ability to store more than one version under a listing and choose which one is the current active one.

So that’s a high-level overview with some of the thinking and some of the problems we tried to address while we were working on Viewer-Managed Marketplace. So, those of you who have tired Viewer-Managed Marketplace, are there questions or concerns or feedback that you have for us?

Why the sudden change when the Merchant Outbox is working fine?

VMM replaces the Merchant Outbox with the Marketplace Listings panel, which allows merchants to carry out a number of Marketplace-related tasks from within the viewer
VMM replaces the Merchant Outbox with the Marketplace Listings panel, which allows merchants to carry out a number of Marketplace-related tasks from within the viewer

[07:39] BL: The merchant Outbox isn’t working fine for everybody, and the Merchant Outbox also does not support  the group of Merchants who sell items that they do not have Copy rights on … in order to sell those, we had to make some changes to the way that Direct Delivery worked, and because we were going in to do this, we looked at the problems and feedback that we had received on Direct Delivery, and made some improvements there.

Overall, the number of times you move something between systems or people, the greater the risk of there being some kind of problem. And so we really wanted to minimise that. There are come people who have had their Merchant Outboxes stuck in initialising, and haven’t been able to put things on the Marketplace, and that’s something out support team is able to help with, but this is the kind of thing that we wanted to address.

Can you confirm the exact time line before auto migration starts so that we know how long we have to migrate ourselves if we wish?

[09:23] BL: We’re trying not to give exact dates, because one of the things we want to do is make sure that we have time to address any bugs or issues that come up before we start moving everybody.

So we will not be officially launching into production until the viewer is the released viewer. We’re planning to put the viewer into the release process hopefully in the next week or two [the viewer is currently a project viewer]. We’re working on getting the updates localised. So however long that takes  – and you all know it can take a month or so to get a new viewer out.

So at that point, will will have launched to production, and we’re planning to have users in production for probably about a month, to give them a chance to start moving things over manually if they would like to. We are going to be getting some volunteers who will let us migrate them early-on, and we might even want to migrate a couple of them during the beta period. We’ve already started testing migrations for some of our internal test accounts.

Once we’ve done those tests and dealt with any issues that come up, then we’ll begin the automated migration process.

[11:04] For very large stores [with] a few thousand or more listings, and if people are Premium members, we’re going to be allowing them to work with us to schedule a night where we can do the migration work. We’re going to do most of the migrations overnight Pacific Time, because that’s when our lowest traffic is on the Marketplace.

Other people who aren’t scheduled will get an e-mail at the start of the migration with an estimate of how long it will take for your store [to be migrated], we’re trying to be conservative, and then an e-mail at the end of the migration, letting you know that the migration is complete.

During the migration process your stores will not be available because there’s just so much risk for things to get messed-up. We expect it to be milliseconds per listing, 500 milliseconds at the most So hopefully that answered that question.

While transferring from the old system the new listings don’t automatically activate. They have to be listed even though it says “active”.

Kurt Linden (via chat): We are aware of this issue and working on a fix.

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