| On Tuesday, June 27th, 2023, Linden Lab streamed a special session of Lab Gab featuring Grumpity Linden, Linden Lab’s Vice President of Product, and Mojo Linden, the Lab’s Vice President of Engineering.
The session was built around announcements and updates relating to various initiatives and product developments. Note that the following is not a direct transcript of the entire session, but is intended to record the key points discussed. |
Table of Contents
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For ease of reference, timestamps are provided to the relative points within the video where specific topics are discussed, allowing readers who prefer to listen to the comments directly to be able to do so.
A Little Background
Grumpity Linden: heads up Second Life Product team, where she has overseen a shift to growth, a stronger, more balanced economy, movement towards better community cohesion, and an overall forward-looking approach. She originally started at LL whilst working for The Product Engine, and was involved in the development of Viewer 2 (as designed by 80/20 Studio), prior to joining LL full-time in 2014. As the Vice President of Product, she is responsible for coordinating the various teams involved in bringing features and updates to Second Life, liaising with legal, financial and compliance to ensure features and capabilities meet any specific requirements in those areas, and so on; work which can involve looking at specifics within various elements of the overall SL product, such as UI design and layout, etc.
Mojo Linden: joined the Lab in 2021 at the Vice President of Engineering. A 20-year veteran of the gaming industry, he has been responsible for launching numerous games across multiple genres and platforms, and has a strong understanding of platforms, architectures, and product development and technical capabilities. In his role at the Lab, he has shown enormous openness and candour in seeking to increase the platform’s functionality and performance, and in pushing to expand SL’s capabilities.
Performance Improvements and Technical Debt
- Performance improvements in both the viewer and on the simulator / back-end has been a focus for the last two years, and remains a focus now.
- The PBR [Physically-Based Rendering – also a see below] project will not only deliver better rendering and better looking world, it includes a range of viewer-side performance improvements – such as removing the viewer limitation on the amount of video memory it can use on a GPU under Windows, allowing for better texture loading.
- There is work in progress to update the simulator code to run on a 64-bit architecture, which will lead to further server-side performance improvements.
- A challenge with improving SL is its 20-year lifespan, which means that while it has been updated throughout, it still has a high degree of technical debt in terms of the age of some of the code and services, due the fact that many technologies and capabilities didn’t exist when the platform was being built, etc.
- Enhancing and improving the platform is therefore a balancing act between introducing new technology, new features and new capabilities whilst also working to ensure the underpinning code and continues to work as expect, and the back-end systems and services can be updated to work in “more modern ways”.
Product Roadmap 2023
In Brief
- The upcoming New User Experience / Senra-brand mesh avatars – for more details, see my summary of Patch Linden’s Lab Gab session, together with the supporting web-based avatar customisation process [also see below for more].
- The SecondLifeTime membership offer – see: Linden Lab launches SecondLifeTime Premium and SecondLifeTime Premium Plus. In brief:
- 200 SecondLifeTime Premium memberships for a one-off payment of US $749 for life and featuring all the benefits available to Premium subscribers.
- 20 SecondLifeTime Premium Plus memberships for a one-off payment of US $1,749 for life and featuring all the benefits available to Premium Plus subscribers.
- The launch of the first Linden Homes theme for Premium Plus – see: Looking at the Linden Premium Plus Homes Ranch theme in Second Life.
- Updates and improvements to the “Land Journey”.
- Further Marketplace updates and improvements, including making the MP mobile-responsive.
- Further improvements to the updated Destination Guide.
- Back-end systems updates (e.g. the architecture update, noted above), which may not always be user-visible.
Second Life Mobile
- Development work is continuing, with an emphasis on performance and rendering (for example: the capabilities of the hardware running SL Mobile is assessed to see if it can render with shadows enabled).
- The user interface has been revised and improved, and the overall aim remains to provide an immersive an experience as possible, and provide users with an many of the capabilities found within the viewer as makes sense to include in a mobile device.
- Work will continue in adding features and capabilities and refining SL Mobile over the next two quarters.
- The current time frame for releases is:
- A new development video update was presented during the session.
Social Casino
- Background: a low-key announcement (via Twitter) of a new format of casino launched by Linden Lab allowing casino-type games to be played without wagering L$ directly or offering prizes in L$ which can be later cashed-out, and thus “not gambling”.
- Seen by LL as a means to provide users with a further opportunity for social engagement and entertainment, based on the idea that casino-style games and environments are popular social mediums in the physical world.
- This has been a complex programme to work out, including the legal aspects, and has been made possible through Mojo Linden’s wide-ranging experience working for the likes of Double Down.
- The experience is to be enhanced during the coming year with more in the way of prizes (e.g. transferring game chips for No Copy / No Transfer items), leader boards, and a grater variety of games.
- The overall idea is to showcase the idea and encourage communities in Second Life to develop their own “social casinos” along similar lines.
Second Life Inventory Updates
- A project has been underway to update the Inventory database schema to pave the way for the addition of a range of new features.
- The first of these are the abilities to associate thumbnail images with Inventory items and folders, and to open individual inventory folders in their own windows.
- This work was released as a project viewer (meaning the functionality is still in development and subject to possible change), called the Inventory Extensions project viewer.
- There is an official lob post supporting this viewer – see: New Features: Inventory Item Preview and Single Folder View.
- I have produced a (hopefully) more detailed companion to that post – see: Looking at the Second Life Inventory Extensions Project Viewer.
The New User Experience
The New Welcome / Community Hubs
- The first in a new series of Welcome / Community Hubs designed to help incoming new users to get started in Second Life and provide them – and established users – with the opportunities to mingle, participate in games and events, seek assistance from mentors, etc., was recently launched alongside the Motown Experience (see: Linden Lab and Motown: a new approach to user on-boarding in Second Life).
- The project has involved multiple teams / departments at the Lab, and is regarded as a “labour of love”.
- There are plans to further enhance this approach to Welcome Hubs and to expand them to other communities / experiences.
New Avatar Customisation Flow
- Alongside the Senra NUX avatars, the Lab will be launching a new avatar customisation flow for new users.
- This will initially be web-based, and part of the sign-up flow, allowing incoming users to customise their avatars as the come into Second Life.
- This will then be expanded so that the Senra avatars and the core clothing / accessories developed for them by Linden Lab will form a part of the Second Life library within the viewer’s inventory, and thus available to all users.
- The improved avatar customisation flow will also be added to the viewer
- As indicated by Patch Linden, there will be a dev kit + licensing agreement for creators wishing to produce and sell products into the Senra ecosystem as it develops, to hopefully provide broader choice for those using the Senra avatars.
Physically Based Rendering (PBR)
- Background: a wide-ranging project to introduce PBR capabilities to Second Life using the Kronos glTF 2.0 specification.
- The current project is to introduce glTF materials into Second Life, and this is now at Release Candidate status both in the viewer and on the Main grid (that latter on a limited basis at the time of writing).
- It means some significant updates to rendering within Second Life, and offers notable improvements. Part of this work involves the introduction of Reflection Probes into Second Life to allow for better surface reflectivity in objects, etc.
- A follow-on project from this work is already underway, allowing the “traditional” textures using a Second Life terrain to be replaced with glTF materials.
- A further follow-on project is looking to allow the controlled use of planar mirrors in-world, with real-time reflections (including avatars).
- I attempt to provide updates to this project through my Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting summaries.
- CCUG meeting are open to all users interested in content creation, and details of meetings can be found via the SL Public Calendar.
- This project does introduce changes to content creation workflows (e.g. lighting and highlighting should not be baked into colour maps; rather full use should be made of the PBR maps (ambient occlusion, roughness, etc), and well as better workflow integration with established tools such as Adobe Substance 3D Painter.
- The viewer is expected to remain in RC for an extended period, in part to allow the back-end support to be fully deployed on the Main grid, but also to allow for extensive testing by as wide a cross-section of content creators and general users as possible and the fact it does introduce a substantial change to the Second Life lighting model. Thus, LL want to offer as much time as possible for people to adjust to the viewer and also to report bugs, etc.
SL’s Future
- In broad terms over the next 10 years: available to more platforms, becoming more of an “everyday companion” rather than being constantly tethered to a desktop / laptop environment.
- Potentially new and different (to today’s) usage and use cases for SL as a result of it being more broadly available through different platforms, and how users view it as a platform / tool / entertainment, etc.
- Continuing to innovate, having appeal to users and communities, foster community building, etc.
In Brief
- [Video: 22:17-23:24] VR headset support:
- Reaching a point where headsets can be supported is seen as a series of steps – such as improving the graphics (notably frame rates), looking at what needs to be considered in terms of UI, etc.
- There are no fixed time frames linked to this work, nor are there any plans for partnerships with headset manufacturers.
- It is more a case that the Lab is “interested” in headset support and that plans are in a gentle processes of formulation, rather than anything directly headset-related being actively worked on.
- [Video: 23:34-25:24] LL and AI tools (Chat GPT, large language models (LLMs), etc.):
- Could be used to make some engineering tasks more automated / productive, but not to the extent of replacing personnel at the Lab.
- Various tools (such as Chat GPT) are already being leveraged in some testing.
- In terms of customer data and feeding that into AI tools to assist with training, engineering, etc., it was noted that there are numerous, wide-ranging laws and requirements as to how customer data is handled [e.g. the GDPR, which although an EU set of regulations, does have a global impact], and LL itself has a long-standing history of not exposing real-world customer data. As such, simply feeding customer data into something like an LLM is not an option.
- [Video: 26:29-28:10] BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” – this is a long-standing issue and source of frustration.
- Various fixes have been implemented to reduced the incidence of the issue, and more and on the way [including one which at the time of writing is with the Lab’s QA team].
- There is no time frame as to when the issue will fully be resolved, but it will continue to be worked on. LL admits it is something of a black eye for them.
- Currently, the suggested workaround is to locate an “empty” region (one with no / minimal avatars) and can use that as a point of log-in the issue should not occur.
- Updates on this issue, when available, are given through the Simulator User Group meetings, and are reported on in my weekly SUG meeting summaries, for those interested.
- [Video: 28:15-28:57] LSL scripting updates:
- Small-scale updates are being routinely deployed (see: Coming Soon: Server Release 2023.06 [now deployed]).
- There is an ambition / desire to implement larger projects, but the best way to implement these and the time frame for doing so is subject to internal discussions.
- [Video: 28:58-29:47] Mac Support: LL remains dedicated to supporting MacOS, but it is admitted that support does tend to lag behind Windows development, and that there are performance issues, etc., still to be address within MacOS which may have been more fully addressed on the Windows platform.
- [Video: 29:47-30:55] Audio improvements: while there are no specific projects on the table at present, there have been internal discussions at the Lab about improvements to SL’s in-world audio capabilities, sparked in part by the arrival of the engineers who transferred over to SL from High Fidelity.
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