Christmas is upon us, and following not far behind, the year’s end, which is often a time of reflection as we look back over the old before pausing to await the arrival of the new. It’s become something of a tradition in these pages to look back over the virtual year’s events as I’ve seen and reported them through this blog, and offer a chance to revisit the ups and downs and the good and the bad the last twelve months have brought us.
To make things easier, I’m once again breaking thing down into three parts, this section look through the months of May through August. You can find January through April here; September to December will be following soon.
The Lab
At the end of April, the Lab put out a blog post reminding people of their Second Life Affiliate Programme, something I caught at the start of May. This is the programme allowing SL users to associate a sign-up link to Second Life in their own website, blogs, social media channel, etc., and earn a commission on new SL registrations (which meet set criteria) using that link. While not new, the blog post served as reminder that the programme is still running, and that LL are casting a wide net in their attempts to gain new users. July saw the Lab also launch resident-focused promo videos on YouTube.
Following-up on comments made at the Meet the Lindens event at Sl12B in June, I put together a brief profile on Bjorn Laurin (Bjorn Linden), the Lab’s (then) new VP of Product overseeing both SL and “Project Sansar”.
With the success of the Meet the Lindens event at SL12B (see below), the Lab invited users to ask the CEO via a forum thread in July. As a part of facing the media, Ebbe Altberg and Second Life appeared on the US TV series Dr Phil dealing with computer game addiction, showing to more beneficial side of engaging in computer games and, MMOs and immersive environments.
May opened with a feedback meeting for the ongoing Viewer-Managed Marketplace beta. VMM suddenly moved with a jolt in July, with the start of the final run of automated listing migrations which came earlier than expected. This was completed in early August, when VMM was considered to be fully “live”.
In May, those using Facebook were informed there would likely be problems in uploading SL images to that service as a result of Facebook taking time to convert to a new API, while at the end of that month, I tried-out the Lab’s New User Experience, which had been updated to make use of Experience Keys – at least on a basic level.
August 2015 brought the said news of the passing of long time resident Lumiere Noir, founder of the Ivory tower of Primitives
Premium members saw their group limit raised to 60, then in August Concierge support was extended to all Premium members, before the surprise news came that VAT charges were dropped for Premium memberships, and the monthly subscription was modestly reduced.
In June we got the news that there were no more updates or improvements being planned for my.secondlife.com (the Profile feeds), while to help those on Windows XP and versions of OS X older than 10.7, the Lab introduced the obsolete platforms viewer, which is still available at the end of 2015. Meanwhile, Avatar complexity and the graphics presets capability finally appeared in a project viewer.
In July I took another look at the Experience Keys viewer, as it reached release status, and the Lab issued the notifications project viewer, while the Dolphin viewer bid a farewell. August saw the Lab acknowledged ongoing issues with land damage following changes they’d made, and promised to get things sorted. August also saw first word that validation checks on mesh uploads, etc., were to be more directly enforced server-side in the near future.
The Virtual Pfaffenthal ramped-up in July to offer a look into a pivotal period of Luxembourg’s history, linking the physical world and the virtual in the process, a story Drax was able to cover brilliantly in the October Drax Files World Makers.
After the loss of SL Go at the end of April, Bright Canopy reached the end of a very rapid, but well-planned and managed development cycle, and launched at the end of August.
Project Sansar
During the end of April / beginning of May, speculation was mounting that “Sansar” might be the name of the Lab’s new platform for virtual experiences. I dropped a line to the Lab on the subject as I wrote about the speculation, asking them about both “Project Sansar” and “Sansar”, and on May 5th they replied to me and confirmed via Twitter that “Project Sansar” was an interim code-name for the new platform.
“Sansar” also featured during Ebbe Altberg’s conversation at the SL12B Meet the Lindens event, for which I provided a transcript, and also summarised the comments made about “Sansar” during Troy and Danger Linden’s conversation at their Meet the Lindens event, and from recent media reports.
In an attempt to separate wheat from chaff, I presented the first in a semi-regular series, The Sansar Summary, focusing on what had been said about the new platform, rather than looking at rumours and speculation. Meanwhile, in August, Ebbe sat down with a glass of red wine for a fireside chat with Upload VR’s Nick Ochoa to discuss SL and “Sansar” in a conversation uploaded to YouTube.
And while it may have been slightly later than planned, the Lab finally announced the “Sansar” closed alpha was officially under-way in August.
The Shire one of 39 regions and locations I explored in the first four months of 2015
Christmas is upon us, and following not far behind, the year’s end, which is often a time of reflection as we look back over the old before pausing to await the arrival of the new. It’s become something of a tradition in these pages to look back over the virtual year’s events as I’ve seen and reported them through this blog, and offer a chance to revisit the ups and downs and the good and the bad the last twelve months have brought us.
To make things easier, I’m once again breaking thing down into three parts, starting with a look back over January through to the end of April.
The Lab
The Lab kicked-off the year by announcing they had partnered with Skrill to provide users with further options for their payment activities, including buying L$ and paying account fees, as well as additional local currency options for those Residents outside the United States. Skrill actually gave word of the partnership ahead of LL, as I reported in my own article on the news.
February saw the photo booth contest open, with the Lab opting to try for a judging-by-panel approach to the contest, rather than simply operating a popular vote approach. A L$19,000 prize pool was on offer, although issues with contacting some of the users led to delays and a little confusion after the fact. As it was February and the month of romance, there was also an invitation for users to visit the Isle of View, or for those seeking a little more fun, there was the resumption of the of the Lab vs. residents snowball fight, which took place in the (then) recently opened Winter Wonderland.
Lindens in action: Torley Linden takes airborne aim; and a (possibly paranoid?) android from the Governance Team
The Lab also took the time to ask for assistance from the community. The first request was related to matters of inventory losses, and marked the start of a long-term project to try to improve inventory handling and management in Second Life. The second request was made to open-source developers to help maintain the viewer on the Linux platform.
February also saw me offer a brief look back over Ebbe Altberg’s first year helming the Lab, while confirmation came that Mitch Kapor had stepped back from an active role in the Lab’s board of directors, while remaining an investor in the company – a point which seemed lost to some following this confirmation.
During March, In the first of a series of moves, most of which appear to be driven by matters of compliance, the Lab called a halt to the use of Linden Dollars outside of their own platforms. Elsewhere, the Lab, in what was a good move, shifted emphasis on the perks being offered to those taking Premium membership, prompting me to one again mull over the idea of Premium perks.
Ebbe Linden as he appeared in-world at the VWBPE 2015 conference in March
Also in March, Ebbe Altberg was the opening speaker at the 2015 Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference, although he opted to take more of a Q&A approach, addressing questions on both Second Life and the Lab’s next generation virtual worlds platform.ahread of this, and in February, in keeping with moves to re-engage with the education community, a request was made for educators to share their success stories.
We also saw the first of what were to become semi-regular opportunities to meet the Lindens announced, which drew a fair number to the photogenic Meauxle Bureaux, as I reported at the time.
Second Life
My own thoughts on Second Life for 2015, started with further musings on the issue of tier – and subject which in some quarters still appears to be surprisingly misunderstood, as demonstrated in frequent comments on the subject which persist in comparing Second Life with much smaller operations.
Capabilities-wise, the start of 2015 saw a final farewell to the last of the legacy avatar baking code, the start of work to fix group chat, and confirmation that the Lab would be replacing llqtwebkit with Chromium Embedded Framework set to bring modern media handling capabilities to Second Life. Elsewhere, the Alchemy TPV developers revealed they had found one of the culprits behind issues of viewer texture thrashing; those little image icons displayed in chat headers, etc., can be quite obnoxious!
Playing with avatar hover height when it was released on Aditi, the beta grid, in February (and the reason I call my alt my “Crash Test Alt” – she suffers a lot!), the long-awaited Lab replacement for the much missed z-offset height adjustment. The capability reached release status in the viewer in March 2015
The end of the year always brings with it reviews of what’s happened during the unfolding 12 months. Some can be lengthy (*coughs at her own 3-part series of late), others brief.
The Lab is no exception to the rule, and in Second Life 2015 Mix – A Greatest Hits Compilation, they offer a thumbnail sketch of some of the more positive developments and events within SL which have marked the year.
Starting with the Project Bento announcement (a project I’ve been able to observe and will be bringing more background on in the future as well as tracking developments through regular project updates), the post provides a grab bag of technical changes to the platform.
These include the arrival of the Viewer-Managed Marketplace, which had its initial main grid beta launch back in April, following a long lead-in over 2014 / early 2015, with full migration starting in July, in one of the more successful Marketplace updates Second Life has seen. Also getting a mention are the arrival of Chromium Embedded Framework, through the CEF viewer, the notifications updates, and Hover Height, both of which were viewer updates suggested by users. Mention is also made of the 28 simulator updates made through the year,
Away from the technical updates, The blog post refers to the new “Classic” starter avatars, which were introduced in November.
PaleoQuest, the Lab’s dino-ish adventure game gets a mention in the official look back at the year, which i admit to rather enjoying
2015 saw a change in Premium membership perks, as they gradually turned away from the usual (and often basic) gifts and more towards more practical offerings, as the Lab’s blog post mentions. These have included things like the increase in the group membership allowance, and the removal of VAT on membership fees, which gave rise to speculation on what was going on to allow it.
Also getting a mention are the recent changes in land set-up and transfer fees, although how effective this will be is perhaps debatable, as I commented at the time, and also – with regards to grandfathered fees, seemed to have a slight edge of giving with one hand, taking back with the other.
Ending with a look at the Lab’s on-going engagement with the community through in-world meet-ups and other events, and giving a mention to forthcoming capabilities designed to help improve the user experience, such as Avatar Complexity, this may seem a lightweight look back at the year; however, it does constitute a fair round-up of the positives SL has seen internally through 2015. In the meantime, I’ll be offering my own more extensive review of things – SL, Sansar, VR, et al, as reported through these pages through the year, over the Christmas and New Year period.
It’s once again that annual time of reflection. The winter is with us, the old year is slowing dying, the new year awaits, and it is time to look back across the highs and lows of the virtual year as seen through the pages of this blog.
This year has been even busier for me than previous years, so I hope you’ll forgive that as I look back over the year as I’ve managed to report it through this blog, I’ve broken it down into three parts, this being the second, and you can catch-up with part one or part two if you so wish. Not everything that happened through the year may be here; there are some aspects of SL in which I’m not active, and so may have missed some headlines. Nevertheless, I hope this review sparks a few memories and provides some interesting holiday reading. As with the first part, rather than just offer a month-by month account, I’ve tried to group things together by topic to hopefully give more of a narrative flow.
The Lab
The Lab is relatively quiet in September. The Skill Gaming Policy takes effect from September 1st without too much fanfare, and at the end of the month the Lab issue a statement that it will be enforced as from November 1st, 2014. When that date is reached, CapEx is forced to suspend operations, due to their Skill Gaming application not having been approved by the Lab, a situation still unresolved at the end of the year.
September does bring with it the very sad news of Joe Miller’s passing; while I wasn’t acquainted with him, having known him only by reputation, I offer a short piece on Mr. Miller and his contributions to the platform.
Towards the end of September, I finally notice that the Lab’s corporate leadership page has been updated, while in October, In October, Ebbe Altberg joins Saffia and Rik for a Designing Worlds special show to talk LL, SL and the “next generation” platform. For those who prefer to read I offer a transcript.
In the interview, Ebbe drops a hint that the product review which saw Creatorverse, dio and Versu vanish from the Lab’s portfolio in February hadn’t entirely finished. At the time I suspected that Desura might be parting company with the Lab, but as it turned out, it was Patterns, the Lab’s sandbox game, that took the bullet, with the Lab willing to hear from parties interested in carrying it forward. However, November does see the Lab shed itself of Desura as well.
The Lab’s updated viewer splash / log-in screen reaches RC status. Landon Linden returns to the official SL blog to provide a fascinating insight into how Lab’s Ops team responds to issues within their services, the communications tools they use – and why the tools are so effective. As I comment at the time, it’s a remarkable piece, well worth reading.
Also in September, the Lab provides a small piece of news on the CDN project, alongside the launch of the new Benchmark viewer and the viewer log-in screen updates. The CDN deployment to the main grid commences in October, initially using the special purpose Snack channel. which is drawn from regions usually on the Main (SLS) channel. The CDN provider is Highwinds.
By October 29th, CDN support is grid wide, and the HTTP pipelining viewer is formally released. As a result of both of these projects, the majority of people are seeing benefits in terms of texture and mesh fetching and (in the case of the pipeline viewer, inventory fetching. However, some across the grid continue to report issues arising from the updates which require further investigation, prompting to the Lab to seek direct feedback. At the start of November, the Lab publish data showing how the CDN has been good for them as well. Later in the month they report on progress being made to deal with the issues affected users are experiencing.
The CDN deployment dramatically decreases the load places on the Lab’s simulator host servers (image: Linden Lab)
Monty Linden provides a further update on his HTTP work, which also touches on the CDN while focusing on his pipelining work, and the improvements that has allowed him to make to inventory fetching as well. In November he is interviewed on the Drax Files Radio Hour, and offers further insight into the work.
October brings word that new viewer-managed Marketplace (VMM) functionality is coming to the viewer. Due to be deployed in 2015, the VMM is aimed towards finally eliminating the need for Magic Boxes and to replace the Merchant Outbox , while providing a means for merchants to sell their goods direct from their inventory (no Marketplace uploads) and to carry out some aspects of Marketplace listing management from within the viewer. In November, I provide an overview of beta testing and the project viewer. Keeping on the Marketplace theme, DX Exchange open their Marketplace to users in November, and I have a bit of a play.
After finally receiving their Oculus DK2 headsets, the Lab is able to release an updated version of their Oculus Rift project viewer. A notice about the POODLE vulnerability is also forthcoming, with an updated viewer coming hard on its heels.
Given October marks Halloween, the Lab launches a further demonstration of the upcoming Experience Keys / Tools in the middle of the month, featuring a haunted house. October also sees the dreaded required tax information issue rear its head again.
In November, users get the chance to meet Lab staff in-world at the Mole’s new home region, while nigh-on a week of daily restarts prompts a blog post on what the problem was. The new benchmark viewer reaches release status on November 10th, but results in some users no longer being about to log-in to SL using the official viewer. A fix appears at the start of December, and quick roles to the de facto release status.
Coming in 2012: a new means to control how the viewer renders other avatars which place a high rendering load on your computer
Work also starts on a new means by which users can control the degree of rendering impact other avatars can have on their viewer’s performance.
Just as they were generating problems at the start of the year, AMD driver issues continue to cause woes at the end of the year, although Yoho Waco offers assistance to affected users. An oopsie with inventory leave some people upset in December, and the Lab offers a partial explanation, and a December 29th GSP update to the effect they believed matters to be fully resolved. On a brighter not, the Experience Keys / Tools viewer reaches RC status.
OnLive and Firestorm announce the availability of Firestorm on the SL Go client for PC and Mac, and hold a special Q&A on the release.
December sees a disturbing twist in misuse of the DMCA process, as Belleza are hit by a take-down notice which later turns out to be not only entirely false, but apparently completely fraudulent in origin. Drax investigates the DMCA process, and I ponder the DMCA issue in general.
As Christmas arrives, the Lab looks ahead to 2015 with a special competition, while a couple of promotional videos (which are rather good) appear on You Tube, one on content creation and the other on getting started with SL. I’m a tiny bit critical of the latter, but actually may have jumped the gun – I’m informed by Xiola Linden that the videos are intended as a part of an e-mail campaign, which will offer the context for the Welcome video I felt was missing.
Art and Events
September kicks-off with the remarkable Stand Up 2 Cancer in-world music event, co-ordinated by Still Braveheart, featuring 23 music venues and 150 performers. It going on to raise a staggering L$1.5 million in just four days. The same weekend sees Making Strides Against Breast Cancer 2014 opens, building towards the MSABC walk in October. Later in the month, the Michael J Fox Foundation has two special events hosted in SL by Team Fox SL and Creations for Parkinsons.
October sees Virtual Ability host their annual IDRAC conference, with a well-rounded list of speakers. Later in the month, BURN2 2014 opens its gates. While in December, I sneak a peek at the Xmas Expo and Breedables Fair.
In the art world, the UWA announces a beautiful printed book about The Freedom Project is now available, and as I have a copy myself, I can say it is simply beautiful. 2014’s Project Sci-Fi also launches. In October, JayJay Zifanwee (Jay Jay Jegathesan), one of the driving forces behind the UWA’s work in SL, participates in the university’s 3-Minute Thesis competition, providing a moving insight into the power of virtual worlds.
Transcending Borders draws to a close in December, with the announces of the 3D Art and Machinima winners, including Tutsy Navrathna’s brilliant first place machinima winner, Metahpore, and Sharni Azalee’s Never Say Never – Love Transcends Borders,
Paradise Lost, the production which has truly pushed the boundaries of performing arts in SL, approaches the end of its season of performances. The LEA plays host to a superb retrospective on Bryn Oh’s art, which starts in September. Put together by the artist herself, it provides a deeper insight into her work and thought processes, which I find intriguing.
Never Say Never – Love Trasncends Borders, by Sharni Azalee, the Transcending Borders 3D Art Challenge Grand Prize winner
And, of course, December brings us the ever wonderful Calas Galadhon Christmas region, one of many winter and Christmas themed regions for residents to enjoy over the festive season.
Other Worlds
In September, Registrations open for the OpenSimulator Community Conference, which takes place in November. High Fidelity offer people a peek into their Alpha testing, and looking at the work of AI Austin, CrtlAltDavid and others. In November they also bring news on their new documentation resource. Speaking at Gigaom the same month, Philip Rosedale voices the view that we still don’t get virtual worlds. Back at the office, it seems that a virtual game of rock, paper, scissors is all the rage. In December, a short series of introductory videos is released.
Stonehenge in Blue Mars during the 2014 summer solstice. One of a number of simulations still available on the platform
November sees me jump back into Blue Mars (yes, it’s still there!) to see what has been going on since its passing to Ball State University.
VR and AR
October sees Magic Leap apparently burst onto the scene, with the announcement that Google and several other big names have poured $542 million into the company, and this on top of around $50 million of investment earlier in the year. No-one is quite sure what the company is up to, and whether it is purely AR or perhaps a mix of AR and VR, but the promo videos are impressive.
In November, it is announced that the Magic Leap technology will be at the heart of a new immersive film bring written by Professor Brian Cox, and which will premiere in the UK in 2015. Then in December, Neal Stephenson reveals he has joined Magic Leap.
Also in October, and having been relatively quiet for a while, the other AR system that had been making news, and which offers a VR capability as a well, castAR, moves to Silicon Valley from Seattle, as their initial developer kits start shipping.
November sees Brendan Iribe again repeat that the consumer version of Oculus Rift is still “many months” away from launch. During the interview, held at the Web Summit event in Dublin, Ireland, Iribe drops hints that Oculus may be looking at a more packaged VR solution, referencing as he does gesture devices, camera systems and haptic devices. Then December brings word that Oculus is buying Nimble Sense.
However, while Oculus may be still sitting over the horizon in terms of a consumer model, VR enthusiast with an up-to-date version of the Galaxy Note 4 had an early Christmas offer, with the opportunity to order the Gear VR.
It’s once again that annual time of reflection. The winter is with us, the old year is slowing dying, the new year awaits, and it is time to look back across the highs and lows of the virtual year as seen through the pages of this blog.
This year has been even busier for me than previous years, so I hope you’ll forgive that as I look back over the year as I’ve managed to report it through this blog, I’ve broken it down into three parts, this being the second, and you can catch-up with part one or jump ahead to part three, if you so wish. Not everything that happened through the year may be here; there are some aspects of SL in which I’m not active, and so may have missed some headlines. Nevertheless, I hope this review sparks a few memories and provides some interesting holiday reading. As with the first part, rather than just offer a month-by month account, I’ve tried to group things together by topic to hopefully give more of a narrative flow.
The Lab
The promised new Patterns UI is launched, and things continue to look rosy for the PC / Mac sandbox game.
In a surprising (and welcome) U-turn, the Lab agree to allow Emily Short and Richard Evans to carry the Versu product and it titles forward as an independent entity. The news is followed shortly afterwards by the launch of Versu’s first title under its own name and Emily Short is interviewed by Drax about Versu, the Lab and interactive fiction as a whole, and Blood & Laurels receives New York Times approbation.
The Lab agrees to allow Emily Short and Richard Evans, together with are joined by Graham Nelson to take Versu forward
However, the big news of the quarter is Ebbe Alltberg’s confirmation (with audio) that the Lab is working on a “next generation” platform. The news first came during a TPV meeting. This was perhaps not the best way for the news to break, as within minutes there were Tweets and feed comments flying around, most of which tended to overstate some of what he actually said, and others really did misrepresent (albeit it accidentally, rather than maliciously) what was said – something that did a lot to further the anger and outcry that followed.
While it might have been better for a more prepared statement on the new being made, particularly given the hoo-haw that followed, my personal take on the news was, and remains positive. As much as we love SL, the fact is that it is getting long in the tooth, it is gradually getting harder to make sizeable improvements without considerable effort (2+ years of the Shining Project, 10 months to tweak around the edges of group chat, etc), and it is hamstrung by its revenue model. Ergo, the Lab do need to move with the times.
Fact is, for all the hard-edged protestations from some quarters, we’re all a fickle bunch, and there’s a good chance that when something bigger, better and shinier than SL comes along, it will wean us away, whether it’s because of broader creativity options, lower fees, greater market potential, more innovative technical capabilities / challenges – or all the aforementioned; and worries about inventory “investment”, etc., be damned. And it really is a mistake to think that just because it hasn’t happened so far, it by definition, won’t happen. At last this way we know who is developing a new alternative, and it is in their own best interest to keep SL going as strongly as they can, just in case the new shiny doesn’t work out.
Where might the Lab’s new platform take us? What form will it take? These have been two (of many) questions people have been pondering since it was confirmed the Lab were actively developing a “next generation” platform
Anyway, following the meeting, the Lab confirms it’ll be hiring-in around 40-50 additional staff to work on the new platform. And as the news on the new platform overshadows other statement made by Ebbe, I offer a piece on his comments on user retention. Official confirmation of the new platform’s development is finally given in a late July press release.
Mid-July finally brings word that the controversial Section 2.3 of the Lab’s Terms of Service has been updated. Sort-of. I’m initially sceptical that the change really amounts to anything, due to the way the wording is arranged, and go into greater depth a little later. I’m not alone in feeling the re-wording isn’t up to the desired snuff, as Agenda Faromet offers a similar perspective, and in August hosts an SLBA presentation on both the changes and the Skill Gaming policy, for which I put together a transcript.
Second Life
The Lab launches a new range of mesh starter avatars designed to make use of fitted mesh – except the base shapes for most of them are issued No Mod. Oopsie. While an update is quickly promised, it doesn’t appear until mid-June. We also get the Interest List viewer reach release status, while the initial release of the Oculus Rift project viewer arrives and Loki Eliot offers guidance on using it with the Xbox controller, mirroring work by Strachan Ofarrel with his CtrlAltStudio viewer.
In a continuance of opening the doors on communications, Landon McDowell (Landon Linden in SL), the Lab’s VP of Operations and Platform Engineering offers up and informative blog post on recent issues with Second Life which I can’t help but praise. The Secondlife.com splash / log-in home page gets a revamp and meets with a positive response.
The Guardian newspaper in the UK carries an on-line article about virtual cities, and aspects people to contribute images of their favourite virtual places, and a fair few from SL show up. June also sees the Lab indicate that, but for a small subset of updates, the major work on Project Shining, after more than two years, is complete. This has been a large-scale undertaking to work across a lot of aspects of the SL service – HTTP delivery for textures and mesh, improvement to avatar baking, updates to object rendering and caching, all designed to improve the overall performance of the platform and to make better use of the data shared between simulators and the viewer, etc.
The group ban functionality, introduced in 2014, is intended to give group owners more say in who can join their groups, and to ensure trouble-makers can be removed without risk of return.
Baker Linden’s group bans work also gets a project viewer release, so I provide an overview of this much anticipated functionality.
Christmas is upon us, and following not far behind, the year’s end, which is often a time of reflection as we look back over the old before pausing to await the arrival of the new. It’s become something of a tradition in these pages to look back over the virtual year’s events as I’ve seen and reported them, and offer a chance to revisit the ups and downs and the good and the bad the last twelve months have brought us.
Once again, this has been an incredibly busy year for me, blog-wise – over 950 articles published so far (and counting!) since the start of the year. So I hope you’ll forgive that as I look back over the year as I’ve managed to report it through this blog, I’ve broken it down into three parts, which I’ll be publishing between now and the end of the year. Not everything that happened through the year may be here; there are some aspects of SL in which I’m not active, and so may have missed some headlines. Nevertheless, I hope this review sparks a few memories and provides some interesting holiday reading. Just to (hopefully) make the reading a little more interesting, I’ve tried to avoid just breaking things down entirely by month, in favour of offering what I hope is more of a narrative flow. Part two and part three are also available.
The Lab
The year gets off to something of a quiet start – literally. With communications from the Lab slowly drying-up throughout the period 2010-2013, There is an announcement (absent from any of the SL channels, due to the Lab’s approach of “siloing” what communications were forthcoming), that the still pre-release Patterns sandbox game / creation tool for Mac and PCs had been updated with materials processing and more, some of which gets a further tweak during the month. An update on the required documentation being sought from users meeting certain transaction thresholds is given, but doesn’t entirely enlighten, prompting me to seek further clarification from the Lab. Given the confusion evident, the Lab does issue a tax and account info FAQ to help people.
Rod Humble, with a little reminder from his past, becomes an CEO of the past at Linden Lab
However, the biggest news to start the year comes via Facebook messages, Tweets and tech media reports, as it emerges that, after three years at the Lab, Rod Humble had departed for pastures new around the end of 2013.
As a result, I look back over his tenure, and decide that, allowing for the warts it brought with it (breakdown of communications, the ToS changes, etc), in terms of the technical aspects of SL, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t a popular view.
However, the lack of anything from the Lab one the matter wasn’t encouraging at the time.
The first real confirmation of Mr. Humble’s departure from the Lab came with the announcement that Ebbe Altberg had been hired, and would join the company officially in February. This was met with statements of “Who he?” from many, so I dug around and put together a brief profile, which in turn prompted the man himself to drop by the blog – which is always welcome! Although admittedly, I couldn’t resist dropping him a letter on the subject of communications – not that I needed to have worried, as it turned out.
One of the first things undertaken as a result of Ebbe’s appointment is a review of the Lab’s attempts at diversification.This results in Creatorverse, dio and Versu being axed, and I’m left wondering if Versu doesn’t deserve a future, particularly given a new title, Blood & Laurels, appeared ready to be launched; I’m not alone in this view. However, the Lab initially refuses the idea.
In the meantime, Patterns, having escaped the chopping block (or at least getting a stay of execution), gets its new UI. Positive moves continue elsewhere in the Lab as the door to improved communications is further pushed open, including a promise to re-open the SL JIRA to public viewing and a promise to revisit the August 2013 changes to the Lab’s Terms of Service. The latter is made during an open Q&A session Ebbe takes at the 2014 VWBPE; unfortunately, when it arrives, the update doesn’t, in the eyes of many (myself included), really seem to actually clarify anything – but more of that anon.
New man at the top, Ebbe Altberg (l), who quickly sets about reversing the Lab’s policy on communications, opening things out and taking time to attend events such as the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education, where he appeared via his alter-ego Ebbe Linden (r – image by Strawberry Singh)
The re-engagement with the education sector continues later in the year with Ebbe meeting with representatives in-world, as he did with a number of other user communities, building bridges and seeking to understand needs and wants within SL as a whole – for which he should actually be congratulated. Also on the education front, the Lab helps to promote education projects, such as the MOOC course for Spanish educators, which was to be repeated later in the year as well.
The start of the year brings word from Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey that while region losses continued through 2013, the total loss is some 40% less than that experienced in 2013, although it still represents an 8.2% reduction in the overall number of regions. This does cause renewed demands for tier cuts from some quarters (although tier cuts are as best a very short-term answer, and could actually do more harm than good, as I explained back in January 2013).
Monty Linden: starts the year as he means to go on: overhauling the Lab’s use of HTTP
For me, my SL January starts with a number of questions from other users on the status of direct messaging on the SL feeds. Passing the enquiry on to the Lab, I receive confirmation that the option had been turned off, which surprises and disappoints some.
2014’s impressive list of updates and improvements to the platform takes off with the arrival of Monty Linden’s much anticipated HTTP project viewer, which he subsequently blogged about. As well as banging on all things HTTP, Monty also sets about cleaning-up the various third-party libraries used in the viewer build process, the first part of an on-going overhaul of that process that would continue through the year.
January also sees Andrew Linden’s last project for SL (completed prior to him departing for High Fidelity in December 2013), a capability to allow for the uniform scaling of linksets, arrive on the grid. Then, the end of January brings with it a surprise when there’s a change to the land bot policy, causing a few eyebrows to rise.
Among the Lab’s major projects, fitted mesh is impacted by AMD driver issues, one of several AMD-related problems which will occur through the year, although they don’t prevent fitted mesh being officially launched in early February.
February also sees the first big step in the Lab’s AIS v3 project to improve inventory handling between the viewer and the simulators, with the release of the SSA / AIS v3 project viewer,
Photography in SL takes a couple of hits early in the year. January sees the issues that prevent snapshots being uploaded to the SL feeds continue, while in March, photo uploads to Facebook are disabled due to them violating FB’s policies by including SLurls. This is finally rectified in April, with the formal release of SL Share 2, which allows photos (and messages) to be shared with Twitter and Flickr, and includes post-processing filter capabilities. I’m able to preview the capabilities ahead of the official announcement, which comes with a welcome video for Torley.
Baby’s Ear, July 2015 (Flickr) – blog post
PaleoQuest, arrived in Second Life at the end of July 2015
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 