Tag: SL News

SL project news week 21 (1): viewer release process

Posted on by Inara Pey

Work continues on implementing the new viewer release process, although it is unlikely to debut this week (week 21). Commenting on the state-of-play at the Open-source Development meeting on Monday May 20th, Oz Linden said, “There are some new services to stand up, and I don’t have enough experience with that to be able to estimate it well.” He also indicated that the necessary changes to the log-in process I reported on in week 20  are still being progressed with care.

However, as of May 20th, 2013, the viewer beta repository has been discontinued by the Lab. This means that the next beta viewer to appear – which is due to be the Materials Processing viewer due out possibly later this week – will be built directly from the Materials project repository and not a merge with the existing beta viewer, although it will go through the existing beta channel for release and made available via viewer download page.

Viewer Naming

Under the new system,  viewer names will be broadly streamlined, with beta and release candidate versions of viewer being broadly identified by the viewer type and project name (e.g “Second Life Beta Materials” or “Second Life Release Candidate Materials”), prior to being updated as the release viewer.

“Willing to Update”

As previously noted in this blog, when a user downloads a specific viewer, they will only receive updates specific to that viewer until such time as it reaches a release status (although user can theoretically run several viewer side-by-side, and receive the required updates to each of them as they become available). However, the beta viewers will in future a new Preferences option, “Willing to update to release candidates” (Preferences > Setup).

The new beta viewer option for updating to RC status
The new beta viewer option for updating to RC status

Precisely how this option works is unclear (I have contacted Oz Linden on the matter but have yet to hear back), but it appears to suggest that if unchecked, then notification of any RC updates to the viewer will not be forwarded to the user  / automatically downloaded and installed, and will thus leave the user running with the viewer in a beta state until such time as a mandatory update is forced as the viewer becomes the de facto release viewer.

How Many?

The new release process means that there will be more viewer options to download via the Alternate Viewers wiki page. How many depends on the number of projects and general work is going on with the viewer. However, it also means that once operational, there should be fewer incidences when a specific project or issue interrupts the flow of viewer through to release status, as occurred towards the end of the 2012, when the viewer releases became “stuck” in the beta release channel as a result of a single crash issue.

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Lab launches Authorised L$ Resellers

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update: May 18th: Podex and Gyndex have indicated they have applied for Authorised Reseller status with Linden Lab.

Upate May 17th: Gwyneth Llewellyn provides an analysis of LL’s move – very much worth a read.

secondlifeLinden Lab has issued a further statement on the recent changes to the Second Life Terms of Service relating to the buying and selling of Linden Dollars.

The blog post, which covers the fact that Linden Dollars can be purchased via credit card in using some 27 currencies and which includes the Lab’s “Getting and Spending Linden Dollars” Quicktips video, reveals that the Lab is launching a new programme of “Authorised Resellers” of Linden Dollars – a move which is likely to spake the most reaction.

The post reads in part::

Now, to give users more options and make it easier to purchase L$, we’re launching a pilot program of Authorized Resellers of L$. These sites are authorized by Linden Lab to purchase L$ on the LindeX and then resell those L$ using a variety of international currencies and payment methods. To be clear: per the Terms of Service, these resellers will not be allowed to purchase L$ outside of the LindeX (i.e. they will not be able to buy L$ back from users and cash people out). The list of Authorized Resellers participating in the pilot program is available here.

 If you would like to receive an application to the program when it formally launches, please send an email to LDollarSeller@lindenlab.com.

The initial list of Authorised Resellers comprises AnsheX, Buildo, VForEx Inc, VirWoX, and Zoha Islands, with more potentially to be added to the scheme – there is an invitation for other exchanges wishing to join the programme to e-mail Linden Lab.

The full terms and conditions for the new programme can be found on the SL wiki.

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SL ToS changes: Lab contacts TPEs; some get account suspensions

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update 17th May 18:45 BST: The Lab has launched an “Authorised Reseller of L$” programme. Initial report here.

Update: 17th May: Gwyneth Llewelwyn provides an interesting and thoughtful analysis on the entire situation. DXEchange has indicated it has received LL’s e-mail of a potential solution, and is considering the matter.

Update: 16:55 BST: The e-mail to TPEs is apparently light on details, but includes the following statement: “We have approached several organizations to discuss a potential solution that would allow them to serve their customers within the bounds of the updated Second Life Terms of Service. We will soon blog to share more information about this solution, which we plan to extend more broadly as well.” So it would appear that the “potential solution” may initially be made on a limited basis.

MBKash has also indicated it has received the e-mail from Linden Lab, as has Gyndex.

secondlifeThere appears to be new movement on the situation involving third-party exchanges dealing in Linden Dollars following the recent change to the Second Life Terms of Service, and movement of a most confusing kind.

On the one hand, blog posts have started appearing on various exchange websites noting that they have received further information from the Lab, and that matters may be resolved in a manner which would allow them to resume the provisioning and exchange of Linden Dollars to Second Life users.

ToS Change

On the other hand, some exchanges are indicating that the SL accounts they use to handle their in-world dealings have all been suspended by the Lab.

On May 7th 2013, Linden Lab updated section 5.3 of the Terms of Service, which deals with the buying / selling of Linden Dollars and third-party exchanges (TPEs). While the ToS appeared to indicate that while such exchanges were not “authorised” by the Lab, the re-wording gave the impression that users could still use such exchanges while re-emphasising that doing so was entirely at the user’s own risk.

However, a blog post announcing the updated ToS change stated the that use of third-party exchanges was “not allowed” under the new ToS, and shortly thereafter TPEs started to receive e-mails from Linden Lab ordering them to cease dealing in Linden Dollars and also to remove / disable all in-world ATMs from SL with immediate effect. Third-party viewer developers were also contacted and told to remove any links to TPEs within their viewers.

As well as leading to a lot of speculation as to the reasons behind the move, the combination of mis-matched ToS update and accompanying blog post, together with the e-mail to TPEs has led to a lot of confusion and upset.

The Good

However, a number of exchanges have indicated that they have had further communication from the Lab which may allow their to resume operations. These include, at the time of writing, VirWox, CrossWorlds and Virtuateq (the latter’s update is in Dutch).

The VirWox update reads in full:

Good News: Linden Lab has approached us with a potential solution that would allow us to serve our customers within the bounds of the updated Second Life Terms of Service. We are in discussions with them and look forward to being able to share more information very soon.

Similarly, CrossWorlds also  reported:

We have received an e-mail today with regards the problem from Linden Lab. It informs us that there may be a potential solution that would allow us to serve our customers within the bounds of the updated Second Life Terms of Service.

As soon as I hear more I will let you know… and fingers crossed we can fix this problem.

It is not currently clear how many other exchanges have received similar e-mails from Linden Lab, which appeared to start issuing them late on Wednesday the 15th May, PDT, and so it is possible that updates may be forthcoming from other exchanges as the day goes on.

Quite what the “potential solution” might be is unclear. There has already been some speculation that it could be for TPEs to register as MSBs with the US Treasury Department’s FinCEN or perhaps providing evidence that they are properly registered under / adhere to any corresponding requirements within their country of operation.

The Bad

Elsewhere the news is not so good. In the early hours of the morning on Thursday May 16th (European time), Jacek Shuftan reported on the Podex blog that:

Tonight  at 2.00 o’clock all my accounts related to Podex Exchange were put on hold by Linden Lab.

I really believed that the new ToS is meant to protect avatars from the risk of fraud.  That was my goal as well so I was looking forward to cooperate with Linden Lab. I could not imagine that over one night they would want to destroy our cooperation and everything what I built for 6 years of my virtual life. They did.

I believed that they would answer my requests to start discussion. They did not.

Similarly, DX Exchange are also reporting they have had accounts suspended:

Our avatars for our exchange activities are put on hold by Linden Lab, so there is no room for interpretation that Linden Lab wants to enforce the new TOS effective immediately.

That means that we are closed permanently as of today.We expect Linden Lab to enforce the TOS on all other exchanges today.

Defying the ToS?

There has been some speculation that Podex accounts may have been blocked as a result of a decision by the exchange to continue to offer L$ in defiance of the ToS change  / e-mail, with Podex citing the 30-day “grace” period prior to changes to the ToS coming into force.

What is interesting here is that DX Exchange appears to have suffered the same fate as Podex (at least for the moment) after they had initially suspended operations, and then, according to Hypergrid Business, decided to follow suit alongside of Podex and others. This move apparently led to Bart Bockhoudt, co-owner of Gyndex indicting to Hypergrid Business that he would be objecting to the move by DX Exchange and seeking further clarification from the Lab. Whether this prompted some exchanges receiving account suspensions or not is also unclear.

However, one of the other exchanges which also opted, according the Hypergrid Business, to continue to offer Linden Dollars under the 30-day grace period cited in the ToS was CrossWorlds – who are one of the exchanges who have received the e-mail citing a “potential solution” from Linden Lab. Again, whether this is indicative that the likes of Podex and DX Exchange have / will also receive similar e-mails, and that the current account suspensions will be lifted / are the result of confused communications within the Lab, remains to be seen.

Still Confused

Overall, the result of these moves appears to leave the entire situation as confused as ever, and doubtless open to further interpretation and speculation. Expect further updates  as / when matters become clearer either via the Lab or through contact with the various exchanges.

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Server-side Baking / Appearance: key questions answered by the Lab

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Monday May 13th 2013, Troy and Nyx Linden appeared on a segment of Designing Worlds to discuss Server-side Baking / Appearance (SSB/A), alongside Brooke and Oz Linden, who were there to discuss Materials Processing.

Troy Linden is a Senior Producer at Linden Lab, who has been working on high-level server-side baking, and Nyx Linden is a Senior Software Engineer at the Lab, who has been working with the technical aspects of SSB/A and has been very much the public face of the project. Together, they answered a series of questions on the project put to them on behalf of users (the questions having been requested in advance of the show being recorded) by the Designing Worlds hosts, Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin.

The following is a summary of the questions asked and answers given.

Nyx Linden (l) and Troy Linden (r) on Designing Worlds
Nyx Linden (l) and Troy Linden (r) on Designing Worlds (image courtesy of Wildstar Beaumont / Designing Worlds)

Saffia Widdershins (SW): Let’s start with the basics: what is baking, and how is it being handled now?

Troy Linden (TL): Baking is a process where we take all the information that involves your avatar – how it looks – and we combine it to deliver a finished avatar. Currently, how it’s handled right now [is] your computer, the individual’s computer, handles all of the processing involved in determining your avatar’s appearance, and it sends all the result back to our servers. So it’s a pretty involved process and there’s a bunch of time that it takes to do all that.

SW: So how is that going to be changed in the future … and will it simplify it?

TL: Server-side baking is our new system. It’s where we actually stand up a new service that will handle all of the baking process on our end. And what this actually does is it takes the load away from your computer, the individual user’s computer, and the results are a faster, more consistent experience during the whole baking process in Second Life.

Elrik Merlin (EM): Just to be clear about this … in the new system, what will be handled by the server and what will be handled by the viewer, exactly?

TL: The new viewer will be sending the server and [be] the recipient of all the avatar data, while the server does all the calculations required. So your viewer will download the results [of the baking process] over a lot faster HTTP connection.

EM: So that’s the basics of how it works, so to speak; how would you summarise the benefits to users?

Designing Worlds hosts Saffia Widdershin and Elrik Merlin
Designing Worlds hosts Saffia Widdershin and Elrik Merlin (image courtesy of Wildstar Beaumont / Designing Worlds)

TL: Well, simply put, it’s a much faster, more reliable avatar rendering experience. So hopefully you’ll see less avatars being stuck in their clouded state as well as being stuck untextured. So they’ll actually appear the way the user actually intended much quicker.

SW: So it will be an end to that problem where you half-rez but, (laughs) your make-up is blurred so you look as though you’ve been having a really heavy night!

TL: (Laughing) That’s the plan. We’re actually seeing some great results so far, so we’re very excited.

SW: Are there likely to be any downsides? There will be less impact on peoples’ machines, is that what you’re saying, or could there me more?

Nyx Linden (NL): The one downside to the new system is, because it is such a big change from how we have done things in the past, everyone is going to have to update their viewer. It will be a mandatory update. Users who don’t update will start to see even more avatars fail to load. Fortunately, we have the viewer that people need to download released, and users who use any actively maintained third-party viewer should be able to download an update presently as well. As long as users do update, they won’t see any downsides.

EM: This is obviously nearing completion and we’re nearing implementation. Can you tell us a little about where the project is, what its current status is, and what the time scales are for introduction are going to be?

NL: Absolutely! So, we’re in a multi-stage release; at this point we have our first viewer out the door. So the next stage is that we’re going to be standing-up the service that is going to be doing all the work for rezzing your avatar. Over time we will slowly roll-out the new system across the grid. That’s going to take some time, and we’re going to be following-up through our blogs and forums to let people know how that process is going, but we want to take our time with that process, to make sure that everything is working as well as we think it is.

Continue reading “Server-side Baking / Appearance: key questions answered by the Lab” →

Lab updates SL’s Terms of Service

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeThose logging-in the Second Life on Tuesday May 7th, 2013 were confronted with the need to accept the platform’s terms Terms of Service (ToS) once more. An official blog post on the matter states:

When you log in to the Second Life Viewer today, you’ll be asked to accept an updated Terms of Service. As with any legal document, it’s important to read in its entirety before accepting, but we wanted to highlight one of the changes we’ve made in this update: to better protect Second Life users against fraud, the updated Terms of Service make it clear that trading of Linden dollars (L$) on exchanges other than the LindeX, Second Life’s official L$ exchange, is not authorized or allowed.

 As the official exchange owned and operated by Linden Lab, the LindeX is the best place to buy and sell L$ for use in Second Life. It consistently offers the best rates for both buyers and sellers, and by limiting L$ trading to the exchange we operate, we are better able to protect users against fraudulent activity.

 The majority of Second Life users who purchase L$ do so through the Second Life Viewer by clicking on the “Buy L$” button. There will be no change to that function, as these orders are placed directly through the LindeX. Similarly, shopping on Marketplace will not be impacted.

The post also includes a link to the Knowledge Base article on the LindeX and the Quick Tips video on getting and spending Linden Dollars.

The core change to the ToS is section 5.3, which has been revised to read:

Third party exchanges are not authorized by Linden Lab and Buying or Selling Linden dollars on third-party exchanges are not authorized transactions. Third party exchanges are wholly distinct from both the LindeX exchange and Linden Lab and they have no affiliation with Linden Lab. We do not endorse or otherwise guarantee the legitimacy of the Linden dollar transfers offered on them, and we are not liable for purchases of such Linden dollars. Buying or Selling Linden dollars anywhere other than the LindeX is done so solely at your own risk. If you Buy Linden dollars that are traced to unauthorized credit card activity or other fraudulent activity, we will recoup these Linden dollars from your Account. The only authorized exchange is the LindeX.

All reference to any third-party exchanges using the Lab’s “Risk API” tool has been removed from the ToS, and the Risk API wiki page has been removed from the SL wiki, although the deletion log is retained for reference purposes.

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LL announce revamp to the viewer release process

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeLinden Lab have announced a revamp to the way in which they will be releasing viewer updates in future.

Currently, the process for the majority of viewer changes is that they go through a progression – generally being seen first in the development channel (or sometimes prior to that in a project viewer), before moving through to the beat viewer (where updates go through what is effectively a final validation  / user test) prior to being adopted into the SL release viewer.

This system has generally worked, but can cause problems, particularly when there is a lot going on in terms of projects and updates, and things end up being “queued up” for the release (as is currently the case, where CHUI, Server-side Baking / Appearance, and a host of other updates / fixes are concerned all being “queued” awaiting their turn in the beta viewer release channel.

Another problem – as seen at the end of last year – can be that should a significant issue occur within the beta viewer code, it can completely block further viewer releases until such time as the problem can be tracked down and effectively fixed. Last year this meant that viewer updates were effectively stalled for around a two month period while LL sought to isolate and fix the problem.

To try to overcome any bottlenecks which might occur with viewer releases, the Lab is adopting a similar process to that used by the server-side code release mechanism, as the blog post explains:

We’ll release more than one new version at the same time in parallel to subsets of users for final validation, and then promote the most important of the best of those to the default Release Viewer when that testing shows it to be ready.

If a development project wants to put out an early version for testing prior to it being ready for the Release channel, a channel specific to that project (either ‘Project <project>’ for very early versions, or ‘Beta <project>’ for more mature ones) will be created, just like we do today. These will be shut down when the project is ready to move to final testing in the Release channel, and users in the early project test channels will automatically be upgraded to the corresponding Release candidate version.

This means that in the coming weeks, we’ll start to see different versions of the viewer start to appear in parallel in their own “release candidate” channels, and people will be able to choose which versions they want to download and try-out. Once it is deemed the code from a specific “release candidate” viewer is ready for release, it will be integrated into the SL viewer and made available to the community through the established mechanism. As such, the beta viewer channel will be vanishing in the near future.

Quite how well different flavours of the viewer will run together on a single computer for those who want to try-out more than one upcoming release remains to be seen. Generally, different versions of the SL viewer tend to play nicely together. However, as was seen with the 3.4 and 3.5 code base changes problems can occur. In that particularly instance, running a development or beta viewer using the 3.5 code and then swapping back to the SL release viewer on the 3.4 code resulted in all the toolbar buttons vanishing from the latter.

The overall hope is that this change will mean that specific features and updates will reach the release version of the viewer at a greater pace than can be achieved with the current process, which in turn should not only smooth the path for new capabilities and features to reach users quicker (allowing for the inevitable bugs and hiccups such projects tend to encounter anyway), but perhaps also help in get fixes for significant issues and problems out to the mainstream viewer.