Tag: SL News

Oskar confirms his departure

Posted on by Inara Pey
Happier times: Oskar’s profile picture (Tangent Eponym)

On Friday November 2nd, comment was passed (not from LL) on the apparent departure of Oskar Linden from the Lab. I commented on the matter in my last SL Projects Update for week 44, but at the time it was unclear as to what had happened and why.

A thread on the SL Universe forum started, some of which doesn’t make the most comfortable of reading given some of the attitudes expressed (not towards Oskar or the Lab, I hasten to add, but rather in comments passed by some SL users regarding other SL users). Yesterday – Monday November 5th – (and missed by me at the time as I was completely distracted with other things), Oskar himself popped-up on the thread to pass word himself on the matter, commenting:

To solidify all rumors, yes my employment was terminated by Linden Lab last Friday [November 2nd]. It was a surprise Skype call with the manager of my department and HR. At the same moment all my accounts were locked and I was told a courier was on the way to my house to take my laptop. This is standard operating procedure at the Lab. The reasons given were quite vague, but at the root of it was complaints from a griefer who I had banned from a private testing sandbox that I managed after he was harassing people and threatening to crash them and the region.

Oskar Linden at SLCC 2009 (image: Teagan Linden / Linden Lab)

I was also told that there were issues with my communications. I don’t understand that because I have operated in the role of public communicator for the lab for three years and have always had stellar reviews. It’s not like the reasons really matter anyway. When the Lab wants you gone it’s over.

To be quite honest this has all come as a surprise and a shock. I have known for a while that this would happen eventually though. All Lindens fear ‘the Skype call’. The old Linden culture is long gone. Many Lindens are disappeared in that way when the Lab no longer has use for them. It has been difficult working through the changes at the Lab the past few years. I could have left, perhaps I should have left on my own. I would have been better off. I did not choose to do so because I was dedicated to the wonderful residents I have met during my 4 years working on SL. I was committed to all of you and committed to making Second Life and Linden Lab a better place. I felt I was fighting the good fight and didn’t want to just run away. I felt that I was making a difference. I hope that I did.

I have no idea what is next for me. I have varied passions that I will follow until I feel the need to pursue further employment.

He goes on to add:

I greatly appreciate all of you who friended me and were so passionate about helping me make Second Life a better place. Your enthusiasm to help find bugs greatly helped the quality of the server code. You are all amazing. You are Second Life, not Linden Lab. Never forget that. I love you all and will miss working with you greatly!

I won’t pretend to have known Oskar well; we’d only spoken a few times, and I’ve only recently been attending his meetings – but I will say that I’ve also found him (and despite my one growl I unfairly gave him in these pages as a result of LL’s own communications policy), to be one of the most open and informative Lindens who faced the user community. His departure is going to take some adjusting to for those who did know him well.

To Oskar himself, I’d just like to pass on my personal thanks for all the effort he has put in over the years. I very much hope that all goes well for him and his family wherever his passions and career may lead. Hopefully, we’ll also see you in-world as well.

 

Of copyright, IP and product licensing

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’ve been watching a semi-interesting forum discussion going on since the weekend

In essence, some are getting upset over the fact that CBS, who now own the rights to the Star Trek franchise world-wide, have apparently “clamped down” on Trek merchandise for sale in SL, with the result that at least one creator has had all wares removed from vendors and the Marketplace, and may have also been banned.

While one may initially feel sympathy for those involved, it has to be said – as several have in commenting on the forum thread itself – that at the end of the day, copyright is copyright, period. Just because the holder happens to be a major entertainment conglomerate doesn’t make the fact that in building and selling content derived from their products, and thus potentially impinging on their copyrights, any less “wrong” than finding the guy on the next parcel over to yours is hard at work copying your own original builds.

Some of those expressing upset at the move do so on the basis that CBS (and before them, Viacom / Paramount) may have flip-flopped over matters in the past, and that holders of other franchises are more lenient. Sadly, none of this matters a jot. Nor does the issue of “fan loyalty” or any other argument.

The major issue in this matter, and the one that gets little or no mention in the topic, is that of licensing.

The fact of the matter is that over the years those holding the Star Trek franchise have made a considerable amount of money through licensing deals with other companies, allowing the latter to make Trek-related products (both real and digital) wither exclusively or in cooperation with others. These deals generally involve a significant upfront payment from the licence holder, usually coupled with a royalties payment scheme based upon unit sales.

As such, while CBS / Viacom / Paramount may well have wibbled over some matters, that licences have been granted at the exchange of large amounts of money, they do actually have an obligation to ensure said licences are protected, period. It doesn’t matter if the person in violation is a fan or not.

There are many great Trek-related (and other franchise-based) models and other goods on sale in SL. While there is no doubting the skill and dedication of those making them, many nevertheless are open to accusations of copyright / IP infringement

Some posters in the thread are calling for LL to get involved in matters. Yet the fact is, LL do not need to involve themselves in matters. I’d actually suggest that, on balance, it is far better that they don’t get involved in this, or any other licensing situation in terms of negotiations over rights even if they were so minded, as it is very likely that things would not end well for anyone.

A far better solution, as some have suggested, is for the Trek fans themselves to address the matter with CBS – and the roadmap for them doing so has already been drawn. At the end of 2010, the Battlestar Galactica community faced an identical situation Universal Studios took issue with BSG-related goods being sold in SL. At the time the fans responded by engaging with Universal and discussing the situation with them.

The result was that in February 2011, Universal Studios agreed to allow BSG-related merchandise to remain available in SL, so long as it was not being sold for personal profit / gain. One might question how actually effective this arrangement has been (there are admittedly a fair proportion of BSG-derived items on active sale in the Marketplace), but the arrangement at least leaves people knowing where they stand, and that those persisting in selling franchise-related merchandise which may be subject to licence arrangements elsewhere and / or are liable to be looked upon as copyright/IP infringing would know precisely where they stand.

At this point in time, there seems little reason to suspect CBS would not be willing to enter into such an agreement if approached positively, and I would hope that if they are not already doing so, Trek fans in SL are making overtures along such lines already. In fact, I’ll be rather surprised if this isn’t already the case. In 2010/2011 the Universal deal was reached through the able assistance of Anthony Haslage, (Ntanel Swordthain in SL), himself of the International Federation of Trekkers (IFT), and Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) Second Life Chapter President. So not only is the roadmap there, the chief architect for bringing it to pass is himself well-placed to represent SL Trek fans.

In the meantime, perhaps the biggest question this situation leaves open is what will happen with regards to Star Wars merchandise in SL now that Disney has acquired LucasFilm, and, presumably, the rights to the highly lucrative merchandising arrangements related to that franchise.

SL Project news week 44/3: mesh deformer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Testing is continuing with the latest release of the Mesh Deformer project viewer, which can be used to deform mesh items to either default or custom human shapes. While the pool of test items remains small, people appear to be testing using their own creations, with at least some feedback being given to the JIRA (STORM-1716), which remains open to comment. If you are testing the deformer using the latest project viewer, please be sure to provide feedback on your results – be they with default shapes or custom shapes – to the JIRA.

Some problems with breast fittings might be down to an incompatibility between Avastar and the viewer, which is currently being corrected

Most of the results obtained to date appear to be satisfactory, although some issues still remain with custom shapes. Darien Caldwell, working with Gaia Clary, has identified one issue which exists specifically with the Avastar add-in for Blender co-produced by Gaia.

Avastar is a Blender add-on for Second Life mesh creators and animators which provides a wide range of capabilities, including (for mesh creation): SL shape import into Blender, SL shape sliders support, support for attachment bones, and so on.

The issue has been that Avastar’s sliders have been based on a scale of 1-100, whereas the viewer’s sliders operate on a scale of 0-100 , leading to some scale miscalculations within Avastar which in turn have led to issues with mesh fitting over body parts such as breasts. According to Darien Caldwell, she and Gaia now have this “pretty well nailed” and an update to correct Avastar will apparently be out shortly (Update: please see Magus Freston’s comments at the end of this article).

This still leaves the broader deformation issue, as reported recently, which is still being looked into, and awaiting some feedback from Qarl.

Other issues outside of these which have arisen with the deformer have been largely the result of unrealistic expectations – that it will, for example, mimic facial morphs or hand movements closely or some changes to feet. However, in these situations, it is important to remember that the deformer was never developed to deal with these, as it works off the avatar’s bone structure, and facial features and hands don not have any bone structure within the avatar associated with them.

Time Frame for the Deformer

While progress with the deformer continues to look good, there remains no ETA as to when the code will appear in the release version of the official SL viewer.

The major reason for this is the ongoing problems with the Beta release channel for the viewer (of which more in the next update for this week!). As it stands, the deformer is positioned roughly at the back of the queue of releases which are being held as LL work to resolve the current crash issues with the Beta viewer. This means that, at least until the Beta issues are resolved, there is no official ETA for the deformer code reaching the release viewer. However, the latest revisions are starting to be incorporated into some TPVs.

In the meantime, and if you have been testing the project viewer, please remember to give feedback via the JIRA.

Performance Concern

While it is not actually an issue with the deformer per se, commenting at the Content Creation User Group on Monday 29th October, Siana Gearz highlighted a potential problem with mesh clothing utilising the deformer and avatar physics.

The concern is that the deformer uses the same morph-based schema as is used by the avatar physics system. This means that the GPU has to do a lot of additional calculations for the polygons in an item of mesh clothing to simulate movement (such as “bouncing boobs”) when avatar physics are in use. This obviously leads to a performance hit. So long as the polygon count in clothing is kept low, the impact is minimal, but the concern is that clothing build using high polygon counts to provide detail could have a larger impact on the viewer.

One possible way for this to be avoided, should it become an issue, is for clothing makers to optimise their mesh clothing with lower poly counts – and the forthcoming materials processing capabilities should go a long way towards helping with this.

Related Links

CHUI: no, not a Wookie, a viewer from LL – with feedback requested

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab have launched, somewhat unexpectedly, a new project viewer, called CHUI. While sounding like a character from Star Wars (CHU-EE, geddit? *Ahem*. Sorry), it stands for Communications Hub User Interface. The blog post states:

With so many ways for users to communicate with one another in Second Life, there are quite a few communications tools in the Viewer. To make it easier to find, learn and use these tools, today we released a project Viewer that introduces CHUI (Communications Hub User Interface). In addition to bringing most of these communications tools “under one roof,” CHUI also introduces some new and improved features.

Among the listed features are:

  • The Conversation Log: providing you have enabled the option to save chat and IM logs to your computer, this allows you to open the entire history of a conversation with another user held in the past 30 days directly in your viewer, or review off-line IMs received from both friends and non-friends
  • Expanded conference calls: with CHUI it is possible to add people to a conference call after it’s started, or add someone to an existing one-on-one IM session
  • The ability to easily move your voice connection between open conversations including nearby chat, private IM, conference chat or group chat. Click the “add voice” button on any conversation to move your voice connection to that conversation. Click the “hang up” button and your voice connection is returned to nearby chat.
  • The ability to access chat preferences in a single click from the Conversation window
  • Change the volume of a single person’s voice by simply clicking on that person’s speaking icon in the Conversations window
  • A multi-line chat entry box which expands as you type.
CHUI Conversation Log

These features primarily found in two floaters: Conversations Log and a revised Conversations floater. The Conversations Log window lists all recent and past conversations, allowing them to be to scrolled through and opened for reading. As I’ve only jut started using the project viewer, I’ve actually not investigated this in-depth. Clicking on a listed conversation will open in the Conversations floater, and the Conversation Log contains two buttons for sorting the listed conversations (by name, by date, etc.), and a gear cog button for access various options – start an IM, enter a voice call, view profile, etc., for a selected conversation in the list.

For those who use TPVs with tabbed IM capabilities, the revised Conversations floater will look remarkably familiar,  bringing as it does local chat and all IM conversations into a single floater panel. Any conversations in the Conversation Loge will also open here as well.

The Conversations floater

The panel includes a number of buttons. These again allow conversation to be sorted, closed individually, etc., and also include a number of additional options:

Add someone else to an existing IM conversation, and establish a conference call. This will open the Choose Resident Floater, allowing you to pick a friend, someone nearby or search for someone.

Start a Voice conversation with a person or hang-up from a Voice conversation (the icon will change on the button, depending on the status of the call)

Open the Choose Resident floater to select someone with whom to start an IM or Voice conversation.

Break-out any conversation into its own floater.

The Conversations floater can also be compacted down into one of three sizes, using the left / right double chevron arrows. These help reduce the amount of space the floater takes up on your screen when not actively in use. It can be expanded either using these buttons or using the right-pointing arrows next to the names in the conversations list.

The three compact views of the Conversations floater

Overall, this is a significant attempt to centralise in-world communications, and there are some nice features here, particularly in the extended Voice options.

For Linden Lab, this is very much experimental, as noted in the blog post itself, and they are asking for people’s feedback on the features:

We’ve been testing CHUI inside Linden Lab for some time, but any major redesign requires a lot of people using it to make it as smooth and useful as it can be. This is where you come in.

Please think about these questions as you use the CHUI project viewer:

  • Are the new features useful?
  • Do the functions you commonly use seem more streamlined, or do they require more clicks than before?
  • Are all of the functions, both old and new, easy to find?

We’ll ask you to complete a survey in approximately one week to gather your thoughts on these questions.

There is a publicly accessible JIRA (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/chuibug) available for the viewer, and if you do try it out and find a bug, LL request you report it there.

Also tucked away in the blog post is news that blocked users and objects can now be viewed from within the People floater, rather than via a separate menu option, and can also be unblocked from here via the right-click context menu.

Related Links

Coming in November: Premium promotion, but not just the usual?

Posted on by Inara Pey

I was playing with Lumiya 2.3.2 this afternoon (review coming soon!), when the veritable Lord of Dee, Ciaran Laval tapped me via IM about what appears to be an upcoming premium promotion, which looks set to be going live on the 14th November.

Ciaran spotted the news while taking a look through the JIRA, when he came across WEB-4950:

WEB-4590: click to enlarge

This is probably listed as a public issue in error, so I fully expect it to vanish behind the curtain next week. However, it raises interesting questions.  Why a JIRA for a promotional offer, and why a link to a Linden Department of Public Works JIRA (LDPW-77, closed to public access)?

Between them, these suggest that the promotion will be more than just the “typical” 50% discount on first payments when signing-up to quarterly membership, and that something in-world will play a part in the offer.

Now, the promo could simply be related to another premium gift, but given the last one was issued in late August, the time-frame seems a little short, premium gifts usually come out a little over once a quarter; we also have Christmas on the horizon, so I suspect that, as with last year’s sailing boat, we’re more likely to see the next gift in December.

There’s also the small matter of LL asking about what can be done to improve the Premium Wilderness Experience a few months back. While it remains open right now, could the offer be tied to a belated overhaul of this (which at the time of writing remains open). If so, it seems an awfully long time to get from the e-mail survey (May) to updating the experience, even allowing for protracted time frames at the Lab. There’s also the fact that while visited, the Wilderness Experience didn’t exactly set the SL world ablaze with positive reviews, and I rather suspect most of the feedback provided on the survey was at best lukewarm towards the whole idea. So I’m far from convinced LL are going to try to breathe life back into that specimen.

Premium Wilderness: too long in the tooth to inspire more interest?

I’m therefore leaning towards us seeing something new, and I’m tempted to lean even further (and risk toppling into error) towards it possibly being something akin to Linden Realms – that is, using the advanced creator tools. The “first set” of these was launched back in July 2012, and we’re still waiting for the updated permissions system associated with them to arrive. That the term “first set” was used in the blog post announcing their arrival, I’ve always wondered if LL LL have something else in the pipeline for the tools (beyond getting the permissions system sorted). So perhaps this promotion will see further tools added to the range and rolled out for Premium members to try in a new playground, a-la Linden Realms.

Guess we’ll find out on or around November 14th!

With thanks to Ciaran Laval.

Mesh upload patch enhancement for creators

Posted on by Inara Pey

Nalates Urriah drew my attention to a thread on SL Universe regarding the development of a new patch which should be of assistance to mesh creators making rigged mesh items. The patch is by Magus Freston and Gaia Clary, and is designed to solve a particular problem which exists between Collada file formats and Second Life. Magus describes the problem thus:

A limitation of the attachment points in the LL character is that many of them have names with spaces, like “Left Pec”. Collada 1.4 doesn’t handle bone names with spaces as space is used to delimit bone names. So the idea is to replace the spaces with an underscore for the collada file so you get “Left_Pec”, which of course SL doesn’t recognise. The patch just translates “Left_Pec” back to “Left Pec” at import time.

Posting initially to the Machinimatrix blog, where the raw code for the patch can be found, Magus and Gaia devised a test for the patch involving a mesh with two additional spheres which if imported successfully using skin weights, should appear hovering close to the hands and rotating as a result of an added animation.

Mesh uploader test item created by Magus Freston

The test files cane be obtained from the Machinimatrix blog thread, although they require registration / logging-in to the blog in order to see and download them.

Responding to Magus’ request for assistance, Darien Caldwell compiled a version of the Windows SL beta viewer incorporating the patch, and after a couple of bumpy starts, managed to import the mesh successfully and as expected. Since then several content creators have tried the patch and found it works, although a couple of warnings may be thrown up during the upload. The uploaded mesh can be correctly rendered in any mesh-capable viewer.

The test viewer is provided as a ZIP file for windows, not an installer. On unpacking, the contents should save to a default folder (at the time of writing “Test Build 341” – although you can obviously rename this). Once unpacked, open the folder and double-click on LINDENDEVELOPER.EXE to launch the viewer.

The uploaded mesh, with animation running, showing the expected result: the two spheres orbiting in front of my hands

Related Links