The rumour mills (serious and highly humorous – the latter particularly on Twitter) churned mightily yesterday, Thursday April 26th, after SL log-ins were blocked. Users attempting to log-in to SL were treated to something of a dire message, rarely seen in recent years, prompting me to tweet at the time:
The outage certainly brought back memories for many, particularly of the old Black Wednesdays, when the Main grid would be down for anything up to eight hours (the rule of thumb being six) for weekly maintenance.
Yesterday’s outage brought with it memories of the “good old days”
A Grid Status update posted on April 27th later revealed that the cause of the fault to be a core network upgrade going awry, impacting both the Main grid and the SL website at secondlife.com. The Grid Status update also warns of further maintenance work that will take place on Monday April 30th as a result of the issue. The update reads in full:
[UPDATED] Scheduled Maintenance Monday, April 30, 2012
[UPDATED 2:30pm PDT, 27 April 2012] On April 26, 2012, the Second Life engineering team was performing an upgrade to the core network. The upgrade triggered a bug that led to downtime and instability throughout the day. The maintenance described in this post is scheduled for Monday, April 30 at 6am PT in order to correct the bug and may result in additional service interruption. We apologize for the service disruption and appreciate everyone’s patience.
[POSTED 1:00pm PDT, 27 April 2012] We will be performing scheduled maintenance Monday April 30, 2012 beginning at 6:00am until approximately 9:00am. Please save all builds and refrain from rezzing no copy objects or making inworld L$ transactions. Some residents may experience delays logging inworld. Please follow this blog for any updated information.
Update: Sometimes working on multiple posts to your blog isn’t a good idea. Between drafting and pushing this one, Qarl updated his code, as Cinders points out. Sorry Qarl! Correct link is here.
Slightly later than he’d hoped, but keeping to his promise, Qarl has released version 0.3 of the Mesh deformer, stating:
Quick announcement – I’m releasing version 0.3 of the deformer code. Primary changes: 1) should now apply cleanly to recent linden viewer code, 2) deformation tables are computed in the background on another thread, so no frame stalls.
There appear to be a couple of elements missing from the patch – as spotted by Henri Beauchamp in a comment following Qarl’s post, so developers may want to hold-off grabbing the code for a bit.
I’ll be watching the various Viewer blogs for updates to see when the patch is incorporated. It’s likely to make an appearance in the likes of Cool VL and Dolphin very rapidly, providing the code is stable. Niran V Dean is planning to make a Full release of Niran’s Viewer 1.33 in the next couple of days, so this might also see the code included – we’ll have to wait and see.
Linden Lab had a Development Viewer in the offing for the deformer. This actually dates back to January, but didn’t get any further than an optional development Viewer due to assorted issues. Marine Kelley, who uses the V.3.2 reported that she’d removed the deformer from her last release due to crash issues, which may be related to reasons why LL never moved the code further along their Development cycle. However, as Qarl appears to have specifically addressed some (or all) of the issues, we may yet see the deformer appearing in something like an official Project Viewer sooner rather than later.
It’s been a while since we’ve had news on the mesh parametric deformer project. So it was good to hear Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden), the man behind the code, to provide a brief update on matters in this week’s Metareality podcast:
[27:58] Sorry guys; so here’s an update on the deformer. I have been obscenely busy in the last three months work-wise, and I have not had the chance to work on it much. That said, I did start working on it again on Monday [the 16th April] and I should have a release this weekend … The deformer’s going to happen, you don’t need to worry about that. Linden Lab has committed to getting it working; if they reject it for dumb reasons, I think that would – while they’ve done dumb things in the past, I don’t think that will happen; that would surprise me.
Given that there have been unfounded rumours circulating that Linden Lab are trying to “kill” the deformer – which seem largely based on the premise that the project doesn’t appear to be progressing as fast as some people believe it should – hopefully, Karl’s update will set matters to rights, and see an end to such rumours.
For my part, I’ll be keeping an eye on Karl’s website at qarl.com, and will relay any news that is forthcoming.
In the meantime, there has been an interesting discussion going on within the SL official forums relating to standard sizes in SL and mesh. It’s worth a read and gives pause for thought – particularly Max Graf’s very considered input to the discussion.
Linden Lab have issued a call to help with SL9B celebrations, which reads in part:
Second Life’s 9th Birthday is coming up in June! This year it’s all about you — the denizens of the grid, the sultans of Second Life and connoisseurs of creativity— and we want to highlight the many unique and innovative ways the community has made Second Life their own.
This year we will focus the spotlight on community events. No one throws a better event or party than the Second Life community! If you’re having an event to celebrate Second Life turning nine, we want to know about it!
On the surface, this sounds great – until one realises that what is in fact being announced here is effectively the end of an era.
In previous years, Second life’s birthday has been marked through a coming-together of the community as a whole on a set of regions supplied by Linden Lab, to create a glorious theme park of builds and ideas created around a central theme, and in and around which parties and celebrations can be held. While not always free from controversy and acrimony, this approach provided a focal point for events and activities marking SL’s birthday, and helped to bring together residents from across the grid.
SL8B sims – not this year
Well, not any more.
Hidden within this announcement is the fact that this year there will be no large-scale provisioning of regions by LL; no central place to explore (lag and all) and see builds great and small and enjoy the thrill of celebration and discovery.
And this is a shame.
The SL8B events have traditionally been a marvellous way for the many talents and groups across SL to showcase their work, their talent and their vision. It’s hard to see how such an infinite diversity of ideas and vision can be replicated through a process of complete de-centralisation; one cannot imagine sim / estate owners / groups developing large-scale builds specifically for SL9B, especially with so broad a theme as has been offered.
NY HealthScape roller coaster, SL8B – just one of the amazing and informative builds
I’ll personally miss the great gatherings like SL8B and its predecessors. I’ll miss the ability to wander through sim after sim of incredible builds, meeting talented content creators and designers and learning about the unique work of groups such as NY HealthScape.
Why LL have chosen to go this route is hard to fathom. Certainly, as mentioned above, previous SLB events haven’t been entirely free from controversy or headaches – but such upsets have rarely intruded into people’s overall enjoyment of the events themselves, and it is fair to say that where drama has occurred, it’s been somewhat confined to those involved, going largely unnoticed among those from across the grid who have attended events within the SLB sims and spent time exploring the exhibits.
As it stands, this announcement in some way reads less like a call for celebration and more like a renouncement of involvement in a key event in SL’s annual calendar.
And at the risk of repeating myself, that’s a shame.
We’ve all dreamed about running “full” SL on mobile devices; while there are some great text-based clients available for both Android devices and the iPhone which offer a lot of functionality, it’s fair to say that SL doesn’t always feel like SL when the graphical element is removed. Whether we will eventually see SL accessible via mobile devices and tablets on a regular basis is open to debate – although with the likes of Unity, it’s hard not to believe there will be a time when graphical access to SL via such devices will be available.
In fact, where the iPhone is concerned, it wasn’t that long ago that it looked as if graphical access to SL might not be that far away, as the video below shows.
This concept demo was developed by Comverse back in 2008. It made SL on the iPhone possible by using a server sitting between SL and the iPhone to handle all the hard number-crunching, with the results being streamed to the iPhone’s web browser, with inputs from the interface being sent back to the server for processing, prior to being sent to the SL servers. The go-between server clearly has an impact on response times, but as Tech Digest said at the time, it wasn’t bad for a proof-of-concept at the time.
Sadly, the project never seemed to go beyond this demo phase, and there is now no mention of it on the Converse website. Still, it’s interesting to contemplate where the idea might have gone, and whether it might yet simply prove to be an idea a little ahead of its time, technology-wise.
Back in the mists of time, I wrote several pieces centred on Linden Lab, one of which in particular, Business, Collaboration and Creative Growth, focused on the Lab’s relationship with the pool of talent it has at its fingertips: the user base.
In that piece, I bullet-pointed a number of ways in which engagement with the community could directly help market and promote Second Life as a whole, noting in closing:
“In short, Linden Lab needs to start collaborating with the user community once more and thinking more holistically about their product. Doing so isn’t going to solve all of SL’s woes (would it were that easy); but it will represent a major step in the right direction.”
Well, it appears that at least some of the holistic thinking is taking hold at the Lab, as the SL website log-in / splash page has been quietly undergoing an overhaul of late.
For a good while, the screen comprised a series of images that fell somewhat short of enticing – if not outright ugly. Perhaps the most famous of these was the “vampire in a snowstorm” image.
Camp-ire: the vampire-in-a-snowstorm log-in page image
Several commentators took LL to task over the images selection – which could at the time best be described as “vapid” – and earlier this year things started improving, with crisper images of avatars appearing, together with picture credits.
Now LL have gone the extra mile and not only engaged with some of best photographers and artists in SL to produce some really outstanding images for the log-in screen, they would appear to have started working on a theme-based approach to advertising SL through the splash page – the current theme being music. I caught sight of the new pages while browsing Strawberry Singh’s blog, but got sidetracked away from the new art by things like Havok sub-licencing and Marketplace updates, which became the focus of recent blog posts.
Strawberry is one of a number of SL artists who were asked by LL to produce music-themed images a few weeks ago, the other being Harlow Heslop, Miaa Rebane, siXX Yangtz and Harper Beresford, and Ivoni Miles. The results are simply spectacular.
All of the images capture the heart of music entertainment in SL in all its diverse forms, with Strawberry’s in particular hinting at more – friendship and relationships. This is a fresh move from Linden Lab in combining user-generated images on a thematic basis to help promote SL and it is one to be applauded – and one I hope we’ll see more of – for how better to capture the rich diversity of Second Life other than by working with those intimately involved with it?
With efforts like this, it would be nice to see some kind of Destination Guide tie-in as well: perhaps with a special sub-category of “What’s Hot” appearing on the log-in screen carrying information on locations directly related to the image theme: in this case, a list of the currently hot live music venues in SL.
Harlow Heslop’s evocative image
After all, if music is being used to promote SL – then it makes sense for LL to provide the follow-through and help those drawn to SL as a result of the theme to actually connect with the in-world music scene – or whatever the chosen promotional theme is.
Of course, this isn’t the first time LL have sought to work with members of the community, and it would be unfair to cast it as such. But given the way in which LL has been perceived to be retreating from direct engagement with the community over the last few years – a perception they have contributed in no small part themselves – this move is to be commended. Hopefully, it’ll be the first step along the way to the Lab working more directly with members of the user community to better promote SL and reach out to potential users. Certainly, there are many powerful tools that can be used in this regard – such as machinima, something I’ve again discussed elsewhere – and the talent to leverage those tools is rich within SL itself. I’ve little doubt that were this talent to be harnessed, the results would be beyond anything LL have themselves been able to produce using this incredible medium.
In the meantime, credit and thanks must go to Strawberry, Harlow and the other contributors to the artwork for their time and effort. So why not take a look at their work for yourself? (Remember you’ll have to log-out of the SL website in order to display the log-in / splash page and see the images.)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 