Second Life Continuing … for real…

Inara posted a transcript and audio recording of Oz Linden talking about Second Life’s future. I referred to the same comments and loosely paraphrased them in Sunday’s post. For a more exact sense of what was said listen to the audio recording. “We are building a new product *in addition* to Second Life”

Remote

Bookmark that article. You will eventually find a low information resident babbling like Chicken Little. It will be a handy link to give them.

We know from talking with Simon and Oz Linden that there is a Next New Thing and they have said it is a large project. Simon said ‘huge’. They aren’t saying anything else.

Oz is pretty much in charge of Second Life development. But, he is not the top guy at the Lab. We know he has to get permissions to hire and spend money. That means Ebbe is still involved. So, we can ask Ebbe what is coming next. But, until he says something we can only speculate.

I suspect there are fewer people working on SL because things are taking a little longer. The pace of viewer development is a bit slower. I attribute that mostly to the staff being diverted to work on the Build Tools, those tools and libraries used to build the viewer and region software. That rebuilding tools work is like an auto manufacture stopping production to retool the factory to build a new model car.

In the next months we will see those tools in action. There is a chance things will work better, debugging will be more efficient, and crash data will be better at identifying problems, enough so that we may see a return to a release pace like we saw in 2013 and the first half of 2014.

Experience Tools is a project that has been in development for a long time, from a user view point. For big projects in SL two or three years is not exceptional. It is nearing an initial release. I expect it to have a phase two or possiblely several rounds of enhancement. Remember. Oz likes the idea of being able to have in-world scripts work with the viewer. That means something like RLV. Experience Tools is a project in that vein. Are they planning to go farther?

So, the Lindens are hiring specifically for SL1, talking about being excited for the future of SL, and being cagey about The Next New Thing. These are all signs of a development group that has plans.

Sort of Iran nuking us, we have a good level of assurance SL1 will be advancing its tech throughout 2015.

One thought on “Second Life Continuing … for real…

  1. Pingback: Second Life 2015 in Review: February 2015 | Nalates' Things & StuffNalates' Things & Stuff

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