Second Life at SVVR 2015 – Conference & Expo

You have probably heard that Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO, spoke at SVVR 2015. You can see a video of his speech on YouTube.  It is three plus hours long… the video not Ebbe talking. His part starts at the 39 minute mark and lasts about 20 minutes.

Kathleen Watkins has a summary of the speech over on Hypergrid Business: Is there a future for user-created content in Linden Lab’s new world? But, it seems Kathleen is not a follower of Ebbe or his words on the Next Generation Platform aka SANSAR aka SL2.0. So, I’ll do my own. 

Kathleen’s disappointment is that Ebbe did not talk about how user made content would be created. Ebbe has talked about that on other occasions. We know that the Lab is using Maya to create content for the Next Generation Platform (NGP) aka Project SANSAR. From what he says in this small speech I am sure we will have in-world building tools as we do now… but better…

Now on to what Ebbe said. I am not quoting him unless I mark it otherwise. It is paraphrased and understood as I see things through my glasses. Watch the video to get his actual words.

Ebbe starts with the obvious, virtual worlds will need content. To give an idea of what VR will be like in the future he quotes Mark Zuckerbreg, “Just like we capture photos and videos today and then share them on the Internet to let others experience them too, we’ll be able to capture whole 3D scenes and create new environments and then share those will people as well.

Ebbe pointed out to the SVVR audience that content creators in Second Life™ (SL) took US$60 million out of the game in 2014.

Through to the 50 minute mark Ebbe is talking about how Second Life is used; health, military, politics, religion, business, art, fashion… etc. 1920’s Berlin is mentioned and the 130 people that rent apartments there. None of this is new to those of us that have been around SL for awhile.

At about the 50 minute mark Ebbe mentions Jo Yardley’s experience of using the Oculus headset to be in 1920’s Berlin and the emotional impact of that.

At the 51 minute mark Ebbe is pointing out the problem of having hobbyists create content. It is not the highly optimized content professionals create. Thus the performance problems in Second Life that experience. The Lab’s experience is in handling ‘sub-optimal’ content.

At 51:40 Ebbe points out that the in-world GDP is US$500 million. Wow!

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