Coming Updates to Second Life 2020

We haven’t been getting much news from the Lindens on what’s up with SL. That is part of the reason I semi-retired from blogging. Now I just post when I have something interesting… interesting to me at least.

The recent Lab Gab (Episode #14 – Feb 21) video gives one of the better updates I heard in some time.

Lab Gab #14 Feb 2020

In it Ebbe and Grumpty are telling us about what is coming. The TL:DR… well… R=Watch in this case. Basically, 2020 and probably into 2021 the Lab will be focused on UPLIFT, the move to the cloud. Parts have already moved and those moves have given Lindens great expectations for how well SL is going to run in the cloud.

The feature add-ons we know about are being completed, EEP, name changes, new Premium Pluuuus… or however Grumpty pronounces it, and some other things will soon be completed. Soon is a couple of months for some things.

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2020 Sansar Update

I’ve not spent much time following Sansar. I was disappointed to hear Linden Lab was laying off staff on the Sansar side. I wasn’t surprised. The VR hype is dying down and reality is setting in. This hype-to-real cycle seems to have moved slowly compared to other new tech cycles. Things are quiet.

Ebbe, Linden Lab CEO, is in this video talking about Sansar, as are other Lindens.

Jo Yardley posted about this video on her blog, which is where I found out about it.

This documentary does a good job of telling us where Sansar is. Some of the imagery from within Sansar is awesome. The chained economy is something we need in Second Life.

It looks like VR is not going to happen as the hype was claiming. It seems business adoption is driving VR, not gaming. Do you realize we are 10 years down the road from the Rift Kickstarter?

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Sansar’s Render Engine – Why?

Ryan Schultz points us to Inara’s article SANSAR: Why LL Are [sic] Building Their Own Engine? It is a longish article and yet concisely answers the question providing several base reasons.

To condense her longish article to a few sentences… The primary reason the Lab chose to build an engine was User Generated Content (UGC). Other engines are NOT designed to handle the novice designers unoptimized content nor manage Intellectual Property (IP) rights. An added benefit is being able to use third-party tools, think Marvelous Designer.

Be careful of eating too many sweets.

Be careful of eating too many sweets.

A couple of things they are thinking about is Open Source. The Lab has become far more appreciative of open source over time. So, they are still planning on having some parts of SANSAR eventually go open source. Unfortunately, that will not be anytime soon.

The Lab is planning to support more VR headsets. OpenVR being one of them. I assume that includes supporting more controllers too.

A new aspect, new to us, is in the ability to run SANSAR on Android and iPhone/iPad type devices. The Lab has always said they want to do this. New in this iteration is they mention whether or not an experience will run on mobile devices is going to be up to the experience designer. So, some complex builds would be limited to desktops with greater render power, simplified builds could run on mobile devices too. So, they are NOT adopting an everything-runs-everywhere philosophy.

There are more details in Inara’s article.

Second Life: Is VR Likely?

VR for Second Life™? Hamlet just wrote about SL and VR. See Is Second Life Too Technically Limited To Create A VR Version For It?

One of the people that came to SL from Myst Online, Adeon Writer, is quoted and has opined in the article’s comments about what is technically possible.

i9-9900k – October 2018

Like most things, anything is possible. But that doesn’t say anything about whether it is likely or reasonable. Both likely and reasonable are generally matters of opinion and the answers are a matter of who you ask. And in matters of opinion, there is generally no final or definitive answer. So, it is a matter of understanding another’s viewpoint and reasons for their opinion.

So, will we have VR or can we have VR? The will and can questions have very different answers… probably. We know we can have VR because it has already been done. So, that answer is out of the realm of opinion. The Lab made a VR viewer for SL years back. Two more VR viewers have been made since then. One shortly after the Lab discontinued their VR viewer. Another just recently. So, can? Yes. As a fact, it has been done. Continue reading

Second Life News 2018 w42

Servers

Mazidox Linden says there is no roll to the main channel this week. The channel will stay on version #18.09.20.519894.

All three RC channels will update Wednesday to version #18.10.04.520268. The changes are listed as Internal Changes.

Clocks

Clocks

Viewers

The main viewer is still version 5.1.9.519298, released in week #40.

Second Life Animesh Viewer version 6.0.0.520211 – Updated in week #41.

Second Life Bugsplat Viewer version 5.1.9.519462 – Last updated in week #37.

Second Life EAM Viewer version 5.2.0.520057 – Moved from Project Viewer to RC in week #40.

Second Life Love Me Render Viewer version 5.1.8.518751 – Released in week #34.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.1.10.520444 – The previous version released in week #34. This is new this week.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.6.515934 – Last updated in week #10. The back-burner version…

Second Life Project Bakes On Mesh Viewer version 5.1.9.519785 – Last update week #39.

Second Life Project EEP Viewer version 5.1.10.520475 – First appeared in SL RC Viewers week #41.

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SL Celebs Make it to Forbes

As it happened a tech contributing reporter for Forbes, Charlie Fink, was talking with Jason Gohlston, Sansar Studio Head, and got set up for his second ever tour of Sansar. Charlie made his own video and Drax with Strawberry Singh also did a video on the HoverDerby: World Premier.

The resulting article is here: VR Action Sport Hoverderby Opens In Sansar. Including a video similar to Strawberry and Drax’s. Both Strawberry and Drax are mentioned and their Atlas Hopping events.

Congratulations Drax & Strawberry.

More Ebbe Altberg from 2018 VWBPE

There is a video of Ebbe at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference. Daniel Voyager posted it and I picked it up from his site.

There is about 4 minutes and 20 seconds of a test pattern at the beginning. I’ve started the video 4:20 in. So, you only have a couple of seconds of it.

If leave the display of the video on mid-size display you see the live chat recorded scroll in the window to the right. Different links will display the chat differently. I thought this was the better one.

The location and computer rendering of the scene both suck. Sad. This looks like something from 10 years ago. The audio has apparently not been edited. So, you’ll have some volume issues but it is OK. Continue reading

The Sanar News Blog is gone…

The Sanar News Blog is gone… well… the name at least. The blog is now using the URL RyanSchultz.com.

Ryan has decided he’ll no longer wait for the Lab to make up its mind and tell him if SansarNewsBlog.com is going to be a permissible use of the Sansar™ trademark.

Mystery of the Stones

Sansar: Mystery of the Stones

He also has decided not to exclusively cover Sansar. He’ll expand into VR, Virtual Worlds, and similar.

He does not plan to write much about Second Life. He thinks there are plenty of people already blogging about SL.

Read his post here: The Sansar Newsblog Has Changed Its Name to RyanSchultz.com