Jo Yardley has a new post up: Ebbe talks to SL users about SL2. She has quoted a number of posts that Ebbe makes in the SL Forum. For a quick read her article is ideal.
If you want to jump into the conversation, search the SL Forum for Ebbe Linden. You’ll get a listing of all his comments and be able to dive into the thread that interests you. SL Forum – Ebbe Linden.
Fantasy Fair 2014
The thread titled Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world was started by Jo Yardley. It is now 28 pages long. I think Ebbe is getting an education in the thinking of Second Life™ users. They are not particularly sane or rational. That doesn’t seem to bother him.
I am seeing a huge number of miss quotes of Ebbe comments and what I’ll call hallucinations about Ebbe’s Friday comments about a new Second Life.
Star Fall – Twilights Edge – 2014
Resource Allocation
I’ve heard in several places that MOSTof the Lab’s resources were to be directed at creating a new Second Life type virtual world. Ebbe said the MAJORITY of resources. That could be anything from 99% to 51%. So, when you hear some say MOST, salt the rest of what they say too.
I suspect that for this year and until SL 2.0 is running there will be something like a 30/70 or 40/60 split in resources. Remember. SL 1.0 is the cash cow. Cutting off its life blood (man power) and allowing it to fall behind the technology curve could collapse the company if SL 2.0 is not the hoped for success. While they plan for it to be wonderful, they can’t know that it will be accepted. A smart manager would protect the company by hedging. Thus the Lab started diversifying. I suspect Ebbe is doing that hedging thing with SL. But, I can only base that on his choice of words.
The Deploys thread tells that the main channel is going to update Tuesday to the Sunshine package that has the AISv3 updates. This ran on Blue Steel last week. The main release viewer had the AISv3 updates. With the AIS running on all the grid, this feature will be everywhere and the viewer can take advantage of it.
The Station 2014
There is also an anti-griefing measure included in this package. Since that is a security issue the Lindens don’t talk about the nature of it.
RC Channels
Blue Steel and Le Tigre will both get the same new maintenance package. The package has the new Linden Scripting Language (LSL) functions for handling materials. To see the effects of the Materials System you must have the Advanced Lighting Model enabled.
There is an announcement up that Second Life’s ™ voice system will be offline for maintenance June 24th (Tuesday) from 12AM PDT. There is no ETA for its return. See the Grid Status page: [Posted 3:24 AM PDT, 23 June 2014] Our voice provider will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, June 24th beginning at 12:00 … Read more
Nyx Linden is going to fold his UG meeting into the Server/Scripting UG. So, the Content & Mesh UG closes with today being its last meeting.
Nyx Linden told us today, “This will be the last regular meeting for this user group. I’m moving on to other projects and haven’t been able to keep up with the details of content creation tasks as well as I used to be able to.”
World of Particles – 2014
Whirly Fizzle and others asked the obvious question, “Are you being reassigned to the new world stuff Nyx?” I found the answer a bit ambiguous when Nyx answered, “I’ll still be in world from time to time, and will be helping Oz whenever any avatar issues come up or with any other pieces where I can assist of course.” So, I find that a bit fuzzy. But, I’ll take that as a yes.
Oz Linden told us, “Topics that otherwise would have come here can be brought to either the simulator UG or one of my open development meetings.” And continued by saying, “I don’t know what the new platform team will be doing to engage with users, or when.” I take this to mean no one knows for sure what they will be doing or when they will be doing it. Things are changing for the Lindens and while Ebbe can make off-hand comments I suspect the Lindens (staff) are still limited in what they can talk about.
Friday’s Third Party Viewer (TPV) Developer’s meeting was long, 2 hours. The last hour is covered in Second Life 2.0 Coming. That is the exciting news, SL 2.0 is coming!
Viewers
As of Friday there were two RC Viewers; SL Share and Snowstorm. SL Share has been in the cue for some time. It is the likely candidate for promotion, probably late in week 26 or in week 27. The Snowstorm RC has a bug that is in the process of being fixed. I expect a new version to make it out to RC in week 26.
The Project Viewers haven’t changed since I last wrote about them.
Jessica of Firestorm says they are integrating ‘Interesting’ and hopefully SL Share features for their next release. The Sunshine AISv3 changes probably won’t make the next release. Experience Tools may make it. But, the team has not had time to examine the changes needed for Experience Tools.
