SL Speculation

Second Life Needs… What?

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Shug Maitland wrote What Does Second Life Need? I like that she thinks. Now she has me thinking.

Shug Maitland Feb 2015
Shug Maitland Feb 2015

A recent article of Inara’s got Shug thinking. All signs are that SL1, our current Second Life, and what I call SL2, the new virtual world Linden Lab is building, will run simultaneously. Shug’s question is can SL1 compete with SL2? Good question.

I’ve heard and read lots of opinions. But, few include why they hold their opinion.

Shug and many of the rest of us agree we need a better avatar, Avatar 2.0. The starter avatars we have now are probably the direction the Lab will go with SL2. The skeleton, skin, and animation will likely all get better.

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Second Life News Bits 2014-32 #2

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This is the last month before many schools start the 2014-15 classes, which in a round-about way makes it vacation time for families. Lindens are people with families and they take vacations. Those Lindens that supply us with information on the server side of things are on vacation. So, Oz and Caleb Linden are filling in. But, with a few people gone the work seems to have slowed, suggesting not much is happening… happening in the sense work progresses to where we can see change.

Sarawak - 2014
Sarawak – 2014

I think we are seeing the affect of a smaller team working on Second Life™. Previously vacations did not slow the pace of releases by a noticeable amount.

The result is there isn’t much news to write about. I think because of the reduced pace of change you see blogs covering more subjects. I know I am writing smaller blurbs about what is going on, thus the ‘bits’ articles. 

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Firestorm Q&A on #SecondLife’s Future

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Wednesday morning at 7AM PDT at the Firestorm Auditorium a Q&A meeting was held. Oz Linden and Peter Gray were answering questions. For most of the meeting Jessica was asking questions I think she took from previously submitted ones and that she or she thought the community was interested in.

And I’ll be proofing this after it is posted… so…

[youtube uO2Ean6Vzxk]

Toward the end they opened it up to audience questions.

The meeting was recorded so you can see it at several places; SLArtists, YouTube, and other places… sound is better on the SLArtists video, but it is hard to jump around in that player.

As always I am paraphrasing and not quoting.

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More Information on Second Life 2.0

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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
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.

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Second Life Assumptions

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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
Star Fall – Twilights Edge – 2014

Resource Allocation

I’ve heard in several places that MOST of 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. 

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New ‘Starter Avatars’…

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New Avatar - Interesting Mesh Density
New Avatar – Interesting Mesh Density

OK everyone is posting about these.  If you haven’t already heard, you have to be hiding. They are far better than the Ruth and Roth avatars from earlier times.

They are interesting and noobies will look much better. However, noobies will still act like noobies . They won’t be all that hard to recognize.

However, Saturday when I was trying to play with the new avatars the SL system was acting up. The Choose an Avatar panel did not want to load. I kept getting an empty panel. I left the panel open and relogged, that got it working, or it may be just the relog did it. Or my region may have been having difficulties.

Once the panel was loaded then some avatars would not load. I would get what looked like an LOD4 version 0f the avatar only, very bizarre looking up close but ok from a distance. Switch to another one and later retry the one with loading problems, seemed to work.

When you wear one of these avatars a folder is created in the Clothing folder of your inventory. The ‘Lucy’ avatar is of course in the Lucy folder.

These avatars completely replace, well are worn over, your system avatar and a full body alpha mask hides the system avatar. They are complete mesh bodies and clothes. I am not sure why they made them No-Mod. 

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