More Information on Second Life 2.0

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

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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Second Life News 2014-26

Servers

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
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. 

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Second Life Voice Offline

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 AM PDT. Residents may lose voice access during this time. Once the maintenance is complete, some residents may need to relog to return to voice. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

Second Life User Groups

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
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. 

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AvaStar 1.1 Beta Released

On Sunday Machinimatrix announced the release of AvaStar 1.1 Beta. Gaia Clary is saying there will be no more test releases as the last one is not drawing any big reports. This suggests AvaStar is near completion for the Fitted Mesh addition.

The announcement is here: Avastar-1.1 Beta is Out. The download is via your personal link for AvaStar.

I am guessing that with the exception of minor changes this beta will be the final release.