Second Life News Week #26

Getting the news out took a bit as I decided to include my own Meet the Lindens video. Pantera Północy posts his videos more quickly than I do. I get bored with his single camera angle. I also process the video to improve the audio… since my camera is moving around have to capture audio at my avatar’s location, not the more easily controlled camera location which has the audio level is all over the place if I move around. That single spot audio is not the best, so I think it still needs some help. But it is serviceable.

Other News

I’ll start off with this alarming bit of news showing where RL government is going with climate change, Climate Apocalypse? Ireland To Ban Private Cars, Import 1M Third-World Migrants. Whatever you think about Climate Change, make sure you aren’t just drinking someone’s Kool-Aid.

SL16B Crowd – The Meet the Lindens Tuesday event was attended by close to 200 people, 11 were Lindens, spread over four regions. Max per region was about 55. I didn’t crash and things worked well. People were a bit slow rendering, textures lagged, but no regions crashed. My FPS was in the 7 to 11 FPS (i5, 32GB, GTX-1060 High-Ultra Shadows + Projectors). – April’s mic was cutting out. – The video is a bit jerky. At 7FPS that happens.

Video Abstract

The video starts with Oz and April telling us about their history with Second Life™. Both were residents before they were hired by the Lab. I found this part of the video INTERESTING… Saffia is a good interviewer.

When we can get Oz or other techy Lindens talking, they always have interesting stuff to say and we learn things about the SL system.

In this Meet the Lindens meeting, April Linden confessed that 2 to 6 months ago they moved the SL inventory to the cloud. Not every detail has moved, but basic inventory (database) now runs in the cloud on much faster computers. And no one noticed, which is what the Lindens want. Continue reading

LINDEN LAB STATEMENT ON TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER ON IMMIGRATION

Various blogs are commenting on Linden Lab’s® response to Pres. Trumps Executive Order requiring additional vetting of all people coming from 7 countries identified be Pres. Obama as not having governments capable of providing background checks of their citizens.

Most are supporting the Lab’s statement;

I am not seeing any thought or facts presented, just emotional ‘oh yeah, this is good.’ So, here are some facts and questions.

First, if you haven’t heard, Linden Lab issued a statement on a controversial subject in the USA and world. The title points to which one of the many. Continue reading

Linden Lab’s Communication Problems

For years we have in Second Life™ have complained about how poorly Linden Lab communicates with users/customers. Over the last couple of years that has improved. But, there are still areas in which the Lab seriously fails.

True love

True love

Daniel Voyager Plurked about Grendel’s Children Saved From Shutdown. This a somewhat common occurrence. I’ve long thought anything one wants to do with Lab will require far more time than one will imagine. This is another story adding support to my thinking.

Second Life: Did you meet a Linden?

The meet up has come and gone for this month. Did you go? Could you get in?

Sur La Maison de Ville Balcon

Sur La Maison de Ville Balcon by Connie Arida, on Flickr

I went a bit late, 5 minutes or so after it started. I did make it in. I had decided to use the Firestorm viewer. I lasted about 15 or 20 minutes before the viewer poofed. I didn’t try to get back in. There wasn’t much going on when I was there. Three Lindens were hanging around. People were chatting away everywhere. So, it was pretty chaotic while I was there. Continue reading

Second Life: Meet a Linden Today

Today is the day for the Lindens to get in-world and mingle with the masses… well, whatever mass will fit in the region Our Island aka Basilique. The meet up starts at 1 PM SLT today, 5/14.

Basilique Dress Code - 2015

Basilique Dress Code – 2015

Seems everyone in the SL blogosphere is publishing the time and location. Since this is a single region without any adjacent regions, I expect it to fill up quickly and be hard if not impossible to get into. When I checked out the location at 8:30 AM there were already people camping out. Checking the map later, about 10 AM, it seems the region is already starting to fill up. Continue reading

Linden Lab Hosting Event

One of the Lab’s people is speaking at April’s HackbrightPRO event on Thursday, April 16, 2015 (6:00pm – 8:00pm) hosted at the Linden Lab office in San Francisco. I suppose all are invited. Register/RSVP and get more information here.

I Dream of Mars 2015

I Dream of Mars 2015 by Stark Osterham, on Flickr

There are two featured speakers; Julie Russell, IT Manager, Medium an online publishing company, and Tara Hernandez, Director of Systems & Build Engineering, Linden Lab. Continue reading

Lindens

Monty Linden has been the one updating the HTTP library that the viewer and servers use to communicate. This has been a long term project that has been completed for a few weeks.

Now Monty Linden is working on SL2 and consulting with the SL1 peeps. For now we will miss his work on Second Life. But, he is likely to make SL2 a better product for his work.

Desura Follow up

Iris Ophilia has an article on New World Notes explaining why she thinks the Lab’s acquisition of Desura is a good thing. See: New World Notes.

NWN's Iris on Desura and Linden Lab

NWN’s Iris on Desura and Linden Lab

I tend to agree with Iris’ take on Desura. Unfortunately we do not know enough about the Lab’s web development teams to know how well they can handle Desura. Talk to people selling in the Market Place and you will likely have a hard time finding anyone that is happy with it.

The Linden team developing the Second Life™ web properties mostly hides out. So, we know little about them or the problems they deal with.

On the other hand, the Linden team providing SL server updates has been talking with us weekly for years. While not everyone is happy with the server team, the unhappy people tend to be the uninformed and the computer tech illiterate. Those engaged with the Lindens and having some understanding of programming and server tech and RL limitations are pretty much OK with and supportive of the team.

With the web dev team, I don’t know anyone happy with them.

How well Desura does from the acquisition point forward probably depends on who runs Desura. If Desura staff is kept as the hands on programmers and Rod sets directions, I expect things will improve. If web developers from the Lab take over,…  this likely won’t be a good thing.

Steam/Valve

I know from comments in various user group meetings that the move to Valve is on the shelf. Several things are on the shelf. The Lab does not have the staff to do everything. No one seems to know what is holding that project up, other than maybe a lack of staff.

I do remember that when the Experience Tools were the hot development item that the Valve relationship was hot too. Since the Experience Tools disaster (See: Greifer Monday and Griefer Monday Postmortem) a bit over a year ago, June 6, 2012, the project went dark. At the time it seems it was decided the permissions system for SL was going to have to be redone. That work was started. For a time it was stalled as other infrastructure parts had to be changed. Things are too intertwined to know what was being changed. Also as it is involves system security we are unlikely to hear any explanation other than how the new Experience Permissions are to be used.

This Experience Tools delay could be the hold up for Valve. If you follow Loki, you know there are some real problems for those that choose to use SL to build a game. The Experience Tools will solve a number of those problems. As Valve is in many ways about building games, giving those users SL without the Tools might have been seen as a mistake, leaving them with a bad taste and SL with a black eye reputation with the Valve crowd. Could be, but we will likely never know.

If we see more discussion about Valve after the Tools are released, we could more easily make the assumption this has been the case.

With the acquisition of Desura one has to wonder of the Lab decided to compete with Valve. I sort of doubt that. But, I don’t use Valve enough, and have yet to try Desura, to know if they are competitive or complimentary.

Looking through the Steam/Valve forum I find the Valvites discussed Origin (Electronic Arts store), Desura and Steam/Valve. It seems in my inference that they are more competitive than complimentary. Desura has a reputation of being more open source like and less interested in DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Some compare Desura to GOG.com.

Several people in the conversation thought Desura was the best for distributing game mods. Othewise Steam is better all around and has good support services, like game forums and match making, for indie developers. Some were concerned as to whether Desura could survive and wondered what would happen to their games if Desura went down.

In general it appears that Desura and Steam/Valve are competitive services targeting different audiences. Steam/Valve targets the pro developers and corporate game makers. They provide services for game mod’ing and smaller developers. Desura appears to target the smaller and independent game makers. So, it is not really a head-to-head competition.

Time will tell how this works out. For now we’ll hear screams from Desura users, that always happens when there is change, and speculation from those of us that know the Lab and use their products.

I wonder if there is an update for my Patterns…