More ideas about improving Second Life

There is a new wave of enthusiasm and excitement going trough the virtual reality community lately.
I too have felt the new atmosphere in SL and it has made me want to revisit some of the ideas I have about improving our virtual world but also share some new plans that have popped into my mind.

Yes, I may have said some of the things I’m saying before, I may be repeating myself.
I’m old, it is allowed.

Reputation
This to me is one of the biggest problems SL has; it either has a very bad reputation or people aren’t even aware it (still) exists.
But this is something that can relatively easily be solved.
For starters, SL needs to get back into the media’s interest and in a good way this time.
Luckily the Oculus Rift and the coming Virtual reality renaissance are already doing this, SL is being talked about again and not always in a bad way.

Suddenly we’re part of something big and interesting again that is happening right now.
But educators are still scared to mention it or suggest a school or museum to use it because of its past.
People still think that SL is just a place where weirdos come to either pretend to look like Barbie and Ken or do all sorts of kinky stuff.

And of course that is true, but there is more to SL than just that, and Linden Lab and us, the users of SL, have to try and make people realise that there is this whole other side as well.

Up till now LL has has not been doing well when it comes to improving their reputation.
Their advertising often shows very pretty young avatars who are either shopping or suggesting something sexy might happen.

The Bikini advertisement they are using right now caused a bit of a stir, to be honest, if I had seen that ad before I joined SL, I probably wouldn’t have, assuming SL was just another IMVU, or worse.

But this post is not just about complaining, I also want to offer some ideas and suggestions.
And when it comes to advertising, I am not just talking as a user.
I graduated from Film school, made a few short movies that got every positive reviews, wrote and directed things for TV, owned my own production company, etc, etc.
Not to mention that my father worked at an advertisement company while I grew up and he brought his work home.
So if you permit me, I’d like to share a few ideas for SL advertisements, for free.
And when I say free, I am of course telling lies.
If LL uses these ideas, I really wouldn’t mind a pile of cash 😉

When SLGo went live, they had a nice, cute, advertisement.
It was well made, unfortunately it reinforced some of the ideas people have about SL, that all we do is shop, flirt and dance, but it looked good.

http://youtu.be/Ysi4fE-VFAA

The most valuable and interesting thing about Second Life are its users and Linden Lab should use them and what they make to promote SL, in a good way.
Imagine the following advertisements;

A very slick and smooth video shows a game, someone flying a mini airship with a cannon, dirty children running trough Victorian Steampunk like streets being chased by a scary man, explosions, smoke, danger…
It looks like an advertisement for a new game… coming to your computer soon… for free!
Then a young chap who is playing this on his computer turns around, looks into the camera and says; I made that!
‘Second Life; make your own game’
An idea of course based on one of SL’s best creators Loki Eliot.

We see an avatar walking into a bar, other avatars turn around, wave at the avatar, welcome him back, they chat, they dance, they laugh.
It is busy and very social, a bit like Cheers perhaps, and maybe, why hide it, there is the promise of romance in the air.
But then we see a guy behind his computer take off his Oculus Helmet, smile because he has just spend some time with his friends and then we see that he is (of course) cool and handsome but lives in the countryside, has a touch job far away from society, maybe gamekeeper in Africa or he works on an oil rig, or perhaps he is even a soldier at the front who now has to go back to do his duty.’

We see a typical ‘soccer mom’ (I hate that word and btw, it’s called football), at home in a kitchen, she is designing clothes on her computer and selling them in Second Life.
Her teenage son comes in, pretends he is not interested but can’t avoid peeking at the monitor.
He has to confess, that last dress she made is actually pretty cool.
She tells him sales are good, he grins and asks her if that means he’ll get a new computer for his birthday.
Mum says they can’t afford that but then checks out her Linden Dollar balance, she smiles and we see her open another window and start searching for that new computer.

A timid and shy teenage girl living in suburbia, in a very boring household where everyone just watches tv, in a very quiet and soft voice she tells her parents she is going upstairs, she gets no reply.
She goes up to her room, logs into SL and we see her avatar get on stage at a full club, everyone cheers.
Then she starts singing, she has a great voice and sings something that is completely opposite to what her character in RL seems to suggest she would sing.
She rocks.
We see her in her little room, perhaps with the Oculus on her head, singing and swinging, having a great time.
We switch to another user who is in the audience, at home in RL he is also enjoying her show, he is a cool kid.
In the background we see his father, busy on the telephone behind a desk, there are gold records on the wall, he hears the music his son is listening to in SL, the man stands up, walks over, gets excited and then holds the telephone by the computer speaker.
It is clear that this shy teenage SL user is about to be discovered.

A high flying career guy at a fancy modern office tells his secretary he is going home, he is going to meet some old friends.
He lives in a nice fancy apartment, he has a good job, there are pictures everywhere of friends, parties, his wife is there, perhaps kids too.
He puts on his Rift and starts up Second Life.
His avatar is suddenly a kid, he is in a basement, everything there is 1980s, the posters, the computer games, the books, the toys.
Other avatars teleport in, all young boys, they laugh, they chat, they play 1980s music and computer games.
We see that behind these avatars are all business men who are living all over the world and who have clearly not been together as friends since their childhood.

A big strong muscular guy is hammering iron onto an anvil, he finishes a sword and leaves the forgeand walks trough the narrow busy streets of a Medieval town.
Everywhere people are working and making something, they agree, that is one nice sword the blacksmith made.
He walks to a castle and hands over the sword, the lord of the castle tells him that the sword is really good, he will get an A+.
The blacksmith takes off his Oculus Rift and turns out to be a 12 year old kid in an Irish classroom.
He is excited, and asks if he really just got an A+.
The lord of the castle takes off his Oculus and turns out to be his teacher who confirms it.

Black and white, we see a young pretty avatar dance with a sailor, the settings is a 1940s sim.
Vintage cars, big band music, a dance hall.
They have a great time.
The girl takes off her Oculus Rift, she turns out to be an 80 year old lady, a tear rolls down her cheek, on the table next to the laptop we see an old black and white photo of her in the 1940s, with a sailor next to her, on their wedding day.

Ok, I know, I got a bit carried away, some of these are a bit silly and over the top, but try and imagine what the target audience would think about them.
Also just forgive me, I’m used to writing drama and have way too much imagination and love for melodramatic romantic stories.

It is not about avoiding adult content, I would be fine with showing someone who in RL is perhaps “in the closet” and who uses SL to realise they are actually attracted to the same sex and explore this.
Or someone who is a very dull office typist but who has a double life as some sort of dominatrix.
It is not about making SL appear better than it is, all of what I suggest is already possible, SL has some stunning places but so much of it will never even be seen by new users who don’t stay long enough and only see the 5 year old abandoned half empty shopping malls.

The idea is that we show that SL has many options, it lets you be who you want to be, that everything you see is made by regular people and that there are real people behind every avatar who do all sorts of different things in SL.
We need to show the world that, yes SL is for shopping, yes it has hanky panky but it has so many other options as well.
If you can manage to make one or lots of small videos that show, in a positive light, the many ways people use SL, you may end up with something that they will want to share with their friends and family to show them what it is they do in SL while now they probably don’t want to tell anyone they even are in Second Life.

A good advertising agency can probably stuff all these ideas into one commercial, they can without doubt also come up with better stories.
SL has creativity, romance, education, an exciting future and so much more.
Stuff all that into one video, even into one picture.
Sure, show bikini babes, but add someone in a medieval dress or a space suit as well!
I know that young people who are interested in social interaction, shopping and romance are the biggest business in SL, but I also know that the advertising that is bringing in these people does not bring users to SL that stay very long.
If the advertisement policy was working, we wouldn’t have such bad retention, more about that later.

The last SL advertisement video I saw did show a very diverse selection of sims and possibilities, but it didn’t link this to real people actually building all of that and using it.
We need to let possible future users know that everything we see was made by regular folk like them.

Another thing LL has to keep an eye on is how the media represents Second Life.

Why are there still stories being published with screenshots from 2007?!
Do journalists not check the LL press page?
Does the actual Second Life website not have a press page?
I looked, I couldn’t find it.
Imagine you’re a lazy journalist, you have a deadline, you have to write about Second Life.
You look at the SL website, can’t find a press page, you don’t bother checking the Linden Lab site.
You need screenshots, they need to be in the public domain so you don’t get hassle with copyrights.
You look for them, all you can find is some old screenshots of weird people doing weird things, well what a coincidence, you think that is what SL is all about so this will illustrate the article perfectly…
People, not just journalists, are lazy.
They want to spend 5 minutes on Wikipedia, 5 minutes on google an then write their article.
So you have to offer them ready made information packages.
When I still made movies and had press viewings, we made sure they got whatever they needed to write their review, a folder with copyright free pictures, background information, facts & figures and some extra stories.
I think that if you can steer the media a bit in the right direction the odds of them writing something positive about you or at least something that is true and up to date increase.
Make it easy for them, stick a big ‘Media enquiries’ button on the SL website, just in case they don’t visit the Linden Lab website.
Keep the press page updated, the current ‘Linden Lab in the News’ section seems to suggest Linden Lab has not been in the media since October last year.
Journalists want to know we’re already experimenting with the Oculus Rift!

As for copyright free images, they link to their flickr collection where they have only 10 pictures that, although good looking, are not very exciting or showing the many different sides of SL.
Many of us would be happy for LL to offer the pictures we make for press use, so why not look at the art we make and ask the makers if you can add them to the copyright free collection the media gets to choose from?
I’ve already uploaded some of my snapshots to Wikipedia Commons so there are at least some up to date pictures there.
If the media does not portray you the way you want to be portrayed, make sure they have easy access to the side you do want them to see.
Don’t ignore misconceptions, fight them.

Tier
The high costs of Second Life remains an issue, it is stifling creativity and stops Second Life from growing.
Land in SL is expensive, maybe the price is somehow justified, but it is still a lot of money that many people can’t afford and there is competition out there that offers more for less already.
Stopping the discounts scared many educators away and Tier is also stopping a lot of people from starting a project or opening their shop.
I’ve written before about tier and I understand that actually lowering tier is a scary thing to do, even for a big company, as they risk losing a lot of income and can’t be sure the alternative will actually work.
I suggest that in stead of just lowering all tier, LL should add more kinds of tier.
That is what big companies do if they have a product that their customers feel is too expensive, they offer special deals, discounts, give away extra’s and above all; offer more choice.
We already have the discount for educational sims back, but why not add other options for regular users such as making tier lower just for the first two months to give people an incentive to start something new, reward sims that are doing well by lowering their tier after a few years, and above all I think Linden Lab should expand their merchandise.
At the moment you can only buy 3 types of region in Second Life!

You can buy a full region, it costs $1000 (!) to buy and has a tier of $295 a month.
Or get a Homestead region, it is the same size but you get less prims and less people can visit it at the same time, it costs $375 to buy and $125 a month in tier.
Or you can get a so called Openspace Region, it costs $250 to buy and $75 tier a month.
Real dollars, not Linden dollars.
I personally feel that all these prizes are much too high but besides that, why are these the only options available to us?
I don’t know much about the technical side of maintaining Second Life, but to me it doesn’t seem like it would be a lot of extra work to sell 2 half regions in stead of 1 full one.
Why can’t we buy a full or quarter region?
Just split a region in 2 or 4 parts, or just create completely new regions of different sizes.
They shouldn’t be next to each other, otherwise you might as well rent it from a landlord, they should look and feel like regular regions, should be place able in the middle of nowhere, just smaller.
A quarter sim would get you 16384 square meters, 3750 prims and would allow 12 avatars to visit at one time.
But it would also cost you $250 to buy and have a tier of about $74 a month.
Still a lot, but cheaper than the other offers and you would actually own your own land and not have to rent.
This may be just what someone is looking for who does not want to buy a full region.
All I am saying is that Linden Lab should look into creating more alternative choices for the customers.
I’m sure we can come up with more than 3.
And although this would create some cheaper alternatives for the users, the land will still give Linden Lab the same income.
Because when I started buying land, I didn’t care about the size but about the costs, the amount of prims and how many people would be able to visit at once.
I would have been really happy with just half a region.

Another idea I’ve had is to create ‘part time sims’.
A lot of social life in SL is centered around clubs, running these can be a lot of work and it is very difficult to break even.
But most venues don’t have a show on every day, maybe just one or two in the weekends.
The rest of the week the club is empty, just using up recourses.
So why not offer sims that are only online in the weekend?
Activated only 8 days in the month, turned off the rest of the month.
If we spread Tier across 30 days it turns out a full region costs about 10$ a day and by only using the sim 8 days a month LL could lower the tier for a full region to 80$ a month.

Of course, as I said before, I have no idea what the possibilities are, but I am sure there are some.
Either way, you could give people more options without lowering the tier per actual square meter.
And this way Linden Lab can test how many people are actually interested in buying smaller regions at lower costs and test if lower tier does actually increases the amount of people buying land.

Retention
Now this is a big one, still.
I think we’re going to get a lot of new excited VR users trying SL out (again) when the oculus Rift and/or other headsets become available to consumers.
But according to LL figures we already have a lot of new people signing up every month.
Problem is, they don’t stay long.
After trying SL as a noob the new CEO of Linden Lab Ebbe Altberg came to the conclusion that first moments in SL for new users are pretty bad.

To be fair, I haven’t tried the new user experience myself for a long time, but this video I shared last week gives a pretty good idea and well, it is rather horrendous;

In previous blogs like this one and this one,  I’ve suggested a few possible solutions;

-Let new users create their custom personal avatar on the SL website before they even start the viewer.
-Give new users an online tutorial on the SL website where they can figure out the basics and also learn how to use the search function (or check the destination guide), choosing their first landing location so that their first steps in SL are in a place they picked themselves.

To my previous suggestions I want to add a new one.

At the moment new premium users get a free Linden Home, in general people don’t seem to be very excited about this offer.
There isn’t much you can do with these buildings, you don’t get a lot of prims and there are so many rules.
It doesn’t really represent the SL slogan “Your world. Your imagination”.
But the idea of giving new users a home, a place to go to, is a good one.
Why not give every new user some land without a building on it?
For free!
Ok I know this will cost Linden Lab but it will also make the first visit to SL a lot more fun and the odds of new users returning a lot greater.
After all, they now have a place where they can try building something, they know where to go to unpack their shopping and where they can invite people to who they meet.
Not to mention that they could begin their Second Life there in stead of being thrown in at the deep end, between the freaks and grievers.
But make it a temporary deal, new users get their deserted island in the sea but it will only be there for a month or so.
When that time runs out those who have stayed in SL will probably want to find a new home so they can keep the house they’ve build or keep enjoying the other benefits of having your own piece of land.
That means that they will rent something from a landlord and thus support the SL economy or they may decide to buy land from Linden Lab.
And it also means that Linden Lab can stop building portals, creating in world tutorials, etc.

Education
I’ve just blogged about this and seeing the Irish school class using another virtual world in stead of Second Life for their amazing history lessons made it clear that Linden Lab has to do more work to get education (back) in SL.
More discounts, more freedom, more options.
Why is this so important?
Because it shows a whole different side of SL and thus it is good for its reputation and second of all, it is a way to get future generations involved with Second Life at an early age and this increases the chance of them returning to it after school.
But above all, it uses Virtual Reality for something really worth wile and valuable.
The video I shared with you has gone a little bit viral, people are discussing it everywhere, that could have been free PR for Second Life.
But teachers need some security, they need to be able to make sure their pupils don’t teleport out, don’t get grieved, don’t bump into things that will freak out the parents.
They will need to be able to download and save the things they and their pupils made.

Oh, and I want more group options, improved basic avatar animations and 24 hour days in SL 😉

Anyway, lots of ideas and plans, let me know what you think and add your own in the comments!

Onlive wants to know your opinion on SLGo

I was part of the beta test group for SLGo, the service provided by Onlive that lets you enjoy Second Life in Ultra settings on mobile devices but also on your old no good computers that stopped being able to handle SL long time ago.
As I wrote here on my blog, I was quite impressed with it and so seem most of the people who actually give it a go.
We weren’t happy about the prizing but luckily the Onlive people listened to us and made some drastic changes there.

I’ve been sharing my experiences with the Onlive people directly and they’ve asked me if I could ask you, my blog readers, to share your ideas on their service.
So directly from them to you;

1) If you haven’t tried SL Go… why?
2) If you’ve tried it and were not compelled to continue… why?

And as this is my blog, I’d like to add my own request;

3) If you’ve tried it, share your experiences!

Were you impressed, how did it work, do you have any ideas and suggestions on improvement?

As for myself, I rather like the service, I’m not a very mobile person but am very happy to now be able to use SL it on my old laptop again.
I haven’t used it very much (yet) for three reasons;
-I don’t have a European power plug for the tablet I borrowed and haven’t had time to get one.
-The viewer is based on the official SL viewer and well, I’m just so very used to the Firestorm viewer.
-At home I have a super alienware laptop and fast internet so I can enjoy SL at ultra settings anytime but I’m very happy to know that if something goes wrong I can still get into SL now on my old laptop and I am considering leaving my heavy alienware at home next time I go visit my parents and use SLGo there full time on my much smaller and lighter Macbook.
-One issue I’ve found irritating is that when Onlive decides that my connection isn’t good enough, my only option is to exit the entire service.
I’d prefer it if Onlive just returned me to a menu or just allowed me to start anyway because my connection is good enough and may just have a temporary drop.

So anyway, share your ideas, opinions, suggestions and experiences with SLGo in the comments, they will reach the Onlive folks.

Check your SL support history NOW

On the 9th of April Linden Lab send a lot (if not all) of SL users who frequently transfer Linden Dollars into real money, a message requesting information about your RL identity.

This has to do with current US “applicable laws” where Linden Lab is forced to obtain information identifying you as their customer.

I had heard about this before but assumed it was only something big users were confronted with, people who made thousands of RL dollars with SL every month.

But it seems also people who really don’t make that much money have to now fill in a form and send RL identity proof.

I am sure a lot of people will be upset about this but even worse is that this request may have escaped your attention.

When I received it I assumed it was spam and even after I had read it, I still thought it was a phishing attempt.

Some people don’t get the notification at all and it ends up in their spam folder or gets drowned out in other emails.

This happens because LL thought that the best way to get this rather important message to us was by creating a case, aka a ticket, in the support section of the SL website.

So the first thing you would have heard about this is an email telling you ‘a new case has been created’.

I immediately thought; “I didn’t create a support case, this is weird, I don’t trust it.”

I had no idea Linden Lab could create support cases for me!

So that is why it is probably a good idea to check your email for an email from ‘support@secondlife.com’ with as a title ‘case has been created’.

And just to be sure, also visit your support history page by clicking here.

Especially if you have recently made a Process Credit request to Linden Lab and you haven’t received your money yet.

If you don’t do this, if you’ve missed this, they may put an hold on your account and you can wait on your payment for ever.

I don’t know what the exact amount is that triggers this whole issue and if you never ever make any money with Second Life, this is probably not something for you to be worried about.
But it seems that the amount is not very high, after all I’m not making a lot of money myself.

Luckily the Support people were very friendly, patient and quick to respond to my questions.

So, if it takes longer than usual (about 5 days) for your Linden Dollars to be transferred to your RL wallet, go look into this.

Terminally ill woman gets to go outside one more time thanks to Oculus Rift

After Roberta was diagnosed with cancer, having not long to left to live, her granddaughter Priscilla (Pri), a video game art designer, decided she wanted to to something nice for her gran with the help of virtual reality.

Roberta had been confined to her house and had told Pri that she so wished to travel or even just simply walk around her own yard, but the illness made this impossible.

Pri emailed the developers of Oculus rift and asked them if perhaps they could help Roberta go outside again.
They send her a devkit the same day.

Soon Roberta was exploring a lovely villa in Tuscany.

This touching video shows her being able to go “outside” one more time.

Afterwards Pri and her gran had plans to have more VR adventures and travels but unfortunately Roberta died 4 weeks later.

I couldn’t help imagining what it would have been like if I could have shown my uncle, the war hero who recently died, the house where he grew up but he hadn’t been able to revisit since the war.

When I am old myself and perhaps no longer able to go outside, I know that by then we will be able to keep having adventures, travel around the world, in space and time.
Maybe I will spend my last days revisiting the 1980s, hanging around my childhood home, watching tv, playing with my dog, while my mum cooks dinner.
That must be so therapeutic and calming.

Well done Oculus team, well done.

School uses Opensim and Oculus Rift to teach history

When I saw this, my heart jumped with joy.

During my regular google search for VR and Oculus Rift stories I stumbled across this on the Technology.ie website, thanks for writing about it folks, it made my day.

As you may know, to me the main, if not only, reason for being part of virtual reality is the ability to “time travel”, to recreate and explore the past.

But since I (re)discovered Second Life almost 5 years ago, I’ve been recreating 1920s Berlin and having a great time doing that while also getting a chance to educate people and see them learn stuff, not to mention that they teach me a thing or two as well.

I’ve always felt that virtual worlds are such a great tool for education, especially by using real immersion.

That is why I was so excited to hear about the really cool students from St Kieran’s National School in Broughal, Ireland, who recreated a historic site after a field-trip to Clonmacnoise, a group of preserved Medieval ruins .

Often people complain that Second Life is too difficult to learn, although I think that they do have a point, it is pretty amazing to see a bunch of 10-12 year olds become such experts in it and get to grips with it pretty easily.

Mind you, everyone knows kids are better at computer stuff than us anyway.

After recreating the ruins they had visited in real life in the virtual Opensim world, they got to explore it with the Oculus Rift.

Not only that, they then get to share it with kids in other schools, where the  pupils guide each other around the virtual place.

How fantastic is that?

I have to confess that seeing history being taught to kids in such a way brought tears to my eyes, I am so passionate about history and helping children realise how awesome that subject is that when I see it brought to them in a way that I think works very well and may leave a huge impression on the next generation, I just can’t stop smiling.

And I keep saying it, of course Gaming is going to be a huge market for the virtual reality headsets but I am pretty sure that within a couple of years all the other possibilities offered by them will make up a much larger percentage of what it is actually used for; movies, tv, shopping, working and of course education.
This is how I think classes of the future will be taught history, welcome to class kids, put on your VR helmet, lets to travel back in time!

Of course, the next project might be to restore the ruins to see and explore them as they looked hundreds of years ago!

I can’t wait and really can’t put into words how happy this video made me.The project was set up by MissionV, who provide “a highly creative, totally immersive, game based learning environment for schools and industry”.
They seem to be doing a very good job at it because, as the teacher in the video said, the kids queued outside the class room, installed ‘Imprudence‘ at home and their parents got involved as well.

But above all, they learned a LOT, not just history.

Of course this video also was hugely frustrating to me.
Why can’t we use Second Life for this?
Why can’t I make 1920s Berlin safe enough for a class of children to come visit it?
Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, very recently spoke about Education in Second Life and I think that he has to move heaven and virtual earth to enable schools and projects like these to come (back) to Second Life.

MissionV will be available to ALL schools in Ireland from September onwards and they should have been using Second Life, but I doubt they will.
There is something worth fighting for Linden Lab, forget about profits, think about using VR for what it should be used for, be a leader in VR being used for education and give educators the tools they need; more freedom, more security, more options and much, much lower tier.
Imagine what it will do to SL when a whole generation of kids grows up learning with SL, not to mention what it will do for SL’s reputation.

Roleplaying is fun and I truly love the community in 1920s Berlin, but being able to see children run around my recreation of Berlin in the 1920s and learn from it would be a dream come true.

Thank you pupils and teachers of the school and the people behind MissionV, you have no idea how happy you’ve made me.

Enjoy the videos and spread the word!

And the end result of what they’ve been building;

First new starter avatar revealed!

For a while now, every new user gets to choose from a selection of avatars.
A while ago Ebbe Linden announced that these would be updated soon.
And just now I’ve learned that the first of these starter- or stock avatars has already been revealed… by none other that Ebbe himself!

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the new starter avatars as worn by our lovely model Ebbe Linden;

This is interesting news for more than one reason.
Not only is it nice to see more realistic and dare I say it, handsome avatars being given to new users who join SL.
But it is also interesting to note that this avatar is a lot closer to a more realistic scale (aka Prim Scale) than the previous ones.
It seems that the many topics about scale in SL by people as Penny Patton and myself may have gotten trough.
Either way, I think this avatar is a step forward and I can’t wait till the other avatars are announced,

However… there is of course a downside to this.
I think that mesh avatars are harder to customise and finding clothes for them that go with the mesh avatar may be trickier as well.
Especially if you’re new to SL, it can be quite frustrating to discover that the old types of clothing won’t fit and that mesh has issues of its own.
For instance, Ebbe himself took some while to rez properly in my viewer today.
This was of course in an extremely busy area of SL, but still.
I can imagine quite a few confused and frustrated new users who aren’t sure how to deal with mesh avatars.
Having said that, coincidentally 😉 Linden Lab just announced that they are going to try and make it easier for people to buy the right clothes for their avatar.

Ebbe speaks about a variety of subjects

Ebbe Linden (AKA Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, makers of Second Life) spoke to a crowd of several hundred listeners at the 7th Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference.
Although the topic was of course Education in Second Life, many other questions came up as well.

It was a bit of a shock when Ebbe walked onto stage completely naked.
Luckily this was not some sort of statement about nudism becoming compulsory in SL, but just a bit of mesh clothing loading lag.
And no, before you ask, I will not put those screenshots online.

It was very nice to see Ebbe inworld (again) and it was clear that most people there were very excited about meeting him.
It also seemed that what he said was welcomed with much enthusiasm.
I think Ebbe managed to make a lot of people excited and positive about the future of SL.

There was some exciting news, or should I say potentially exciting, as the proof is in the pudding and we can’t judge it yet till things actually start happening.
But if things are going the way Ebbe apparently wants them to go, the future of SL is going to be very interesting indeed!
More and better communication between Lindens and us users, cooperation between SL and High Fidelity, easier exchanges of goods, people and money with other virtual worlds, etc.

I was also very glad to see that his avatar was not gigantic, but a more realistic (prim)scaled one.

I’ve tried to catch a few of his answers and share them here with you.
But as I had to do this while the actual talk was going on, and while I sometimes had to just copy/paste things from public chat and the (excellent) transcript, in stead from what I was actually hearing.
So please be critical and make sure you watch the video below to be sure of what Ebbe actually said.

Ebbe on education;

“We’ve made a mistake”, talking about taking away education discount.

On content and ToS;

We do not want to steal or profit from your content.
We’re not trying to lock you in, getting content in and out of SL should be easy.
We don’t want to lock in content. You should be able to export to other environments.
Nothing we are doing technically prevents export. Many get their content out.
maybe it is third party solutions
we are not preventing. Are we making it simple enough from our interface?
there may be few people who do this.
Maybe we need to make that more streamlined, we are not preventing it, but we don’t want it to be easy for others to rip people off.

On what is happening in the industry;

There is industry interest in solving the things we are trying to solve.
It gets more competitive but anyone of us moving the ball forward moves us al forward.
Yahoo’s acquisition was a tech talent acquisition.
I don’t think they want to get into our space
Facebook buying Oculus is excellent.
They see the future we have all been working on.

On new users experience and improvements;

The conversion rate of people staying with SL isn’t great
You have to be determined to make it through on your own.
We need to make this easier for normal consumers to use.
This is a challenge for a small company.
I lean to making it easier to use before focusing on interconnection.
We have a lot of work ahead, but a lot has been done, it’s better than 2 years ago.
There is still a lot to do in subcomponents of SL.
Most are not great.
It needs to go from a minimally appealing product to a product that appeals to hundreds of millions.
I know we can solve this.
My dream is to make this something a huge number of people can enjoy and contribute to, this is just the beginning, there is more to come.
It should be easier to get a nice plot of land with a mesh house.
improve the quality of that experience.
We have discussed how people navigate.

Communication between users and Linden Lab;

We are here. We are willing to listen and dialog. We want to talk about the future. The doors are open again.
We want to know how to make you successful.
I want to learn and listen.
You can reach out to individual Lindens if you think they are interested.
Maybe we can think of a place where we can list interest groups and what they are talking about, so we can hop in.
Like an interest group catalog to know meeting times and formats.
The general communications with you and us had deteriorated before I got here, from what it was years ago.
We want to be more transparent.
We want feedback, to learn from you, to correct things
If the community has things to do, if they want to invite us to participate, today you will find more people who can and are willing to participate.
There was a policy that Linden avatars being inworld, They could always use alts. That policy has been removed.
we had an all hands meeting yesterday, they told me to interact more with users.
That may create formal meeting plans between certain Lindens and interest groups.
As people start to be inworld, with their relevant projects, they will see how their work can improve.
I hope more Lindens will come inworld to interact with users so that can be a more normal comfortable thing.

About the Oculus Rift;

We released a beta viewer compatible with Oculus.
we will have an improved version in a week or so
You can be truly inworld in a realistic way I am glad Facebook bought Oculus.
it shows the market that this isn’t a niche.
It will have broad implications for many people.
We are the ones who have been working on *a* version of a virtual experience
the most advanced to this date.
I trust FaceBook will do the right things to benefit all of us, not just them.
With Oculus we have worked focused on viewing experience.
not yet the user interface
and it becomes harder to interact with SL
We want to explore how to make changes in how you interact with the world.
Without relying on keyboard/mouse
PHilip (rosedale) is doing interesting things and other companies.
We want to work with things that may become mass market.

About current state of SL;

Nobody else has an environment this open and where users take it where they want to take it
The GDP inside SL is hundreds of millions of dollars
we are ready to take it to the next level
nobody else is this far.

On education;

If there are groups not qualified as an education institution by our current rules, they don’t have credentials, maybe we can explore this.

About customers asking for changes;

When they express a need, that’s right.
When they tell us how to meet that need, it’s often wrong.

On Sl’s reputation;

It is unfortunate.
I don’t know how much is self inflicted, or dynamics of the market.
People need to understand the depth and breadth of what SL offers, no single vertical.
Not exclusive to any segment, just like RL you want to allow everybody.
It has as much variety in content as the internet itself.
One good thing, looking back, SL got overhyped too early, some was self inflicted.
Maybe there was a hope that tens of millions would use it
but complexities, it got as big as it got because of how easy or difficult it was to use.
The idea that a concept like this would displace the internet was swollen head thinking.
Our wish and the reality were too far apart.
that is unfortunate, there is a lot of good stuff happening here, not seen outside
We want to correct this.
The market is starting to embrace virtual reality, there is an opportunity to restate our role,we don’t want to over promise but we spend a lot on marketing

On expanding;

We want to make safer high volume transactions
There is a lot of extra eyeballs on this space because of what is happening with bitcoin
what that offering would look like, a virtual currency that goes out of SL, that’s another step
Ultimately, in order for SL to grow, it has to become easier to use.
we can’t go mass market as we are today.

Drax and I asked; what tech from High Fidelity will be used in SL?

I hope a lot!
I hope it will create many advances many can benefit from to move virtual worlds and virtual reality forward.
the more new hardware and interfaces, it moves us all forward.
Philip and I know each other well
Some of us will visit them in a couple of weeks to see demos
how we can help each other
it is early stages
I am transparent with Philip
we have assets that are valuable to them, and I hope we can collaborate
I am interested in the work they are doing with bringing emotion into your avatar experience
look them in the eye
they are working in that area
I want to be sure we provide that level of emotional capability to our avatar

Wow, that was pretty much exactly what we were talking about in The Drax Files Radio Hour!

The last words Ebbe spoke trough the microphone were;

How do I…

I couldn’t help laughing at that, he is still a bit of a noob 😉

Let’s hope this goes a bit towards fixing the disconnect with the educators that have left SL and that LL is working on getting them back.

Philip Rosedale shows High Fidelity progress

About a week ago Philip Rosedale, founder of the virtual world Second Life and High Fidelity, was a guest speaker at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meetup where he spoke and showed a few very interesting things about his new Virtual Reality project.

The full video can be seen below but I choose to pick a few things and mention them here.

He demonstrated how he could move his avatar’s face and arms by simply talking to his webcam and using some controllers.
Although a Kinect like device was also viewable on the computer.
It was very impressive, it brought his avatar to live in a whole new way.
But, and I know I sound like a broken record, every time I see someone waving controllers around, I can’t help but thinking to myself, what’s keeping the designers to move on from these silly gadgets to gloves, bracelets, rings, etc.
I know a few people are experimenting with them, but well, they have to hurry up.

I think that for a lot of reasons, being able to use these devices to make the process of getting into a virtual world and the actual qualitative experience of being there fundamentally different is going to take us from the million people Second Life has today to a 1 billion users with something we’re all going to build together.

I agree that communication will be completely different and our bond with avatars will become much stronger than it already is.

This direct communication he was showing was extremely fluent and very natural, something “you just can’t do with anything else”.
Spatial sound is another very exciting thing High Fidelity (can we name it HiFi yet?) has to offer.
It makes voice chat so much less annoying and intrusive but it also adds to the immersion.
Mr Rosedale demonstrated it by having another avatar inworld whisper into his left and then his right ear.
I love that sound is very important to the HiFi team, especially with the coming VR renaissance, it is going to be much more important as part of a VR experience.

According to Mr. Rosedale HiFi has a latency of 100 milliseconds, while these numbers can go up to 500 with mobile phones and even higher with voice over IP services.
The kind of person to person communication HiFi is offering can’t be compared to anything else (except perhaps RL…) and is revolutionary.

The avatars we see in the demo look nice but a bit cartoony.
Of course eventually users will be able to completely customise these avatars but the “anime” characters look like fun and of course they reinforce any facial emotions.
Mr. Rosedale also said that they did try a more realistic version but the “photorealistic faces are scary”.

He then showed us a nightclub, perhaps the first (public building) in HiFi?
Again the Spatial sound makes a big impression, the music clearly comes from within the club.
In a city like 1920s Berlin this would be amazing, especially when you’re walking around using a VR headset.
You go trough a narrow street and you hear a baby crying from an open window, music coming rom a radio in a shop, a couple fighting from another house, a dog barking, etc.

In the club there are 40 avatars jumping around a bit, probably bots.
Mr. Rosedale explains that all of these could run on separate devices, a test showed that you could run an avatar with just one cell phone.

Screenshot found on Reddit. http://imgur.com/uenRSyZ

 

You can build any avatar you want… …we’re using full on triangles and textures to build these characters as compared to something like Second Life.

At the moment it seems like they are concentrating a lot on avatar interaction, I think that is a very wise thing to do and something that could definitely be improved in Second Life.
But from my personal very narrow point of view, I’m hoping (and assuming) that the tools to make large realistic looking cities are going to be worked on soon as well.

Mr. Rosedale did not talk about alternative ways of communication.
It seems that you can decide not to use your camera so your facial expressions are not translated into the virtual world, but there was no mention of other ways to interact with other people.
In Second Life there are many users who for one reason or another don’t want to use voice chat so I wonder how they will fare.

Prims have been replaced by something he calls ‘Voxels‘, but in a way, they are just boxes he rezzes in VR, so prims.
But in the demonstration he shows how he can build with the sensors, drawing in virtual air, in 3D just by waving his hands around.
Looks good and works good, but of course, I can’t help but think about how I’m going to be able to build my cities with that.
Will there be serious architectural tools as well?
I’m sure there will be.

Because HiFi is using JavaScript, the prims, excuse me, voxels appear to have already some functionalities that we would normally need scripts for in Second Life.
Mr. Rosedale throws voxels all over the place, when he shoots them they vanish, etc.

He also shows off a statue of David, it looks impressive but still a bit ‘Minecrafty’.
And it didn’t fully load till we got really close.
But I’m nitpicking and of course, this is all still in an Alpha phase.
The statue uses its own server, you could use servers for everything, you could have a city with a server for every single apartment or even each closet.
Making it all run a lot smoother I guess.
The statue was made with “several million of voxels”, I wish we could see how it was made!

I love the idea of building things that could actually be damaged, imagine a car crashing into a house and half the façade falls apart, bricks raining everywhere!

Lag may become a thing of the past when HiFi is going to be able to use people’s computers as their servers.
Machines are already so fast these days that the HiFi team has more power than they need.
But I can’t help wondering how the smooth way HiFi works will start slowing down when I import my infamously laggy 1920s Berlin sim there…

High Fidelity, the business, will make their money providing the service and selling names for avatars and locations.
The club and people have single text names that are unique in the entire virtual world.

Whois gonna own ‘San Francisco’ is going to be as interesting a debate as who is gonna own ‘sanfrancisco.com

I can imagine a lot of early birds snapping up some of the big names and then making a bundle selling them on.
What would you do if somebody already has your name or a server with the name of the simulation you wanted to build?

Hifi will have its own, new, currency and a fluid economy.
There will be new tools and a marketplace where you can buy and sell things across virtual worlds.
And as mentioned before, it has worked with the Oculus Rift since the very beginning and Mr. Rosedale thinks it will be a visual access point for many.

The Uncanny valley becomes even more uncanny when its you, looking at yourself in the mirror.

Second Life shows that it can be done and Mr. Rosedale thinks the virtual world will become as big as consumer internet is today.

When asked if it will be possible to bring things and avatars from Second Life to High fidelity Philip Rosedale didn’t give a straight answer but did say some rather interesting things;

I don’t think any of us, even those of us here, understand once this all starts to work how large a space, set of interactions, people using it, we’re talking about. I think we’re talking about the same scale as the consumer internet today, eventually…
…Everything in the Google warehouse, everything in Second Life, everything in Turbosquid, will just be sucked up into this expanding network of systems that people are putting online as if a drup of water in an ocean.

He also mentioned identity, he said that it is very important and that just like in real life, it should be your choice what you tell others about yourself.
So walking around with a big sign over your head with your name on it would be weird.
In High Fidelity, you choose what you want to disclose about your RL.

The default choice, I guarantee you that makes virtual worlds really big, is zero, you don’t identify anything at all.

There will be unique user names, Philip couldn’t say when we can start registering these but promised it would be very soon.

As mentioned before, High Fidelity plans to use regular users their computers as servers, on this Philip said;

There’s only 600.000 servers, we estimate, plus or minus, on earth in server farms.
That is all of Rackspace, not counting Google… …there is 600 million machines (laptops an desktops) out there… …Second Life today is about 40.000 Host Islands, that is enormous but think what it would be like if we could have 40 million.
Second Life is so staggeringly large, it boggles the mind, and beautiful, you can’t believe how much is in there.
But what’s it going to be like when it is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude larger than that.
And if we can use everybodies machines togethers in a common network, it can be and it can be really fast.

At the moment it does seem like transporting our Second Life avatars and things to High Fidelity won’t be an option.
Making the odds of me actually switching very small indeed.
HiFi does look very promising, but I have an entire 1920s city in SL and the idea of having to even pack it up and move it to a new world gives me a headache.
Let alone having to rebuild it from scratch.
I’m not sure I’d survive that.

Having said that, I have to say that this is the first time that I am officially getting excited about HiFi, I am starting to see progress and potential and will be keeping an eye on it even more now.
But I can’t help wondering if Mark Zuckerberg is thinking the same thing…

You can watch the full Philip Rosedale segment of the video here;

show #13: terms, terms, terms….

Our latest Drax files radio hour episode, about ToS, Oculus, copyrights and much much more.

the drax files radio hour

show #13 [art by richard a.goldberg]

we are tackling two big challenging things this week: recording the show with our oculi on while trying not to bump into physical objects AND we are discussing the linden lab terms of service.

brace yourself and listen to the full hour before commenting, deal?

and additional reading material as per usual below:

– sl go [sl beauty for mobile & low-end machines] now unlimited use for 9.95 US$ per month

pro tools, google docs & sl go by onlive [on an oooold mac pro!]

– jo and her rift review [+ maria korolov says: “the race is on!”]

– should fb buy ll? [according to april 1st & gwyn llewellyn they already have]

linden lab is focused on cutting edge dev!

– vitriol against oculus team!

– the guardian on vr

– philip rosedale on identity in the metaverse of the…

View original post 168 more words

SLGo will cost $9.95 a month with unlimited usage

When I first wrote about SLGo, the service that lets you use Second Life on mobile devices but also on old computers at ultra settings, the reactions were very mixed.
In general everyone agreed that the technology was impressive, many of us can’t enjoy SL at ultra settings at all, so it was quite exciting to be able to do that not just on our old computers but also on mobile devices.

But people were unhappy about the fee.
Being Dutch I hate paying for anything, except stroopwafels of course.
During the beta testing that I was a part of, you can read my experiences here, Onlive had set the costs of their service at $2.50 a hour.
But it seems that the people at OnLive have actually listened to our complaints, suggestions and tips because they have lowered the prices dramatically and offered some really good subscription deals.

As Beta users we filled in some surveys and trust me, I filled it in with a Dutch mind; I wanted it for cheap.
Well they actually listened and even cut in half what the average amount was the beta testers said they wanted to pay.

The full press release explains in detail;

It’s been almost a month since we launched the beta of SL Go, our mobile viewer for Second Life, and the response from the SL community has been very positive. Second Life residents have said they love being able to access Second Life in full 3D using Wi-Fi or 4G LTE on a tablet or lightweight laptop. We also know they want a subscription plan with unlimited usage and would like broader international access.

So today, we’re releasing updates that will allow more people to experience SL Go and that offer more choices and flexibility in our pricing.

SL Go updates (effective immediately):

• Monthly unlimited usage subscription plan for $9.95US/£6.95UK.
  No commitment – cancel anytime.
• Reduced hourly rates – only $1US/£0.70UK per hour
  (the free 20-minute trial remains in effect).
• Expanded international support: now 36 countries (listed below).

SL Go is now supported in the following countries:

• Andorra
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Hungary
• Iceland
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Latvia
• Lichtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• Monaco
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Russia
• San Marino
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Turkey
• United
• Kingdom
• United
• States
• Vatican City

We’re grateful for the opportunity to support the Second Life community, and pleased to be working with such a passionate and creative group. We look forward to further developing SL Go with their feedback and suggestions.

Rick Sanchez, VP Product and Marketing

And check out the interview Drax had with Dennis Harper, senior product manager with SLGo;

Make sure to check the Drax Files episode tomorrow where talk more about this subject.

Late addition;

I asked SLGo why Germany is not on the list;

When compared to other European countries, Germany has a number of rules governing online purchases which aren’t a perfect fit for models like this. We’d love to open up SL Go to users in Germany, and will certainly do so as soon as the opportunity presents itself. It’s understandably an important audience for us and for Second Life.

I also asked the SLGo team if it would be easy to change subscriptions, for instance what if you have the pay per hour plan but suddenly your super computer explodes and you have to start using SL on your poor old 5 year old laptop, in that case you’d want to switch to 10 bucks a month.
They said that you can subscribe to the monthly option at any time and the time you’ve already paid for on the hourly plan will not be lost but kept in a ‘credit bank’, so when you switch again those unused credits become available again.
But if you’ve got a LOT of SLGo time already paid for you can contact their customer support team who have been instructed to give a free month’s subscription to customers who feel they’ve been disadvantaged by the change of pricing.

Good customer service all around I reckon.

I still hope Linden Lab makes a nice deal with them to offer SL premium members a discount and perhaps SLGo should look into creating an inworld presence where people can pay for their subscription with Linden Dollars.

The official announcement on the Onlive website can be read by clicking here.

The Linden Lab press release can be found by clicking here.