Private Estate Survey by Tyche Shepherd

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Tyche Shepherd

Tyche Shepherd (SL Grid Survey) published a Private Estate survey on the SL Universe forum.
I’m a sucker for facts and figures, so with permission, I share the publication here;

Well it’s been a while since my last Private Estate Survey run back in November 2013 which you can find in this same thread here New SL Sims in past week

So here is the March 2016 Private Estate Survey , these results are based on a sample of 5000 randomly selected private estate regions designed to estimate Full/Homestead/Openspace penetration.

Summary: Overall distribution of Region types is very much unchanged from Nov 2013. Ownership however is much more concentrated with a larger proportion of the grid being owned by the top estates. Tier is still healthy at just under US$3.4M for the month

The key results are as follows:

• Full Regions : 2266
• Homestead Regions: 1921
• Openspace: 21
• Closed to Public :792

Of the 4208 accessible regions , 53.9% are Full Regions, 45.6% are Homesteads and 0.5% are Openspaces. The Margins of Error are +/-1.28% , +/- 1.28% and +/-0.18% respectively for the three figures figure at the 95% confidence level. Full Regions and Homesteads have gained 0.1% each in share since July with Openspaces losing 0.2% . So in 2 and a bit years very little change in distribution of region types.

During this period Private estates had a net loss of 1875 Regions to a total of 17549 representing an overall decline of 10.7% since Nov 2013 . The proportion closed to public access was significantly up from 12.0% to 15.8%.

2 of the Full Regions were Linden Developed Regions (i.e. sold new with content) were included in the sample this time, but no Developed Homestead was sampled. Again as with all previous surveys this is too small penetration to estimate total number. 32 of the sampled full regions were Skill Gaming designated ones (1.7% of Private Estate Regions).

284 of the 1921 (14.68%) Homestead regions were at the new non-grandfathered rate, this is down on on Nov 2013 figure of 17.6% .

Taking these figures a good estimate of private estate tier due each month is US$3,385,000 +/- US$43,000 . (Calculated using known grandfathering rates but excludes any academic reductions and is rounded to the closest US$1000), this figure is significantly down on Nov 2013’s estimate of US$3,857,000 by $472,000 (down by 12%).

The top 20 landowners currently control 49.1% (+/- 1.3%) of private estate regions, This is significantly up on Nov 2013 (39.5%) , using list prices their holdings account for 40.6% of total private estate tier (Nov 2013 was 30.5%)

The figures for the top 10 landowners are 36.4% (+/- 1.2%) of regions and 29.5% of tier (the larger estates tend to have a bigger proportion of homesteads than smaller estates). This share for the top 10 is signifcantly up on Nov 2013’s figure of 28.9% of private estate regions.

The Top 10 Full Region/Homestead/Openspace proportions are 37.1%/62.8%/0.1% and 38.6%/61.3%/0.0% for the top 20

The Top 20 Estates by number of regions held are as follows:

• Dreamseeker Estates 6.1%
• Azure Islands (ACS) 5.1%
• Richmond Land Management 4.9%
• Zoha Islands 4.7%
• Jessica Chung (ACS) 3.3%
• Weezles Real Estate (WRE) 2.8%
• Surreal Chung (ACS) 2.6%
• Victoria Chung (ACS) 2.6%
• Miriam Chung (ACS) 2.3%
• Lorena Chung (ACS) 2.0%
• Blanxi Estates 2.0%
• Lala Rentals 1.5%
• Jewels Island 1.4%
• Fruit Islands Estate 1.4%
• Bell Estates 1.2%
• Lombardi Holdings 1.2%
• Heidi Chung (ACS) 1.0%
• Kendallwood Virtual Estates 1.0% tied for 18th place with …
• Serena Estates 1.0%
• Luxory Estates 1.0%

Total known ACS holdings come to 19.1%. (13.8% in Nov 2013)

The Margins of error for these Estate shares range from +/-0.6% for the largest down to +/- 0.2% for the smallest so some of the ranking especially between 11th and 20th place may be slightly off. These rankings are purely on number of regions owned and are not based on FRE numbers .

The regions were running on the following distribution of server class

• Unknown 0.05%
• Class 701 46.15%
• Class 801 53.78%
• Class 830 0.02%

Survey Details: This survey was based on a random sample of 5000 private estate regions drawn from all 17524 private estates on the grid on 25th March 2014. The actual surveying took place between 25th & 26th March 2016. A further 17 regions were randomly selected to top up the sample, replacing regions which were unavailable (other than closed to public access) at the time of surveying.

Tyche Shepherd (SL Grid Survey).

Pepa Cometa makes fantastic 1920s Berlin project video

The 1920s Berlin Project

After seeing the stunning Pfaffenthal video (see it here), I invited talented machinima maker Pepa Cometa to Berlin, hoping she would make a video about our sim as well.

Luckily she fell in love with our community and started work on filming it right away.
That is if she wasn’t too busy drinking schnaps, dancing with the charming men or The enjoying herself at the Cabaret.

The video was shot during the cold winter of 1929, of course we follow the seasons in Berlin.

The result is absolutely amazing, not only does it show our city in the best possible way, it also shows outsiders that Second Life CAN look stunning… if your computer is good enough…

It is especially impressive that Pepa managed to capture the vibrance of our city and the strength and spirit of our community.

Feel like (re)visiting our sim after seeing the video?
We’ve just moved, so…

View original post 26 more words

Ebbe speaks at VWBPE, mentions Sansar and banning controversy

Tags

banning, controversy, ebbe altberg, education, linden dollars, sansar

Ebbe Linden spoke at VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education) yesterday, sadly too late for me to be present myself.
I think the audience was a little smaller than last year so I guess it was too late for quite a few other people as well.

Luckily I found an excellent video by the splendid Mal Burns here on youtube;

 

 

Here are some of the things that stood out to me;

• Linden Lab has been playing with a lot of the new VR hardware and trying to integrate it with Project Sansar.
• SL performance has improved this year and more improvements are in the pipeline.
• Registration and setting up will become easier.
• Lots of work done on compliance, redeeming Linden Dollars, fraud control, etc.
• Today you need Maya to work in Sansar, this will change in June, when they open up Beta access to a broader set of creators.
  They are very focused on creators for the rest of the year, people with lots of experiences in building experiences.
  Somewhere in May or June they will start accepting applications from people who want to get involved in beta testing Sansar via an online signup page.
  Depending on your skills and project you have in mind, they’ll let you in.
  People who just  want to snoop around is not what they are looking for.
  They want creators who are willing to give feedback and help test Sansar.
  FIY Linden Lab, building 1920s Berlin is a pretty advanced demonstration of experience building tools… subtle hint…
• Sansar will be opened to the public at the end of the year.
• Sansar will be no where near as feature rich as SL is now, many of the things you depend on in SL, will not be available at the beginning.
  You can create prettier and faster things in Sansar that work better with VR tech, there will be features that you do not have in SL, like lightning, physics, avatar movements etc.
  But creating a highly functional educational scenario might not work yet.
  It will take time before you can do in Sansar what you can now do in SL.
• There is no plan to migrate everyone to Sansar and for years and years to come Sansar and SL will remain different products.
• The Community Gateway program is progressing well, there is no final ‘Ship date’ for it and they are signing people up for it.
• Ebbe explains that if LL knows your RL identity and have the relevant documentation, your credit processing is more likely to go faster.
  The announced changes are planned for early April.
• LL is now working on integrating te HTV Vive VR headset with Sansar,  the headset also used for Steam VR and Ebbe expects it to work next week.
  Ebbe does not know how and if this will work with Steam VR.
• No skill based gaming in Sansar at first and it has not been determined yet if LL even wants to allo this at all because it is very costly and requires a lot of oversight because of the many laws.
  For now LL will concentrate on making Skill Based Gaming work better in SL before they decide if they want to bring it into Sansar.
• Sansar is aiming for an age range of 13+ but there will be content ratings.
• LL may create some SL community gateways themselves, for instance one for Educational sims.
• Ebbe thinks that when Sansar goes public many people will leave Second Life but only to have a look around and when they realise they can not (yet) do the things they do in SL in Sansar, that they’ll return to SL.
  I personally can see that happen as well, for instance what are many of SL’s communities to do without something as basic as a rental system?
  I can perhaps build 1920s Berlin in Sansar, but what if we can’t have shops yet, something as basic as doors that open or… schnaps?!
  Berlin probably won’t move permanently till we can do in Sansar what we do in SL today, or at least most of it.
  Nevertheless, as soon as I can build in Sansar, there will be a 1920s Berlin outpost or embassy say there.
• Right now Sansar is being build for PC, Windows specifically, Oculus and Vive HMD.
  They are preparing for Android and IOS.
  One employee is working fulltime on getting Sansar to work on mobile devices.
• There is a streaming solution for Sansar like we’ve seen in the past being offered by third parties.
  Using Cloud GPU’s we can stream all of Sansar to an iPhone, Ebbe sees that demonstrated every day.
  This is very exciting.
  When SL Go came to an end I felt and wrote that LL should take its place and offer high quality streaming of SL to its users.
  This did not happen but I’m happy to see that they are now doing this for Sansar.
  This could mean that everyone will be able to experience Sansar at the highest graphics settings, although of course this will come at a price.
  Personally I hope that they will have premium accounts in Sansar that will offer you, amongst other things, this streaming service.
• A Mac viewer is described as going to be looked at somewhere further along the line.
  Which is bad news.
  I’m not sure how many SL users are on a Mac, but I am one of them, even though I do plan to get a new gaming PC later this year.
• Contrary to earlier information, Ebbe announces that the Linden Dollar will probably NOT be used in Sansar.
  So there will be an exchange system that allows you to transfer Linden Dollars to whatever the Sansar currency will be.
  This is because of the hugely different business model Sansar has.
• There will be lots of different building tools in Sansar but LL will strongly support 3rd party tools and thus a common file format.
  So you’ll be able to build in all kinds of programs like Blender, Maya, etc and import it.
  But there will also be tools inside Sansar such as terrain and layout tools, but also basic object manipulation tools so you can take assets and arrange a scene.
  Over time they will work on creation tools that will allow you to build within Sansar.
  This is good news, I personally think that many people do not want to use that 3rd party software as they can be rather complicated or intimidating.
  Easy inworld tools are one of the things that made SL great and leaving those out would damage Sansar I feel.
  I hope they won’t wait too long with this.
• Ebbe experienced 360° video in Sansar.
• Ebbe used handcontrollers to rearrange objects in Sansar.
• Sansar uses a sort of ‘baking’ progress, so in stead of building something ‘live’ and seeing it work right away, like we do in SL, you have to ‘publish’ what you’ve build.
  This allows the system to optimise the scene for lighting, spacial audio, performance, etc.
  This is needed to make the world work at the high specs it promises.
  It may be the end of watching someone build, which is a shame.
• Ebbe talks about the recent banning of several creators in SL.
  He says that it is something that happened because Lindens now and then just ‘dip in’ and see what people are doing and then notice something that calls for a warning or a ban.
  But sometimes they make mistakes.
  He also explains that outsiders who sometimes support those being banned often don’t know what it exactly is what rule was being broken and what it exactly was these banned people did.
  He suggests that when some people say they were not given a reason for being banned, they may not strictly be telling the truth but Linden Lab can’t speak publicly about what it exactly was that got them banned in the first place.
  He asks people to trust him, they do not take banning people lightly and have good reasons to do so.
  There is no sudden ‘crusade’, just following the ToS they’ve always had but sometimes a certain kind of rule breaking flies under their radar long enough and when they act on it, people think something unusual is happening.
  To see his answer, go to 47:50 in the video.
• Ebbe is too busy to make his own avatar or bears.
  Which I can appreciate but I still think that making your own avatar is such an essential part of being in SL and understanding its users, that I feel he has to spend some time to do that anyway.
  Without any help!
• Ebbe ends his talk with reminding us that Second Life is the best virtual world on the planet and it will take a long time for anything to surpass that, including Sansar.

 

Finally faster credit processing but…

Tags

credit, dollars, linden, money, processing

Today Linden Lab announced that it is going to speed up credit processing.
This is great news, something I’ve been asking for and bothering Lindens with a while.
In these days having to wait up to 5 working days for your money seems a bit much and slow, especially if those days include a weekend.
I understand that it is not easy and the government has put lots of pesky rules and laws in the way, but still, we can get cash from eBay trough paypal within minutes.

So it is great news that now they have improved this;

We’re happy to announce that we will significantly improve how quickly we’re able to process a majority of credit requests.

Based on current data, we estimate that the upgrades we’ve made will allow approximately 75% of process credit requests to be completed within 2 business days.

Still not a couple of hours, but an improvement nevertheless.
But this may not always work;

For a minority of requests, the process may still take 5 business days. Because we’re dealing with sending real money to users around the world, we may require additional information and perform other processes that could impact the time needed.
A good rule of thumb is that the better we know you as a customer, the more likely it is we’ll be able to quickly process your credit requests.

So I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
I’m hoping to cash in a few Linden Dollars in a few days, so I’ll be counting the seconds to see how long it will take now.
Let me know how long it takes for you.

But there is a sting in the tail…
Only the sun rises for nothing (a Dutch saying).
Better faster credit processing comes at a price.

In addition to taking time, processing credit and paying real money to users’ PayPal and Skrill accounts incurs costs to Linden Lab. Each transaction actually costs us more than the $1 (USD) fee we have been charging. To address that and in light of the significant investments we’ve made to improve the related systems and processes, we will be making some adjustments to the fee structure, beginning next month.

As of April 5, 2016, instead of charging a flat fee of $1 (USD) per transaction, we will charge a fee of 1.5% of the transaction value, with a minimum fee of $3 (USD) and a maximum of $15 (USD). Additionally, the fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase 10¢, from $0.30 (USD) to $0.40 (USD) per transaction.

Which of course is not good news.
Most people in SL don’t make any money at all and amongst those who do only a minority actually make big bucks.
For the average ‘credit processor’, a few dollars is quite a lot, it adds up.

Either way, here you have it.
Both good and bad news I guess.
I can’t help asking myself if LL is going to make a profit on the cashing out now, if so it would create another source of revenue and might give them another reason to lower our tier… subtle hint…

I wonder if perhaps they could have given us the choice between fast or regular credit processing.
If you’re not in a hurry, you choose regular and safe yourself up to $14 a month, if you are in a hurry, you get it faster but you pay extra.

You can read the full announcement by clicking here.