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…
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.
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.
again a show with some perspective [if we may claim so ourselves]: tony walsh, game designer and vw pioneer, and jacki morie, the original gangsta goddess of vr!
Last November Linden Lab lowered the setup fees for buying land in Second Life.
At the time I was quite enthusiastic and felt that it was a great step in the right direction, hoping that more prices would start coming down, especially tier.
And even though I still think that this was a good step in the right direction, I’ve had a little time to think it over and now realise that this news wasn’t as great as I first thought.
For people who never looked into buying regions, it of course sounds great when they lower the price from $1000 (!) to $600, but if you have been in SL a little longer and ask more experienced people for advice, you’ll learn that paying even $600 is still a lot more than if you bought one second hand from another SL user.
For instance, if you join one of the Land selling groups in Second Life (such as the one I joined called ‘For sale by owner’ or here on the SL forum; Regions for sale) and are patient, you’ll be eventually offered regions for as little as $300 or even less.
I joined the group a while ago and have even seen them being offered for $100.
And you can even buy a ‘grandfathered‘ region there, if you’re lucky.
And yes, you may still have to pay $150 to move the region, $100 to transfer and $50 to rename it (even though in many cases this is already part of the deal and if you do all those things at once even LL will charge you less), but even then it is still cheaper than buying a new one from Linden Lab.
After all, fewer and fewer people are buying land and many want to get rid of their region, so the market is good if you’re a buyer.
So, as long as second hand regions can be bought for $300 or even less, having them now for sale at $600 is not a very good deal.
Looking at the stats, it is clear that the lowered setup fee did not cause a increase of regions being sold nor did it stop the total amount of regions declining.
In the end we end up in the same old situation; SL is too expensive for many people.
I still think they should lower the setup fee even more or scarp it.
And of course they should also lower the tier, even if it is just by a small amount.
But this is of course scary as the tier is what pays the bills and if they lowered them they would lose income without being sure that many more people would actually start renting land.
So, the Oculus rift is finally going to be commercially available.
They are now available for pre-order and will start shipping from March 28th onwards.
But… and here comes the sting… it is going to cost $599.
That is just too much.
And here in the Netherlands you’ll even be paying $750.
This does not even include their special controllers.
And that while Palmer Luckey himself only a few months ago answered a question by Road to VR about if the consumer Oculus Rift price would come in around that $350 ballpark target with;
You know, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. We’re roughly in that ballpark… but it’s going to cost more than that.
Must be nice to live in a world where $599 is roughly in the same ballpark s $350.
Either way, it seems they are selling them, lots of them.
But as excited as I am about all the new tech that is coming, I am not willing (or able) to spend this much on a headset.
Especially as I’ll also need to buy a new computer to handle VR properly as it doesn’t even work on my MacBook.
So even though I’m grateful to Oculus for sort of kickstart the VR renaissance, I also think they messed up.
Not only because of the high price they are asking for it but also because I think they missed the boat.
All this has taken them so long, that the competition has been developing other headsets as well, cheaper ones.
The Oculus will not be as much a seller as it would/could have been at half the price.
I think this may even slow down the spread of VR.
If even someone like me, who is crazy about VR and wants a good headset so badly, thinks that the Oculus headset is too expensive and will just not buy one, imagine what the average gamer or potential VR user will think
And let’s not even think about .general gamers, museums, schools and regular folks will think about this ‘toy.
While they should have brought us a good but cheap Rift that everyone would have wanted to buy and thus make sure that VR headsets end up in as many households as possible.
Do they really think we all want or need those special headphones, a game, a remote and an x box controller?
Because we pay extra for those, maybe not much, but it adds up.
Did they really have to spend so much time to develop all these extra things and their special new controllers?
I personally think they should have sold a basic Rift before Christmas and then sell all that other stuff separately for those who want them.
Now they missed the holiday sales and ended up with a very expensive toy.
But Palmer explains;
To reiterate, we are not making money on Rift hardware. High end VR is expensive, but Rift is obscenely cheap for what it is.
I think and hope that the competition will now step up and offer us a good VR headset for at least half the price.
Oculus may have just ruined the opportunity of a life time.
I am secretly looking towards the people at Apple.
We know they have been acquiring quite a few VR related patents and are working on something…
And at least if they build a headset it will work on my Mac…
A year or so ago I saw a video showing the Infinadeck, an omnidirectional treadmill to be used for Virtual Reality.
I loved it and got excited about its potential.
A couple of days ago they released a video showing the new and improved version;
I know, I know, it is huge.
But it is a lot smaller than the previous version;
Once more it is the potential that is exciting, not (yet) the actual device.
Right now it looks great and seems useable in an arcade, laboratorium or military HQ.
But too big for my room and probably too expensive, for now.
This will become interesting to us all once it gets even smaller and cheaper.
It has to fit in a regular room and be affordable.
But this is still early days, it is not important what the device looks like now but what does matter is how it has improved in the last year and how it actually works.
It is brilliant in its simplicity.
I once tried to think about how an omnidirectional treadmill would work and my brain exploded.
But their solution is so basic yet so sophisticated.
I think this might be the technique to go with.
Is this something we VR users want?
Yes and no.
I guess it depends on who you are and what you do in VR.
I personally love realism and would not mind at all being absolutely exhausted after a VR gunfight or having to actually walk everywhere in Second Life.
I think it will be fun but it will also finally give us a chance to actually get off our fat backsides and get some exercise without having to stop doing what we love.
Even though I am generally promoting a VR experience that involves fewer wearables and not more, here is one gadget I might be tempted into wearing.
The Teslasuit allows you to undergo a wide array of sensations while exploring or gaming (or whatever else) in Virtual Reality.
From the expected bullet hits and punches, it also promises to let you experience wind, water, heat, cold and even something as subtle as a hug or stroke.
Yes, they really do promise that during your next visit to a VR beach, you’ll feel the water at your feet and the wind on your body.
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Incorporated within the suit is a mesh of sensors that pick up and translate actions in VR into electric impulses that you’ll experience as pressure.
It is called neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) and is generally used for exercise, physical therapy, etc.
You’ve probably seen it done with little patches stuck to the skin.
It comes close to the Haptic Suit we know from the bestseller book ‘Ready player one‘, soon to be made into a Spielberg movie.
Just like with most VR related gadgets and VR itself, it is hard to imagine or understand how well it works and how much an impact it makes until you’ve actually tried it.
So checking out some of the videos that show people wearing and testing the suit is what got me excited.
Have a look at some of them by clicking here.
It is still early days and like many other gadgets being developed for VR these days we know that it is only the beginning and things will continue to get better, cheaper, lighter, etc.
I can imagine a not too distant future where VR haptic suits become even lighter and thinner, much cheaper and will cover your entire body, including your face and hands.
And that they can also be used to send signals to VR, not just receive them and when you close your hand, your avatar will close her hand.
I think that giving us gloves that allow us to actually feel what our avatars are touching or holding, or at least create some sort of sensation when you push a button or open a door, will change a lot of things.
I think the Teslasuit guys are working on those as well, and perhaps next a haptic balaclava so you’ll feel it when I slap you in the face for telling a dirty joke in my virtual bar in 1920s Berlin in Second Life.
When we have the ultimate suit that does everything, we will no longer need to place sensors in our rooms or wave controllers about the place.
And maybe they’ll add heat and cold pads that will be able to actually make you feel colder or warmer.
Maybe one day we can get rid of all our gadgets and wearables and just wear the suit and the headset to do everything.
One suit to rule them all.
The benefits of these suits are obvious; VR experiences become more real, more complete.
In games you actually feel a hit when someone shoots you, when you go sailing you feel the wind and the water, when you are with someone you care about you feel their hand shake, their hug or their hand on your shoulder.
And yes, I am avoiding the obvious, I’m too much of an old fashioned prude to discuss VR hanky panky with you lot.
I’ll leave that to your dirty, dirty imagination 😉
The Kickstarter went live yesterday and they hope it will get developers on board who will start creating experiences for their suit.
Their goal is £250,000 and as I write this the total stands at £7,649 £9,758.
Check out their video below and the Kickstarter page by clicking here.
Personally I am very excited about this development, not specifically this suit, because right now I couldn’t even afford one and I think that this technology still has some way to go, but it is more the potential that I love, I can see what this will be used for in the future.
It is the possibilities that are most exciting.
All pictures copyright Tesla Studios & Kickstarter.
Lab Chat returns on January 21st – with Ebbe Linden (aka Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab) answering more of your questions!
After the success of our first episode in November last year, we are delighted to announce the second episode of Lab Chat, recorded in front of a live audience and then broadcast on numerous streams including Second Life’s You Tube channel, AviewTV and SLArtist as well as being available in audio and written transcription.
The second broadcast will be at 10.30am SLT in the LEA Theater with seating available on LEA2, 3 and 4.
Lab Chat Episode 1, photographed by Torley
How do you submit your questions?
You enter your questions on the special Linden Lab Forum which will be opened for questions shortly – we’ll tell you when and where to go!
The questions to feature on the show will be chosen by the Lab Chat team…
happy 2016 from the drax files radio hour with jo yardley
well by the time you hear this you have transitioned into a new year & we wish you dear listener all the very best and our beloved world of second life just equally a grand old time in 2016.
jo and i will be taking a vacation until the next lab chat which will hit your ear-waves before the end of january = stay tuned and watch these pages.
![awesome stuff at the expo [pic by june fallon]](https://joyardley.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/awesome-stuff-at-the-expo-pic-by-june-fallon.png)
Lab Chat Episode 1, photographed by Torley 
