Lab Chat, a talk show with and about Linden Lab is coming!

Tags

ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, Lab chat, linden lab, saffia widdershins, talk show, talkshow

No matter how many blogs are written, interviews are done and stories are published, it seems that there are always questions about Second Life, Project Sansar and Linden Lab that people can’t find the answer to and want to ask.

During the 12th birthday celebrations of Second Life several talk shows were organised, well known VR TV host Saffia Widdershins and co-hosts interviewed several Lindens and it was very interesting to notice how many questions the audience had to ask if they were given the chance.
Clearly the people of Second Life have lots of things they want to ask the Lindens themselves and even though they sometimes show up on the forums and at inworld meetings, it seems that we do not all get as many chances to ask them things face to face as we would like.
So every time a Linden was interviewed there at SL12B, lots of people showed up and when the public was given a chance to ask their questions things often got very interesting.

This made me think of a famous UK tv show called Question Time where regular members of the public get a chance to grill their politicians.
I love this show and I don’t even live in the UK!

So I thought that it might be fun to have a similar show in Second Life but with Lindens in stead of politicians and I wrote this blog about it (click).

Not much later I was one of Saffia’s co-hosts myself and we interviewed Ebbe Linden (aka Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab) together.
When the interview was about to end Ebbe mentioned that he rather enjoyed the chat and that we should have one more often.
This made me think back to my Question Time idea that I also had talked about with Saffia before the show.
And so the plan was made.
You can read how it all exactly happened in this blog I wrote about it (click).

So behind the scenes we’ve been working on this idea and now it is going to happen!

We’re going to try and keep it as basic as possible, just like Question Time, you ask the questions, one or more Lindens answer them.
The show will be recorded live in front of a studio audience and then broadcast later.

We will pick 4 questions from the SL forum but if time allows it, we will also open up the floor to people in the audience to ask theirs.
We are not selecting questions as a way to sensor out the negative ones or tricky ones, but to make sure things aren’t asked that are already common knowledge or should be if you bother to ask around.
Also it is sometimes important to give the Lindens a heads-up, just so they can bring some facts and figures with them or so they can make sure they have the latest news from their colleague working on that very subject.
And we also do this because not everybody is interested in that personal issue you have with someone else in SL regarding a dress you bought but somehow the texture didn’t look as good as on the picture, etc.
We want questions everyone wants to hear the answers to!
We also pick questions for technical reasons, we need to get in contact with you for the show, see if you’re willing to use your voice for the recording or if we need to read the question for you, etc, etc.

But remember, if we have time left, we will, just like during SL12B, take questions from the audience text chat.
So even if your question wasn’t selected, bring it along to the recording.

The show will be recorded Thursday, November 19th at 10:30am SLT at the Linden Endowment for the Arts Theatre, Saffia and I will be hosts and our guest will be Ebbe Linden — CEO of Linden Lab.

You can read the official Linden Lab announcement here (click) and leave your questions on the forum here (click), make sure to ask it by Friday the 13th (!!) of November.

The Lab Chat logo, made by Marianne McCann

Grid dips below 25.000 regions for first time since 2008

Tags

"second life", facts, figures, statistics, traffic, Tyche Shepherd

Tyche Shepherd, who has been keeping an eye on all the numbers, facts and figures of Second Life, yesterday announced that for the fist time since 2008 when she started keeping these records, the amount of regions on the Second Life grid dipped below 25000 for the fist time since June 2008.

We all know that the amount of sims in Second Life has been declining for a long time so this isn’t really a surprise.
But still, it must be unwelcome news at Linden Lab.
Or maybe extra motivation to keep making Second Life and Project Sansar better.

Of course 25.000 areas of land the size of 65,536 m², is still a gigantic virtual world.

Since December 2014 there were a few small signs of growth, but generally we’ve just seen decline.

You can read the full report on the SLUniverse website by clicking here.

Make sure you also check out her excellent website; http://gridsurvey.com

TNW website publishes interview with Ebbe about Second Life and Project Sansar

Tags

"second life", ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, interview, project sansar

Today an interview with Ebbe Altberg (aka Ebbe Linden, CEO of Linden Lab) was published on ‘The Next Web‘ website.
It has over 600.000 ‘likes’ on Facebook and over 1.6 million followers on twitter.
So no small fry.

It has a very catchy title, or as those pesky young kids call it; “Click Bait” worthy;

Think Second Life died?
It has a higher GDP than some countries

The audio was recorded at the Web Summit in Dublin and lasts about 10 minutes.
You can hear all of it by clicking here.

There isn’t much said we didn’t already know and no new exciting facts about Project Sansar were leaked, but it is a nice interview and once more Ebbe shows that he is pretty good at making people realise that Second Life is still doing well and has provided the people at Linden Lab with a lots of experience on running a virtual world, one that gives them now, on the eve of the Virtual Reality Renaissance, a very interesting position.

Sadly they used a rather dull picture to illustrate the article; a screenshot showing all the avatars that were replaced by nicer ones just the other day.

New classic starter avatars for Second Life now available

Tags

"second life", avatar, changes, improvements, news, virtual reality

Linden Lab has just given us 16 brand new classic starter avatars for Second Life.
I’ve written about the starter avatars and some of the problems involved here; “The ongoing trouble with the new mesh avatars” and here; “An alternative to starter avatars”, also suggesting that they replaced and improved the old starter avatars in stead of those full mesh avatars.

Last year brand new full mesh avatars were released but many users (especially noobs) soon discovered that they looked nice but sadly were a bit static (no mouth opening when talking for instance) and it was very difficult to adjust them or  even change their clothes.
Full mesh avatars are something even advanced SL users sometimes have problems with so you can imagine that they didn’t make things easier for people new to our virtual world.
And of course making sure they feel at home asap is very important to keep them from leaving.

So these new avatars are the good old ‘system avatars’ we know and love (and hate) but with mesh attachments.
In a way, the best of both worlds…?

I think these new avatars look pretty good, especially the one in the 3 piece suit, even though he needs a haircut.
He is ready to start exploring 1920s Berlin, maybe I’ll even put a box with that outfit as a freebie at our teleport area.
Sadly none of the ladies have 1920s suitable clothes.
Seriously though, of course there are a lot of people who’ll find that a certain type or kind of avatar is missing from this selection.
The one thing I dislike about these new avatars is that they are all young and pretty.
I would have liked people a little older, a little fatter and perhaps a little uglier.
You know, like real life 🙂

Anyway, quite an improvement on the old system avatars, at least at first sight.
I haven’t tried them yet.
But it is a shame that after all these years apparantly it is still so difficult to create avatars that look good, are all mesh, are animated and not so complicated to modify or dress.
Something that seems so easy in games.

But I still think that it would be even better to allow new users to create and already personalise their avatars right there on the website before they even enter Second Life, letting them have some fun and giving them an avatar they’ve already started bonding and identifying with before they’ve even put virtual feet on the virtual ground.
I’ve written more about that idea here; “Starting your Second Life” and here; “Starting your Second Life is still not easy”.

You should be able to try out these new avatars now.

You can read the official Linden Lab announcement here; “New Classic Avatars are Now Available in Second Life!”.

Road to VR talks about Sansar

Tags

ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, project sansar, rad to vr, sansar, virtual reality, VR

The website Road to VR is one of the most active and up to date websites on the subject of Virtual Reality.

Today they published a short article on Sansar and in it Ebbe said a few interesting things.

Such as;

We’ll do a lot of things to help users understand how to create performant content. There’s a lot of work yet to do, but we have plans for things like automatic optimization of content, polygon reduction of content that preserves quality at the same time, including showing users that create content some sort of visual indication of how performant their content is going to be across various platforms… I’ve already see stuff in Sansar that I know you’d never see in SL.

I like the sound of this.

Giving users the tools to build whatever they can imagine is crucial for Sansar to succeed and be something more than all those other VR worlds that are and will be popping up.
One of the problems with SL is that we have those tools and can build whatever we want but as many of us aren’t that experienced, this sometimes results in corners of our world that don’t look very good or take a long time to load.

So the golden formula for Sansar will be easy creation tools + automatic optimisation = great VR.

Please read the entire article on the Road to VR website by clicking here.

Two new Project Sansar pictures

Tags

sansar

Today Linden Lab gave their website an update and on the Project Sansar page they use two pictures as a background.
These pictures are similar to the video footage we’ve already seen so I think it is safe to assume one or both of them are actual Project Sansar screenshots.

And as there isn’t much news to share on Project Sansar and most of us are very, very curious, I decided to share them here.

The Project Sansar page ends their intro with;

“In the coming months, Linden Lab will welcome additional creators and content partners to Project Sansar as new features are added to the platform and testing expands.”

Well Linden Labbers, my suitcase are packed!
Let me in already 😉

Click to enlarge these picture below.

Copyright Linden Lab

Copyright Linden Lab

First video footage of Project Sansar revealed

Tags

ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, sansar

Today I was informed by Second Life user Digit Gears, that at the end of Ebbe Altberg’s presentation at Web Summit in Ireland, he showed a few seconds of Sansar footage.

It is pre-alpha material and filmed by a member in the audience, but what we can see looks pretty good.

However the material is not clear enough to get really excited about.
I asked Linden Lab if they would put the video online somewhere, but alas;

@1920sberlin sorry, but no, we're not planning to publish that video. You will see a couple of screenshots soon though…

— Linden Lab (@LindenLab) November 4, 2015

For now we’ll have to do with this video on twitter, if the video does not work below, follow this link to see it on Twitter itself.

Coming next year #ProjectSansar from #lindenlabs pic.twitter.com/jH9xOKdmAJ

— Janne Juntunen (@jannejunt) November 4, 2015

On the website Fortune.com a short article was published announcing Sansar to be ‘live’ in the first quarter of 2016.
I assume they mean public alpha testing, not ready, so I checked with Linden Lab;

@1920sberlin we're following up with the author to clarify, but launch will be later than that

— Linden Lab (@LindenLab) November 4, 2015

They do have a new Sansar picture;

http://fortune.com/2015/11/04/how-second-life-developer-hopes-to-deliver-the-youtube-for-vr/

show #90: voices of vr

Another Drax files Radio hour episode;

the drax files radio hour

show #90

the ultimate show, where a former radio person – now podcaster drax – interviews a former documentarian – now podcaster kent – about podcasting. and all that happening on a podcast sans goggles although the frame around it is vr and vws.

enjoy & be inspired by the fabulous kent bye who seems to have become the foremost historian of the [new and historic] vr movement:

and a few contextual links below:

• kent’s voices of vr podcast [drax was on #47]

drax’ physical counterpart was on the show

• kent is seeking paetrons [even l$ supporters!]:

•  ieee conference [the largest org dedicated to the advancement of tech incl vr]

ieee credo as expressed by buzz

• sleep no more = immersive theatre

• oculus toy box demo [we talked about with luann and joyce a couple weeks back]:

• deja vu = in 2008 gridnauts from ibm and linden…

View original post 111 more words

The single terminal rental system

Tags

rental system

Many years ago I had a little shop in a sim that used a single terminal rental system.

With other words, everyone in the entire sim who had to pay rent could do so at a prim situated in the main municipal building.

In all my years in Second Life I’ve had 2 rental systems (the two biggest ones everyone’s probably using) and neither offer that option.
I’ve asked, I’ve begged, I’ve bribed and although it is being worked on, it is still unavailable.

I wonder if anyone knows if such a system is around, somewhere.

Why would anyone want such a system you ask?

Well mostly because of prims and scripts.
In the region of 1920s Berlin we have about 100 rentals, yes I know, that is a lot.
But that also means we have over 100 rental boxes with each a script inside.
By using a single terminal rental system, I could free up these prims and remove the scripts from the sim.

But it also lets us have a more fun and realistic way to pay the rent for my tenants, in stead of throwing money at a box by their front door, they now have to take the tram to the post office and pay their rent at the counter there.

Of course, the system would also be able to control the front doors of apartments and have a nice online website where you can keep track of all the payment done, how much time on rentals is left, who is using too many prims, etc, etc.
So it is all not as easy as it sounds.

But still, I am desperate for such a system to be installed in Berlin and have been for years.

Do you know if there is such a system currently available somewhere?

And of course, I can’t help thinking about how this will happen in Sansar.
Has Linden Lab let some of the big rental system creators into their new virtual world yet?
Even if Sansar goes public, until there is a working rental system, I fear many sims will not get started but in stead will have to wait till one is build.

Unless… maybe the people at LL are building a new land system that lets you, as owner of a region, cut the land into tiny parcels and sell/rent on to someone else who then simply pays tier online but it ends in your pockets?
That could be interesting.

show #89: vr kids

The latest Drax Files radio show episode;

the drax files radio hour

show #89

today a look at how vr can help kids with physical disabilities or temporary impairments.

fascinating. and more of course. and high fidelity and more…of course:

reading desired? here we go:

• havok engine bought by microsoft

mesh uploader in sl = also governed by havok [pic by inara pey]

• hololens dev kit for 3k [us$ not l$ ! ! ! ]

hololens project x-ray demo at windows10 devices event

• tony parisi has a new job and a new book

tony now at wevr [pic by uploadvr]

learning vr book coming in november

• oculus toy box = social vr???

• second life performer zak claxton:

• our guests rj sampson and reggie millsaps jr. from vr kids

big bear festival therapy [pic by vrkids]

• testimonals from parents/kids:

• webgl works in second life via the valhalla project viewer [d/l it here]

• high fidelity adds eyetracking via smi modded oculus…

View original post 101 more words