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...directly part of the process of creating a new world. -- I guess the 'directly' could be debated. But, I don't beleive the part about our not being involved. We have been adding feature requests and complaining for years. In spite of numerious people saying the Lindens don't listen, they have been collecting and making a list of the things we want and complain about. I doubt that all that just went away when they decided to build a new, better SL.

We just haven't participated in the way you want to participate. I doubt your way is going to happen. 

Things done via large committees usually suck. The exceptional things in life are usually created by individuals and small groups.

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Pamela Galli wrote:

What LL is proposing is something like this:  "Hey, all you residents of Topeka, how about you give up your identity and all* your stuffs and we move you to PARIS!!!!!  (At your expense, of course, but still: PARIS!!!!.)"

 

*Well maybe not all but we cant say for sure, so dont count on anything."

 

Well, sort of. A little bit, maybe.

A better analogy might be learning that a favourite club or amusement park was closing down. Or, for merchants, that the really excellent mall in which their shop is located was being torn down. (And we've had, I think, some assurances from Ebbe that identity should be portable.)

 

I'm honestly not trying to serve as an apologist for LL here. But, assuming that it is necessary or best to build the new VW from scratch (and I suspect that it is), it's hard to see how this could have been handled in a way that wouldn't have created something of a panic.

I will start worrying more if, further down the road, there isn't more news about what can be ported over, because that will suggest that they are afraid to tell us of what won't be transferable.

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I am thinking back to Direct Delivery. Overall the service works much better than Magic Boxes. It's far more reliable in my experience. But Marketplace still has several issues, and it is more than likely because lots of hacky solutions have been made to get it working on things that have been around for years. To be honest with you, DD has treated me very well and leaving Magic Boxes behind let me punch through a glass ceiling I could never get past, no matter how many new products I made. I basically switched to DD and watched my sales go crazy while I didn't even make anything new, advertise, etc.

I have faith in LL over this. You've got to remember that a large part of writing software is understanding existing code and writing new things that work well with the existing code. If what LL is trying to add relies on older code that's way too complex to understand, then it doesn't matter if you're actually a good programmer or not. You will write really good code that behaves very poorly with the existing code.

I would at the very least expect something that works very well for the intial burst. LL will need to do everything it can to keep the employees that helped develop the original SL 2.0 codebase around, because they will understand it completely. I can't even begin to fathom how much code is left in SL 1.0 that was written entirely by people who don't even work there anymore. I can also imagine a lot of Lindens looking at code and not having a clue what it does (it's not the Linden's fault, some code just works that way, specially if the people before you didn't write good code and comment), and then making guesses which leads to massive problems.

Having a team working on SL 2.0 for the next 5 years that completely understands how the SL 2.0 platform works will be revolutionary to the end user experience and you will see a lot of problems with SL 1.0 completely disappear, only due to the raw nature of having a team of programmers who understand what they are writing code for without having to make horrible guesses and not understanding existing code.

It look LL 4 hours to find out that a MySQL server that assigns IDs reached the upper bounds of IDs and couldn't generate any more. It is pretty easy to say "wow LL is incompetent, they couldn't find that problem for 4 hours!", but if you look at it more along the lines of "the old people who worked here 10 years ago made a huge noob mistake by not allocating enough memory for the main IDs or using the wrong type of ID key and they are all gone now." and then imagining people who know better and wouldn't expect such a mistake to be made while trying to find a mistake like that, you give LL a little more sympathy.

However I am probably a little biased. I have managed extremely large PHP projects by myself in the past, so I understand how these sort of things work.

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Mony Lindman wrote:

 

You say "If Linden Lab would not make a new virtual world with up to date technology it is highly likely that somebody else would". Well.. someone else already does.. it's called High Fidelity. Is that not competition enough for SL?

It is very interesting to see which comes first: Is it Second Life 2 (or whatever it will be called) or is it High Fidelity? And it will be very interesting to see also how they differ from each other. Maybe there might be even some other virtual world under development?

It was about time that Linden Lab took the step into the future; before it was too late. We have very interesting times ahead.

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You have faith in LL over what? All we know is a new shiny is possibly coming in the next two years. We know nothing about it. Zero, zip, nada, zilch. If they roll out the new shiny and there is zero importing of anything from SL what will you do then? Can you afford to spend thousands to start over? I can't. What abut those that have paid thousands to start up SIMs and tens of thousands a year to have them? Do you really think these people will be able to shell out that kind of money again? I have been here for over 8years. I have zero faith in anything LL says they will do. I just wait and watch.

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Coby Foden wrote:


Mony Lindman wrote:

 

You say "If Linden Lab would not make a new virtual world with up to date technology it is highly likely that somebody else would". Well.. someone else already does.. it's called High Fidelity. Is that not competition enough for SL?

It is very interesting to see which comes first: Is it Second Life 2 (or whatever it will be called) or is it High Fidelity? And it will be very interesting to see also how they differ from each other. Maybe there might be even some other virtual world under development?

It was about time that Linden Lab took the step into the future; before it was too late. We have very interesting times ahead.

I find it quite funny that any1 would compare HF to SL. There has been no indication that HF will be anything like SL. Plus, 1 of the key features of HF will be to have users supply the hardware to run it. Another big feature is that you will need more devices to use it. None of this has been proven to be successful, and there is no guarantee that any1 will use it at all. HF is taking a big chance that everything will fall into place, much like it did for SL.

SL2 tho, does have all kinds of evidence that it's model works. The question is really whether they can make it better.

 

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I imagine that, when SL2 is launched, quite a lot of SL1 users will go and use it, including creators. Remember that some creators set up in Inworldz and that other thing - Blue Mars? - just in case they took off. They didn't, but SL creators were there, and probably still are in Inworldz. I imagine that many SL1 creators will set up in SL2 and operate there as well as here. The one thing that SL2 will have for creators over systems like Inworldz and Blue Mars is that it will be known up front that it will take off, because users from here will populate it. So creators will be in there like shot, without any need to close operations here.

Then I imagine that SL2 will become the more popular, probably because it will be better than SL1, and sales in SL1 will dwindle, to the extent that sellers here will close, at first maybe quite slowly, but the pace will pick up and there won't be many, if any, sellers left for SL1.

That's how I imagine it will be, but it's just my imagination.

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I am looking at it along the lines of throwing something older out and having something newer come along that learns from the mistakes of previous projects.

Look at something like Windows. I've made this point elsewhere, but Microsoft got rid of 16-bit application support in 64-bit Windows. Yet 64-bit Windows 7 is a pretty decent OS. But you wouldn't be there if MS made a huge effort to make sure those 16-bit applications still worked on 64-bit Windows.

It's a fact that software that is developed on top of software that people don't understand will turn out poorly. SL 2.0 is LL starting over with people who understand completely what the new code does.

Meaning that there's more than likely been a lot of things LL has wanted to add for us but couldn't because it wasn't technically feasible.

And as for content, I already asked Ebbe in this thread (and he responded), and LL is going to do whatever they can to ensure that as much content as possible can be brought over. There seems to be this massive knee jerk reaction and people are thinking that because of an upgrade, people are going to lose everything. You don't lose everything if you upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 (and you're smart about it). I still have files in my "documents" folder in my Windows install from more than 10 years ago, because I've brought them with me from XP -> Vista -> 7, and each one had multiple fresh re-installs.

People do not understand how valuable the existing SL 1.0 content is to LL. Content is what makes SL good and LL won't throw that away for SL 2.0. Ebbe agreed with me 100% on it.

I am trying to think how I can explain this. But if LL releases SL 2.0, and absolutely no content can be transfered from SL 1.0, then there's no point in going with SL 2.0 as opposed to something else like High Fidelity, InWorldz, etc. However if LL makes it easy to bring SL 1.0 content to SL 2.0, then going to a competitor means you give up existing content in SL anyways. I asked Ebbe if he realized this and he agreed with me.

He is not good at explaining what is happening. He basically came out and said "we aren't making promises but we're going to do our best to make it as easy as possible to move to SL 2.0 and bring your content, friends, inventory etc, but there's going to be some things that would require us to not fix things that need to be fixed if we make sure everything can come over. We will do our best but some things just won't be able to make it." and everyone thought that mean "it's all over SL 2.0 won't have anything at all from SL 1.0 and everyone will have to start over from scratch!!!! ZOMG WE ARE DOOMED!~!! SL 1.0 FOR LYFE!!!"


I hate to sound rude but it seems like no one in this thread has ever ran their own start up or anything. I have had a few in my life, some successful, others not, but content is the most valuable asset you have as a start up. Your customers are second, because customers won't show up without content yet you need customers to consume content (so they are both extremely important, don't get me wrong, I'm not choosing one as important and one as not). LL throwing away all SL 1.0 content for SL 2.0, as far as business sense is concerned, is so ridiculously bad of a business decision that it would mean suicide and I can't even fathom it happening.

I actually did have a (very short lived) start up that did very well for its short life. It had to be shut down and re-launched several times, and every time we beat out existing competitors hugely because we launched early and were in a really good position because we had tons of user content already, and other sites didn't. In fact, they had vastly nicer solutions to what I had yet we were more popular, because we had the content. A few times I had to just scrap things and start over again because I made huge mistakes. Mistakes that can't be patched out.

I realize this is winded but I understand what LL is doing and it's definitely needed. I don't blame Ebbe, it's not an easy thing to try and explain, but he could be doing it better IMO.

I suppose as one final effort, I'll fall back to the dreaded car analogy. Right now, SL 1.0 is a clunker, but it has all sorts of things we like in there, like a nice stereo and speakers. LL is basically offering us a new car, but telling us that they'll do their best to make sure you can bring that stereo with you. But they're saying that they can't make promises that everything will work. You might end up with the head unit working and front speakers, but no room for the subwoofer.

That's not a bad proposition and I would gladly invest in SL 2.0. In fact, I've already stated this elsewhere, but I plan on ensuring that my existing customers get what they paid for in SL 2.0 if/when they migrate. If LL doesn't provide the tools, I'll have to do it myself. But it is feasible for me to do this from an income standpoint and I want to ensure that my customers are happy. If anything, this attitude of being terrified of SL 2.0 is the worst thing anyone can do for their customers. You're basically telling them all that you have no interest or faith in the brand new car that's sitting in the driveway because your subwoofer and rear speakers don't fit in the new car and you can't bring them with.

If I get new tools and I get to actually upgrade my existing products as I move them to SL 2.0, I'd be even happier.

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LaskyaClaren wrote:


Pamela Galli wrote:

What LL is proposing is something like this:  "Hey, all you residents of Topeka, how about you give up your identity and all* your stuffs and we move you to PARIS!!!!!  (At your expense, of course, but still: PARIS!!!!.)"

 

*Well maybe not all but we cant say for sure, so dont count on anything."

 

Well, sort of. A little bit, maybe.

A better analogy might be learning that a favourite club or amusement park was closing down. Or, for merchants, that the really excellent mall in which their shop is located was being torn down. (And we've had, I think, some assurances from Ebbe that identity should be portable.)

 

I'm honestly not trying to serve as an apologist for LL here. But, assuming that it is necessary or best to build the new VW from scratch (and I suspect that it is), it's hard to see how this could have been handled in a way that wouldn't have created something of a panic.

I will start worrying more if, further down the road, there isn't more news about what can be ported over, because that will suggest that they are afraid to tell us of what won't be transferable.

I think a better analogy would be Kansas and the land of ZO,  the transition may hit like a storm but the other side is going to be way more cool,  who knows the storm might not even be that bad.

For those of us who all ready live on more then one grid this announcement is no big deal, it's not the end of SL, it's not the end of other worlds, it's the end of LL only having one world.  Some people will stay in SL, some will go to the new SL, and others will do both.

The new world may be so land of ZO cooler  then Kansas that once people see it,  they won't want to move over some of their old SL stuff.  Some people don't have red shoes and won't be able to get to ZO so will stay in SL.

In the video that I posted here yesterday it's very clear that LL is not giving up on SL and is still working on it and new feature for it.  I all so found it extremely encouraging as a content creator, that LL now considers content creators it's main customer.  In other words then new would will be about making content creators happy.  There are all so some good hint's on what won't be making it over, but to soon to be sure.

The Transition will certainly have some impact on the short term economy, it's to early to even make plans on what or how to transfer items or start over with new world items.  I think a good strategy to survive the transition would be to find new markets out of SL for your existing content, at least until we know what the new building standards are.  Just a guess but I think updating sculpt maps to mesh would be a good idea too.

 

 

 

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Pamela Galli wrote:


LaskyaClaren wrote:


Domitan Redenblack wrote:

COBY, you are saying:

 

Linden Labs also has the right to go out of business and lay off all workers, and wreck the investment of the owners.

 

This is "typical LL thinking" about customers. "It's our ball, so burn your shoes and outfits and property, OR just go away". 

 

The 3 Stooges of corporate management? Really?

 

Don't you think Linden really understands that losing customers is 100x easier than getting them?

 

 

 

 

In fairness, LL has, intentionally or not, let the cat out of the bag. You now have pretty fair warning that, t
wo years down the road at the latest, Second Life will become something of a lame duck.
You have, in other words, lots of time to respond: this wasn't sprung on us at the last possible moment.

 

For some, SL became a lame duck as soon as this announcement was made.  And the effect will snowball -- unless LL comes up with some kind of reassurance, and fast. 

 

Electronic Arts/Maxis announces new releases of The Sims series (each release completely incompatible with the previous one) long in advance of their actual release, and in fact they generally release $40 expansions for the current release (which won't be usable at all for the new release) AFTER the announcement. And people buy them anyway, because they feel like playing with them for the time being, and they know the new release won't be full-featured for some time.

Right now you're in a panic because you're afraid a huge group of people currently willing to pay a few dollars for an imaginary sofa will suddenly decide not to because they may only be able to use it for a couple of years instead of -- whatever the lifecycle of an imaginary sofa IS; I'm not sure if there have been any tests done in that area.

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I believe the creation of a newer platform with the experience gained from the years and layers of coding Second Life is the best logical descission. A clean slate puts the lab on a level playing field against HyFy and facebookWorld. But im still pretty sure that ill be working on new projects right here on this old grid for at least four more years.

keepcalm.jpg

 

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:


Pamela Galli wrote:


LaskyaClaren wrote:


Domitan Redenblack wrote:

COBY, you are saying:

 

Linden Labs also has the right to go out of business and lay off all workers, and wreck the investment of the owners.

 

This is "typical LL thinking" about customers. "It's our ball, so burn your shoes and outfits and property, OR just go away". 

 

The 3 Stooges of corporate management? Really?

 

Don't you think Linden really understands that losing customers is 100x easier than getting them?

 

 

 

 

In fairness, LL has, intentionally or not, let the cat out of the bag. You now have pretty fair warning that, t
wo years down the road at the latest, Second Life will become something of a lame duck.
You have, in other words, lots of time to respond: this wasn't sprung on us at the last possible moment.

 

For some, SL became a lame duck as soon as this announcement was made.  And the effect will snowball -- unless LL comes up with some kind of reassurance, and fast. 

 

Electronic Arts/Maxis announces new releases of The Sims series (each release completely incompatible with the previous one) long in advance of their actual release, and in fact they generally release $40 expansions for the current release (which won't be usable at all for the new release) AFTER the announcement. And people buy them anyway, because they feel like playing with them for the time being, and they know the new release won't be full-featured for some time.

Right now you're in a panic because you're afraid a huge group of people currently willing to pay a few dollars for an imaginary sofa will suddenly decide not to because they may only be able to use it for a couple of years instead of -- whatever the lifecycle of an imaginary sofa IS; I'm not sure if there have been any tests done in that area.

I am not "in a panic". I am reporting what some people are stating in forums about their plans to invest in SL after hearing the announcement. I dont know what effect the announcement will actually have, maybe none at all.

My concern as a merchant is not with sales of sofas that cost a couple of dollars but with high ticket feature rich items items like my mesh kitchens (which come with 'lifetime' updates that just got shortened). I would not be surprised if that sort of thing had sales impacted.

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Ebbe, considering we just heard that a beta will be ready next year, should you not be getting content creator in there now, or starting to have meetings with them? Or, did you already select a small group of FIC creators to steer your design? If that is the case, you will reap what you sow. I say the more people you bring in the better it will be. Fitted Mesh is a prime example of LL listening to bad ideas.

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Ebbe, considering we just heard that a beta will be ready next year, should you not be getting content creator in there now, or starting to have meetings with them? Or, did you already select a small group of FIC creators to steer your design? If that is the case, you will reap what you sow. I say the more people you bring in the better it will be. Fitted Mesh is a prime example of LL listening to bad ideas.

I bet it's teh same group they keep interviewing for their ideas they say we all want... You know, the new improvements to things that "content creators" asked for. Funny how all of the Creators here have all said they were stupid ideas. Not sure which creators LL talks to, but it isn't us.

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Thats just it.. LL has ZERO content in SL. It is all user created. They lose nothing to wipe it clean and start over. We are the ones that will lose out. And Ebbe did not say anything of the sort, what he said was "We can't make any promises at this point."  That is corporate speak for "You are F**ked."

What would be so hard in keeping both? Why does one have to replace the other? We have all spent a lot of moeny in SL. For them to not come out and say what will and wont be possible is idiotic. Almost as idiotic as leaking this on another forum that is not run by LL. That is like Comcast leaking info about a new channel line up on a commercial run only on DIsh Network. It was a slap in the face and further proof that they give less than a tinkers dam about us.

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:


Medhue Simoni wrote:

Ebbe, considering we just heard that a beta will be ready next year, should you not be getting content creator in there now, or starting to have meetings with them? Or, did you already select a small group of FIC creators to steer your design? If that is the case, you will reap what you sow. I say the more people you bring in the better it will be. Fitted Mesh is a prime example of LL listening to bad ideas.

I bet it's teh same group they keep interviewing for their ideas they say we all want... You know, the new improvements to things that "content creators" asked for. Funny how all of the Creators here have all said they were stupid ideas. Not sure which creators LL talks to, but it isn't us.

Don't get me wrong here either. I'm not blaming those creators, nor saying we should not think out of the box. I'm saying that LL obviously doesn't have paid talent to know whether something is a good idea or not, from a creative standpoint.

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I would be happy already if we could get to know early which data formats we will have to support in the future. It probably would help a lot for planning improvements of tools like Blender for example.

And yes, i am aware that its too early to ask this question. I just hope, whoever is responsible at LL will remember to not forget us :matte-motes-wink:

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Gaia Clary wrote:

I would be happy already if we could get to know early which data formats we will have to support in the future. It probably would help a lot for planning improvements of tools like Blender for example.

And yes, i am aware that its too early to ask this question. I just hope, whoever is responsible at LL will remember to not forget us :matte-motes-wink:

I will add, as it's obviously true, that Gaia could be LL's greatest asset from the standpoint of creation.

If I were LL, or Ebbe, I would pay Gaia a salary, just to pick her brain whenever possible.

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:


Medhue Simoni wrote:

Ebbe, considering we just heard that a beta will be ready next year, should you not be getting content creator in there now, or starting to have meetings with them? Or, did you already select a small group of FIC creators to steer your design? If that is the case, you will reap what you sow. I say the more people you bring in the better it will be. Fitted Mesh is a prime example of LL listening to bad ideas.

I bet it's teh same group they keep interviewing for their ideas they say we all want... You know, the new improvements to things that "content creators" asked for. Funny how all of the Creators here have all said they were stupid ideas. Not sure which creators LL talks to, but it isn't us.

Notice, that most of those ideas that we so called want, although I do like them, they are all coder stuff. So, again we see that coders have much more pull than content creators. If the coders need something to work on, how about fixing the 6 year old bug that breaks every single looping animation in SL? I'll also point out, that when you fix something, it is essentially like getting new features.

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Medhue Simoni wrote:


Gaia Clary wrote:

I would be happy already if we could get to know early which data formats we will have to support in the future. It probably would help a lot for planning improvements of tools like Blender for example.

And yes, i am aware that its too early to ask this question. I just hope, whoever is responsible at LL will remember to not forget us :matte-motes-wink:

I will add, as it's obviously true, that Gaia could be LL's greatest asset from the standpoint of creation.

If I were LL, or Ebbe, I would pay Gaia a salary, just to pick her brain whenever possible.

Agree! Be smart, involve Gaia Clary early.

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For us who make skins and shapes we need to get uv maps and all details like morph targets, rigging, support for facial expressions, finger and hand geometry, genitails, number of uv sets supported on the avatar, convertion utilities, differences between male and female uv mapping, layer support like diffuse bump spec normal ambient displacement opacity reflection refraction, legacy layer and uv support (if any), eyes, mouth and teeth, lashes, material zones in the face geometry if more than one, fully mapped figures as early as possible... the list goes on.  

 

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Well, i am first of all interested in how content upload will be supported at all. Maybe we will just import textures and (normal/specular/...)-maps, while avatar/creature/asset creation will become an embedded tool in SL-2 (who knows, don't constrain yourself with what you are used to) ...

 

  • Depending on what content we will be allowed to import, knowing early about the formats would be helpful.
  • Maybe at some point they will decide to use Collada 1.5, or drop Collada and use FBX instead. And hopefully not invent a proprietary format...
  • Maybe they will decide to use Collada for animation import, or keep with bvh, or anim, (or use FBX?).
  • Maybe there will be a standard skeleton (hopefully not)

All of that comes before "how many uv layers are supported" and such :matte-motes-smile: And as i mentioned before, certainly these questions can not be answered now (Ebbe already mentioned that it is is way too early for getting answers on these questions)

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Wonderful news,excellent LL and moving with the times.
A new platform is the way to go been waiting for this kinda news a long time,this is what is needed next gen VR,SL is a 11 years old now its stone age in the terms of tech and LL has only been patching it with mesh/fitted mesh ,project shining and so to try and keep it with the times.But they cant keep patching a system thats now almost stoneage.
So bring on the new VR world,LL has been the forefathers of it all i am sure they learnt alot over the last 11 years and put that experience to good use .

My wish list is :
State of the art graphics engine
Firestorm Dev Crew to help develop the new viewer (lets face it folks ,The firestorm is just way ahead of the sl viewer)

 

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