Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world

[arton Rotaru]

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Niecia Davi wrote:

 and expect us to reinvest all over again?

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No, they don't expect us to reinvest all over again. They expect (hope) that hundreds of millions of people will replace you anyway.

[winterthyme]

That's a useful summary - thanks.  A couple of follow up questions:

 

1. Any indication yet on what the scripting language will be - or which language one should have experience in to fast-track familiarity with the new "LSL"?

2. Any idea when, where and how people will be able to subscribe for alpha and beta testing?

 

Thanks!

[DesperadoReprise]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

 I'll be 70 later this year

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Really? I'm extremely surprised.

I assumed you were much older.

Perhaps your Early Onset Dementia fooled me.

"there's no time left"

[Racheal Rexen]

Hello Ebbe, thanks for taking the time to answer ours questions, My question is if the Adult Community will have a place in the new Virtual world? 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Racheal Rexen wrote:

Hello Ebbe, thanks for taking the time to answer ours questions, My question is if the Adult Community will have a place in the new Virtual world? 

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Best of luck getting a straight answer to *that* one!

"is there going to be anything?"

 

[Niecia Davi]

thats crap because if the current populace of sl thinks they are about to suffer a loss and stop buying the funding for sl2 drops off. These questions need legit answers and not the type of skirting replies such as the one you gave.

[arton Rotaru]

It's business as usual. Face it. They don't build this new platform for it's rather tiny paying customers userbase. Although, that's what they will end up with. They just try to reach out to higher grounds, be it with us, or without us.

[Niecia Davi]

This whole thing stinks the high heavens of corruption and greed.   This is not about them creating a "better viewer" this is more about the fact that a lot of the linden exchange that is currently going on is NOT going into their pocket and the only way they can stop that is to wipe the slate clean and rewrite a new sl that stops the bleed from their pocket and more appropriately puts it into their pocket.  They will have a rough time convincing me differently because they are all about money and what percentage of the pie they are currently getting. Too many other people and financial interest are getting a piece of the pie LL thinks that they are not getting and quite simply they want to change that and will do what rewriting they can to refunnel that cash they are not getting into THEIR pocket. it is a shame that they will in essence rip off millions of sl accounts and the hard earned dollars that the average persons earned and put into their inventory by wiping out those inventories they may feel as though they have the right and perhaps they do but it DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT!!

[Sylva Petrov]

Okay, I undestand that the format of animations will be changing. However, will their basic use in-world be changed, or will they remain playable assets kept in inventory? I.E. once created, will they be used similarly to how they are currently used in SL or will they be applied in a very different manner. Please Ebbe, any details you can offer on animations would be a massive help in reassuring myself and my customers that we're game on.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

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Racheal Rexen wrote:

Hello Ebbe, thanks for taking the time to answer ours questions, My question is if the Adult Community will have a place in the new Virtual world? 

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I am not Ebbe, but he has previously said that he sees the new world having some sort of G/M/A system as it does now, and he sees the new world as having room for all sorts of communities.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

 

ToS will not be an issue. 

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The ToS is an issue NOW!! You told us you would have it fixed months ago.

[Hatusuhari]

What about all of the things people have gotten in this game. Why would we cross over to a server were we have to SPEND an gain new things

[Drake1 Nightfire]

With animations and avatars changing "radically" will mesh clothing have to be re-rigged or will we be able to use the ones we already have?

[Phoebe Avro]

I have just had another thought what about all the non English speaking residents in SL do they have a clue about this news?

Its all very well and talking in this thread  but i do believe the German people are the second largest number of people in SL

Ebbe wie gut Ihr Deutsch ist?

[Gaia Clary]

From all that i learned today especially from Ebbe's answers about the new world i now am rather confident that the following assumptions are fulfilled in one way or the other:

 

1. We will get the ability to upload static meshes (furniture, houses...)
2. We will get the ability to upload custom skeletons (rigged meshes)
3. We will get the ability to upload animatrions for our custom skeletons

 

With these 3 assumptions in mind i predict:

Legacy Characters

We will be able to upload characters which are 100% compatible to what we have in Second Life now. We already can create these charaters outside of SL since a long time. Importing them to the new world using FBX or collada should not be a problem. So should this not be provided by Linden lab, we can do this.

Regarding shape editing we can currently not make any statement about whether this can be supported or not. That depends highly on how the new animation system will be implemented and if customizable shaping will be provided in some way.

Legacy Animations

Whatever format LL will support for animations, as long as the new format is specified we will most probably be able to convert .bvh and even .anim files into that format and get our legacy avatar uploads animated in the new system using the existing animations. I predict that bvh will be an accepted format (just by thinking about standards).

Sculpted Prims support

We will certainly be able to convert Sculpted Prims into efficient meshes with the help of conversion tools. we can read sculptmaps and we can create the corresponding meshes since a long time. Upload to the new world should be no big issue as well. So again, should there be no tool provided by LL, we will have it.

So for now all is said from my side. I can now happily turn back to my daily work and wait for the specifications to show up.

@Ebbe: thank you very much for your answers. They helped us a LOT to make some preliminary decisions.

[SkyeRyder Varriale]

  I want to add that whenever news like this is revealed there are tons of "Yaktivists" who do nothing but complain about how the sky is falling.  It's human nature to assume the worse but let's wait and see what happens before we jump to conclusions. I have expressed my main concerns in a previous post here, but I am willing to wait and see before I make any decisions. Overall, SL has to improve technically at some point. It's the way they decide to do it that will make or break them.

[Hatusuhari]

My question is what about the THINGS people have bought. Why start on a new server when we have to buy new things, when they can just imporve sl. Can we send out invenrtory to the new 2,0 sl?

[Pamela Galli]

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Hatusuhari wrote:

My question is what about the THINGS people have bought. Why start on a new server when we have to buy new things, when they can just imporve sl. Can we send out invenrtory to the new 2,0 sl?

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How about read the thread to see which questions have already been addressed?

[Zena Zemlja]

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SkyeRyder Varriale wrote:

  I want to add that whenever news like this is revealed there are tons of "Yaktivists" who do nothing but complain about how the sky is falling.  It's human nature to assume the worse but let's wait and see what happens before we jump to conclusions. I have expressed my main concerns in a previous post here, but I am willing to wait and see before I make any decisions. Overall, SL has to improve technically at some point. It's the way they decide to do it that will make or break them.

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I'm with you on this.

It also makes a huge different when and how to announce changes. The announcement should have been a formal one, sent to all residents same time, with vital information on what can be transferred etc. Just posting somewhere there will be a new sl and lots will change and lots of content may not be useful anymore, that's asking for trouble.

There is one post now from Ebbe that makes things a bit more clear: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Linden-Lab-is-building-a-NEW-virtual-world/m-p/2758334#M185698

But still a lot of questions remain unanswered and worst case scenario it may lead to people leaving sl, or at best not buying or building anymore, which will have an effect on sl economy. So the sooner more detailed information can be given in a formal message to all residents, the better. 

[Zena Zemlja]

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Hatusuhari wrote:

My question is what about the THINGS people have bought. Why start on a new server when we have to buy new things, when they can just imporve sl. Can we send out invenrtory to the new 2,0 sl?

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Some of this has been answered here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Linden-Lab-is-building-a-NEW-virtual-world/m-p/2758334#M185698

You're welcome.

[Qie Niangao]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

 

ToS will not be an issue. 

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The ToS is an issue NOW!! You told us you would have it fixed months ago.

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While I agree with this sentiment -- the ToS is a dreadfully wasteful distraction at this point, and needs to be fixed now so that Ebbe and other Lindens can communicate effectively, instead of triggering this same old problem over and over again...

although that's all true, what Ebbe was actually saying about the ToS was quite different, and quite interesting for its implications about the next platform. In the context of what he was replying to, it can only mean that any content in current SL is eligible to transfer to the new platform (separate from whether it technically can, or would work there). That is, they will exercise the rights that they've had since the very beginning of SL to interpret "the service" inclusive of the new platform. Creators, then, do not need to give any additional license of their content for it to appear on that new grid -- they've already given it, all the way back to the first prim ever rezzed by any resident.

[Innula Zenovka]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

I pretty much only said these things:

We are embarking on a huge project to build a better virtual world from the ground up.

We are not going to constrain how good it can be by forcing some levels of backwards compatability (Sine then I've added some detail that identity and social connections and Lindens$ will come across and quite a bit of content as well, but with content we need more time to figure out exactly what will be backwards compatible, people will have plenty of time to see how this plays out and get a chance to try the new while still also hanging out in SL)

We will continue to invest in SL and keep improving and have no plans for any shutdown. 

The rest is all speculation that has since then popped up. 

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Thank you very much for re-stating that.    I'm struck -- maybe I shouldn't be -- by the vast, and frequently baroque, structures of speculation that people have built, both here and at SLU, on so small a foundation.

 

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And yet nobody has said that the sky is falling

 

(unless I missed it)

 

ETA: It takes very little to have plenty of people here either jumping ship, threatening to jump ship, claiming the people will leave in droves, stating quite categorically that LL has shot themswelves in the foot, done something that will cause SL to fail, kill their profits, etc. etc. It's always like that here. We are a drama-loving people

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[Perrie Juran]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

 

Get the Lindens back inworld -

 I remember the Linden Village area, inworld meetings, Lindens just hanging around just talking to passers by.  I haven't seen a Linden since M was CEO and their inworld presence got cut back.  It was reassuring to have staff inworld...proof they used the product they created.

Ebbe says: I removed the restriction that was in place for Lindens to be inworld. I'm not going to force people in there, but nothing is stopping them now. I go in as much as I can to hang out and chat with people. 

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If you need to build a new viewer, then you really need to have the people making the design decisions on the GUI spending time In World.  They need to try their hand at building.  They need to spend time flying or sailing.  They need to spend time at a Club. 

Because if things aren't made simplist for people, then you are still at square one with where the rubber meets the road.....where I am sitting at my computer.

I can show you common activities that used to take one mouse click that now require three in the Official Viewer.

You know why I use a TPV?  It's not for the bells and whistles.  It's because of a couple of simple little things that we repeatedly asked to be implemented in the Official Viewer that have been ignored for years.

If they don't spend some time In World they will just be building in the dark.

 

[Teager]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

You asked: 

1 - What type of assets are more likelly to be transferable to SL2 and what probably not? (meshes, animations, sculpts, scripts, textures, builds made of normal prims, system clothing ?)

We don't have all the answers to this one yet, but several areas will have radical improvements and thus not possible to be fully backwards compatible. 

Mesh is ok (but with better lighting and other tech you may want to make tweaks)

Animations will change (major mprovements as we don't currently do it the way it should be done)

Sculpts (TBD, but not as is, but maybe converted to Mesh?)

Scripts (major improvement, so will change)

Textures ok

Prims (TBD, but probably not as is)

Avatars will be radically improved as well so a lot TBD 

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Let me start by saying... I'm thrilled to see news of a new, improved grid. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of the changes we've been needing and have been unable to build on the old platform.

But... seeing that animations will change has made me very nervous. As a creator of mesh avatars which must be fully custom animated, you've just implied that my entire line of work may need to be redone for SL2. So this brings up one major question which, from my point of view, could be the single make-or-break factor for SL2:

Will mesh avatar creators finally be able to create and name our own custom armatures?

Providing this high-demand feature to mesh avatar creators could allow us to do so much - rigged mesh wings, tails, rigged faces, rigged fingers and toes. And (perhaps now more importantly) would prevent mesh avatar creators and animators from essentially having to start over on our creations.

Is custom armature creation a feature we can hope to see with the new grid?

[Maklin Deckard]

There is so much wrong here, speculation, suggesting things I said that I never said, or somehow suggesting that I, or the great people here are responsible for what happened five or ten years ago....but here we go, I'll respond to some of this stuff, but I'll skip all the stuff about problems in the past...that was the past...and by the way, all that "crazy" stuff has given us the best virtual world there has even been and still is. So somehow people here managed to do something right over the years...

First off, thanks for the reply.

Every organization has a reputation.   You come here and act shocked and clueless as to why a significant portion of your playerbase distrust you.    That is why I listed past problems.  LL EARNED a bad rep with many, accept that or not, it takes more than a new CEO and a promised new world to overcome that.

I never said LL did nothing right.  I said they did enough things that were wrong, copped attitudes with the players when confronted with bugs, etc. enough to make a subset of customers distrust anything they say.  I expeienced the things I listed firsthand, watched communities destroyed and friends leave due to decisions of the 'great people' at LL..PLEASE tell me why I should disregard past behavior trust you?

And as far as the best virtual world, I think perhaps it would be more correct to say the ONLY virtual world.   You can get away with a lot (and have) when you are the only game in town.  Not to say I have not had fun in SL, but not as much as might have been with better decisions by the powers that be.

Ebbe says: I removed the restriction that was in place for Lindens to be inworld. I'm not going to force people in there, but nothing is stopping them now. I go in as much as I can to hang out and chat with people. 

Thank you for that.   It was a very good call.    And I would not expect you to force anyone inworld.  I rather miss seeing the various Lindens inworld and actually interacting with them, seeing what they like, what they have built, etc..   I remember when a (now ex-) Linden showed me a build he made with some of my builds.  And another (ex-) that had a clock I gave her as a gift in her inworld home she was decorating.  I had a little more trust for Lindens when one knew their choices affected them as well instead of just being faceless bots in it for a paycheck.  I am currently transitioning out of SL and VR...made that decision last night...but when I was more active and engaged, I'd have not minded meeting you inworld.  Hell, probably would have given you one of my (now dated) prim builds just for fun.

Ebbe says: I don't think doing that would be a meaningful difference in the success of SL. 

Agree to disagree ont his one.    I've had many friends over the years leave over the crashes and such from the LL client.  I use Firestorm for this very reason, even though I'd prefer to use the LL client, but it runs badly and crashes for me...and it lacks features.

Ebbe says: We have. SL is a lot better today than it was a couple of years ago. But there is a limit to how much better we can make it...and how much effort it takes to move forward incrementally. 

In some ways better, in others worse.   From a TECHNICAL standpoint, better.   But the population drops cause by some of the fiasco's I listed in the 'history/reputation' part you glossed over, not so much better socially.

Ebbe says: That is your opinion. But I know that the more distant future will have to go way beyond what incrementally can be done to SL. And it's either us or someone else...

Again, agree to disagree.    I am not privy to internal discussions, but I can't shake the feeling this is more a reaction to HiFi and Oculus/Facebook than anything else.   Let's draw in the masses with eye candy at the expense of the folks currently here.   That's cool, but it didn't work with the corps and tie-ins like CSI..the casuals came and left.

Ebbe says: Again, your speculating a lot. You won't lose your name. A lot of content will work fine. Some won't. And that would be true regardless if we improved SL incrementally or started from scratch to get modern tech and capabiliteis done right. 

Again, agree to disagee.   I can only go by your past actions and reputation as a company.   I read your posts today, a lot of content apparently means 'mesh only' since you said that the scripting will change / prims will change and sculpts MAY be imported as mesh.   Since everything I have that I would want in SL2.0 is prim/sculpt-based and scripted with LSL (INCLUDING most of my AV), you confirmed a lot of my fears...I will be losing most everything and starting over unlike incremental changes where I'd lose it a little at a time.    And glad you mentioned about the names not being lost...That is a very wise decision on your part!   Would have been nice had you actually mentioned it at some point previous to my post.

Ebbe says: Let's see what you think when you see it. And sticking with SL is fine, it will be around for a very long time **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif" border="0" alt=":smileywink:" title="Smiley Wink" />

I would LIKE to believe you, but I have never seen a business that kept the old product going alongside the new.  The old product either got killed off, or put into maintenance mode, so as not to compete with the 'new and improved' product  To take a page from games, how much DLC gets published for Game v1.0 when Game v2.0 hits the shelves?  Basically, none.

I honestly have no desire to try 2.0, Ebbe, so we won't be seeing what I think of it.  But it is a nice sentiment.     You seem like a decent enough person, Ebbe, and I am sorry if I offended you.  I say what I am thinking and I don't play sugar-coat words with others, but you REALLY need to consider the relation between past behavior and reputation and the negative reaction to the vagueness of your announcement.  I wish you luck on your new project and on trying to keep SL 1.0 going.