Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world

[Magnus Brody]

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Mony Lindman wrote:

ok .. here i go :

 

- Linden Lab gimme a kiss

- "TBD but not as is"

 

.. would that sell ?

 

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Might need some work.

[Zena Zemlja]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

"LL isn't the only company working on making a next-gen virtual world right now."

Who else does so? I mean, with nipples included?

:matte-motes-nerdy:

---

 

I'm afraid nipples will be forever adult content, female nipples that is. I don't know why male nipples are no adult content, as they do look the same as female nipples, but I guess they are moderate content because male breasts are less sexual to... I don't know really to who, I actually think they are quite sexy.... but anyways, not sure if they are allowed as moderate or general content or maybe after my post as adult content only like female ones... :matte-motes-evil:

[Magnus Brody]

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Zena Zemlja wrote:

I actually do write poetry and do sell them, either illustrated and framed or on a notecard, and yes, they do sell on notecards. You cannot make them no copy though, otherwise no one can read the notecard (something I never really understood about the permissions of notecards). But you can make them no mod and, if you wish so, no trans too. 

Who ever would have thought eight years ago when I registered for sl that my poetry would be a business to survive best all current plans and changes to come! 

:smileylol:

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Difficult to no transfer as copy, then paste to new notecard lets new owner set their own perms?

[DesperadoReprise]

I should point out, not just to the ESLers, that there is a world of difference between poetry and your doggerel.

"The queen of diamonds let you down, she was just an empty fable; the queen of hearts you say you never met"

[DesperadoReprise]

Is Alexie Vlodovic an alt of Ebbe Linden?

"is there going to be anything left?"

[Zena Zemlja]

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Magnus Brody wrote:

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Zena Zemlja wrote:

I actually do write poetry and do sell them, either illustrated and framed or on a notecard, and yes, they do sell on notecards. You cannot make them no copy though, otherwise no one can read the notecard (something I never really understood about the permissions of notecards). But you can make them no mod and, if you wish so, no trans too. 

Who ever would have thought eight years ago when I registered for sl that my poetry would be a business to survive best all current plans and changes to come! 

:smileylol:

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Difficult to no transfer as copy, then paste to new notecard lets new owner set their own perms?

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It actually is not of much use to set permissions on notecards, because even when no modify, one can indeed always copy paste the text to a new notecard. I sell them copy trans no mod, the latter only to stress the importance of the fact that they are copyrighted poems. The illustrated and framed editions of the poems are prims with mod, trans, no copy permissions. But prims seem to be changing in the new viewer. Worst case scenario that means I may have to reframe about a thousand artworks to continue my business. :matte-motes-confused:

[Perrie Juran]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

you said: 

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.

 

Which little things? Thanks!

---

You could, as you are already seeing, start a thread just on this.

And I go could off a long "rant" here.

I'll start with culprit number 1.  The camera window.  We have been asking for it to be made resizable for years.  In the TPV's it is.....it takes up 1/4 less of my screen at smallest size.  And not only that...compare Firestorm with the Official Viewer:

      

Note how in Firestorm (on the right) everything is on top.  I don't have to drill down to another window to change from rear view to side or front view.  And I switch between them regularly....especially before I go out, I always check I've got my zipper pulled up.       (And yes I know about alt cam: it has its purposes too).

 

2.  Command line functions.  I can change settings 'on the fly.'  One of the most popular features in the TPV's is the ability to change draw distance with a simple command as an anti-lag tool.  When I'm dancing in a Club I don't need to be drawing objects 512 meters away.  So when I go to a club all I need to do is type "dd 64" in my chat bar and my draw is reset.  When I go flying and I need it higher, all I need to do is type "dd 256" or however far I want to see and instant gratification.  In the Official Viewer I have to open the preference window and it interupts what I'm doing.

3. Which would bring me to CHUI and the Chat bar in general.  I got involved in the Beta Testing.  My thread on it, Chewing on CHUI.  The design of the interface is flawed from the ground up.  It is also that project that really convinced me that the Devs (or whoever was the decision maker) did not have a Second Life.

You probably don't know that CHUI almost went live without a chat bar.  There are many commonly used scripted objects that rely on chat commands.  Having to open the whole CHUI window to do so is silly.  Likewise, if I'm at a club and all I want to do is participate in local chat I don't need the CHUI window chewing up all that real estate on my screen.

The chat bar was and is a need, not a want.  There's a whole list of things in the CHUI JIRA on that.  What stunned many of us is that we had to 'make an argument' for it.  That's what convinced me the person or persons responsible didn't have a Second Life.

 

3.  Firestorm allows me to auto-respond to any one who messages me with out setting to busy.  The danger of "busy" is that inventory offers go to trash.  I don't have to worry about that with Firestorms auto-respond function.  Not only that but it has a filter.  I can set it to respond to 'non-friends' only.

4.  Legacy Profiles.  The old interface far exceeds the new in ease of use.  See my discussion with Torley starting with message 12 here.  That is where my comment about something that used to take one mouse click now needing three comes from. 

The reason you don't hear more flap about all these things is because the majority of your users are using a TPV.  TPV's have their place.  They add a lot of other functionality that enhance people's SL.  But when it comes to basic things, they shouldn't need to be having to tear them apart to make them simpler and easier to use. At least that is my opinion on the subject.

[Pussycat Catnap]

So if Ebbe's still reading this my question is as a landowner...

 

What will happen to the land I have, if I decide to move to SL2?

Will I be able to go in there and 'claim' a like amount of land, or put in a ticket to have a plot of similar shape?

(ask your staff about how the move to Zindra was done in 2009 - will a program like or better than that be in place?)

 

It took me years in SL to find the right shaped piece of cliffside land... Its the sort of land most SL users do NOT like... but that enough few are passionate about that I basically end up in 'bidding wars' with the same few other folks that each time I've moved, I've seen them either as my new neighbors or eventually showing up...

- We're mainland freaks... we rather like a large connected continent, and we like certain things about that depending on where in mainland we've ended up.

 

Just as fond as I am of my cliff... is how I feel for my place in Bay City... where I also now have the memory of a friend from there having passed away in real life...

That presents for me two complications. On the one I would want some guarantee of being able to get an equivalent lot to my place in Bay City... (which cost me several hundred real life dollars...) and I worry about the permancy of memorials now made in rememberance of my friend.

 

[Mony Lindman]

thanks.. but ..

you say:

Animations:

Depending on the format that will be used internally and for transport into SL2 it will be no big issue to transfer old animations to the new system provided you play them on legacy avatars (see above). I suspect the transfer format will be either BVH or FBX (and we are capable to convert .bvh and .anim to these formats for that purpose)

Also the fact that we will get NPC's will probably make the animators very excited. So i bet that many LSL based animations will be migrated to Bone based animations anyways ...

- Well , Ebbe said the format will be FBX but what worries me in fact is that Sylva Petrov who is the most important creator of full permission animations for builders in SL, didn't get a clear YES answer from Ebbe to these quesstions:

Sylva Petrov wrote:

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.

---

I don't eactly know yet...TBD

.. so, if there is no clear YES to questions like "will they remain playable assets kept in inventory" and "will they be used similarly to how they are currently used in SL or will they be applied in a very different manner" , you will understand that, as a creator of animated items who invested a big amount of money in thousands of full permission animations , i'm worried..

Sylva ensured her customers that she will do all to adapt all animations to the new world and the same licence will be valid in both worlds .. but will it be at all possible to adapt them when not even Ebbe knows if they will be used and applied in the same way or differently ?

What if they are related to a "scene", as FBX in fact should be .. and will they work on avatars with customized armatures ? I dont know and Ebbe seems to not know either, so .. you can bet im worried ..

[Chic Aeon]

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Zena Zemlja wrote:

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Imagin Illyar wrote:

The main viewer doesn't have derender?  I couldn't live without derender.  I use it every day in my work.

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It's one of those things you really don't want to miss once you know what it can do for you. 

I really think it would be a smart thing to get all features from current viewer

plus

all tpv's up on the new platform, and then add some brand new ones to it that will blow us away in an huge aww. 

---

As I understand it, that can't be done right now because as stated in the Firestorm meetings and somewhere at the beginning of this gonnamakehistory thread -- Linden Lab has special contracts with developers so that their code becomes part of the Linden viewer and is not governed by the "sharing" that the regular license uses (sorry, forgot the term but sort of like creative commons - open source where you are required to SHARE your improvements) 

So while The Lab COULD add in some features, they will need to negotiate or remake some of the third party viewer features if they want to add them.

 

And yes, for those of you that do not use the LL viewer it would be good to at least install and try it. LOL. It is pretty painful when you are used to all your powerful bells and whistles. I had to use it for awhile when materials came out. I cringed a lot but made it through.  I predict that the viewer will be a BIG part of the acceptance of the new world.

 

AND -- I am not sure about something you said earlier about the Z axis. You CAN change that in the Edit Shape menu -- first pane which I think is "body" or something like that. Bottom. It is called Hover. If you are going to USE that shape you need to save it. If you are just taking photos and need your feet to touch the ground, you can simply minimize the window.

LL was very nice and included that in a round about way when the original height changing was broken due to some improvements; I can't remember what exactly broke it.

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Gaia Clary wrote:

So, here is a short summary of what we (a few enthusiasts) think about migration from SL1 to SL2. Maybe this can take away some of the fear that we see flooding around since a couple of days.

Prims:

Are parametric

meshes

. That is: these meshes are defined by geometric parameters instead of vertices, edges and faces. From how these elements work i can imagine that some features might survive, others not. I have no idea if current features can be mapped to new features, but i guess that there will be at least a chance to get things ported "to some extent". However there might be better ways than trying to move prims over to SL2 as they are.

Sculpts:

Are

meshes

with a predefined flat mesh-topology (technically very similar to NURBS). And since they are regular meshes by all means, there is in principle nothing to worry about their migration to SL2, except their huge inefficiency (in most cases). The fact that they are cheaper than meshes regarding LI is not because they are more efficient but due to historical decisions.

Avatars

: are

meshes

with associated Riggs. And Riggs will become much more customizable than what we have today. Custom riggs will most probably make it already possible to transfer the current avatar to SL2 including its UV textures. Where it becomes tricky is when it comes to Morph shapes. If we get Morph shapes, then it becomes possible in principle to migrate the

legacy Avatar's

shape editor to SL2. Of course this highly depends on what capabilities the new system will have.

 

System Clothes:

Are textures basically. It might become possible to migrate system clothes into textures and from there it is no problem to get them into SL2. And finally put on a legacy avatar if desired. I bet this will be mostly a matter of license policies (extract textures from the system cloth items and trasnfer these to the new system)

Scripts

: will change dramatically i guess. So indeed scripts need to be mostly rewritten for the new system. So workload will come from here. But maybe that is not as bad as it sounds in first place.

 

Animations:

Depending on the format that will be used internally and for transport into SL2 it will be no big issue to transfer old animations to the new system provided you play them on legacy avatars (see above). I suspect the transfer format will be either BVH or FBX (and we are capable to convert .bvh and .anim to these formats for that purpose)

Also the fact that we will get NPC's will probably make the animators very excited. So i bet that many LSL based animations will be migrated to Bone based animations anyways ...

Currency:

This has already been answered: We will keep with Linden$. And that implies that the currency will remain stable during the transition phase... i believe...

I think that all questions about migration will be addressed and answered sooner or later by LL. How the migration will take place and how much effort tool makers will have to put into this, and how easy it will become for merchants and users... 

Of course there is no answer yet for all of this. But from general assumptions i am very confident that a lot can be one

---

Sorry Gaia, I just want to add a few points to your well done list here.

Prims, Sculpts, Meshes: Some people are assuming that we will still use Land Impact as a measure. I seriously doubt that it will all work the same, as the whole point of Land Impact was to try and match mesh land costs with prims and sculpties. We will no longer have to do that, and I'd be willing to bet that large meshes will not be penalized like they are now in SL.

Animations: It's just wrong to think that somehow animation works like other assets. Animation is a somewhat universal asset for games, and converting animation to fit different skeletons is not all that difficult, and there are a number of ways and tools. Sometimes you might use a 3rd party tool, or sometimes it is done in the game engine, like Unity3D. Plus, in almost all motion capture systems, you import the avatar you want the animation to work on, and the mocap system fits it to the avatar you import. You then export that animation right from that avatar's skeleton. Most of the animator that work fulltime animating, aren't going to be rattled by a skeletal change. The animators that only use the simpler tools like Qavimator, will likely get some tools to convert things easily.

To make my point about animation a little clearer, I'll give you a good example. I have motion capture that I created that I sell on 5 different platforms, which all use a different skeleton. The same animations, just applied to different skeletons, although, I generally do have to adjust things by hand, a little.

[Vivienne Schell]

"..when not even Ebbe knows.."

My impression is that when the CEO does not even know exactly about basical features of the product he just announced, and is not even capable to clarify on essential topics, there is something basically going wrong.

:smileyvery-happy:

[Mony Lindman]

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Magnus Brody wrote:

---

Mony Lindman wrote:

ok .. here i go :

 

- Linden Lab gimme a kiss

- "TBD but not as is"

 

.. would that sell ?

 

---

Might need some work.

---

OK .. the poem continues in SL 2 :

 

We can kiss here in the hall

aaa .. but there is no poseball ..

 

[Vivienne Schell]

HIgh Fidelity can´t be compared to Second Life at all. It´s something different for different porpose and miles away from launch. Tho you never know with Phil. He certainly is capable of performing the most stunning PR loops.

OK; Facebook. Do you think Facebook will have the guts to face the anarchist maliciousness of the SL audience? Nipples? NIPPLES?

Facebook will certainly go total mainstream, which means cleansie teensie inbetweensie. If LL actually wants to build a business on competing with Facebook on Facebook level this would be as suicidal as you would try to compete with a Gepard on the 200m sprint distance.

Umm, no. Otherwise all there is "something we don´t know of". Which is nothing at all.

[Mony Lindman]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

 

Sorry Gaia, I just want to add a few points to your well done list here.

Prims, Sculpts, Meshes

: Some people are assuming that we will still use Land Impact as a measure. I seriously doubt that it will all work the same, as the whole point of Land Impact was to try and match mesh land costs with prims and sculpties. We will no longer have to do that, and I'd be willing to bet that large meshes will not be penalized like they are now in SL.

Animations:

It's just wrong to think that somehow animation works like other assets. Animation is a somewhat universal asset for games, and converting animation to fit different skeletons is not all that difficult, and there are a number of ways and tools. Sometimes you might use a 3rd party tool, or sometimes it is done in the game engine, like Unity3D. Plus, in almost all motion capture systems, you import the avatar you want the animation to work on, and the mocap system fits it to the avatar you import. You then export that animation right from that avatar's skeleton. Most of the animator that work fulltime animating, aren't going to be rattled by a skeletal change. The animators that only use the simpler tools like Qavimator, will likely get some tools to convert things easily.

To make my point about animation a little clearer, I'll give you a good example. I have motion capture that I created that I sell on 5 different platforms, which all use a different skeleton. The same animations, just applied to different skeletons, although, I generally do have to adjust things by hand, a little.

---

Yes, ok but I can not adjust by hand the full perm animations that I bought in SL, after they were converted and moved to the new grid. And even if the creator does this for all customers who bought their anims and we get them in SL2 again.. is it possible for the creator to convert them in such a way that they will fit to all possible skeletons that will be there ?

 

[Ebbe Linden]

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

Ebbe Linden wrote:

---

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? 

---

We have no plans to disallow anything that's going on in SL and is legal. We're proud of the freedom we offer. 

 

---

Thanks! This is one of the questions I was going to ask.

I'm not, like many asking here, a landowner, and I haven't been a creator for 3 years or so (pre-mesh), so I'm more interested in the social dynamics, community, communications tools, and so forth. I'm sure some of these you are not going to be in a position to answer yet, but . . .

 

 

• Following up on the answer above, do you see the Community Standards as remaining more or less stable?
  - just read them again. Seems reasonable to me...but way to early to be specific on something like this...
• Will there still be free avatar accounts? (I assume that accounts will remain anomymous/pseudonymous.)
  -yes, that's what we're thinking
• if there are free accounts, will there be limits on the number of accounts (I think there are, theoretically, now, but if so it isn't enforced).
  -we have some thoughts around this but too early to be clear on it
• Will there be built-in viewer building tools for things like mesh, comparable to what currently exists for prims, so that more creation can be accomplished in-world?
  -we want to allow for inworld creation that's easy, and support high end external tools...but again, early days...
• Will the new VW feature a version of the LEA, so that support will continue for the arts on the new grid (this is an important question for me).
  -has not been discussed, too early to know such details...but have nothing against it
• The move to make the new world work for Oculus Rift notwithstanding, will the viewer UI continue to be relatively friendly and usable for those using more old-fashioned tech? (I.e., a mouse and keyboard)
  -yes
• I am delighted and impressed by your answers here -- do you see other forms of consultation with residents in the future? And not just with the high-end land barons or content creators?
  -for sure we will include more and more people as we progress and have more details and product to show.

That's probably a good start . . . ;-)

---

 

[Innula Zenovka]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

"..when not even Ebbe knows.."

My impression is that when the CEO does not even know exactly about basical features of the product he just announced, and is not even capable to clarify on essential topics, there is something basically going wrong.

:smileyvery-happy:

---

As a scripter, I don't find it particularly strange that they haven't yet decided which scripting language to use -- there are a few obvious options (and one very obvious one) but I can see why they don't yet want to take a final decision.   Similarly, my animator friend and business partner isn't particularly worried they haven't yet made any final decisions about animation formats and so on.   

[MartinRJ Fayray]

I think this is a great opportunity!
I hope that at some point LL will work on VW together with High Fidelity, because some very cool former Linden Labs developers are now part of the HF team.
I am very happy that LL and Ebbe Linden listened to the community, and made the decision to re-create Second Life from scratch.
Also I am more than happy that Oz is now the new technical director of Second Life, he is awesome!
And I'm also glad that Maestro is still around, because he is awesome, too!

Thanks a ton for listening to your customers!

I'm just a bit worried that SL could lose all it's great communities if residents partly leave SL and go to the new world.
The communities (clubs, themed sims, groups) are what drives Second Life,
for many residents it's mainly just a chat-platform.

It would really be cool if people could jump from Second Life servers to the new world and back, or have private chat and voicechat and group chat between both platforms.

I think the most important target group for both, the old and the new Linden World are the existing Second Life communities. People would still come together, find friends, chat and purchase some clothes or avatars, if there was no user-generated content at all (and the former LL CEO Rod Humble, who previously developed The Sims 2  knew that pretty well, as The Sims 2 had no user-generated content at all). Of course content developers are a big and important group in SL, as they are paying for in-world stores, and have to attract visitors who go to their shops, and buy and use their content. But it's friendship and the excitement of finding new friends, and the opportunity to go to a public community-sandbox to chat and find other people who share your interests, at a place where you already found a couple of friends, which actually makes people coming back, and logging in to Second Life again, and keeps them here in this wonderful place.

The most important group of residents are the existing communities, Clubs, Themed regions, Groups, FRIENDS on the friendslist.



Furthermore I hope, that Linden Lab will design their new virtual world in a more global attempt, and will make use of a distributed server infrastructure when they design the regions/simulators of the new virtual Linden world.
Right now who doesn't live in North-America is damned to have a ping above 200ms everywhere else in the world, because there are no region-servers (or ANY LL servers) outside the US, which makes it a lot harder to use Second Life from other parts in the world.

It would be great if the new Linden world allows region-hosts in other parts of the world, like Germany or Great Britain or Asia, so that German regions for example can choose to have their region hosted in Frankfurt, to have a better ping, lower latency, and a smoother and better Second Life experience.

I hope that the new Linden VW does NOT depend on a public resident wiki like it was when they created the first Second Life, there should be internal written specifications of the software, and also undocumented code is a no-go for professional software. Facebook won't buy it if you can't provide them with any written specs

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Mony Lindman wrote:

---

---

Yes, ok but I can not adjust by hand the full perm animations that I bought in SL, after they were converted and moved to the new grid. And even if the creator does this for all customers who bought their anims and we get them in SL2 again.. is it possible for the creator to convert them in such a way that they will fit to all possible skeletons that will be there ?

 

---

Yes, it is possible. This is all just speculating tho. Who knows how it works out in the end. Like Gaia and I were discussing earlier, LL will likely have some kind of default skeleton. We obviously won't have to use that skeleton, but using that skeleton might be the only way to have animations that fit every1, depending on how LL does it.

It could be possible to make a bone system where it could use any animation imported. Off the top of my head, I can imagine a system where the creators were simply given a bone naming standard. So, the creator just labels his bones according to that standard. Inside this new world, if an animation is played and the avatar has bones that match with the bone names in the animation, then it animates the avatar. If it worked like this, I could imagine making lion animations that every lion avatar could use, because they would all use the same naming standards for the bones.

Here is maybe an easier to understand example of what I'm talking about. Let's imagine that I make animation for a tail. If every tail creator in the new SL names their bones like tail_1, tail_2, tail_3, and so on, then the animation will work with every single tail.

 

Now, of course, I have no idea what LL has planned. I'm just saying that almost anything is possible if you think about it long enough.

[irihapeti]

---

Simone Arsenault wrote:

I am sorry but you make me smiling. In my european country, so many huge companies were sued and forced to backtrack because : not everything that you are forced to sign with prior agreement means that is acceptable.

In my country consumers have legal protection fortunately.

---

i think you will find that the legislation refers to the issue of dispute resolution. and the provision of info on any ToS/ToC prior to purchase

many companies Terms were presented as a take-it-or-leave proposition and if you have a issue with the product subsequent to purchase then tough. You shouldnt have bought it in the first place was their response

was particularly rampant this with shrinkwrap goods. Software in particular. Where the ToC/ToS was written on a piece of paper inside the box which you coudnt view prior to purchase without breaking open the packaging. Which the retailer/seller would prevent you from doing without buying it first. bc other customers not happy to buy a product off the shelf where the packaging seals had been broken. Catch-22 

the legislation pretty much curbed these practices

+

so these days in most western countries (mine also)

- manufacturer must have a disputes resolution process

- If manufacturer have ToC/ToS then must make this available for viewing prior to purchase. ergo: ToC/ToS printed on the exterior of the packaging. Or common these days a link to manufacturer website where can view in detail before purchase

- retailer cannot prevent/hide manufacturer-provided info from their own customers

 

[Vivienne Schell]

Beta will be within six months and they do not have a clue on FORMATS? Nor on the visual appearance? Infrastructure? Graphics Engine? Server Software? Database? Legal and community framework? Whatever?

Sorry, but the investor who bought this must be pretty simple minded.

[Vivienne Schell]

"Yes, it is possible. This is all just speculating tho." So the "yes it is possible" is speculating too, right?

[Mony Lindman]

Thank you. I hope they will think about all the details ..

There are also a lot of full perm animations made by animators who are no longer in SL so they can not make any modifications. And some other animators probably would not know how .. I hope there will be some "tool" to convert these bvh anims to whatever format will be used, or maybe LL could convert them upon moving them.. and then we must only pray that they will fit to all those skeletons..

[Perrie Juran]

That reminds me of something, maybe a good note for Ebbe's file.

I'm certain at some point you'll need to address the geography of the New World.

If you do Continents, make sure that the boating/sailing community can circumnavigte them. 

Right now do to the lack of protected land/water, it is not possible to do.

Also Intercontinental boating should be made possible.

Flying also has it's problems over Main Land because of issues with 'ban lines'

As a percentage of the entire community I don't know how many people fly or boat.  But I'd be pretty sure that it is not an insignificant percent.

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Vivienne Schell wrote:

"Yes, it is possible. This is all just speculating tho." So the "yes it is possible" is speculating too, right?

---

I meant speculating about what LL will do, not what is possible. What is possible is generally pretty clear. What is doable, might be different tho.