Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world

[Gavin Hird]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Yes, but MS never did and never even would think of the announcement of a core business application upgrade/replacement where essential content as Excel Sheets are not backwards compatible.

 

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Ha!

Ask the US state administrations that sits on thousands and thousands of Word documents they no longer can open how they feel about backwards compatibility of business applications. I have a few of those too. 

Or how Microsoft's mp3 player partners felt when they were suddenly dumped because Microsoft figured they wanted to roll their own Zune. We all know how well that went. 

Let me add to that: ever tried to migrate a large SharePoint installation to the next version? Thought not...

Unfortunately I fear it is some of that Microsoft attitude we see here in action. 

[DesperadoReprise]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

 

Dude, how sad does your life have to be to post nonsense over and over, for days? Seriously, I want to know. It will be much more productive than what you are currently doing. Go ahead, tell us about you. Tell us about your childhood. Maybe we can help you. Why hide? Let it all out. We won't judge you.

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Why are you being so critical of Ebbe, Medhue? He's just doing his job. Well, actually, it's Peter Gray's job. As you have pointed out, Ebbe should be getting on with the CEO's tasks, which primarily consist of co-ordinating the management resources available to him so that it appears that he knows what he's talking about.

"turned the tables"

[DesperadoReprise]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Yes, but MS never did and never even would think of the announcement of a core business application upgrade/replacement where essential content as Excel Sheets are not backwards compatible.

 

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Ha!

Ask the US state administrations that sits on thousands and thousands of Word documents they no longer can open how they feel about backwards compatibility of business applications. I have a few of those too. 

Or how Microsoft's mp3 player partners felt when they were suddenly dumped because Microsoft figured they wanted to roll their own Zune. We all know how well that went. 

Unfortunately I fear it is some of that Microsoft attitude we see here in action. 

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I think the point that Viv is making here, Gavin, is that even - or especially - when Microsoft were not building in backwards compatibility, they didn't make the suicidal commercial mistake of warning users up front that they were wasting their time and money on stuff that would be obsolescent in the near future.

"stardust"

[Gavin Hird]

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Yes, but MS never did and never even would think of the announcement of a core business application upgrade/replacement where essential content as Excel Sheets are not backwards compatible.

 

---

Ha!

Ask the US state administrations that sits on thousands and thousands of Word documents they no longer can open how they feel about backwards compatibility of business applications. I have a few of those too. 

Or how Microsoft's mp3 player partners felt when they were suddenly dumped because Microsoft figured they wanted to roll their own Zune. We all know how well that went. 

Unfortunately I fear it is some of that Microsoft attitude we see here in action. 

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I think the point that Viv is making here, Gavin, is that even - or especially - when Microsoft were not building in backwards compatibility, they didn't make the suicidal commercial mistake of warning users up front that they were wasting their time and money on stuff that would be obsolescent in the near future.

"stardust"

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You could say that, but they have had a bizarre habit of announcing their next version is much better than the current (Vista vs W7, or W7 vs W8) when they have hardly started shipping, thereby stalling upgrades and sales to corporation to the point it really hurts them.  

So they have actually "made the suicidal commercial mistake of warning users up front that they were wasting their time and money on stuff that would be obsolescent in the near future" – just a slightly different twist. 

[Vivienne Schell]

Anyways, you still were able to play your MP3´s on Vista, right? And watch your AVI´s. And if a 1995 Word document does not open in 2014, ok, then this was not declared MS intention but colateral damage.

When Apple moved to OS X, you still could play your MP3´s, watch your MOV´s and use your Photoshop assets.

We can discuss the migration quality of Apple and MS core business product upgrades and replacements, but neither Apple nor MS would ever dare to destroy their business and customer base by depraving them of their assets.

That´s real business, not playing the gods of the techie microcosmos in a niche. And this difference in the basical sense for business/customers and biz/tech balance is probably the reason why Apple and MS can throw 500 already employed forces on a new product while LL can´t even afford one.

[Phoebe Avro]

Emerald Life

[Gavin Hird]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Anyways, you still were able to play you MP3´s on Vista, right? And watch your AVI´s. And if a 1995 Word document does not open in 2014, ok, then this was nott intention by MS, but a lack of code caring.

When Apple moved to OS X, you still could play your MP3´s, watch your MOV´s and use your Photoshop assets.

We can discuss the migration quality of Apple and MS core business product upgrades and replacements, but neither Aplle nor MS would ever dare to destroy their business and customer base by depraving them of their assets.

That´s real business, not playing the gods of the techie microcosmos in a niche.

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I totally agree with you on that!

... which is why I have suggested alternate routes that can make for a smoother transition and pan out to everyone's advantage. 

[Phoebe Avro]

haha I was tempted to mension Vizact2000

[Vivienne Schell]

". which is why I have suggested alternate routes that can make for a smoother transition and pan out to everyone's advantage"

They definately need some kind of migration plan, otherwise this neither will work for Second Life nor for the new project. Most amusing here is that some of the things which cause the most trouble, namely texturs of empire state building size, can be ported 1:1. in case i got that right.

 

 

:matte-motes-shocked:

:

[irihapeti]

Philip wants to change humanity. Is his calling. He hoped to get that when he envision SL. He never got change. We just brought our same old humanity (developed over 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of years) into SL with us and never changed at all

I like Gwyneth. She is a humanity changer as well. Not all the time but she thinks and writes a lot about the greater things. She writes really interesting stuff from that perspective. And I quite like that she can express those thoughts and ideas very well. So I think about them also

Ebbe (and Rodvik before him tbf) just want to make some good software for us to express ourselfs in and with. And make some money for the LL company

if I have to choose between changing humanity or letting humanity change itself then I prefer to let humanity find its own path

and I settle for a game/world that dont crash please. And a spaceship. I want a sim spaceship please that can fly to the stars. So i can leave humanity behind. At least for an hour or two (:

[irihapeti]

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Phoebe Avro wrote:

Emerald Life

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nuuuu !!!

 

you defo havent got the job ok

you are sooo sacked !!!

 

q; (:

 

[Gavin Hird]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

They definately need some kind of migration plan, otherwise this neither will work for Second Life nor for the new project. 

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It is damn hard to have a migration plan when you don't even know what to migrate to.

 

 

CEO: Hey, let's migrate to the moon, eh?

Engineering: "Nah, let's go for Gliese 832. – Nearby Alien Planet May Be Capable of Supporting (Second)Life, it says on the product sheet."

CEO: "Great, I'll go and inform the rest of the team!"

Engineering: "Better write a migration plan... "  – "What tech do we need to get there??!?!" - "Heeeey!!?" - looking in disbelief at latest twitter message... 

[Innula Zenovka]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

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.

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Where do you get "within six months" from?   I thought the Beta was supposed to be available sometime next year, not by the end of this one.

[DesperadoReprise]

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irihapeti wrote:

Philip wants to change humanity. Is his calling. He hoped to get that when he envision SL. He never got change. We just brought our same old humanity (developed over 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of years) into SL with us and never changed at all

I like Gwyneth. She is a humanity changer as well. Not all the time but she thinks and writes a lot about the greater things. She writes really interesting stuff from that perspective. And I quite like that she can express those thoughts and ideas very well. So I think about them also

if I have to choose between changing humanity or letting humanity change itself then I prefer to let humanity find its own path

 

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My wife believed in tryng to change humanity.

But I warned her, the only thing you can change humanity into is inhumanity.

That works for me, as my wife found out.

"you sealed your fate"

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

Alright Ebbe, I've been reading a whole hell of a lot of what other people have been writing about this (what I consider to be) exciting development and, after careful consideration, have come up with the one thing which would make my migration to this new platform extremely uncomfortable.

Of course, I only speak for myself when I say this, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who would feel this way... I know that you've already said that it's important that we're able to transfer our identity to the new world, but my identity, for me, is more than just my name or friend list or inventory or $L balance.

This is me...

This is what represents me in the virtual world.  This is the image which I've created over the last almost six years by tweaking my shape and carefully choosing elements created by others.  I may not be much of an original content creator, but I assure you that putting this avatar together was definitely an exercise in creativity.

I love my SL home and my SL land; I adore the people on my friend list and I treasure many of the things in my inventory, but none of them compare to the emotional investment in which I've made to my avatar.

I've been to other virtual worlds... Inworldz, Open Sim, Cloud Party, Blue Mars... I just never felt comfortable there for the simple fact that I couldn't look anything like what I thought of as myself.  Could I have gotten over it, had I have given myself a chance to do so?... possibly.  But, I'm more than certain that, should I had been able to enter those new worlds in a form with which I was familiar and emotionally invested, I probably wouldn't have left them as quickly as I did and would have, at least, tried to judge them on thier own merit once I got there, rather than have left them because I simply couldn't connect with my avatar the way I do in SL.  Emotions can be a very powerful motivation.

If you ask me, emotional investment is the very thing that has enabled Linden Lab to keep SL alive for as long as it has.  My suggestion to you would be to capitalize on the emotional investment of your users by pandering to it.

With that in mind, here's my idea... make legacy avatars portable to the new platform from the get go.  That way, it creates the illusion of using one's current SL avatar to explore the new world as their old avatar self.... in which they've got an emotional investment.  Yes, I'm suggesting that you enable the use of the old antiquated avatar base in the new world... yeah, it's ugly... but it's familiar.  And, if your new avatar system is so much better (which I'm sure it will be), I'm certain that people will start adopting it in droves, once they get there and can see the difference.  Why else would mesh body parts be such the rage nowadays?

...Dres

ETA: I'm also willing to do without animated mesh penises... for a few months at least.

[Mony Lindman]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

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Mony Lindman wrote:

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.

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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 ..

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i did not state fbx as fact but a direction we're leaning in. Not final. 

And SL won't change these things so you don't have to worry. Only if you want to make things in the next gen product will you have to learn some new things and do some things differently. It's up to you. 

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grrrrrrrr .. are you sure you didn't work for Radio Erevan before ? Or maybe for Pravda ?

Of course i will have to learn new things if i make new things in the new world but i was asking and was worried about IF and HOW the OLD things , in this case ANIMATIONS, will work in the NEW world.

When you say "SL won't change these things" what do you call "SL" in this sentence ? The old SL or the new one?

If you mean the old , we know that.  If you mean the new , plase say so ..

And yes i do want to "make things in the next gen product" , the question is if i can use my thousands of full permission animations for which i paid a lot of money, ALSO IN THOSE THINGS that i will want to make in THAT "next gen product".

And this question is still NOT answered.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

"Where do you get "within six months" from?   I thought the Beta was supposed to be available sometime next year, not by the end of this one."

Oh, now you caught me doing exactly the same what Linden Lab does: Speading wishiwashi announcements for firing up useless panic debates.

Sorry for that.

 

[Mony Lindman]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

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Mony Lindman wrote:

Yes but the animations I have are paid already, while the new ones I would have to pay again .. These animations are my capital, I invested about 2 million lindens in animations and when I say "invest" I do mean that till now I considered them an investition, a very good one and .. long term ..

For me , and for many others who use animations in their builds , the transfer and the use of these animations in the new world is vital.

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And they will continue to work in SL, which, again, we have no plans to close down. 

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Sir, with answers like this and the one to my previous post, you insult my intelligence. Not to mention yours..

The matter in question is the transfer and the use of present animations IN THE NEW WORLD, not if they work in the old one.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

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"It is damn hard to have a migration plan when you don't even know what to migrate to."

They know in theory. But a theory isn´t a sales argument. And shouldn´t be prematurely announced as a product.

And if they really were open to ALL possibilities it would not be a problem to tell people:

"100 percent compatibility with your assets."

And make up a list of what will be the lil exceptions (like empire state buildings) and guarantee customers a path to conversions, at least.

I´d be totally fine with this, and not only me. On the other hand, if they really, really wanna leave everything behind and create something absolutely new, even a completely new customer base, while telling their old customer base "Don´t worry be happy", OK. This is gambling with Second life customer money, not serious business. And gambling is prohibited in California, as far as I know.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Parrish Ashbourne wrote:

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Suspiria Finucane wrote:

I realize there are many questions and missing some is expected. Here are ones I asked earlier.

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Suspiria Finucane wrote:

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

 

Goal is to empower creators to do any content we can (including skeleton), but again, early...

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Can you say if this refers to in-world empowerment or external program empowerment? In my opinion, the in-world creation aspect of SL is something we've lost. The more in-world creation that is possible, the more attention span you garner.

Imagine how many hours are spent in external programs instead of occupying your virtual world.

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Also;

I was curious if you can say whether the brand Second Life will be on the new product and the old SL would be something like SL classic or SL legacy?

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coke classic was one of the biggest marketing success stories ever, may be SL will out do SL2 with the right marketing, I like SL legacy better sounds more Tron like, or how about the SL Matrix

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Two words... Crystal Pepsi.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

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DesperadoReprise wrote:

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

Of course they don't have any plans to disallow ageplay of the sort you describe.   They disallowed it seven or eight years ago, and people don't normally talk about making plans to do something they've already done.    

 

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But Ebbe has comitted here in these forums very recently that Sanitised Life will allow user freedoms as long as they are legal.

And depiction of sexual age-play is not illegal in California, with whose laws LL has to comply.

Is he lying, inconsistent, or incompetent?

"it's finally turned the tables"

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I said: 

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

rather than "...going on in SL..." I could have said "...adheres to SL policy..."

So now you can have fun with that for a while...

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Rather than replying to the troll just ignore him.. All you are doing with the snide replies is making the rest of us not believe you. Lose the snide comments.

How about a straight answer. Why did you announce this when you have almost zero info you can give the people that pay your salary? 99.999% of what you have answered is TBD. That is not an informative answer, so why leak this? You created FUD and are really doing nothing to fight it. You have yet to make any official announcement on any LL site that I have found. Way to garner support and trust. LL used to send announcements through SL itself. Haven't seen one fo those in years. Now we get info about a new SL from a whispered rumor via a third party site from a blogger.. Why that specific blogger? Why didn't you come here and let us know? Why, Ebbe? Answer that if you have the chutzpa.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

"It's a lot of work and LL can't throw hundreds of people at it like Google or Microsoft could."

Yes, but MS never did and never even would think of the announcement of a core business application upgrade/replacement where essential content as Excel Sheets are not backwards compatible.

Guess why?

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Perhaps if tLL hadn't cut a third of their staff....

[Gaia Clary]

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Mony Lindman wrote:

Sir, with answers like this and the one to my previous post, you insult my intelligence. Not to mention yours..

The matter in question is the transfer and the use of present animations IN THE NEW WORLD, not if they work in the old one.

 

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I would like to add some related questions:

 

1. Are the Animations in the current SL extractable in principle ?
2. Will LL give us tools at hand which allow us to extract the raw animation information from SL Gestures and SL Animations and export this data to our local disk ?
3. I guess the animations in the current SL can be exported as .anim files ?
4. Will LL describe the animation format in a way that we can transform the exported data into data conforming to the new system ?

Some previous answers gave me the impression that third party tool makers could in principle fill the gap here, provided they get the ability to access the data in which way ever. I believe the biggest problem here is related to license and permission...

I also believe that any animation that was created for the current SL Avatar can be migrated to another skeleton provided it is at least similar structured. so in principle i believe that a huge amount of existing animations actually CAN be migrated to any avatar that is based on a human skeleton.

Note that regarding SL animations we mostly speak about the 26 SL Base Bones which form a pretty simple base skeleton. attachment point animations might be an issue, and weighted attachment points are imho a corner case as they have never been officially suported by SL.

Heh, you have given me a few ideas already where we can possibly chime in when it's time  :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

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Mony Lindman wrote:

Sir, with answers like this and the one to my previous post, you insult my intelligence. Not to mention yours..

The matter in question is the transfer and the use of present animations IN THE NEW WORLD, not if they work in the old one.

 

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I would like to add some related questions:

 

1. Are the Animations in the current SL extractable in principle ?
2. Will LL give us tools at hand which allow us to extract the raw animation information from SL Gestures and SL Animations and export this data to our local disk ?
3. I guess the animations in the current SL can be exported as .anim files ?
4. Will LL describe the animation format in a way that we can transform the exported data into data conforming to the new system ?

Some previous answers gave me the impression that third party tool makers could in principle fill the gap here, provided they get the ability to access the data in which way ever. I believe the biggest problem here is related to license and permission...

I also believe that any animation that was created for the current SL Avatar can be migrated to another skeleton provided it is at least similar structured. so in principle i believe that a huge amount of existing animations actually CAN be migrated to any avatar that is based on a human skeleton.

Note that regarding SL animations we mostly speak about the 26 SL Base Bones which form a pretty simple base skeleton. attachment point animations might be an issue, and weighted attachment points are imho a corner case as they have never been officially suported by SL.

Heh, you have given me a few ideas already where we can possibly chime in when it's time  :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:

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Let me answer that for you as Ebbe isn't up yet...

We don't know yet, it's too early to tell.

[Gavin Hird]

If you are the creator of the animations and don't have the bvh files any more, there is an option to still get them out which goes like this:

 

1. Back up the animation with Stored Inventory to your local harddisk
2. Restore the animations from Stored Inventory to a server running opensim
3. From there you can use tools to restore the bvh

If you don't own the animations you are out of luck...