Introducing Lab Chat - A New Q&A Show in Second Life

[EllaGuru Wellesley]

Lucky for those. I had someone write a Bad 1 star review that was completly untrue. The product had sold well with no complaints up to that point. Her remakes did not reflect the product and made no sense. I IM her to try and find out what was the problem. No reply. I asked Lindens to remove the review, they did no!. So not sure who you are talking about.

[Ai Austin]

Looking out 3 or 4 years, do you see Project Sansar as creating many separate sharded experiences for its users or will a user see themselves as being part of a connected whole?

My question is about the Lab's interest in supporting the creation of a "metaverse" of linked and shared content. So, do you see a continuing role for the massive investment in content and shared experiences that are already in Second Life (and indeed in OpenSim) and where technically feasible for that to still be able to be "visited" from newer platforms... perhaps with a limited outfit and "travel suitcase".

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Linden Lab wrote:

Hello,

This thread is for your questions for the upcoming edition of Lab Chat. Read what Lab Chat is on our

Official Blog

, then add your questions to this forum thread. 

 

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[ChinRey]

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Arduenn Schwartzman wrote:

What type collision is more efficient with the currently used Havok rendering engine: cubes colliding with cubes, or spheres colliding with spheres?

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That's no secret actually: The sphere is the most HAVOK friendly shape, with pyramids as the second best option. Somewhere on the LL website there is a pdf file with a really good explanation how various physics shapes work with HAVOK. Don't ask me where you can find it though. I lost my own copy when my old computer expired and Aquila only knows where the original is hidden.

That leads to my first three questions:

• With the recent focus on efficiency and performance, can LL reorganize the content creation related documentation, collect it all in a single easy-to-find place, rewrite it to make it more understandable for people who aren't too tech savvy, update it and fill in the holes?
• Is LL going to work with the existing content creator schools and groups to help educate the builders? (I know the short answer is yes - I've already been asked to participate in such a project - but more details please!)
• Would it be possible to revive the Builder User Group? I know the old one didn't work in the end but how about a different model, not quite as secret and perhaps involving the builder schools and Mike and the Moles.

On second though, perhaps it should all be summed up into a single big question:

• What can Linden Lab do to help, advice and encourage content creators to build an even better Second Life for everybody?

 

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NVZN wrote:

Why doesn't Linden Lab respond issue press releases in response to news stories about "new" developments in the broader VR industry?

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Maybe broaden it to cover LL's marketing strategy in general, I'm sure I'm not the only one who have noticed that the wonderful new web ad campaign seems to be specifically targeted towards existing users.

As much as we all love to hate newbies, we can't get away from the fact that they are essential to the survival of the grid. Nobody stays in Second Life forever and without enough new users, it will slowly but surely fade away.

It's not only about recruiting new users though, we need to keep them too. The not very intuitive viewer interface with the steep learning curve, the not very well targeted portal park destinations (although I have to say they've improved considerably recently), the lag/high client performance requirements... these are factors that keep people from logging on a second time. I know there are plans for a brand new welcome area system but that's only a small part of the problem, the existing Learning Islands and Social Islands are actually really good. It's what happens after people leave there that is the real problem. So:

• What can Linden Lab do to recruit and keep new users?

 

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And finally, the forgotten user groups: The explorers, the people the people who come to Second Life to see the wonders of a virtual world. Sim crossings are still hazardous even at the best of times, the map is littered with ads and doesn't show mesh properly, the destination guide and inworld search functions are still inadequate (although the destination guide at least is better than it sued to be). If you travel across mainland, you have to run a gauntlet between ban lines and security orbs and through cast desolate areas of abandoned wasteland. If you want to explore the islands - well, you have to find them - no easy task. Second Life is becoming more and more a medium for solipsism, a collection of isolated pockets only nominally interconnected rather than a big virtual world.

• What can Linden Lab do to encourage people to explore Second Life?

 

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Edit: Seems nobody has said this yet: Lab Chat is a great idea! Lots and lots of thanks to Linden Lab and the Lab Chat production team!!!

[Garnet Psaltery]

What are the incentives for people to start sims and communities in Second Life, knowing that they might have a better experience in Sansar?

[ChinRey]

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Garnet Psaltery wrote:

What are the incentives for people to start sims and communities in Second Life, knowing that they might have a better experience in Sansar?

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Oh yes! That question has to make it to the show!!!

[sirhc DeSantis]

"What are the incentives.." does rather cut to the heart of it. 

Extend it to perhaps - when will we have actual news (not snippets such as scrpts will be c#, other tools than maya will be supported, oodles of land, vague possible screenshots, 'experiences' etc) about this new platform and its capabilities/possibilities? Or even if it is going to follow the user generated content for all model at all?

Right now, SL is still the big fish - amongst SL model grids of course that seem to appear like algal bloom but the alternative to the status quo is growing, even if the overall market remains pretty flat - most stuff made for 'here' works 'there' too. Even the Labs introduction of mesh has led people to realise that skills learned for here are indeed marketable - outside.

I have no problem with learning new things at all, its one of the strengths of SL that have kept me here. Concrete news of what is being developed would be helpfull, to put it mildly.

I will wait for the transcript though, as this voice talkie show format leaves me cold.

[Imagin Illyar]

I have run an estate in SL for the past 7+ years.  The most common request is to change terrain texture for a parcel.  Would it be possible to have the ability to change the terrain texture for an individual parcel of land instead of sim wide?  Also, the ability to bake the terrain for an individual parcel.  These 2 options would make my tenants very happy and my work as an estate owner much easier

[Nalates Urriah]

I think you can set those values using llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(  with the flag PRIM_POINT_LIGHT. The texture has to be set PRIM_TEXTURE.

[DevinVaughn]

There have been a lot of exciting changes in SecondLife such as the PaleoQuest and new Classic Avatars for noobs. I am wondering if we can expect more things like new games, places to visit, and avatar updates in the future, and also if there are any plans to update the Linden Homes with mesh style homes, (or perhaps a new theme Linden Home region built in mesh)?

Thanks.

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

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Nalates Urriah wrote:

I think you can set those values using 

llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast

(  with the flag PRIM_POINT_LIGHT. The texture has to be set PRIM_TEXTURE.

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Sorry, no, and this is a bit of a sore point with some of us. While it's possible to turn on and off a projected texture lighting effect, it's impossible to adjust its parameters. I first requested this in 2010; for the canonical jira, see Strife's with links to generations of jira requests lost to one administrative snafu after another, with a current request that was accepted a little over a year ago.

Given the history here, I'm guessing the jira must be about due for reorganizing, lest any actual progress be made on this longstanding request.

[Loki Eliot]

I find it harder than ever to get word out for experiences i create. I rely on being listed on Destination guide, a privalege some people dont get. Would it not benefit everyone to improve the ability of sharing Content and Expereinces in Second Life? How could this be done?

[Nethya Emor]

My 10th year on SL soon! Some questions for LL:

• What all updates will you bring out with the Marketplace Beta? Will we see some more filtering options such as limiting time period, searching within categories?
  
  
• Do you have any larger updates in mind for Second Life up until 2017?

• Has community changed your mind about any decisions you wanted to make?

• Are you satisfied with the current official viewer?

• Will there be any new statistics about SL?

• Any technologies and features you are considering for Second Life?

• Do you plan to change name of Project Sansar before the release?

[Vick Forcella]

So early in the morning, on Friday the 13th, I came up with another question that I would like to see an answer on.

Second Life started with a vision, a very personal vision of The Creator Philip Rosedale.
Vision and Missions shift over  time and Second Life is not what Philip originally envisioned, it's better.

So, What *is* the Vision for the future of Second Life and what is the mission for Linden Lab to reach that vision?

[Erik Mondrian]

Stephan already brought this up, but I think it bears repeating. You seem to be targeting a range of platforms for Sansar, from VR HMDs to mobile devices--and yet, last I heard, it's apparently "unlikely (at this point in time) that Linux will be supported." Why is that?

~Erik

[Lilith Heart]

Mostly I'm interested in additional information regarding Project Sansar and welcome this opportunity to ask questions.

 

1. Will the permission system of SL be carried over to Sansar, or some version thereof ?

2. Will Sansar allow full blown editor extensions like ... Fabric Engine, PlayMaker etc ?

3. Will Sansar encourage the development of land rental/estate businesses ?

4. When Sansar opens will SL land prices go down?

5. How do LL plan to develop the content ecosystem for Sansar in a timely manner ? Without it, players/users won't be attracted to Sansar. Content is King.

6. In Sansar, will there be Inworld Shopping ?  or will there only be a web based 2D marketplace ?

7. Will Sansar have a vegetation editor so we can set up plants and trees to work with wind/wind zones ?

8. How much of a percentage will LL share of content sales in Sansar ? Will it be  30% like the Istore, Unity etc ?

9. In Sansar, will there be a map of Worlds ? If not how will people find Sansar experiences to enjoy and how will there be a larger sense of world community ?

10. Will the avatar appearance editor be a work of art ? Recent games are setting a very high standard

11. Will there be hard limits for Sansar avatars ? number of attachment points, polycounts, texture size etc 

12. Can Sansar worlds be interconnected and borderless, without world/sim crossing issues ?

13. Can we see a roadmap for Sansar development ? What's done, what in development etc

14. Why are LL being so secretive about Sansar ? Are there any real competitors that LL know about who are targeting this specific area (3D multi-user, virtual world, community game development tool) ?

15. Why didn't the Lab start on Project Sansar sooner ? What were you guys thinking ?  

16. Are LL as surprised as I am that there are so few Lab Chat questions considering there are 900k people logging in to SL per month ?  Who are all these people and how come they don't have any pertinent questions about our world and future worlds ?

17. Can I have my own Lab Chat show as I have so many questions ? 

If any of my questions are chosen for Lab Chat, I would like to request that Saffia Widdershins ask them on my behalf. Thank you in advance Saffia :-)

Lilith Heart 
The Heart Garden Centre :heart:

[Qie Niangao]

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Lilith Heart wrote:

 

4. When Sansar opens will SL land prices go down?

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This hints at a more general issue that I've been wondering about:

Assuming Sansar makes it into a revenue-generating beta, how will the Lab organization be structured to keep SL and Sansar from sabotaging each other's success?

This has been a problem for the Lab, historically, most disastrously with the competition between Marketplace and the Land product, but this could be worse: the Sansar team has a natural incentive to cannibalize the Second Life business -- but if that's premature, LL could be left with no profit from either product. How will you prevent this?

(Yes, eventually Sansar's market should be so large that the current Second Life business doesn't even register as a blip on the adoption curve. But initially, Sansar Marketing will be tempted to feed off SL, potentially leaving neither platform viable.)

[ChinRey]

One more question from me:

Considering the rather unpromising beta version fo the new MP search ( see https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Marketplace-Search-Beta-Now-Available/td-p/2978231) and the many other MP related problems still unadressed, what plans do LL have for upgrading/replacing the existing Marketplace and when can we expect to see results?

 

[Froukje Hoorenbeek]

The new marketplace search beta appears to make all bestsellers disappear from search. This is not doing anyone a favor. Not the customers, that get a horrible idea of what is available in sl and have to go trough 20 pages to get to the good stuff, not merchants like me that will surely loose at least half their sales, not Linden Lab, who would have gotten 5% of those sales. Is the marketplace important to LL? What are you going to do about this?

[Vick Forcella]

Considering the amount of Sansar questions, and the sort of questions, I think it's time to make another (progress report) blog post with that subject so that people can envision the experience creators can make on Sansar and the relation (none) with Second Life. I don't feel addressed to explain to others what Sansar really is.

So far Sansar has been explained in external (i.e. not this blog) Blogs and RL presentations. The perception of many is that Sansar is something like Second Life Version 2 (a replacement) and it is very much not (witch is sad really).

[Guest]

Hi and thank you for this opportunity

My only question is

 

 What time frame can we expect the new marketplace changes to take affect, if they ever do ?

I understand it is still in beta but it would be extremely important to us creators to know a rough estimage of "when or if " the new marketplace will replace the current one. I am not sure if the new marketplace is anywhere close to being done.

I would suggest tackling simpler  problems rather than taking shortcut solutions to a bigger problem as it seems in the current beta.

 

 

Thanks again for your time

Cytherion

Director, Akaesha Designs

 

[Polymath Snuggler]

Followup question to ChinRey's:  Has LL considered purchasing a 3rd party solution to help optimize the SL marketplace experience?  Google & Amazon both offer extensive services that do search and ranking exceptionally well.  Is it possible that in the long run it would be cheaper to simply adopt a 3rd party search and raise the 5% cut LL takes off MP revenues to pay for it?

[BlueTrianon]

Two questions from me:

1.  Project Sansar has been in an invitation-only pre-alpha for a few months, with invitees were pulled from both inside and outside the Second Life community.  What sort of general feedback have you recieved from invitees who were not part of the Second Life community?

2.  We hear a lot from Second Life users about things they want and need.  Is there one thing that you wish users would do to improve the Second Life experience?  Or one thing that you wish users would stop doing? 

[Aprille Shepherd]

Sansar Questions: 

1 - Will Sansar include Adult, much (or exactly) as it is here in Second Life? If Sansar does not include Adult, then someone had better make some nice mesh tumbleweed to blow across the deserted sims.  

2 - Will RLV be included?

3 - Will LSL scripting run natively in Sansar? 

4 - After reading some of the other questions and comments, some people seem to think that Sansar is "not anything like SL" and will not be a "replacement" for SL.  Is this true? 

 

SL Question:

4 - Will you please include the option (preferences tick box) to "opt out" of "Project Interesting" as many computers with various configurations are seeing the the world as a collection of blury boxes that only focus when you mouse over them.

  

Thanks - Aprille Shepherd

[Neo Nino]

Hi, two questions regarding SL Experience:

1) In the early days Linden Labs said that eventually SL Experience will be rolled out to be by creator, across all sims. Is this still the plan? This would be a great help to creators of wearable attachments, that are independent of sim experiences.

2) Will SANSAR have a creator-based, cross-sim Experiences system as well?

Thanks!!

[Saffia Widdershins]

Thank you for all your questions!

The Lab Chat team is now going to look at all the questions that have been asked and select the ones that will be used on the first Lab Chat show.

If your question isn't chosen, you may still have a chance to ask it in the open session that will come at the end of the show - if there is time.

Any questions that appear after this post would have to be used in a later show.