Lab Chat Returns January 21st, 2016 with Linden Lab CEO - Ebbe Altberg

[Linden Lab]

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. This thread will be closed on January 15th, 2016 for this round.

 

[Soen Eber]

As a content creator (scripting, building, texturing...etc):

1. What additional tools and workflows should I become familiar with in order to create in Sansar?  I understand C# will be the preferred (only?) scripting language, and I assume mesh creation skills will be important.  I ask because it will take some time to get familiar with any new tools which will be required.

 2. What is still "To be determined" in so far as content  creation is concerned?

3. Will we still be able to create objects with prims? 

 

[shug Maitland]

Ebbe, would you please discuss in-world building in Sansar.

How will it be similar or different from building in-world in Second Life.

Will we be, for example, building with voxels? prims? or something completely new.

Will there be a built in way to create or edit Mesh in-world.

Thank You in advance for enlightning us.

[Ashur Constantine]

A few times earlier last year Ebbe mentioned the possibility of faster credit processing, same day even. Any update on whether that can still happen and when?

[Harlow Joubert]

What will happen to Second Life large land owners if everyone gets free land in Sansar ? 

Will there be large land based communities in Sansar ?

Is Sansar a place to "live" or more of a day trip amusement park?

People file Abuse Reports all the time for serious attacks that make their regions unuseable to minor hurt feelings --- are people ever held accountable for the lesser "crimes"  of sharing  private messages , building over a public road etc  ?

 

[GreenLantern Excelsior]

There has been constant, unrelenting griefing recently where multiple Abuse Reports are written, but Linden Lab takes many hours to respond and remove the griefer objects. These objects often have extremely offensive photos of pornography, dead and mutilated bodies, and heart-wrenching animal abuse. Some people believe that Second Life would be a better place to visit if Linden Lab would give selected volunteer residents the ability to stop griefer attacks as they are occurring. There are organized, trained groups in Second Life whose members respond to these griefer attacks 24 hours a day and submit Abuse Reports to Linden Lab. Employees are expensive. Many companies and agencies are learning that working with volunteers provides equivalent service to that obtained from a paid employee at little or no cost. We have already created a framework for a pilot program to implement a volunteer Governance Team to respond to griefer attacks. Can we speak to someone in Linden Lab to discuss this idea?

[Prokofy Neva]

Presumably both legacy Second Life (which began with Sansara!) and the new Project Sansar will share the LindEx. 

Has any thought been given to the impact differing economic bases will have on the currency and economy as a whole? Likely more land revenue than content revenue comes through the original SL economy mainly because people pay more in rent to inworld landlords than they do in content purchases, overall, and because many merchants and landlords cash out Linden dollars to pay their tier in real dollars. 

Rents are also recurring costs; someone might buy a $1000 dress or a $3000 skin or a $10,000 car or sword but they pay that in rent each month.

Meanwhile, Project Sansar, we're told, will have less costly sims, tax on content and possibly other things we haven't heard about (a fixed-rate currency exchange?)

The reality is that for those cashing out to dollars, the LindEx has essentially lost a point in recent months -- it is no longer possible as it once was to get the rate of 248 Lindens to the dollar, and only 249 is the best rate possible -- unless you are willing to wait weeks, or even longer. This appears to be happening because many people are cashing out large sums in the hundreds of millions, possibly in anticipation of SL's economy becoming devalued significantly and/or people flooding out of SL to PS. Whatever the promises of keeping old SL open, the economy will affect some choices and could be a conflict or cannibalization driver.

Really, can these two economies with such different bases co-exist on one LindEx, and will one pull down the other, even if LL continues its policy to "print money" by having Supply Linden inject cash? The rationale for this was to keep the Linden dollar "cheap" for tourists and even more dedicated long-term users who want $1000 Lindens to feel like something, and not $3.70 US (counting fees to both LL and PayPal).

In the Project Sansar economy, will purchases on the Marketplace continue to be "sinks" rather than "sources"? Or will LL have to revise this concept and make them "sources" precisely because they hope THIS to be the revenue source creating the commissions/taxes by which LL will free itself from "land"? What *is* the plan?

Will Sansar have upload fees, group fees or other fees that are sources or sinks?

Or will land purchases/land market sales/land rentals/tier payment to LL continue in fact to be the basis of the economy, although perhaps reset to a lower level?

Will there be groups that can handle group land, and will islands be divisible into parcels for "sale" in addition to rent?

[Prokofy Neva]

No one needs vigilantes or volunteer groups in Second Life to do "security," as this can bring griefing and oppression and loss of privacy as bad as the griefers. SL has a long history not only of griefers and mentors and helpers abusing their powers but of griefers pretending to be these helpers and infiltrating the volunteers utterly. None of it is needed. 

Another reform entirely is needed. Linden Lab has to stop deflecting abuse reports at the Concierge level, and in fact treat a request to Concierge to assist with griefing to be as routine and normal and doable as resetting a sim on a mainland or moving a private island.

Lindens should come and GLOBALLY remove griefer prims rather than forcing people to return them one by one or pick their way through lagging and crashing sims to try to get no-show oldbies to return things -- or convince Lindens to move their own land's autoreturn to 1 instead of 5. Any significant grief attack on multiple sims should INSTANTLY as soon as there is a  credible report that is verified lead to GLOBAL return/deprecation of the griefer objects throughout SL. Why this takes so much to do is beyond me. There's absolutely no reason why it can't be done on a sim-wide basis at the very least.

LL should move from resisting the efforts of its customers to get help with griefing to routinizing them.

Anyone at Concierge level with multiple sims has the power on islands at least to take care of a lot of their own griefing problems. But if they face griefers using exploits, like placing prims that can't be returned, the Lindens should respond in real time to these requests when they impact larger communities. Forcing people to write tickets and wait a day or 3 or 5 or more to get action is just not right as they are paying for these sims. 

Nonchalance and even collusion in dealing with griefers and mantras about "expected behavior" are not unacceptable.

 

[GreenLantern Excelsior]

The potential for abuse exists in every facet of life. That is not a good reason to sit with folded hands and do nothing. And past performance is not always indicative of future results. Just because past LL volunteer groups caused problems does not mean that future volunteer groups will cause problems too. Adding more tasks to the Concierge's job description is not a solution. They are overloaded already, and griefer response is not their job. Second Life needs a new approach to this problem. The idea here is not to implement "vigilante justice." I am suggesting a pilot project to test the idea that Linden Lab can utilize trained volunteers to return griefer objects at all hours of the day and night. There would be no additional cost to the company, and the residents would be happier. That's a win/win situation. If the pilot project doesn't work, then we can push RESET and go back to where we are now. But I believe the idea is worth a try.

[Prokofy Neva]

No one needs YOU to do things *on their property*. They have more controls than you do, so it's absurd to think that a landowner is sitting "with folded hands" just because he doesn't want to let YOU play wannabe cops-and-robbers on HIS land.

What the entire fake "super heroes" RP comes down to again and again is a failure to grasp what property laws are as well as good government and the rule of law. No one needs non-property-owners to handle land, except for the "government" which controls the servers and has greater powers. RP groups are irrelevant.

Any "justice" that involves non-property-owners intervening to solve problems is vigilante justice in this context.

No one needs "volunteers" who rapidly become abusive and corrupt as long and repeated experience shows us in Second Life precisely because they have neither the responsibility or their appreciation of property, both in the lesser sence of the SL "landowner" renting servers from SL, and in the larger sense of the actual property owner, Linden Lab.

Again, "security forces" and "volunteers" and "helpers" who intervene in this set-up are redundant, useless and only become a problem.

What's ESPECIALLY not acceptable is enabling residents WHO DO NOT PAY THE TIER to return prims other people's lands. That's just not on. Either the landowners must do this, or Linden Lab.

[RAG Randt]

I have limited knowledge about Sansar's business model. From what I do understand, it will be a game engine platform (like Unity). What I would like to know, as I want to base a business model on it, are details as to how and why Sansar will give me better access to the global market then Second Life. WIll Sansar be available on mobile media?

[Loki Eliot]

What has your reaction been to the cost of Oculus and how do you see this effecting Project Sansar. The device seems aimed at hardcore gamers, would Project Sansar appeal to such a niche group?

[Loki Eliot]

2nd Question.

Can you please clarify how Avatars will function throughout Project Sansar? You stated that Experiences in Sansar would dictate how your character/avatar looked in an experience. Does this mean Users wont have their own personally crafted avatars from one expereince tot he next?

[Alexxis DeCuir]

Ebbe has mentioned that processing credit to paypal will be faster in the future. When will this happen?

When will Sansar open to the public, and when can creators start learning to develop for this new world?

[Maddy Gynoid]

Will it be possible to establish an IM connection between Second Life and Sansar users?

Since Second Life users can also use their accounts for login into Sansar (as I understand it), this would be a good way to counteract the collapse of SL communities after Sansar is open for everyone. From a technical perspective this should not be so difficult to implement, because Second Life and Sansar both running on Linden Lab servers. Or you can use external solutions such as XMPP.

[Johannes Huntsman]

As someone who has a vested interest in the art scene in Second Life, can you discuss art related tools in the proposed Sansar viewer? Will we have windlights and the ability to create them? What about filters? I have read that Sansar will have the possiblities to sell scenes, will the true be said of artists who would like to sell say 3d scenes, but without using Maya?

[Loki Eliot]

Currently in SL both user and creator are combined in the one viewer experience, Will the Sansar Creator experience be different to a Sansar User experience either by different viewer modes or entirely different viewer clients? 

[Loki Eliot]

Ignoring VR Goggles, what other technology might Sansar be able to use to enhance the VR Experience?

[Brayla Ravenhurst]

 

---

GreenLantern Excelsior wrote:

There has been constant, unrelenting griefing recently where multiple Abuse Reports are written, but Linden Lab takes many hours to respond and remove the griefer objects. These objects often have extremely offensive photos of pornography, dead and mutilated bodies, and heart-wrenching animal abuse. Some people believe that Second Life would be a better place to visit if Linden Lab would give selected volunteer residents the ability to stop griefer attacks as they are occurring. There are organized, trained groups in Second Life whose members respond to these griefer attacks 24 hours a day and submit Abuse Reports to Linden Lab. Employees are expensive. Many companies and agencies are learning that working with volunteers provides equivalent service to that obtained from a paid employee at little or no cost. We have already created a framework for a pilot program to implement a volunteer Governance Team to respond to griefer attacks. Can we speak to someone in Linden Lab to discuss this idea?

---

I wish there was a like button. LIKE!

[Willow Dion]

Will the lab improve its support for Oculus Rift in SL?

[Jennifer Boyle]

Will SL residents be able to take anything with them from SL to Sansar?  If so, what?

[Caitlin Tobias]

Will there be a Sansar-based Online Community, where Sansar-residents can gather and share their experiences and tips, without have to resort to the common social media platforms that are not exclusively for Sansar/LL (and often require too much rl details? Something interactive, for Sansar  perhaps combined with SL Avatars, as to keep everone connected and create social networks - including the official communication from LL?

[Perrie Juran]

Will Sansar have a LL managed Mainland?  If so, what will be the business model for it?  Will we be able to buy parcels as we currently can, etc, etc?

 

Will Sansar have it's own Forum/Blog or will it all be just shoveled into this Forum? 

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

GreenLantern Excelsior wrote:

There has been constant, unrelenting griefing recently where multiple Abuse Reports are written, but Linden Lab takes many hours to respond and remove the griefer objects. These objects often have extremely offensive photos of pornography, dead and mutilated bodies, and heart-wrenching animal abuse. Some people believe that Second Life would be a better place to visit if Linden Lab would give selected volunteer residents the ability to stop griefer attacks as they are occurring. There are organized, trained groups in Second Life whose members respond to these griefer attacks 24 hours a day and submit Abuse Reports to Linden Lab. Employees are expensive. Many companies and agencies are learning that working with volunteers provides equivalent service to that obtained from a paid employee at little or no cost. We have already created a framework for a pilot program to implement a volunteer Governance Team to respond to griefer attacks. Can we speak to someone in Linden Lab to discuss this idea?

---

We always enjoy reading about and watching You Tubes of your comic book exploits against the Goon Squad to make SL safe for us all.

But we don't want any vigilantes.  Go somewhere else.

[R Dismantled]

How much development is going into API functions for Sansar, and what will external systems be able to poll and control?

Will the API functions use XML or JSON?