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

[Zoey Winsmore]

To be honest, Linden Labs has never taken Abuse Reports serious. But I sure also want to know how that is even handled.

I had to file several abuse reports for a serious case, but that Resident, could stay online and do whatever it wanted.

[Zoey Winsmore]

I hope these questions can be asked and answered in the next upcoming Lab Chat, and not dwell on only Sansar thing for 1+ hours where question after question really goes back to what has been said.

 

My questions:

 

1)  Does Linden Labs really take Abuse Reports serious?  Is there not a way to talk to someone who is for the Abuse Team inworld. In many cases, the form is limited to a certain number of characters, and it does result that it is not possible to explain things as good about what the Abuse Report is for. I did file reports for very serious things, but that resident was never dealt with at all. It could do whatever it wanted to cause all sorts of problems. I would like to see a point in SecondLife where we can go to, to talk to a Linden Employe and even give more details about the Abuse.

 

2)  Would it be possible, to get more space for making group tags. It is limited to just 20 characters but would be nice if that could be bit longer, even if it has to be for just premium members. A max of 35 characters or even a minimum of 25 characters would be helpful. As I most of the times, coming atleast 5 character sort.

 

This is basically what is coming up for me, hoping these would be answered.

Thank you.

[Carlyle Chaparral]

Will Linden Labs improve efforts to protect Second Life creators from being ripped off by copiers?   It seems like not enough is being done now, and the prospect of this getting even less attention from LL as the focus moves to Sansar is very disheartening. 

Given this track record in Second Life, what protections for creators will exist in Sansar?   Will it be like SL is now?  

 

[Richardus Raymaker]

A have a few things all about project SanSar. It's sometimes hard to explain precies the question. because the amount of information current available.  Some questions can mabey be read as notice to the devs if the are not important enough to ask. I have so many questions and things read that mabey some are already answered in the past.

 

1. Social , communication and input

SanSar want to be a social platform. Is sansar more then only voice and HMD (Head Mounted Device) driven platform. Is chat, keyboard and mouse supported like we have in Secondlife or better in sansar ? Is the space navigator supported ?

Do we still have inworld IM and Groups to communicate ?

2. Building

Is the inworld object placement tool , just as easy as the one in Secondlife ?

This question is for many very important, is sansar going to have inworld build tools like secondlife. It would make sansar much more attractive for people and let it grow fatser if the can build inworld.

3. Avatars and experiences.

Last lab chat , theres some talk about avatars and experiences and the lose of your own avatar experience. Does this mean if you go from one experience to another one that the experience owner ca force you into a different body and break your experience ? Really a NoNo.

Or can the experience you visit only change clothing but you keep your created avatar. That would be ok.

In other words can you as experience holder choice if visitors are free to use there own avatar from other experience (unlimited avatar access) or are all visitors required always to choice from a limited range of avatars (clone feeling) before the can enter your experience ?

It's important that you can keep your avatar between experiences, if the owner have enabled that option.

4. Small (sub) Experiences that form a big estate (experience) and parcels.

In Secondlife it happens many times that more people own  a sim. From that sim you can make a big island (estate) that exists out of small ones from different owners. Is something like this possible in sansar ? The best way is still to create a big experience out of small ones. so people still have full control on there own land. Not like you see on secondlife mainland that one owner say what you can do on the land.

Otherwise is it possible to go seamless from one experience holder into other experience holder but the are both running in the same main experience.

I expect that inside a experience land can be subdivided like secondlife and rented etc !?

5. Blender.

When SanSar is going open for the bigger group ? summer or fall. (i hope summer 2016) Is bledner full supported with building and avatar creation for import and export. So the bggest userbase can create avatars, clothing etc. without the need to buy extra exspensive tools ?

6. Experiences

Can we see experiences like sims in Secondlife. but then bigger and hopefull much cheaper and more in the price range for webhosting ?

7. Costs

It would be nice to know more about what SanSar is going to cost to be there and have land or experience to be creative on. That's the problem with Secondlfie it's so extreme expensive that creativity get blocked or limited.

8. Security and privacy

Is sansar having good security and privacy setting like you have in secondlife. Meaning that build access is not for a whole experience but that it can be set to a small area of land and only for that user. That again could set it to a group or give other users build rights ? Does SansSar work a bit like secondlife and people that own a sim.

9. Camera and build size

What build scale is sansar going to use, because secondlife is complete wrong scaled and gives a weird experience.

What camera angle is sansar going to use ? a more horizontal one like you have in secodlife would be a good choice. It really brings you more into some experience if that is combined with A real life build scale.

 

-- END --

Ok, rigth now i cannot think about other things. Thats all folks.

 

 

[R Dismantled]

If I understand correctly, the Sansar code will be significantly more closed to third-party development and forks than SL.

Have you used a third-party SL viewer?

Have you seen the innovations and user interface features that these developers add which users want?

Have you asked your official viewer developers how much they rely on third-party code?

Do you realize how this might hinder Sansar?

[LordSir Ninetails]

From what I have been able to glean from the information made available, Project Sansar appears to be a commercialized version of RealXtend Associations Tundra platform which allows individuals and companies to build an 'Experience' or 'Project' inside a container framework sitting on top of an overall platform with a frontend application that allows the consumer to choose which experience they want to join and a Marketplace that will have controls in place for the 'Experience' developer to allow or disallow various items from that Marketplace to be used in their 'Experience'....would this be a fair description of Project Sansar ?

[DevinVaughn]

Questions creating Poses & Animations for Project Bento avatar:

I'm very excited about additional bones being added to the SL Skeleton.

1) Once Project Bento is released, how will creators make poses and animations for the new bones (wings, fingers, facial expressions, etc)? In the past on the SL Wiki, was a downloadable figure rigged for Poser. There are also programs like QVimator.  What tools will creators have for Bento to make content? Will there be any inworld tools for Bento pose/animation creation?

2) Will animations for Bento have the abilty to animate (or pose) separately?

Example: A Bento facial smile that effects no other body part; a wing animation that only animates the wings; a finger pose that only poses the fingers. Also, will poses and animations for Bento have the option for full body animation?

 

Thanks!

[Majestic Kohime]

I have a bunch of questions. Iam a known creator and scripter/developer in SL for years. Ive been disapointed by the many changes of TOS LL did throught the years, that changed our inworld experience drasticly.

 

1/ The welcoming of new users, and the Linden Lab ambition.

 The debate concerning welcome sims started during the last LAB CHAT, though, many parameters haven't been mentioned. I would like to highlight some facts that, i think are essential for the future. please read them carefully, those facts are confirmed by a long term experience in SL (thousands of hours/ years)..

  1.1: The welcome Sims organization. Merging orientation islands and welcome sims?

We all agree that the welcome sims owned by users had many problems: griefers, bad designed quality, bloodlines spammers, etc.. Though, they had a few good points that made the new users experience, a very good one, and that convinced new users that Second Life was an awesome place, or, at least a place to discover:

  1.1.1: During Sl registration, you had the option to chose your welcome sim (year 2010 and before) depending on the langage: there were english welcome sims, spanish, french, etc.. Globally, welcome areas from before 2010 were far better concerning the new users langage, and this is essential.

This option was excellent. Thinking that all SL users and future users would like to have a english speaking experience in SL is a big mistake. Creating welcome sims langage-based is very important. A lot of asian people dont like to speak english, same globally for all countries, we globally and firstly  like to meet people from our own country, and to talk our native langage.

Creating welcome sims, Linden lab owned and designed, and langage based (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanases, Corean...) would be excellent, and would bring far more people.

 

  1.1.2: Making those Welcome sims/orientation islands open to ancient users. 

This is very essential that new users meet actual users directly on the welcome sims. Understanding the goals of second life, the different experiences, fixing the problems. Actually the orientation island dont permit  to new users to meet actual users; This is sad, for following reasons: all the "noobs" meet in those orientation islands, so, if one has a question like "how do i fix that graphic problem" no one can answer them".. of course they are all new users..

 

  1.1.3: making the welcome sims safe.

Trolls, spammers, griefers, bloodlines harras, adult content in PG welcome areas..etc.. All those stupid attitudes from certain users are responsible of the loss of many new users that will have a bad opinion of second life.

We really need to create a quality process, that would make the new users first hours experience the best. One new user satisfied is one future regular user.

The safety would include Linden Employees that have the mission to make the welcome areas/orientation islands safe. A real time moderation, and not a ticket support one. We should also increase the punishment of the trolls/griefers/etc.. Dont forget that even if some of those griefers spend a lot of money in SL and the lab hesitate to give them big punishment, if one griefer bothers 100 people, that will then have a bad opinion of second life, this is better to ban the griefer definitivly, and to give the best experience to the 100's users this griefer would have bother.

  1.1.4: Resume concerning welcome sims/ orientation islands.

Would Linden Lab manage and designe welcome sims, graphicly attractive, and langage based (English/french/japanese/russian..etc...)?

Will LL  Merge orientation islands/welcome sims and permitting actual users to meet new users to help them is real time?

Will there be a quality process concerning the safety, creating a real time moderation by linden employees concerning the welcome sims, increasing punishment of griefers?

 

 

NB: This is the first part of my questions and suggestions. The part 2 coming soon.

[Imagin Illyar]

How will the avatars work in Sansar?  From the point of view of a clothing maker - will there be a standard avatar that is hopefully better than the ones in Second Life?  Will there be a need to have to create standard sizes as we do now or will fitted mesh work properly so that there is no need?  Currently a mesh clothing designer who wants to be competitive must create 5-6 standard sizes for those using the standard avatar as well as fitted mesh for the 7 or 8 different popular mesh bodies.  Will Sansar have an avatar that allows us to avoid this?

[Richardus Raymaker]

10. Land size

How much Sqm land land does experience have in project sansar ? Can the experience grow seamless in size ?

 

[Richardus Raymaker]

Now i use the secondlife viewer a bit more. Why is the secondlife viewer  so clumpsy and not userfriendly.

As example. Detach a clothig part is very difficult in the orginal secondlife viewer compared to Firestorm and Singularity etc. In the secondlife viewer you firtst need to open inventory, find the clothing part in your inventory and then remove it.

And now a TPV viewer. click with the right mouse on the clothing part, click detach and your done !

 

Same with edit mesh clothing. you first need to rezz it on some rezzable land. then edit it. take it back. then wear it. in TPV viewer you can edit it the correct way straight on your avatar.

 

 

 

[Majestic Kohime]

The part 2 of my questions/suggestion concerns the inworld creation tools:

 

2/

Second Life used to be known world wide to be the place that users can create everything. Though, since 2012 and the Meshs apparition, that reputation been affected because Inworld tools have been terribly outdated in comparason of external tools (such as: Blender, Maya, Web Servers..etc..).

Linden Lab made the clear choice to stop the development of the LSL, and also to stop development of the inworld tools.

A lot of users that only liked to play with inworld tools, simply stopped to create.

Questions are:

2.1: Will linden Lab add a classic Project Sansar AVATAR SHAPE with ALL (or more) the EDIT options we have in Second life to EDIT our shape, inworld? We also could create hair and hair bases, and classic clothings, what about them? 

This is an essential point here: actually, most of the new users join second life and see their "basic noob mesh avatar". They want to change it but they cannot edit their "basic mesh body" anymore. When they do ask to actual users how to "look good", answers are "oh, there are few mesh bodies:heads, from 5000L$ to 15000L$, feel free to buy them. This has an highly negative impact on the motivation of new players. We should be able to edit a high definition SHAPE in project sansar. Second life slogan was "create your world". If we cant fully edit our own shape inworld, this slogan will mean nothing. Ill also add that restricting the high quality bodies to only few creators, will be destructing. We really need a project sansar basic shape with high definition, fully editable.

 

2.2: Will Project sansar Land creation tools be more updated than into SL?

Will we be able to DIG, HOLES into the land, without water into it?

Will we be able to place submarines houses under the water and remove water from their interior?

Thoss few questions seem stupid, but thats the sad reality of SL land tools in 2015. They still limit creativity.

What about the wind and environment settings?

In SL remember that we could create grass and basic trees, will those options kept? (and updated, of course...)

 

2.3: About prims/items creations in Project Sansar.

Obviously inworld tools in SL are outdated. Prims are not used anymore. People than join SL find inworld creation tools very outdated in comparason to all the sandbox universes (minecraft, etc..) that appeared past few years.

Will inworld creation tools permit to create BASIC mesh objects and edit them? And adding few basic materials? this would permit to keep creativity inworld. This was the main goal of "second life: create your world". The slogan wasnt create your world... "in maya", or "in blender".

 

 

[sirhc DeSantis]

A simple one : What is Project Sansar and what does/will it do?

Some concrete examples instead of more fluffy generalisations would be nice.

(Afraid my initial frisson of nervous excitement has rather evaporated, replaced with ennui.)

[xBurningAngelx]

Dear uncle Ebbe, a few thoughts shared with you :smileywink:

A> Prepaid premium memberships we can purchase then give to friends n loved ones

B> Gift cards that can be bought for the marketplace to gift at friends n loved ones 

C> Please port the Patterns Game into project Sansar as a linden realm experience for premium members

D> Reward premium members special recognition with a badge in the profile

E> Create a badge system as rewards for other things including badges we can buy from the market as cool gifts to share.

 

Have a great day :matte-motes-smile:

Bella

[Tectum Neumann]

1. Experience creation depends upon fostering some combination of tribalsim and a sense of progression among its users. This requires good database storage and integration. It also requires a very flexible avatar permission system customizable by each experience. Will these tools be in Sansar?
2. How much of the C# language will be in Sansar as it is a very powerful language when everything is there?

And  congratulations on noticing this lack of experience creation support in Second Life because it has too many beautiful yet empty sims. People need a reason to buy and create things.

[MBeatrix]

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.

As a parcel owner, I don't want you or anyone else not belonging to LL with special powers over my parcel. If you want to play cops, get your own parcel and do it there. Also, LL's support always responded quickly to the cases I filed, and even quicker now with Concierge Support — last time they took about 10 minutes to send 3 employees investigating and fixing whatever the trouble was at the region where I own a parcel.

[Dresden]

I have two questions as follows:

What part, if any, will voxels play in Project Sansar?

Have you given any consideration toward trying to improve the experience of your user base concerning customer service?  If so, in what way?  If not, why not?

...Dres

[Richardus Raymaker]

11. Disablities

Does project sansar viewer have support for people with disablities or bad eye sight ? That means that there need to be some option to set text bigger etc. (but not always icons) It's important that people with bad eye sight can use sansar too.

Asking this because the secondlife viewer is not perfect in that, and it seems that now finaly after 4 years a long standing bug get fixt. Need to see it first myself.

 

 

[DaxPolaris]

Has any consideration been given to making Sansar a geographically contiguous (albeit expanding) world rather than one full of holes and dead zones as in SL? It would be amazing to have a world which is fully connected and navigable/crossable from end to end.

[AbriannaOceanside]

I know that there was once a big focus on the capabilities of providing rich educational and more interactive business experiences for real-world establishments within the realm of Second Life. Do you feel that this is something that we've lost sight of, and/or do you see a potential for growth in these areas as our technological capabilities have very much changed since those earlier days?

Also, with the impending launch of Sansar, is that an area that will also be a focus within that platform?

[Cam Mode]

Why not kill ban lines on mainland when no one who is allowed or owns the parcel is anywhere on the parcel? 

 

We can't steal things and it makes mainland miserable to fly over  or have as next door neighbor . When an owner , group member or allowed person appears ---the bans would kick in .

[GreenLantern Excelsior]

Your neighbor left building and scripts turned on at his parcel. He is not online and can't be contacted. The griefer dropped some very offensive objects on that parcel, and the particles and sounds from those objects are slowly drifting across your parcel, where you are trying to have a party with 20 of your friends. The Concierge tells you to write an Abuse Report, because it's griefing and you don't own the affected parcel, but it's Sunday night and there's no one available from Linden Lab to come and fix the problem. This happens frequently, and it is a source of great frustration to residents, many of whom have contacted us for help. We can do nothing but write multiple Abuse Reports and wait for Monday morning when the Lindens come back to the office. In this case, you and your friends will have to wait too.

[Loki Eliot]

Does anyone at Linden Lab know how the SL cache works/does not work?

[MBeatrix]

Your neighbor left building and scripts turned on at his parcel. He is not online and can't be contacted. The griefer dropped some very offensive objects on that parcel, and the particles and sounds from those objects are slowly drifting across your parcel, where you are trying to have a party with 20 of your friends. The Concierge tells you to write an Abuse Report, because it's griefing and you don't own the affected parcel, but it's Sunday night and there's no one available from Linden Lab to come and fix the problem. This happens frequently, and it is a source of great frustration to residents, many of whom have contacted us for help. We can do nothing but write multiple Abuse Reports and wait for Monday morning when the Lindens come back to the office. In this case, you and your friends will have to wait too.

That may be a good point for someone, but not for me. I'd rather risk having a parcel next door griefed than risking having some mean cop messing on the land I pay for. If a parcel next to mine is griefed, I can switch off rezzing, object entry and scripts for non land group members — which won't affect my party. Also, if the griefing involves particles, it's just a matter of disabling them in the viewer.

Even on Sundays, the response to a support ticket filed has never taken more than one hour.

No way I can agree with you on that, sorry.

[Cackle Amore]

Sansar Questions:

Can you tell use anything about what sort of in-game tools we might have in Sansar for creation/editing?

And how in-depth will the character creation be in Sansar? Will we still be able to mod items and/or wear things as attachments with the ablitly to adjust their placement?

Any details on what sort of measures ya'll have planned with Sansar to help counter sub-par content some users might try to create/upload?

Can I be a hyena?

Any hint at when we could be on the look out for alpha/beta?