September Town Hall discussion

[animats]

There doesn't seem to be any discussion topic for September's town hall, now that we've heard Ebbe.

[Garnet Psaltery]

It's been pinned to the top.

[animats]

"This topic is now closed to further replies.", says the pinned topic.

That was the pre-talk topic for asking questions. There's no post-talk analysis by users.

Inara Pey covered this well on her "Living in a modem world" blog.

Basically the same as Ebbe's last talk a few months back.

[Callum Meriman]

8 hours ago, animats said:

There doesn't seem to be any discussion topic for September's town hall, now that we've heard Ebbe.

Correction: Apart from the fact his hair never rezzed, we only heard Ebbe's every third word. It was the most painful video I'd watched for a while.

I guess Ebbe's good microphone is hooked up for his eager Saturday Sansar Playtimes and not for SL, so hopefully the Lab can afford to buy Ebbe a better microphone for SL next time.

Yep, my biggest take away was Ebbe saying "I am in Sansar each and every week, but, I am only inside SL when I really have to be, as I am way too busy."

 

Edit: It honestly beats me why the board of Linden Lab keeps choosing CEOs who are not diehard product evangelists.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Callum Meriman
Also added a picture of the never-rez hair.

[Ethan Paslong]

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

Yep, my biggest take away was Ebbe saying "I am in Sansar each and every week, but, I am only inside SL when I really have to be, as I am way too busy."

Edit: It honestly beats me why the board of Linden Lab keeps choosing CEOs who are not diehard product evangelists.

.. if the CEO not even thinks it's worth to log in how will he ever be able to promote it...

this is simply really bad.

Perheps Ebbe is better offered a position as CEO of the Sansar Team, give us one that does have feeling with SL.

[animats]

He still thinks Sansar is going somewhere? Here are live statistics for Sansar usage:

As of this posting:

• There are 1,084 experiences listed
• There are 4 people in 4 listed experiences now
• Today's peak is 16 and average is 7 people
• 4 experiences visited these past 3 hours
• 105 experiences visited today
• 377 experiences visited this month

Yes, average concurrency in Sansar today was seven users.

Average concurrency for Second Life is around 35,000 - 40,000. Sansar would have to increase usage by 5000x to reach SL's level. While, in fact, Sansar usage is down. A few months ago, average concurrency was around 50.

None of the new VR worlds are doing well. VRChat peaked last holiday season and is down about 5000 concurrent users. High Fidelity and SineSpace have tiny user counts. Facebook Spaces - well, Facebook doesn't talk about that much any more. On the game side, the game industry has backed off from VR.

It's now safe for the Linden Labs CEO to admit that VR isn't going to be a mass market product any time soon. He can blame the VR market for Sansar's failure. Investors will understand that. In fact, it's starting to look bad for a CEO to still be pouring money into headset VR.

 

 

[Ethan Paslong]

1 hour ago, animats said:

There are 1,084 experiences listed

not sure this means a lot... i have two there too, but havent been at it in long time

Not sure whats more sad now.. these low figures or a CEO with "no time" for SL.
Of course it's a good thing to see some Lindens here on the forums and working hard inworld, we need more of those!

Edited September 17, 2018 by Ethan Paslong

[Blush Bravin]

I think you are distorting his comments. He didn't say he has no time for SL. He said he has little time for just hanging out in either SL or Sansar. If he's going to spend some of his personal time on a Saturday logged in he prefers Sansar. Come on guys don't you think you're being too critical?

Ebbe is very devoted to SL and furthering it as a platform. LL is spending a lot of cash on SL and hiring more people for the SL team. They have been actively developing Second Life while spending some of the LL resources for developing a new product, Sansar. I keep hearing people making comments that SL is suffering at the cost of Sansar. I don't think this is true at all. If anything I think that working on Sansar has given the team new ideas to use for SL as well. 

Perhaps if you logged into Sansar and attended a few Atlas Hoppings and got to hear Ebbe talk about the products outside of a formal setting, you'd begin to see his dedication to SL.

[MoiraKathleen]

I listened to the video several days ago.  The impression I got was that he didn't have a lot of free time to just hang out inworld as a resident.  The comment about Sansar didn't bother me because it is LL's product as well, and I don't see anything wrong with him trying to give that product a little extra push by his presence, especially in it's early days.  I was really surprised that, of all the things he talked about, this was the thing that people found to pull out and be critical about. 

It also doesn't bother me as much because it seemed to me, from the rest of his talk, that he does care a lot about SL, and is committed to continued development projects on the SL side as well.  I don't think a company invests in long term, complex development initiatives unless they believe in the product.   It feels to me that there has been more communication from Lindens in general, especially through the forums,  and I see that as a sign that the company as a whole is behind SL, from the top down.  I don't think we would see that if the CEO wasn't interested in SL.   

[Phil Deakins]

@animats

Sansar isn't a finished product yet, so LL won't have been promoting it to the people they intend aiming it at, so the numbers don't mean much at all. The users there are just people from here who got their 'experiences' for free, to help LL with the development. Even I got one lol.

It is taking them a very long time to get it up and running, and ready for the wide wide world, though.

[Callum Meriman]

8 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

I think you are distorting his comments. He didn't say he has no time for SL. He said he has little time for just hanging out in either SL or Sansar. If he's going to spend some of his personal time on a Saturday logged in he prefers Sansar. Come on guys don't you think you're being too critical?

Actually no, I don't think it's critical at all, he shows his personal desire clearly by the fact he can find time most Saturdays to go into Sansar, but never a Saturday in SL. That he openly states he prefers 3D to 2D reinforces that. I stand by the comment that the LL Board really need to start hiring product evangelists.

8 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

Perhaps if you logged into Sansar and attended a few Atlas Hoppings and got to hear Ebbe talk about the products outside of a formal setting, you'd begin to see his dedication to SL.

Ongoing issue for people outside the USA timezone, just as we can't get the luxury of live support, we also don't get the luxury of such sync-ups.

 

I will keep hoping Ebbe actually spends some time in SL like we see the other Lindens doing. 

[Blush Bravin]

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

Ongoing issue for people outside the USA timezone, just as we can't get the luxury of live support, we also don't get the luxury of such sync-ups.

Atlas Hopping is hosted by Draxtor who lives in Germany. I suppose if he can do it you can too.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Blush Bravin

[Callum Meriman]

1 hour ago, Blush Bravin said:

Atlas Hopping is hosted by Draxtor who lives in Germany. I suppose if he can do it you can too.

For a European it's 8pm at night. Quite a civilised hour. For me, it's 4am. Sure I guess I could wake at 3:30am and start my PC and strap on the goggles.

Watch out for the old and chubby looking avatar with the green hair who yawns a lot guys \o/ Just be patient as I am not really that good at moving.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[Blush Bravin]

13 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

For a European it's 8pm at night. Quite a civilised hour. For me, it's 4am. Sure I guess I could wake at 3:30am and start my PC and strap on the goggles.

Watch out for the old and chubby looking avatar with the green hair who yawns a lot guys \o/ Just be patient as I am not really that good at moving.

Ahhh .. I was thinking you were in Europe too. My mistake. I am up quite often at 4 am myself, but I admit it's not everyone's cup of tea.  

[Callum Meriman]

8 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

Ahhh .. I was thinking you were in Europe too. My mistake. I am up quite often at 4 am myself, but I admit it's not everyone's cup of tea.  

I can't attend office hours, events such as the atlas crawl are difficult (as much as I would love to be sold on the idea), out of hours live support is out of the question, most in world dances are out of the question. Maintenance happens during or prime time.

Aussies tend to spend their days alone in world as both Europeans and Americans sleep - and SL is super empty in those hours. Then when the Europeans and Americans schedule their events... they arrange things at our 3am-5am.

 

Such is life.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[Phorumities]

11 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

I think you are distorting his comments. He didn't say he has no time for SL. He said he has little time for just hanging out in either SL or Sansar. If he's going to spend some of his personal time on a Saturday logged in he prefers Sansar. Come on guys don't you think you're being too critical?

Ebbe is very devoted to SL and furthering it as a platform. LL is spending a lot of cash on SL and hiring more people for the SL team. They have been actively developing Second Life while spending some of the LL resources for developing a new product, Sansar. I keep hearing people making comments that SL is suffering at the cost of Sansar. I don't think this is true at all. If anything I think that working on Sansar has given the team new ideas to use for SL as well. 

Perhaps if you logged into Sansar and attended a few Atlas Hoppings and got to hear Ebbe talk about the products outside of a formal setting, you'd begin to see his dedication to SL.

They spend money on SL because its their cash cow. 

I can just imagine convos at rl parties, ooooh you work for LL.... you should be so ashamed... I've  I heard some pretty depraved things about second life.

Yes but but but, we have Sansar too, its cutting edge and there's no depravity of any kind.

And no growth or future either

 

[KanryDrago]

On 9/17/2018 at 8:33 AM, animats said:

He still thinks Sansar is going somewhere? Here are live statistics for Sansar usage:

As of this posting:

• There are 1,084 experiences listed
• There are 4 people in 4 listed experiences now
• Today's peak is 16 and average is 7 people
• 4 experiences visited these past 3 hours
• 105 experiences visited today
• 377 experiences visited this month

Yes, average concurrency in Sansar today was seven users.

Average concurrency for Second Life is around 35,000 - 40,000. Sansar would have to increase usage by 5000x to reach SL's level. While, in fact, Sansar usage is down. A few months ago, average concurrency was around 50.

None of the new VR worlds are doing well. VRChat peaked last holiday season and is down about 5000 concurrent users. High Fidelity and SineSpace have tiny user counts. Facebook Spaces - well, Facebook doesn't talk about that much any more. On the game side, the game industry has backed off from VR.

It's now safe for the Linden Labs CEO to admit that VR isn't going to be a mass market product any time soon. He can blame the VR market for Sansar's failure. Investors will understand that. In fact, it's starting to look bad for a CEO to still be pouring money into headset VR.

 

 

It is not VR that is dead more good titles come out for it everyday and with second gen headsets and peoples machines slowly catching up as they upgrade then it will slowly ramp up.

Sansar however I can't ever see being a thing. There is nothing it does better frankly than a custom experience and with the big graphics engines (unity and unreal) supporting VR it is not hard to develop them. Any company worth its salt isnt going to use Sansar they are going to create a tailored thing. Sansar is simply a solution looking for a problem and not a terribly good solution

[Qie Niangao]

37 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

It is not VR that is dead more good titles come out for it everyday and with second gen headsets and peoples machines slowly catching up as they upgrade then it will slowly ramp up.

Sansar however I can't ever see being a thing. There is nothing it does better frankly than a custom experience and with the big graphics engines (unity and unreal) supporting VR it is not hard to develop them. Any company worth its salt isnt going to use Sansar they are going to create a tailored thing. Sansar is simply a solution looking for a problem and not a terribly good solution

I'm not nearly as optimistic about VR's prospects for the next decade or so; it may drift along at the current rate of product introduction for a while until the well of venture funding completely dries up: adoption has vastly underperformed the (overhyped) expectations of two years ago, and now the patience of money runs thin.

This assessment of Sansar seems apt: "Any company worth its salt isn't going to use Sansar" -- but I don't think LL ever expected it to be a big platform for serious commercial development. Rather, I think they as game developers themselves imagine a market for would-be hobbyist game developers, and may even think Second Life offers evidence that such a market exists. People do buy SL islands, after all.

The thing is, I've been to Sansar, and for me it's Second Life with all the fun stripped out.

[KanryDrago]

2 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm not nearly as optimistic about VR's prospects for the next decade or so; it may drift along at the current rate of product introduction for a while until the well of venture funding completely dries up: adoption has vastly underperformed the (overhyped) expectations of two years ago, and now the patience of money runs thin.

This assessment of Sansar seems apt: "Any company worth its salt isn't going to use Sansar" -- but I don't think LL ever expected it to be a big platform for serious commercial development. Rather, I think they as game developers themselves imagine a market for would-be hobbyist game developers, and may even think Second Life offers evidence that such a market exists. People do buy SL islands, after all.

The thing is, I've been to Sansar, and for me it's Second Life with all the fun stripped out.

Same here with respect to Sansar.I have tried making the point over on the Sansar part of the forums to the "creators" that love Sansar. To make money there you need customers, I am an ardent vr'er I spend a fair amount in sl. I can see no reason on earth I would visit Sansar there is just nothing there I want. When I want to put my headset on I will go play a custom game, or custom built experience not some jack of all trades one size fits no one solution

[Qie Niangao]

On 9/17/2018 at 12:11 AM, Callum Meriman said:

Yep, my biggest take away was Ebbe saying "I am in Sansar each and every week, but, I am only inside SL when I really have to be, as I am way too busy."

I guess I would be in Sansar every week, too, if I were in Ebbe's place. As long as they're burning development resources, I'd be asking myself: "Is this the week I pull the plug? Or is this the week there's something worth marketing? Or, worst case, is this yet another week I have to sit on my hands?"

[ClaudiaOoOo]

noone asked if we can change only a first name even if we have a surname already ?

 

[Callum Meriman]

8 minutes ago, ClaudiaOoOo said:

noone asked if we can change only a first name even if we have a surname already ?

 

change is only allowed if you pick a new surname.

[Phorumities]

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

change is only allowed if you pick a new surname.

we have display names why does anyone even care about changing user names now?

[Blush Bravin]

1 minute ago, Phorumities said:

we have display names why does anyone even care about changing user names now?

Because display names suck? Anyone can set their preferences to not show display names. 

[Callum Meriman]

8 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

we have display names why does anyone even care about changing user names now?

A lot of people choose a name they regret over time.

It might have been a name they thought was funny at the time (Trump4Pres), or a name that means something bad in another language (kuso), or a sexual name that they are now ashamed of (boyToy69), or even a name that no longer reflects who they are. (Think Bruce who now prefers to be called Barbara).

Then of course there are people who want to have the same name as their partner to show their undying love. Those people wlll be able to both select a new surname and wear it together.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Callum Meriman