Checking in after a long hiatus - Still not interested in returning because...

[davidventer]

I took a break from Second Life quite a while ago due to Linden Lab's illogical choice to throw resources at Sansar while ignoring longstanding BASIC Issues on Second Life. Now that the failed disaster and waste of resources that was Sansar is out of the picture, can Linden lab PLEASE fix the following:

Linden Lab, if you're reading this, pay attention to the following if you wish to remain relevant:

1. Two factor authentication. Why is this still not a thing? It's really not that difficult to implement. You actually run a payment processing service and you don't even have 2FA for that, seriously? I recommend using the Twillio/Authy API to get this done. Google it. It's really not that difficult to implement. 

2. Mobile-Friendly/Responsive Website, Account Dashboard, and profiles, etc. Why is this still not a thing? The community section of the website is the only mobile-friendly part. Everything else is trash and feels like we're living in 1999. Please put some resources into web development to get this fixed.

3. Old, outdated, deprecated graphics frameworks need to GO. Still using OpenGL? Really? STILL? Heard of Vulkan and Metal? Google It. Hire some developers to make a Vulkan Viewer for Windows and a Metal Viewer for Mac. And no, please don't go the MoltenVK route for Mac, it's trash. If you could afford the resources to develop the disappointment that is Sansar, surely you can afford to hire some developers to re-code the SL viewer for the Vulkan and Metal API's.

4. Mobile Viewer for Android and iOS. Why is this still not a thing? If you can't get it done, at least create a mobile app with a mobile-friendly my.secondlife.com interface running in the app, and maybe some live direct chat / IM capabilities and marketplace integration with a mobile -friendly marketplace view. The fact that SL still doesn't have a decent, official mobile client or companion app, or even a mobile-friendly website in 2020 is just baffling. Do the guys at the lab not own smartphones or tablets? 

5. Official Controller / Gamepad support with default, ready-to-go controller mapping profiles. I'd like to launch SL with my Xbox wireless controller connected to my Mac and actually have it "just work" without me having to fuss with why it's not being recognized or struggling to manually map things to it. Set some default mappings for character movement and make it work automatically when a connected controller is detected.

6. Fix the new user onboarding experience and provide some objectives and incentives. Give new SL residents something to work towards other than just "this is how you move around and this is how you find places, now off you go." Introduce new users to Creator Tools in SL. Builders Brewery is a great place that I honestly think should be officially sponsored and supported by Linden Lab in order to get new users to learn how to create stuff in SL. Show new users everything they can do through interactive tutorials, not just "here's a list."

7. Streamline and standardize the avatar editing/creation process. Remove the default system avatar entirely and focus only on wearable/detachable bodies that support bakes-oh-mesh (for compatibility with old layer clothing from the creator community). Provide a bakes-on-mesh supported, LL created wearable body as standard that can then be REPLACED by a more detailed body from the creator community. The default system avatars that hide underneath need to GO, they are trash and simply ad an extra layer of confusion for new users. New users shouldn't have to hide their body to wear a new one. it should be a wearable that gets replaced, and if you take it off, it should be just a cloud, or automatically re-attach the starter body rather than being a body underneath a body that creates unnecessary confusion. I've introduced quite a few friends to SL over the years who always struggled understanding appearance modification in their early days on SL. "I have a body, why can't I just edit it to make it look like yours? Why do I need to wear a new one on top of this one? Why do I need to hide the other one? can't I just replace it? This is confusing." - You get the point. If the system body is by default a detachable wearable with no other body hiding underneath it, it'll ease some of the confusion. 

8.  Repeating point 3: VULKAN for Windows! METAL for Mac! Get it done! I know you have the resources. Just do it!

I expect that this post will probably receive some salty feedback from SL loyalists or get flagged for whatever reason but seriously, these are SIMPLE THINGS that should've been implemented YEARS ago already. SL is becoming less and less relevant by the day because of LL's refusal to update and implement even the most basic of things while wasting resources on things that no one asked for.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk 💁🏻‍♂️

[Adamburp Adamczyk]

whut?

[Love Zhaoying]

#4 is coming. You will find most of your points addressed on the Forums. If the poster's last name is "Linden", you can trust the information.

[Chroma Starlight]

It's hard to get past the negativity regardless of any merits to the ideas you present. Second Life is also about community and relationships, and your relationship with the hosts of this party won't attract many invites. Second Life and Sansar and High Fidelity are delightful precisely because they were ambitious and willing to take creative risks. I wouldn't want Linden Lab to be any other way, it fills our heart with hope that companies like this still exist and operate in this cynical pecuniary low time for humanity on Earth.

[Aishagain]

@davidventer: In the face of such stalwart negativity I am tempted to dismiss your remarks as largely irrelevant.   However:

1) Replacing OpenGL, with either Vulkan or Metal, while desirable from certain viewpoints, is impractical due to the underlying code structure of SL.  While it IS possible it is by no means simple.  Besides although Vulkan is largely bug-free Metal most assuredly is NOT.

Several of your other points are currently being addressed by LL.

 

[Rowan Amore]

26 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

#4 is coming. You will find most of your points addressed on the Forums. If the poster's last name is "Linden", you can trust the information.

They actually started a whole new sub forum to address the Mobile.

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/359-mobile/

[davidventer]

51 minutes ago, Aishagain said:

@davidventer: In the face of such stalwart negativity I am tempted to dismiss your remarks as largely irrelevant.   However:

1) Replacing OpenGL, with either Vulkan or Metal, while desirable from certain viewpoints, is impractical due to the underlying code structure of SL.  While it IS possible it is by no means simple.  Besides although Vulkan is largely bug-free Metal most assuredly is NOT.

Several of your other points are currently being addressed by LL.

 

What you call "stalwart negativity" is actually just blunt honesty. Sorry for not sugar coating or @$$ kissing. I have no reason to.

Glad to hear that several of the points are being worked on. So there's hope yet.

As for "Besides although Vulkan is largely bug-free Metal most assuredly is NOT." - It's actually the OTHER way around, FYI. But that's not the point of this discussion. And call it "impractical" all you like, but these are the new norms and if Linden Lab wants to keep SL going for years to come, they need to adapt to the new API's sooner rather than later. OpenGL will eventually be deprecated by Microsoft as well, it's only a matter of time. You'll also find that the majority of other multiplayer online games out there have already made the switch. LL is lagging by holding on to a dying framework. If it really is 'by no means simple' then at least start the process of working towards making the necessary changes to eventually get it implemented before it's too late.

Edited September 29, 2020 by davidventer

[Love Zhaoying]

33 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

They actually started a whole new sub forum to address the Mobile.

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/359-mobile/

Yeah, saw the first post. Now there's 2 posts. Word may spread slow about new forum sub-forums.

[Aishagain]

@davidventer: Well, you tell me that it is Vulkan not Metal that is buggy, with regard to Windows OS, Metal is....problematic at the least.  True, Vulkan has issues as well, which rather reinforces my point...moving from one set of bugs to another simply makes no sense whatsoever.  Your point re other gaming applications is valid and many of us have been quietly (and not so quietly) suggesting to LL that "a change gonna come"... it seems to have little impact, for the perfectly valid, if irritating reasons I mentioned.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Sometimes it's hard to run a stable and dependable platform if every other week the devs see a new thing and want to play with it.

4 hours ago, davidventer said:

due to Linden Lab's illogical choice to throw resources at Sansar

See what I mean? The flashy new stuff didn't catch the user-base that the old dependable stuff held onto.

 

Don't blame LL, blame us

Edited September 29, 2020 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[davidventer]

49 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Sometimes it's hard to run a stable and dependable platform if every other week the devs see a new thing and want to play with it.

The new graphics API's aren't just a "new thing to play with" - Modern Operating systems are deprecating support for OpenGL. I wouldn't call it "dependable". 

For Windows and Linux, Vulkan is the way to go.

For macOS, Metal is the new standard, and has been for a while now. 

If Linden Lab wants long term stability and dependability, they should drop OpenGL and make the switch to Vulkan and Metal. Unless they expect their user-base to keep using outdated operating systems for the sole purpose of being able to play Second Life in years to come. With the resources WASTED on Sansar, LL could've given us a Vulkan viewer for Windows and a Metal viewer for macOS already; or at least modernized their web properties for mobile compatibility as a start. 

I'm glad that they finally came to their senses and are focussing on SL again, now here's hoping they'll actually update it to modern standards so that we can all keep enjoying this wonderful virtual world that they've created for us. Sticking with OpenGL will guarantee the death of SL on macOS with the next macOS update a year from now. And eventually, the same grave awaits it on Windows and Linux if they don't make the switch to Vulkan for those platforms. OpenGL is DEAD, accept it.

Edited September 29, 2020 by davidventer

[davidventer]

5 hours ago, Adamburp Adamczyk said:

whut?

Exactly

[Horus Salubrius]

23 hours ago, davidventer said:

7. Streamline and standardize the avatar editing/creation process. Remove the default system avatar entirely and focus only on wearable/detachable bodies that support bakes-oh-mesh (for compatibility with old layer clothing from the creator community). Provide a bakes-on-mesh supported, LL created wearable body as standard that can then be REPLACED by a more detailed body from the creator community. The default system avatars that hide underneath need to GO, they are trash and simply ad an extra layer of confusion for new users. New users shouldn't have to hide their body to wear a new one. it should be a wearable that gets replaced, and if you take it off, it should be just a cloud, or automatically re-attach the starter body rather than being a body underneath a body that creates unnecessary confusion. I've introduced quite a few friends to SL over the years who always struggled understanding appearance modification in their early days on SL. "I have a body, why can't I just edit it to make it look like yours? Why do I need to wear a new one on top of this one? Why do I need to hide the other one? can't I just replace it? This is confusing." - You get the point. If the system body is by default a detachable wearable with no other body hiding underneath it, it'll ease some of the confusion. 

THIS !  Having just spent days struggling to grasp this stuff & not look like a freak show, I can see why people would just give up - it is very confusing & unnecessarily complicated IMHO.   I spent quite a lot of time in SL a decade ago so thought it would be a breeze .. ha !  was I wrong on that.  

I still don't "get it" yet, but at least I have an avi I like.  

[bigmoe Whitfield]

2fa I can get behind,  but you are asking for a recode of the basic underlying of SL,  impossible without taking SL down in the process.  Good luck with that.

[animats]

The OP is absolutely right.

Remember Sears?

It took decades of complacent management to reach this point. But they got there.

LL lost a year moving SL to "the cloud". That's working now. Visit Hippotropolis. Good job. Works just like the old data center. User will barely notice.

OK, let's go down the list.

1. Two factor authentication. All that work to spin off Tilia, and no better security?

2. Mobile-Friendly/Responsive Website, Account Dashboard, and profiles, etc. Yes. It's not that hard, and you can hire people who know how.

3. Old, outdated, deprecated graphics frameworks need to GO. Big job. It means a rewrite of the rendering end of the viewer. A Viewer 3. I've written about this before. One point I make is that most of SL's datedness is viewer-side. That's good, because the sim side is hard to fix without upsetting the world. The viewer isn't as hard to change, and any problems only affect people testing new viewers.

4. Mobile Viewer for Android and iOS. Probably not; not enough compute power or bandwidth in those things. Non-3D clients are possible but not all that useful. But reevaluate each year; the time will come.

5. Official Controller / Gamepad support. Yes. It's ridiculous that SL can't be played with a gamepad. Or use joysticks properly.

6. Fix the new user onboarding experience and provide some objectives and incentives. That's hard, but can be outsourced to groups. Just offering more useful portals at the Portal Park would help.

7. Streamline and standardize the avatar editing/creation process. Remove the default system avatar entirely and focus only on wearable / detachable bodies that support bakes-on-mesh...

I've been talking to new users recently at Caledon and Firestorm Help Island, both of which now seem to be rarely staffed. Two things come up repeatedly. 1) What do I do now? 2) How do I fix this %$#(^! clothing problem? As an absolute minimum, the onboarding process needs to finish with the new user wearing one good mesh avatar and outfit, with that outfit saved so they can go back to it. I've found that the most useful thing I can tell new users is how to save an outfit. Once they know they can go back, the whole clothing system becomes less frightening. Major clothing problems are extremely upsetting to some new users. I talked to one woman who was having alpha layer problems, had lost her shoulders, and was quite upset. Knowing there's a way to go back helps increase user confidence. Also, not one of the new user entry points properly covers current BOM-capable mesh avatars.

8.  Repeating point 3: VULKAN for Windows! See above.

SL is becoming less and less relevant by the day because of LL's refusal to update and implement even the most basic of things while wasting resources on things that no one asked for. EEP comes to mind. Huge effort. We got a nice moon out of it.

"Less-relevant" is on point. I have a topic where I post articles about "the metaverse", currently a hot subject in the business press. Often, Second Life is mentioned. Often in the context of "oh, you might remember that old thing". Second Life is so out of the news that searching for "Second Life" in Google News returns zero first page results about Linden Lab's SL.

[davidventer]

Another thing:

Rather than all these dodgy, ugly, and poorly coded 3rd-party viewers; allow other developers to create plugins/mods for the default viewer that can extend its functionality, adding new buttons and functions. This could also be an opportunity for devs to monetize said plugins. Make a marketplace section for viewer plugins and have the default viewer automatically download and activate these plugins in the viewer once a plugin is purchased from the marketplace. Create another section in the viewer preferences for plugins that list all the purchased plugins (think steam DLC/workshop style interface) where users can then disable/enable these plugins along with a link to the marketplace for finding new plugins. 
 

Just a thought. 

[Mollymews]

2 hours ago, davidventer said:

Rather than all these dodgy, ugly, and poorly coded 3rd-party viewers; allow other developers to create plugins/mods for the default viewer that can extend its functionality, adding new buttons and functions

 

is not clear to me why you might think that adding a capability for users to create viewer plugins/mods would result in less dodgy, ugly and poorly coded things

[AdminGirl]

On 9/30/2020 at 2:07 AM, davidventer said:

7. Streamline and standardize the avatar editing/creation process. Remove the default system avatar entirely and focus only on wearable/detachable bodies that support bakes-oh-mesh (for compatibility with old layer clothing from the creator community). Provide a bakes-on-mesh supported, LL created wearable body as standard that can then be REPLACED by a more detailed body from the creator community. The default system avatars that hide underneath need to GO, they are trash and simply ad an extra layer of confusion for new users. New users shouldn't have to hide their body to wear a new one. it should be a wearable that gets replaced, and if you take it off, it should be just a cloud, or automatically re-attach the starter body rather than being a body underneath a body that creates unnecessary confusion. I've introduced quite a few friends to SL over the years who always struggled understanding appearance modification in their early days on SL. "I have a body, why can't I just edit it to make it look like yours? Why do I need to wear a new one on top of this one? Why do I need to hide the other one? can't I just replace it? This is confusing." - You get the point. If the system body is by default a detachable wearable with no other body hiding underneath it, it'll ease some of the confusion. 

I agree with this one in particular. Learning mesh was such a confusing experience when I joined sl. I can't imagine what it's like now that new users have to add BOM on top of it. LL should at least let users choose an "invisible" classic avatar from the library to save the trouble of having to hide anything.

Don't know enough to comment on the other points. But I do get frustrated at how poorly sl utilizes modern hardware. Shouldn't be like this.

[davidventer]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

is not clear to me why you might think that adding a capability for users to create viewer plugins/mods would result in less dodgy, ugly and poorly coded things

Valid point but at least an ugly plug-in would then have its uglyness and massy code limited to a single button/window/section/function (Like a HUD) rather than making the entire viewer look like trash. 

Edited October 1, 2020 by davidventer

[Mollymews]

1 minute ago, davidventer said:

 making the entire viewer look like trash. 

the whole answer to that which we don't like about the viewer, is to build our own from the source. Then skin our build and/or add viewer-side functionality we would like. For interacting with the inworld then add a LSL interface. RLV and Firestorm bridge are working examples of LSL interfaces. We can make a LSL interface of our own design

Linden provide/link the resources for making our own viewer here:   http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Get_source_and_compile

[Resi Pfeffer]

On 9/29/2020 at 6:07 PM, davidventer said:

SL is becoming less and less relevant by the day because of LL's refusal to update and implement even the most basic of things while wasting resources on things that no one asked for.

I dont even understand the half of the technical stuff you talk about, but probably the most of the money what could have been used to do what you just asked for, was going to be wasted for the walking/standup comedy simulator aka Sansar.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

4 hours ago, davidventer said:

llow other developers to create plugins/mods for the default viewer that can extend its functionality, adding new buttons and functions

This I definitely agree with, rather than roll out viewers with loads of stuff there that a typical user never needs, have plugins that allow individual users to add functionality they do need. The bloat in the viewer executables would be reduced.

[Nick0678]

5 hours ago, davidventer said:

Another thing:

Rather than all these dodgy, ugly, and poorly coded 3rd-party viewers; allow other developers to create plugins/mods for the default viewer that can extend its functionality, adding new buttons and functions. This could also be an opportunity for devs to monetize said plugins. Make a marketplace section for viewer plugins and have the default viewer automatically download and activate these plugins in the viewer once a plugin is purchased from the marketplace. Create another section in the viewer preferences for plugins that list all the purchased plugins (think steam DLC/workshop style interface) where users can then disable/enable these plugins along with a link to the marketplace for finding new plugins. 
 

Just a thought. 

It's a bit late for such stuff, SL is 17 years old now and doesn't even have an official android or iphone app.

You do have a valid point though regarding DLC's etc and it would be nice to be like that but ...

 

Anyway at least the majority of SL users has the option to download and use one of the publicly available 3rd party viewers thanks to their devs coding for free/fame.

(Those who want extra features or custom looks usually build their own personal/custom viewer).

Edited October 1, 2020 by Nick0678

[Alwin Alcott]

just adding.. about the loaded viewers... years ago they released a "light" one with less functions .. it was one of the biggest disasters in viewer releases.
 

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

This I definitely agree with, rather than roll out viewers with loads of stuff there that a typical user never needs, have plugins that allow individual users to add functionality they do need. The bloat in the viewer executables would be reduced.

is interesting what we would include as core in a viewer and what we would consider as non-core to be added as an optional plugin

going thru the Linden viewer as an exercise then the non-core capabilities for me are. Non-core meaning to me, that I don't use them:

- Destinations Guide, Events

- Avatar - choose new

- Grid Status

- Voice morphing

- Picks, Classifieds and Marketplace listings..

- HowTo..., and everything else on the Help menu except for About Second Life

i pretty much use all the rest on a reasonably regular basis

some people would consider the above core to them. Like merchants with Picks, Classifieds and Marketplace listings. New people with Destinations Guide, Events, Avatar, for example. Grid Status for at least venue owners, landlords, estate owners

the idea of plugins, as an idea, is not bad. The hard part is working out what is core and what isn't. Which is pretty subjective