Oooo a New Shiny. Event Regions - What do you think of this?

[C0ui]

On another thought perhaps LL just wanted to have these regions for themselves first, hosting their own corporate presentations and conferences having primarily large corporations in mind as a target:
For instance: Corporate executive or marketing lead arrives to linden hosted conf, sees 200 people and asks them how they managed to pull it off. Linden offers him the opportunity. Sold.

As to the announcement itself - they had to do it, or otherwise it would always remain a "hidden" feature for big cheese clients only.

[Patch Linden]

16 hours ago, Inara Pey said:

At times I wish LL would be more definitive in their blurb. 

"IaaS: Instancing as a Service - Request to have your region duplicated to another region."

What, precisely does this mean? What are the limitations?

• Do you genuinely mean simultaneous instancing, on an on-demand basis (e.g. I can simply request another instance of my event to be spun-up based on the demand I'm seeing  -  and request it is taken down when demand drops below the level where it is no longer required)?. 
• Am I limited to just the one instance (as the wording perhaps implies), or can I have more than one?
• Is instancing covered by the "original" region's tier, or is a surcharge applicable? If so, how much?
• If none of the above, then clarification, please!

Howdy!  I'll try to explain in bullet list form to follow your questions in order

• Sorry in advance, if I may not understand the nuance of "genuinely simultaneous" correct in my explanation but here is my best try. 🙂 You can have the event region cloned (copied) to another region.   We already do this with Linden Realms, Portal Park, or the Welcome Islands as an example.  The recipient region can be another event region or a regular full region, keeping in mind that the 30k land impact limit could be a factor.  The recipient region(s) can be another empty region that already exists in your ownership and is out there on the grid.  This is a custom service we will provide manually as requested generally within 24 business hours.  We can spin it up/down as needed.
• You can have more than one.
• No, as you would already have to own additional empty recipient full regions or event regions for us to instance to.

 

[Patch Linden]

17 hours ago, C0ui said:

Just curious if anyone from this group or anyone you know in SL actually took a part in 200 avatar server stress-testing, or was it just bunch basic avatar created by LL interns?

Also if this is for daily rentals and someone decides to invest and then sublet this sim for daily or weekly renting contracts, would they actually have enough renters?

Would someone persay actually want to rent such region for a big wedding or other celebration and pay week's rent of lets say 300USD so they have enough time to decorate and then to trash the place when they are done?

Also, did anyone actually ask for this?

Asking for a friend:)

203 fully decked out avatars at a very large, popular shopping event that runs monthly.

Do I know your friends? 

[Patch Linden]

6 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

I wonder if LL will host their own shopping events, like their SL birthday and Halloween, in these new regions. It'd be nice to see how well it runs and everyone who experiences it will be able to spread the word.

Since the cat is out of the bag as they say, yes, most extremely large scale events have been running on them internally for around a year now, a lot of time and testing went in to this.  Meet the Lindens at SLB, some of the Shop and Hop events, various other events of importance happening around the grid if we knew about them might have found themselves on the hosts specifically purposed for events regions.

[belindacarson]

8 minutes ago, Patch Linden said:

Since the cat is out of the bag as they say, yes, most extremely large scale events have been running on them internally for around a year now, a lot of time and testing went in to this.  Meet the Lindens at SLB, some of the Shop and Hop events, various other events of importance happening around the grid if we knew about them might have found themselves on the hosts specifically purposed for events regions.

What about the "white gloves concierge service"? Will that be 24/7 live staff?

[Inara Pey]

21 minutes ago, Patch Linden said:

Howdy!  I'll try to explain in bullet list form to follow your questions in order

• The recipient region can be another event region or a regular full region, keeping in mind that the 30k land impact limit could be a factor.  The recipient region(s) can be another empty region that already exists in your ownership and is out there on the grid.  This is a custom service we will provide manually as requested generally within 24 business hours.  We can spin it up/down as needed.

 

Just to be clear. If an Event region is copied to a Full region (Land Capacity allowing as you  note), are you saying the Full region just gains the Event region's contents + landscaping, but none of the product benefits (e.g. the increased avatar count, extended chat range, etc.), and so remains at the $249 tier. OR are you saying the Full region to with the Event region is copied is "upgraded" to Event status and "gains" all the associated Event benefits (along with a corresponding increase in tier)? 

 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

53 minutes ago, belindacarson said:

What about the "white gloves concierge service"? Will that be 24/7 live staff?

Maybe it means if you break the server, Patch will come by and kick the thing to restart it! 🤣

[Qie Niangao]

I'm having trouble getting my head around what's been scaled-up here, technically. At least in my experience, event lag is almost exclusively a function of texture download delay. I see this texture-loading lag even on moderately loaded event regions with, say, 20 avatars all impostered and some Spare Time in the frame.

Granted, at some very busy events—presumably the target of this offering—there's still some script lag and even rubber-banding, all those avatars keeping the sim too busy; it makes sense to throw more processor at that, but unless something is also fixing the texture loading lag, those events would still be unbearable.

I wonder if, indeed, texture loading lag is somehow addressed in Event Regions.

[Extrude Ragu]

Just looked at the Buy L$ page Instant Buy

240,759L$ is what you can buy with 999 USD - The price of an event region for a month once the introductory period is over.

So to break even the event organizer alone needs to make ~7,766L$ per day every day for 31 days straight just to break even assuming a 31 day month.

Obviously that number is not quite right as the price to buy L$ is not quite the same as the amount to sell it and a bunch of other stuff I won't get into, but just some glancing numbers.

It seems to me that on a commercial level this offering therefor we can reasonably say is not for your average Joe, I just wonder how many SL Citizens are out there for which this is actually a worth while prospect.

[Persephone Emerald]

It seems to me that the people this would be marketed to would be organizers outside of SL - corporations, musicians, people who are used to paying in the hundreds and thousands of dollars for spaces and who would be paid in real money for tickets to attend. Linden Lab is already getting money for subscriptions and tier from businesses inworld. Getting more organizations into SL for special events would be a new and potentially very profitable revenue stream.  People who attend these events might then decide to try SL as regular users.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

It seems to me that the people this would be marketed to would be organizers outside of SL - corporations, musicians, people who are used to paying in the hundreds and thousands of dollars for spaces and who would be paid in real money for tickets to attend. Linden Lab is already getting money for subscriptions and tier from businesses inworld. Getting more organizations into SL for special events would be an new and potentially very profitable revenue stream for them.

Ah. So, they're finally bringing Sansar into SL. Why the frak didn't they do that in the first place? 

[Love Zhaoying]

16 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Ah. So, they're finally bringing Sansar into SL. Why the frak didn't they do that in the first place? 

I'm looking forward to the big name / promoted concerts.

[Dreamer Pixelmaid]

21 hours ago, C0ui said:

Just curious if anyone from this group or anyone you know in SL actually took a part in 200 avatar server stress-testing, or was it just bunch basic avatar created by LL interns?

Also if this is for daily rentals and someone decides to invest and then sublet this sim for daily or weekly renting contracts, would they actually have enough renters?

Would someone persay actually want to rent such region for a big wedding or other celebration and pay week's rent of lets say 300USD so they have enough time to decorate and then to trash the place when they are done?

Also, did anyone actually ask for this?

Asking for a friend:)

This has been tested in real shopping events with real shoppers (I've seen people riding horses and parading their pets at crowded events). I suppose it may have also been tested with avatars created by Linden Lab inters 🤣 No idea). It has also been talked about in large shopping groups. There was quite a lot of chatter at the beginning of the testing in real events quite a few months ago (sorry, I can't remember the exact date) when they were tested at Equal10 (huge event, always laggy), and there was some kind of problem and the regions had to close for an hour or so until things went back to running smoothly. There were lots of shoppers knocking at the doors of those regions, and lot of chatter in shopping groups about why that had happened. 

[Dreamer Pixelmaid]

5 hours ago, C0ui said:

On another thought perhaps LL just wanted to have these regions for themselves first, hosting their own corporate presentations and conferences having primarily large corporations in mind as a target:
For instance: Corporate executive or marketing lead arrives to linden hosted conf, sees 200 people and asks them how they managed to pull it off. Linden offers him the opportunity. Sold.

As to the announcement itself - they had to do it, or otherwise it would always remain a "hidden" feature for big cheese clients only.

This has been tested in real shopping events with real shoppers and it has also been talked about in large shopping groups. Maybe not lately, but there was plenty of chatter months ago. So no hidden feature for big cheese clients only. 

[Coffee Pancake]

$900 a month ... for a region that's slightly better ... and does nothing for the client side impact of having *checks notes* 175 avatars in close proximity.

 

Who was asking for this?

 

LL do appreciate that the sequential processing of every single worn rigged object (of which one attachment can be many) scales linearly in the client, and that nothing server side can compensate short of enforcing system avatars. They do get this is how their product works and how people have been dressing themselves for the last decade .. right?

@Patch Linden When and where can we expect to find a test region that we can pile on and demonstrate this.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Maybe they're also creating higher capacity Corn Fields ?! 😜

Edited May 3, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Sid Nagy]

On 5/2/2022 at 9:46 PM, Paul Hexem said:

These prices are out of control.

I said it somewhere else- one can buy a dedicated server box outright for 800 bucks, and get a dedicated fiber connection for 80 a month or less. Why are we paying thousands for a virtual server?

It is a take it or leave it offering I guess.
Not meant for everybody. Just like a normal region isn't for everybody either.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Sammy Huntsman]

3 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

It is a take it or leave it offering I guess.
Not meant for everybody. Just like a normal region is for everybody either.

I just don't get why people are getting mad, if they can't afford it. They just don't get it. 

[Nika Talaj]

3 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

It seems to me that the people this would be marketed to would be organizers outside of SL - corporations, musicians, people who are used to paying in the hundreds and thousands of dollars for spaces and who would be paid in real money for tickets to attend. 

Yes, eventually.  And, as I mentioned earlier, the entire event need not be held in SL, which was the way people used to think of holding RL events in virtual worlds.  Since the pandemic has acquainted a LOT more people with the concept of hybrid events,  having a virtual instance of a RL event is an obvious plus. 

Also note that any event with attendees who are not currently SL users is going to have less of a texture problem than the large shopping events, because nearly all attendees will be using prefab, minimally customizable avatars.  You want onboarding of event attendees to be as painless as possible.

This is obviously not a new idea; people have been selling specialized virtual worlds to RL companies for ages.  Often these were based on open source platforms like Unity, Vircadia, OpenSImulator, MayaVerse, etc..  But SL has slowly evolved into a much more capable platform for this sort of event.

• Cloud-based, for grid scalability and international reach
• MUCH more visually sophisticated
• Inworld event/game portals are also more sophisticated, with a more hardened implementation, than in the past
• LL is more adept at corporate partnerships, e.g. offerings like Zenoscope
• Choreography tools used by SL dance troupes make it possible for each region to easily have simultaneous, clone presenters for their concert, demonstration, whatever.  The tools can now take care of a performance's synchronized lighting effects, animations, set changes, costume changes, and camera management without human intervention.  Yup, BTS could perform on a set of souped-up event regions simultaneously ... NOW.
•  And now, more scalable individual regions, with better chat and media sharing as well

I wonder if somewhere on a whiteboard at LL, there is a list of SL enhancements needed to re-enter the RL event market in a serious way.  I would give a lot for a glimpse of that whiteboard ... i wonder how many bullets have already been marked "done"?

Edited May 3, 2022 by Nika Talaj

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

1 hour ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

I just don't get why people are getting mad, if they can't afford it. They just don't get it. 

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

I find the timing impeccable. LL stated last Web meeting they wanted to roll out Premium Plus before the end of May and were going to announce what we'd be getting with the feature in tomorrow's Web meeting.

Now I see that that meeting has been cancelled.

Does this also mean that Premium Plus' planned rollout for this month has also been cancelled?

Is this new "shiny" and its insane pricing being used as a final gauge of public interest before they commit to an equally insane Premium Plus price?

 

[Coffee Pancake]

I'm not upset about the price, even if it, and region pricing in general is well beyond the means of most.

I would just appreciate if there was some place in the product stack for private land holding that was more affordable and accessible to people who just needed more than a basic lindy home.

[Paul Hexem]

3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I'm not upset about the price

I am. For that price, we'd better be able to call @Patch Lindenon his personal cell phone if there's ever a problem.

Companies that charge 15 a month for virtual servers even provide near 24/7 support. That's not a bragging point for this.

[Coffee Pancake]

50 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

I am. For that price, we'd better be able to call @Patch Lindenon his personal cell phone if there's ever a problem.

Companies that charge 15 a month for virtual servers even provide near 24/7 support. That's not a bragging point for this.

The price of a regular region is unobtanium, a homestead is unobtanium .. comes a point when it doesn't matter how high the price is.

Perhaps I should have said "I'm not upset about the price as I or anyone I know will never be able to afford one anyway."

[Kathlen Onyx]

7 hours ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

I just don't get why people are getting mad, if they can't afford it. They just don't get it. 

This doesn't only affect new products. If prices like what they are planning on charging are just accepted then you sure can expect prices will be increased over other services as well.  Rolling this out especially with how the RL economy and gas prices are currently is really poor planning IMO.  I'm disappointed that they choose now to release this instead of Premium plus or some other service that would better more than a select few.  As far as "White glove concierge service" Shouldn't everyone get that?