What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

If there would not have been TPV's around in SL, SL would still be around IMHO. And that was mainly my point.

Of course it is nice that we have them, but they are not essential for SL IMHO.

Oh sure, SL would still be around probably.

But not all of its users would be.

[Sid Nagy]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Oh sure, SL would still be around probably.

But not all of its users would be.

Of course not, but most would stay after a bit of grumbling. Especially when a switch to Unity would give the LL viewer a good boost forward.

Edited March 2 by Sid Nagy
Added a bit.

[Istelathis]

I wonder if it would cost TPVs anything to modify viewers in Unity, considering they are not making any money at all that I am aware of.  That just goes way above anything I know, how these things work is beyond me especially when it comes to LL, if someone were to make a viewer using it if they are charged or not.   I do know that there is one person that is out there, building a Unity viewer for SL desktop

Crystal Frost, which I have not been keeping up with.  They probably would have more of an idea of the finances involved.  The last update to the video posted on youtube was about three weeks ago, so they are still chugging along.  I don't think TPVs would vanish, unless they were charged per each user using the viewer.  

[Arielle Popstar]

40 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

If there would not have been TPV's around in SL, SL would still be around IMHO. And that was mainly my point.

Of course it is nice that we have them, but they are not essential for SL IMHO.

Highly unlikely. Without the input from TPV dev's at meetings, the SL viewer would be even more a mess then it already is. Without the support from FS's Group help, very few would know how to use any viewer because they would have quit in disgust shortly after they started. The only ones using the SL viewer are people who don't know any better, people who use it to compare viewers and people with a very limited inworld experience who only use it to create something,  talk to someone inworld, or sit in their skybox and script or post to the forums in a browser while afk in the viewer. They don't need any features in their viewer because they do nothing that makes their inworld experience a challenge.

[Sid Nagy]

You understand the ideas from Philip behind this?
Let others do the work as much as possible, if possible for free or else for very little. He even tried to build a business\platform around that idea when he left LL.
Seems to work with viewer development too then.

If there were no TPV's LL would have to pay up for more staff to develop the viewer.

Edited March 2 by Sid Nagy

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

If there were no TPV's LL would have to pay up for more staff to develop the viewer.

Hire more devs, to replace all the superior effort put in by TPV devs, to develop a brand new viewer, from scratch in...

 

57 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Especially when a switch to Unity would give the LL viewer a good boost forward.

Some crappy over rated 1st Person Shooter game engine that offers NO advantages whatsoever over your own engine that you have invested 20 plus years in.

 

It's change for the sake of saying you changed something, not for the sake of improvements. Completely pointless.

 

[Sid Nagy]

8 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

It's change for the sake of saying you changed something,

Sounds like a lot of TPV development. Rename a few things, put it in another place and then: Look how the fail viewer has placed it. Yeah right.
Some viewers are really something for specialized tasks, but most mainstream TPV's, yeah right.

But I'm not looking for a viewer war, so I tiptoe out now.
 

[diamond Marchant]

So the great Callyfornia Blizzard of 2024 arrives, the lights go out.... time passes... miraculously the lights come back on.... and this thread has been derailed by TPV talk... ha ha ha!

In a small company like Linden Lab, the VP of Engineering is very very important. Linden Lab needs a good one ASAP.

The original post concerns communication. Just wanna get an idea of what is going on. That is all.

 

Edited March 2 by diamond Marchant

[rasterscan]

7 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

VP of Engineering is very very important. Linden Lab needs a good one ASAP.

 

Remember the Line Workers at the bottom of the pyramid ? Without them don't matter who's at the top.

[Arielle Popstar]

12 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

 

The original post concerns communication. Just wanna get an idea of what is going on. That is all.

 

What does your horoscope say? That has as likely a chance of being right then anything else said here.

[Persephone Emerald]

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Highly unlikely. Without the input from TPV dev's at meetings, the SL viewer would be even more a mess then it already is. Without the support from FS's Group help, very few would know how to use any viewer because they would have quit in disgust shortly after they started. The only ones using the SL viewer are people who don't know any better, people who use it to compare viewers and people with a very limited inworld experience who only use it to create something,  talk to someone inworld, or sit in their skybox and script or post to the forums in a browser while afk in the viewer. They don't need any features in their viewer because they do nothing that makes their inworld experience a challenge.

It's not fair to say that only those who don't know better use the SL viewer. Some people have legitimate reasons for using it. TPVs offer us more options for those who want more flexibility, though. Firestorm also has a great inworld support group.

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

You understand the ideas from Philip behind this?
Let others do the work, if possible for free or else for very little. He even tried to build a business\platform around that idea when he left LL.
Seems to work with viewer development too then.

If there were no TPV's LL would have to pay up for more staff to develop the viewer.

Linden Lab has saved a bunch of money by letting the TPV developers do much of the work and take most of the risk for creating viewers that might have problems. Remember the Pheonix viewer? Users loved it, until they found out one of the developers had been secretly harvesting their data. LL didn't have to take the PR hit when that happened. Phoenix did, and they were lucky their users trusted most of its developers enough to give them another chance with Firestorm.

Every mesh body that falls by the wayside has no negative impact on Linden Lab. Meanwhile the starter avatars they create are repeatedly held up as examples of poor production skills. By encouraging users to be innovative while also taking all the risks of creating new products, LL gets all the benefits of a mostly open platform, while also being able to remain unaccountable for many of the problems.

Edited March 2 by Persephone Emerald

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

You understand the ideas from Philip behind this?
Let others do the work as much as possible, if possible for free or else for very little. He even tried to build a business\platform around that idea when he left LL.
Seems to work with viewer development too then.

If there were no TPV's LL would have to pay up for more staff to develop the viewer.

In the Soros foundations, this concept is called Other People's Money. Program officers loved OPM -- they could get other people to pay for things and merely add their luster to it. It seems to me OPM only works if you have at least luster or *some* start-up cash to bring to the table, however. 

[Prokofy Neva]

7 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

It's not fair to say that only those who don't know better use the SL viewer. Some people have legitimate reasons for using it. TPVs offer us more options for those who want more flexibility, though. Firestorm also has a great inworld support group.

Linden Lab has saved a bunch of money by letting the TPV developers do much of the work and take most of the risk for creating viewers that might have problems. Remember the Pheonix viewer? Users loved it, until they found out one of the developers had been secretly harvesting their data. LL didn't have to take the PR hit when that happened. Phoenix did, and they were lucky their users trusted most of its developers enough to give them another chance with Firestorm.

Every mesh body that falls by the wayside has no negative impact on Linden Lab. Meanwhile the starter avatars they create are repeatedly held up as examples of poor production skills. By encouraging users to be innovative while also taking all the risks of creating new products, LL gets all the benefits of a mostly open platform, while also being able to remain unaccountable for many of the problems.

I can't think of a single other product, platform, metaverse, thing, whatever where the chief entree into the world is developed by third parties, and the platform provider is happy to let 90% of the user base go on that other viewer/gateway to the experience. They do more than just save on dev costs. They shift the blame for failures. And they let copybotters hide behind a TPV.

[Sid Nagy]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

And they let copybotters hide behind a TPV.

That evens things then. A lot of stuff used inside SL is "borrowed" elsewhere too and then uploaded here a bit modified IMHO.

[Persephone Emerald]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

In the Soros foundations, this concept is called Other People's Money. Program officers loved OPM -- they could get other people to pay for things and merely add their luster to it. It seems to me OPM only works if you have at least luster or *some* start-up cash to bring to the table, however. 

By mentioning Soros specifically you come dangerously close to making this a political statement. The orange one also is famous for using other people's money for everything he does, from real-estate investments to paying for his legal bills.

[Love Zhaoying]

Every time I see the post title in "Unread" feed, I can't help but think of the song from the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" with the same lyric!

 

[AmeliaJ08]

Reading this with interest and hadn't really considered the potential implications of an engine switch to Unity. I think that genuinely would kill off the third party viewers.

The opensourceyness of SL's viewer is probably one of the big reasons it's still around. I know we could probably cope with the official viewer, it's perfectly capable but... clearly there is a strong demand for more advanced features.

To this end maybe it isn't so obvious that the desktop viewer will follow along with an engine switch. SL kinda needs to be its own independent thing running on its own technology as much as possible on the desktop, if growth in mobile is strong though maybe that will become less important? I hope not.

 

 

Edited March 3 by AmeliaJ08

[BilliJo Aldrin]

19 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I can't think of a single other product, platform, metaverse, thing, whatever where the chief entree into the world is developed by third parties, and the platform provider is happy to let 90% of the user base go on that other viewer/gateway to the experience. They do more than just save on dev costs. They shift the blame for failures. And they let copybotters hide behind a TPV.

The SL viewer sucks, pure and simple. Only noobs that don't know any better use it. And that's probably why you lose so many. LL hasn't had a decent viewer since SL 2. whatever.

And then they waste their time making more and more shiny crap that most people don't want or need or can even run

[Blaise Glendevon]

2 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

The SL viewer sucks, pure and simple. Only noobs that don't know any better use it. And that's probably why you lose so many. LL hasn't had a decent viewer since SL 2. whatever.

And then they waste their time making more and more shiny crap that most people don't want or need or can even run

But have you considered not running Second Life on the Antikythera mechanism? Most of the graphical upgrades are not that strenuous on a reasonably up to date computer. And I use the default SL viewer when I'm at the mentor hub or the Bellisseria hub as a requirement of my position and it loads smooth in a way Firestorm doesn't. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

But have you considered not running Second Life on the Antikythera mechanism? Most of the graphical upgrades are not that strenuous on a reasonably up to date computer. And I use the default SL viewer when I'm at the mentor hub or the Bellisseria hub as a requirement of my position and it loads smooth in a way Firestorm doesn't. 

If you volunteer at a mentor hud, the first thing you should do when you interact with a noob is tell the noob to log out, download firestorm, install it, open it, choose phoenix layout, close and restart it and log in with viewer that isnt total crap. 

That’s what I tell noobs if they ask.

😂

[Arielle Popstar]

31 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

But have you considered not running Second Life on the Antikythera mechanism? Most of the graphical upgrades are not that strenuous on a reasonably up to date computer. And I use the default SL viewer when I'm at the mentor hub or the Bellisseria hub as a requirement of my position and it loads smooth in a way Firestorm doesn't. 

Problem is there is no easy to find support for the SLViewer once they leave the Hub, unlike FS where they immediately have access to any help they might need and even tips and tricks for questions they don't know to ask yet. It is a disservice to a new person to not point then to the Viewer with the best support.

Its about the communication and there is very little of that from SL as it regards their services.

Edited March 4 by Arielle Popstar

[Istelathis]

5 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Reading this with interest and hadn't really considered the potential implications of an engine switch to Unity. I think that genuinely would kill off the third party viewers.

The opensourceyness of SL's viewer is probably one of the big reasons it's still around. I know we could probably cope with the official viewer, it's perfectly capable but... clearly there is a strong demand for more advanced features.

To this end maybe it isn't so obvious that the desktop viewer will follow along with an engine switch. SL kinda needs to be its own independent thing running on its own technology as much as possible on the desktop, if growth in mobile is strong though maybe that will become less important? I hope not.

 

 

I don't know, it all depends on if it would cost money for the TPV viewers, and who would be paying for it.  It may all still come down to LL, footing the bill even if it is Unity.  Modifying the Unity viewer might actually be easier for the developers of TPVs, adding in their own bit of code here and there.  They may still contribute to the main viewer too, with suggestions, and who knows, I mean, it might mean more people climb on board participating with development considering Unity would probably be easier to work with for a lot of people.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Unity supports prims right?

It must. I’m pretty sure even the leadership of LL isn’t stupid enough to break 20 years of prim content

[Qie Niangao]

On 3/3/2024 at 5:19 AM, Persephone Emerald said:

By mentioning Soros specifically you come dangerously close to making this a political statement. The orange one also is famous for using other people's money for everything he does, from real-estate investments to paying for his legal bills.

It stuck out to me, too, in part because it seemed to be using "Other People's Money" as unironically beneficial, as opposed to the moral hazard it has connoted since Adam Smith. I re-read it a few times without getting the point, with or without the Soros reference.

13 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Reading this with interest and hadn't really considered the potential implications of an engine switch to Unity. I think that genuinely would kill off the third party viewers.

It's certainly true that PBR makes SL content development more engine-neutral, something Mesh also did—which wasn't uniformly beneficial to folks making SL content, and I suppose that flood of indistinguishable imported content can only accelerate with glTF scene imports, the next step in standardizing SL to be just like everything else. (When it requires an unemployed certified game developer to decorate the ol' prefab, it'll be a brave new virtual world for SL users and content markets. But I'm sure it'll be ever so pretty.)

I'd expect TPVs to exist regardless of engine, but with LUAU that may be practical at a higher level, at least for most TPV functionality. Of course that depends what the Lab exposes to the API, and reportedly they haven't even decided if the mobile viewer will get LUAU.

[Love Zhaoying]

11 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

The SL viewer sucks, pure and simple. Only noobs that don't know any better use it.

TIL, I am a noob who doesn't know any better. 

And the SL viewer worked fine for me for all these years, even though I used the same PC for 10+ years!