Ebbe Linden

When Oz and Danger can prioritize it above other things...lot's of important things so could be a while...

Cheers!

Sparkdaemon wrote: Improvements? i didn't noticed anything. But i noticed that the ping (who were ~ 120 ms before the update) is now around 240 - 300 here (France). it's now impossible to do some think like drive, fly precisely (Was already hard before) and all the stuff who need precision. Don't tell me that it's my connection, I have ~22ms on google servers. sparkdaemon. EDIT: I use Firestorm, and same problem with Singularity and Alchemy Thanks for the info. Do you mind trying the new official SL viewer to see if that makes a difference? http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/

Bunyip Fanshaw wrote: I don't know what Second Life you're living in but it isn't mine. Not only has performance not improved for me, it has actually deteriorated recently. In particular, teleports are way slower, if they happen at all. Rezzing in some places has regressed to a snail's pace. Chat lag is not as bad as it was, but still bad enough to be annoying. Picture quality is erratic ...the flickering at the horizon which went away with some bug fixes a couple of moths ago has returned. Bummer. Strange. What viewer are you using? Where are you located?

Indigo Mertel wrote: Ebbe, can you share something about what graphic engine will LL use for SL2? Are you going to use Unity, by chance? Or, will you develop your own? We're not ready to talk about this yet.

Teagah Beck wrote: Dear Lindens, my avatar is Teagah Beck and I am a member of a support group for Second Life on Facebook. We represent around ten thousand Brazilian avatars. With me another avatar, Victtorya Rossini, group's administrator. We are delighted with the news, and reading the information in English, about the new Second Life, Second Life New Generation, we understand that: what will happen is for the good and none of us will lose anything or be abandoned in so old and outdated grid. So we have some questions and we would like you to have the courtesy to reply. Earlier it was said that there will be two incompatible worlds and the new one will start from ZERO. Well friends, the word, zero, frightened us. I confess. 1 - Mr. Ebbe Altberg has enlightened us that we can keep our identities in both worlds. And we will have our list of friends, too. 2 - Mr. Peter Gray spoke of calm, it's early and that: 'This does not mean you can not take some parts of your second life with you'. And the Lindens have another priority at the moment. Perfect, who has an inventory of 100 thousand items and took a third of real life time, to be builder Inworld, will be encouraged to migrate? How? We want to migrate and enjoy the novelty. But for many of us will be a fateful decision unless we can somehow bring our experiences, our possessions, finally, our dreams to this seductive invitation. Our scripters are asking us information about the language that will use in the new grid. Can enlighten us about that too? If you already have something published on the subject, can you show us the way? a link? Please. Last question for now, we will have free accounts? We understand that our doubts until now may have been answered at some point but please, can you repeat that? Tell us again how this wonderful new world with the spirit of Second Life will be for our good too. Of course we have a million of questions and we will seek answers at the right time. Finally we want to thank everyone in Linden Lab for their efforts and say that the Second Life, on those long 11 years, affected us, changed us and enhanced us. Thank you. Best Regards, Second Life Brasil on Facebook Hi, first let me reiterate that SL is not going away and that we have a dedicated team that will continue to make SL better. As this new world takes shape we want to make it easy for SL users to come in and explore and help us shape it's future. We're aiming to let people start playing with it sometime next year. For a long time you can choose where to spend your time and energy. We have no plans to shut SL down or force people to migrate. Only time will tell what will ultimately be best for users and our business. We have said that we don't want to constrain ourselves with the requirement of full content backwards compatibility, as that may make it impossible to make the advances in quality and experience and thus make it less competitive in the long run. More information will come with time, but if you work with mesh your experience and content will be useful for sure. Scripting will change as we'll introduce a modern language (possibly c#, but not decided). Yes, we are thinking that there will be free accounts but that's a while out as Beta next year may not be completely open. This new world will allow us to improve graphics, performance, quality and empower creators to create richer and more powerful experiences that are not possible today. We'll also do the work to support phones and tablets in addition to PC and VR hardware. We will all have plenty of time to see how this will work out. Thank you for serving residents from Brazil. It's a great market for us.

Teager wrote: Ebbe, While catching up on the last 10 or so pages of posts which happened last night, I've noticed a lot of you saying, in essence, "SL1 won't change; if you don't like it, don't switch." I can understand the reason behind that response. I, too, am getting tired of reading dozens of rude comments by the same handful of naysayers. But, speaking as one of many content creators whose full real life income is earned from Second Life, this response isn't helping to build my confidence. Any way you look at it, the launch of SL2 will divide our user base between two virtual worlds. (Possibly four, depending on launch dates of High Fidelity and the Facebook virtual world project.) I believe all that I, and several other creators in this thread, want to convey to you and the SL2 dev team is that we need as much backwards compatibility as we can possibly get between the two grids... because, for us, not switching is not an option. If we don't move forward to the new grid, we divide our income in half. Even when we do switch, we as creators will be slowed by having to format our products for two different worlds. We won't be able to put out items as quickly as we could. My avatar projects require a detailed rigged mesh, dozens of textures, 100+ animations, sounds, scripts, HUD designs, addons, accessories, and third-party creator tools to be made, as well as extensive bug testing. Each of my avatars takes me an average of 10 months to complete (working full time, because SL is my full time job). By the time I complete my next avatar, SL2 will be in beta. By the time I've finished the one after that, SL2 may be approaching its launch date. Will those 20 months of work still be worthwhile when SL2 launches? I'm thrilled to see that custom skeletons are something that have appeared on your roadmap; I'm hopeful that this will allow a lot of re-use of older meshes and animations, and I look forward as well to seeing the improvements that can come as a result of that feature. I'm hopeful that SL2 can grow to be a wonderful thing, and I'm eager to see what you come up with. All I ask is that, as you move forward and lay the groundwork for this new world, you don't fall into the trap of "you don't have to switch if you don't want to". Make us WANT to switch. Make it EASY to switch. And put high priority on maintaining as much backwards compatibility with SL1 as you possibly can. Custom armatures will greatly help with reusing meshes and animations. What can you do to reduce the workload of re-writing scripts? How about textured clothing and skins? The idea posted earlier of allowing some sort of method of matching old SL1 content in users' inventories to new SL2 updated content is a good one. Please make the transition as painless as possible. Don't let yourself become dismayed by the panic; find a way to excite us. Be on our side. Because we, the creators who form the backbone of the virtual world, need to be on your side too. Thanks. That's definitely our goal and we'll make it easier than competitors will. We also don't want to compromise on how good it can be because of it. Balancing act.

kiramanell wrote: Ebbe Linden wrote: So you assume we could have the same amount of resources regardless of how hard it is to compete or that all projects are equal in potential value? Working on some products have much higher cost and lower return on investment than others. I appreciate a reply from the man himself, but I honestly don't know what you mean, here. I was pretty much just saying that being able to import half-a-home is, effectively, the same as not being able to import it at all. And thus, realistically, that I can forget about ever being able to port my many homes to SL2. Unless you tell me I am wrong, of course (please, tell me I am wrong, LOL). hmm, maybe i responded to another thread?

Kedehern Eiren wrote: Ebbe, I have to ask....after reading this and other message boards you replied to, you have yet to answer the one burning question I have....what incentives will there be for people to migrate from SL1 to SL2? Other than it being "a new shiny SQUIRREL" type of thing? ~~~Torlok That is so far out that we don't have specific plans for it yet. All depends on when it reaches quality and experience that users want. We have years to see how it plays out.

Mony Lindman wrote: Yes but the animations I have are paid already, while the new ones I would have to pay again .. These animations are my capital, I invested about 2 million lindens in animations and when I say "invest" I do mean that till now I considered them an investition, a very good one and .. long term .. For me , and for many others who use animations in their builds , the transfer and the use of these animations in the new world is vital. And they will continue to work in SL, which, again, we have no plans to close down.

Mony Lindman wrote: thanks.. but .. you say: Animations: Depending on the format that will be used internally and for transport into SL2 it will be no big issue to transfer old animations to the new system provided you play them on legacy avatars (see above). I suspect the transfer format will be either BVH or FBX (and we are capable to convert .bvh and .anim to these formats for that purpose) Also the fact that we will get NPC's will probably make the animators very excited. So i bet that many LSL based animations will be migrated to Bone based animations anyways ... - Well , Ebbe said the format will be FBX but what worries me in fact is that Sylva Petrov who is the most important creator of full permission animations for builders in SL, didn't get a clear YES answer from Ebbe to these quesstions: Sylva Petrov wrote: Okay, I undestand that the format of animations will be changing. However, will their basic use in-world be changed, or will they remain playable assets kept in inventory? I.E. once created, will they be used similarly to how they are currently used in SL or will they be applied in a very different manner. Please Ebbe, any details you can offer on animations would be a massive help in reassuring myself and my customers that we're game on. I don't eactly know yet...TBD .. so, if there is no clear YES to questions like "will they remain playable assets kept in inventory" and "will they be used similarly to how they are currently used in SL or will they be applied in a very different manner" , you will understand that, as a creator of animated items who invested a big amount of money in thousands of full permission animations , i'm worried.. Sylva ensured her customers that she will do all to adapt all animations to the new world and the same licence will be valid in both worlds .. but will it be at all possible to adapt them when not even Ebbe knows if they will be used and applied in the same way or differently ? What if they are related to a "scene", as FBX in fact should be .. and will they work on avatars with customized armatures ? I dont know and Ebbe seems to not know either, so .. you can bet im worried .. i did not state fbx as fact but a direction we're leaning in. Not final. And SL won't change these things so you don't have to worry. Only if you want to make things in the next gen product will you have to learn some new things and do some things differently. It's up to you.

Vivienne Schell wrote: "This one will take more time for us to figure out" Are you sure that you are the CEO of a company which didn´t figure THIS out after 11 years? :matte-motes-sunglasses-3: Are you trying to influence me in some way? If not, then what are you trying to do?

kiramanell wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: This isn't just a reply to your post, kiramanell. It's meant for all who are seeing doom and gloom because of the SL2 announcement. If LL doesn't create a much better SL-like world, someone else will. If someone else did it, we'd all be saying how much better it is 'over there', and quite a largeish chunk of the population would go over, perhaps also maintaining a presence in SL as well for a while. Those that went over wouldn't be thinking how bad it is that we can't take the inventories along, because nobody would expect SL inventories to go over. Yeah, Except that someone else's Virtual World wouldn't go at the direct expense/cannibalization (pulling away of resources and ppl) of SL. So it's LL that is creating the better world. What's wrong with that? Nobody can find fault with that. AND some of the SL inventory will go over. What a plus! AND SL will continue to run as well. So we get it all - a better world, some inventory going over, and continuance of SL. As I said in chat, the other day: "Half a home is no home at all." It's cute if, say, all the mesh parts can be ported, but if the other prim-half stays behind (very realistic to still have prims in a somewhat older home), then you have totally broken build, and essentially just a pile of garbage. So you assume we could have the same amount of resources regardless of how hard it is to compete or that all projects are equal in potential value? Working on some products have much higher cost and lower return on investment than others.

Dmitri Polonsky wrote: Mony Lindman wrote: Ebbe Linden wrote: You asked: 1 - What type of assets are more likelly to be transferable to SL2 and what probably not? (meshes, animations, sculpts, scripts, textures, builds made of normal prims, system clothing ?) We don't have all the answers to this one yet, but several areas will have radical improvements and thus not possible to be fully backwards compatible. Mesh is ok (but with better lighting and other tech you may want to make tweaks) Animations will change (major mprovements as we don't currently do it the way it should be done) Sculpts (TBD, but not as is, but maybe converted to Mesh?) Scripts (major improvement, so will change) Textures ok Prims (TBD, but probably not as is) Avatars will be radically improved as well so a lot TBD Again, we will have years to sort this all out together... 2 - Is SL2 to be considerd "another grid" in which case the TOS of most full permission creators would prohibit the transfer to that grid? If that is the case, could LL speak a word of power and decide that for full permission items that CAN be transfered, the new SL should be considered as the "same grid" ? ToS will not be an issue. 3 - Will at least the L$ currency remain the same and will available balances be usable in both worlds? Yes 4 - Will the 2 worlds be connected in any way and will an avatar be able to move from one to another with the same name and profile and groups and friends? And .. some of its inventory.. Identity and friends will be preserved. Inventory depends on above decisions under #1 but we clearly want as much of existing work to be possible to leverage as long as it will not impact how good the new platform can be. Thanks for the answers, Im sure everyone needed them. If possible maybe a few details are still needed.. you say : Sculpts (TBD, but not as is, but maybe converted to Mesh?) Converting to mesh would not be a problem indeed but the advantage of sculpts is that they are only 1 prim each . Meshes have usually more. And in the present SL if i put scripts in a mesh it doubles the Li. Will this be the case also in SL2 ? And as i asked about the TOS i didnt mean the SL TOS but the TOS of the full permission creators who all dont allow the use of their items in other grids. So the question remains: is SL2 "another grid" ? And i also asked at point 4: will an avatar be able to move from one to another (grid)? Your answer to the TOS question sugests that its the same grid but .. how would that work? In the same viewer ? I would need a little more clarity here plase.. Genrally it dosnt look very good for someone like me who spent over 2 million lindens on full perm animations and if i understand well they can not be moved to SL2, nor can they be somehow converted .. This will of course affect all animators and also all builder who make animated items.. Therfore I would be very interested to hear your oppinion about the other possible "option" I just posted (bottom of page 51) Thanks I really saw no answers in his post except a lot of we don't know or cannot discuss. Meaning most likely assets will NOT transfer. I've seen 9 years of this kind of answers in SL. So you don't have enough information to make the decision to use a future product. That makes sense. So keep using the one you want to use until you get more information and then make a desicion on what to do.

Dmitri Polonsky wrote: "I'm here. Reading everything. But there are a lof questions I can't (or won't) answer at this time. And it's also good to see you all talking amongst yourselves and I've already seen that dialog trend in a positive direction. " And herein lies a huge problem most custoemrs of SL have had for years, things that will not be discussed. It is my understanding that pruchased content will not be migrated over. That means a huge loss on investment for old timers such as me who have 9 years in SL. A tax for content will only succeed in squelching new creators form starting. I will be honest and say this sounds like yet more panderring to high dfollar customers with a total lack fo regard for the little guys, This brings back reminiscences of a certain ex presidential candidate and his comments about the 47%. Ebbe if you want the view of a long time Sler about all this and where SL has been and mistakes made, feel free to contact me in world sometime. I would welcome a discussion with you about it, but one of Sls major probelsm has always been selectively applying ToS and following up AR's and bug reports selectively by financial status rahter then viewing it as all cusotmers are created equally. That is a mistake I would rather not see you continuing. Just keep using SL. In the future you can decide what to do when you have other options.

kiramanell wrote: Vivienne Schell wrote: "i've seen entire sims from reputable builders disappear, precisely because LL introduced new things´" The difference HERE is that almost any single asset format will change. The history of mesh or whatsoever has only proven that partial format changes alone didn´t have ANY positive impact on the overall growth of SL. Now they gamble and hope to get away with a radical cut. I think they basically miss the fact that the vast majority of dedicated Second Life customers (not the loud minority on SLUniverse and elsewhere) is not really interested in any substantial changes of technology, but in their inventory and what they can do with it, how they can do something with it and - most important - what for? And since friday for how long? Old dilemma: Techies vs. Philosophers/Business People. At LL the techies obviously dominate all other groups. My point exactly. Not everyone can or wants to embark on a full 'do over.' Reading those blogs, it looks to me that we can pretty much kiss backwards compatibility goodbye (if, for nothing else, by logical inference: after all, the reason to start anew was to get rid of the old, inhibitive tech). My entire sim is full of homes I bought, and then took many years sometmes to mod and decorate, and make my own, as it were. So, while not a 100% content-creator, I'm not sure I want to start all over again. And, like you say, what for? Just so some CEO with a wet dream can yank it out from under me again one day? As Bush once said: "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice.... eh, also shame on you!" (or words to that effect). Also, pray-tell, LL, what spectacular (not specular) new tech is being used?! In reality, I can't even get the Lindens to up the 512MB texture memory limit on the current incarnation of SL, out of fear ppl won't be able to run it. So, what makes them suddenly think the world is ready for Matrix 2.0 now?! So good news then that we will continue to improve SL and that we have no plans to shut it down. You can choose when you see it in the future.

DesperadoReprise wrote: Innula Zenovka wrote: Of course they don't have any plans to disallow ageplay of the sort you describe. They disallowed it seven or eight years ago, and people don't normally talk about making plans to do something they've already done. But Ebbe has comitted here in these forums very recently that Sanitised Life will allow user freedoms as long as they are legal. And depiction of sexual age-play is not illegal in California, with whose laws LL has to comply. Is he lying, inconsistent, or incompetent? "it's finally turned the tables" I said: We have no plans to disallow anything that's going on in SL and is legal. We're proud of the freedom we offer. rather than "...going on in SL..." I could have said "...adheres to SL policy..." So now you can have fun with that for a while...

Niecia Davi wrote: From what I read today about the upcoming new sl2 the scripting will change / prims will change and sculpts MAY be imported as mesh. This means dont buy anything that is prim/sculpt-based or scripted with LSL at this time they are trash and there will be NO PLACE in the NEW SL2 for them. As it stands right now it would be like buying an old television set that does not pick up the new wavelength...useless...well useless in the near future...but means you buy it plan on trashing it. Merchants might as well start giving prim/sculpt-based objects and LSL scripted objects away for free because Linden labs just rendered them useless. No we didn't. They will work in SL for many many years just fine. And then it will be a long time for you and anyone to decide to use next gen over a long period. By your suggestion nobody should ever by a phone.

We don't have all those answers yet. I believe it's important to support entrepreneurs that provides solutions that we can't for various businesses, verticals, markets, languages, etc. etc. Clearly that will only succeed if they can add value and get rewarded for providing that value. We're very early here, still dealing with low level technical stuff and don't have business models etc. all figured out yet. We will bring our ideas forth as soon as we have something and meanwhile I'm all for hearing your ideas so that when the time is right we can start a good dialog.

Chic Aeon wrote: I do have a question for Ebbe and THANK YOU for joining in the conversation. I believe that was an excellent move and is appreciated by many. Has it been decided if folks will be able to be in SL 1.0 and SL 2.0 (I know that isn't an official moniker) and keep their inventories OR will they need to choose a version or make an alt to be in both? Editing as that may not have been clear from a reply from someone else. "IF a person wants to remain in SL 1 and also be in SL 2 will they be able to have the same inventories (at least as of the time of the move) -- so similar to the beta grid, a one way copy. " TY. You will be able to be in both but you won't have a shared inventory as some content can't be the same across the two.

Count Burks wrote: Mister Altberg, I am what your company refers to as a "Key customer" and am curious as are my colleagues, what Linden Research does have in mind for the Estates of Second Life as this migration will have a serious impact on our business. Migrating databases and inventories is one thing. The estates did make serious investments in Second Life and have been providing you with a steady flow of income for years. In the year 2007 Linden Lab did put up a big plaster of an advertisement on its website stating: "Come to Second Life and start a Real Estate business". Linden Lab gladly took the millions of USD$ in investment. I did not hear a word yet from you how you intend to treat all the Estates which put in a lot of labor and often cover for you. I am looking forward to your thoughts and ideas, many are looking forward to hear that. Count Burks Hi, it's very early as we're still mostly dealing with a lot of lower level technical things right now and don't yet have fully fleshed out business models etc. But there is no doubt that it will be important to enable entrepreneurs that provide services on top of our platform that solve things for certain communities, segments, markets, etc. I believe our success depends on it otherwise we won't scale as well. There will be plenty of time to discuss these things and we look forward to doing that when we get a bit further along. It's still very early...

LaskyaClaren wrote: Ebbe Linden wrote: Racheal Rexen wrote: Hello Ebbe, thanks for taking the time to answer ours questions, My question is if the Adult Community will have a place in the new Virtual world? We have no plans to disallow anything that's going on in SL and is legal. We're proud of the freedom we offer. Thanks! This is one of the questions I was going to ask. I'm not, like many asking here, a landowner, and I haven't been a creator for 3 years or so (pre-mesh), so I'm more interested in the social dynamics, community, communications tools, and so forth. I'm sure some of these you are not going to be in a position to answer yet, but . . . Following up on the answer above, do you see the Community Standards as remaining more or less stable? - just read them again. Seems reasonable to me...but way to early to be specific on something like this... Will there still be free avatar accounts? (I assume that accounts will remain anomymous/pseudonymous.) -yes, that's what we're thinking if there are free accounts, will there be limits on the number of accounts (I think there are, theoretically, now, but if so it isn't enforced). -we have some thoughts around this but too early to be clear on it Will there be built-in viewer building tools for things like mesh, comparable to what currently exists for prims, so that more creation can be accomplished in-world? -we want to allow for inworld creation that's easy, and support high end external tools...but again, early days... Will the new VW feature a version of the LEA, so that support will continue for the arts on the new grid (this is an important question for me). -has not been discussed, too early to know such details...but have nothing against it The move to make the new world work for Oculus Rift notwithstanding, will the viewer UI continue to be relatively friendly and usable for those using more old-fashioned tech? (I.e., a mouse and keyboard) -yes I am delighted and impressed by your answers here -- do you see other forms of consultation with residents in the future? And not just with the high-end land barons or content creators? -for sure we will include more and more people as we progress and have more details and product to show. That's probably a good start . . . ;-)

Medhue Simoni wrote: Drongle McMahon wrote: "We will get the ability to upload custom skeletons (rigged meshes)" Gaia, can you say where that comes from? In particular, do myou have any idea whether it applies only to avatars, or to non-avatar mesh? I am thinking about some ideas discussed a long time ago if we could access bones in scripts etc. Drongle, did you just wake up? Why would custom skeletons only mean avatars? Plus, Ebbe mentioned that things in the new world will be made in much more efficient ways. I take this as meaning that we'll use bones instead of scripts to move objects. Correct. Why just avatars?

Mony Lindman wrote: Ebbe Linden wrote: You will certainly be able keep your identity, social network and L$ and you can hop back and forth and decide for yourself where it makes sense to spend your time and energy. How do you mean this "hop back and forth" move ? In the same viewer ? Teleporting ? Loging off and loging in with another viewer ? Sorry, different viewers you would have to run side by side.

Pamela Galli wrote: Ebbe Linden wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Yeah. This is why I mentioned expediting their modeling and planning, which I hope (and suspect) they are doing. It should be possible to produce reasonably full answers to many if not most of these questions this early on: surely they are not making this up as they go along? What do you want to know? I realize you might not have this level of detail worked out yet but: When you mention types of content that might be able to be ported over, such as mesh, do you mean purchased content in inventories that could be moved over into new same-name account inventories, or content that can be uploaded by creators? This one will take more time for us to figure out. It won't be trivial, or in some cases possible, to just do this on the fly. I think it will have to go through the creators to update/modify to make things (or users may get upset with us and the creator when things don't work exactly as expected). So maybe a system that makes it easy for creators to know what items to update and redistribute to their existing customers is the way to go where the creators can decide how to charge for those updates (or not). I'm guessing this would be the direction to explore...