Vivienne Schell

" LL has spent way too much trying to win the Lottery .. and not nearly enough time plugging the leaks and holes in their existing house" Remember, it´s Silicon Valley we´re talking about. Winning the lottery is a big deal there. Especially for former Yahoo executives.

There are not only too many tools, but too many possible user directions. I cannot offfer a detailed solution for Second Life, because reducing SL to a "core" or a "core" target audience performing a "core" activity would certainly destroy what Second Life makes Second Life. The result would be something completely different. And don´t get me wrong, I do not favor a "reshaping" of Second Life for mainstream acceptance at all. My point is that within the contemporary market environment and technological limits Second Life as is (as a conception) does very well. There might be some ways to improve what there is marginally, but I do not think that these improvements will make Second Life a mainstream compatible application. The core question is. Do you want a niche existance or do you want mainstream success? I am fine with the niche, but obviously decisive folks are not...

Penny gets one thing right. Whichis that the complex conception of Second LIfe (it´s not only a game, but a sandbox, soicailising environment, and whatever else one can imagine) requires a certain level of complexity regarding user interface design Fact is, you did not learn to tie your shoes within one hour, nor did you learn to drive a car within one hour. The essential problem Second Life has is that such a supercomplex conception as Second Life is build on does not fit into the mainstream online habits anymore. I doubt that the recent mainstream audience would ever accept a learning curve which requires more than one or two hours of their precious time anymore. Second Life was born into a time where even the internet browsers were all but easy to handle for the user. In a time, where the internet user was willing to learn a thing. But the times have changed. We´ve seen a lot of simplifications meanwhile, wherever mainstream is targeted, not only in computing. I doubt that Penny´s demand for "better tools" will help there. Even "Better Tools" require learning the tools. "Less tools" is the mainstream answer. Second Life has too many tools for too many and too different possible user activities basically, that´s the problem. Not only the quality of the tools.

"If anyone doubts this, just go download the current version of Daz Studio. These days in 3D art you can fit almost anything to anything. Last year when fitted mesh was coming out I noted the 'button issue' of "fitted" and deformer solutions - that fine details which pop out of an outfit and are not part of the rigging will lose shape when deformed. Daz has, somehow, solved this for most cases." Interesting. Is DAZ a multiple user online environment? Did I miss something? Oh no, wait. It´s a single user desktop app. Oh my. "Linden lab fundamentally does not understand the visual." They do in the real time multiple user online game sandbox sense and within the the technological limits of real time multiple user onlne sandbox game sense, which includes massive bandwidth, database and local PC rendering stress. You obviously don´t. You seem to think that Autodesk or whatever 3D creativity applications - and the superhighpoly output one can achieve with such suites - can be simply applied to something completely different as Second Life is. You´re dead wrong. Linden Lab did a pretty good job with beating the hell out of OpenGL and optimizing the dataflow for SL purpose, in fact.

"Cloud Party was bought out and shut down before it got out of the early alpha stages of development. It was certainly nowhere near ready for prime time before the plug was pulled, so we'll never know if it ever would have been viable." Wrong. We know that the conception was not viable because it was shut down. People with a viable commercial interest do such things to hopeless attempts.

"Once you start doing that you might as well just rebuild it from scratch." Too easy. No one can "rebuild" Second Life "from the scratch". One can build something different. Based on a completely different conception and a basically different technology under the surface. But Second Life as is is a unique mixture of Linden Lab input and user creativity which piled up over ten years. No one can ever manage to "rebuild" the same thing. And anyone who will try that will fail miserably for various reasons. Just like Opensim, In-Worldz or even Cloud Party (which came very close to an attempted "Rebuild") failed to atttract more than a niche audience. I don´t know where you people build your hope for a "Second Life Two, Three, Four, Five or Six" on. It´s a miracle to me.

"Did you know those of us who took part in the mesh beta had to fight tooth and nail to get LL to include any sort of rigged mesh at all? LL did not want to do it." Yes, I know. And because i know i see my thesis - that LL finally listened to the "Hail the Holy Mesh" crowd is just another proof for their lack of intention to adress the mainstream crowd - approved. And another fact many of you seem to ignore is that Linden Lab operates with very limited resources lately since the big lay off campaign in 2009/10 (Which was the final retreat into a niche). Linden Lab simply did not and does not have the resources nor the time to implement your wishes. So, what you got is what LL was able to give - not more, not less.

Any kind of mesh avatar in SL is a showstopper for newbies, rigged or not rigged does not matter. It´s something for the advanced user only, who is willing to trade flexibility for kinda better looks (kinda, if 10 percent matter). Mesh clothing attachments are close to the "newbie showstopper" status, although there are enough clothing attachments available which might fit the legacy shapes somehow. But even there, the requiremet of the inavoidable alpha layers, besides a number of other obstacles, is puzzling enough for a newbie to give up on it. Niot to mention the render and memory stress all these shinies load onto an average PC. This is obvious, but it proves that LL basically gave up on a mainstream Second Life a long time ago and decided to focus the attention on the dedicated crowd they have instead of gaining new customers. Avatar attachments were a major problem from the start, but as Penny mentioned, the problem has turned into a dead end street.

There will be no "SL2", anyway. Maybe the newmainstreamthingwithoutanameyet has avatars and works in 3D. But this does not imply any similarities to SL beyond the fact that both use pixels.

A "SL 2" certainly would be a disatster if there would be a "SL 2". There will be none. People on the forums mainly tallk about further improvements of Second Life or some changes based on the Second Life conception as is.. They do this because they simply ignore the commercial motivation of Linden Lab. Linden Lab cannot have any interest in spending a several million dollar investment and resources galore on a conception which never lived up to it´s initial promises. Whatever this "new, better, whatsopever", exclusively mainstream targeted baby will be, it will be everything but NOT a second, third or fourth Second Life.

INo. They actually don´t have to fear this, since they changed the ToS in favor of such actions. But back to topic: Expect this bettergreaterfantasticsuppposedtobenew hi tech fantasy shiny they have in the plans to be very, very different from what you are used to in Second Life in almost every way - IP right handling included.

Basically Linden Lab COULD take down whatever content they want to take down for no reason at all.

Nevertheless Linden Lab performed a pre-emptive strike regarding "Avatar" for some valid reasons. Which proves that "Safe HArbor" is only sooooo "safe", otherwise...who cares? And you cannot really compare something as BIG and established as Facebook to Linden Lab and their survival project for which they do not even have a name yet. Different pair of shoes. Apart from that: There a numerous truly BIG lawyer associations making BIG money with prosecuting IP right violations. Try to post a Getty image on your personal website and you´ll certainly get an unpleasant mail within a few weeks.

Many reasons, Qui. One of the most important is "Public Image". Imagine a 3D world based on - or substantiallly reliant on - ripped off from whatever game, turbosquid, DAZ or other SL typical rip sources. Do you think that the media attention will be a positive one? Mainstream needs media attention, in a straight out positive way. At least in the beginning. Linden Lab cannot risk another "Looted Life" anti-campaign. # No one really cares about Second Life anymore, and that´s why Linden Lab and most rippers, thieves and license violators get away with this - meanwhile- breathtaking pile of balant IP right violations. Safe harbor or not - and safe harbor isn´t as safe as many here suggest. Not at all. Why do you think the Lab removed these "Avatar" thingies BEFORE Cameron thought of filing a DMCA and then sue LL into hell?

There are different ways to draw some red lines for object importers. One of them is what they did lately, iimposing some cash out limits (600 US dollars a year, any more requires IRS tax form and ID card copy). This certainly helps in some way. - in Second Life. But for the "new" thingy it might become inavoidable to license off-world content creation to real persons with a real ID exclusively - IF they are serious about "Mainstream". It´s what almost every serious and broadly known game platform does if it allows mods. Only this can prevent the rippers, IP thieves and "who cares?" crowd from taling over - as they did with the glorious Second Life "Mesh Revolution". "Safe Harbor" is not an option.

"As I said before, it is not LL's job to do this anyway. It is up to the person that owns the IP rights to enforce them. " Linden Lab only gets away with the supposed to be "Safe Harbor" status because Second Life has been removed from public attention over the past years. Once they come up with something "newer, bigger, greater", which will be in the focus of international media attention it absoluteyly will be their job to keep this thingy clean. Otherwise some judge will close it down before the first 10,000 of the wished 10 million users dropped into the place.

"They have also made it very clear that this new virtual world, while very similar in many ways to SL, will be a its own product." No, by making nothing very clear they made very clear that there will be almost no similarities. It makes no sense at all to release something like a "Third Life" anyway, and this will not be their purpose. Forget about "SL 2", it will not happen. The Lab wants "Mainstream", the big dollar, gazillions of happily paying users and Silicon Valley top notch status. This can´t be achieved by an anarchist user sandbox conception as Second Life ever was - so they obviously think.

I advise everyone who insists on "realism" in SL to go for it: http://www.lindenhomes.co.uk/ YES! YES! YES! Finally we have the politically correct sized ultimate realistic experience! No camera adjustments necessary. Hell, Real Life is better as we thought, isn´t it?

Stick to Blender. :matte-motes-nerdy:

I think that's an issue LL has to deal with. Google and Facebook are looking for disruption. That rarely comes from industry old timers. True. Minecraft worked by shocking cubic disruption, too, btw. But Mitch Kapor didn´t want further "experiments" and disruption back in 2008/09 (I recall some famous speech there). And since then SL is in decline. Dunno if Kapor and the other BOF´s still are on the LL board, but it´s no surprise that they sponsor good old Phil with his "next generation" attempt to attract the masses and corporations by supposed to be fancy technology. Unfortunately the people go to where the fun is, technology doesn´t matter much to them. And the corporations go to where the people are. Something the industry oldtimers never really got.

It´s a different pair of shoes, but it proves the overall trend: Projects like Minecraft, which are designed simple, user friendly and effective and which are based on in-world user creativity alone are a proven mainsream success. Google tries the other extreme way. But no one will invest millions into a SL 2014 (or "the next generation LL thing" like project), because such conceptional wishiwashi can only end in a niche - if anywhere at all. Either go in-world and provide the necessary tools or go into a completely different direction, that´s the trend. And not "Second Life 2.0". What for? We already have a life. No one needs a third one.

Something like Mesh Studio is really nice - but if Linden Lab had introduced it as a system tool i´d call it a showstopper design. Face it, each step beyond using the default, native creation tools basically is one too many if you base a virtual environment on user creativity. That´s my point. All the tools you mentioned are some kind of workaround, and by far not the best, most effective and system compatible solutions. Regarding mesh clothes, avatars and whatever: Same trouble. Inadequate formats due to a lack of adequate tools. Not everything is bad in Linden World, of course. SL works, it is profitable and still seems to attract enough people to pay Linden salaries and maintainance. But It will not grow anymore. It never was easy to handle, but now it has become waym way, way too complicated for the user to be more than just another niche within a niche. Which is okay, but also a missed opportunity.

All of these mesh-will-be-the-downfall-of-SL arguments are eerily reminiscent of the very things that were said about the introduction of sculpties. Well, both import formats did not and will not stop the slow decline of SL: Since the introdution of sculpts and mesh imports SL declined steadily. At best it stagnates since a year or so. Anyone who tells me that these import formats helped the success or growth of SL as a platform must be victim of some fata morgana. While SL boomed before they come up with these nice looking but online VR incompatible import formats (while compatibility demands more than just a technical specification). The facts don´t lie. I don´t say that Mesh and Sculpt imports are the downfall of SL, but in my opinion there is only one reasonable way to make an online VR like SL grow, which is providing and improving native in-world formats and native in-world tools by design and functionality. Minecraft and Blue Mars both proved it in any thinkable way. Linden Lab was on the right track but unfortunately someone there decided to leave this track - probably because some wishful thinking led someone to the conclusion that some major corporations would contribute their modelled corporate buildings this way.

Blender is exactly worth what is is worth compared to truly usable and truly pro adopted modelling software. Dot. Obviouly this minor, clunky, almost unusable monster with a learning curve higher as the mount everest (even 100 times steeper as SL) is the choice for the majority of SL Mesh importers. Why so? Because it´s so "fantastic"? Certainly not. It´s a freebie. For some reasons. What LL plans there, I don´t know. I agree with you there. And I am very sceptical. I only hope that Altberg will not waste Linden Lab resources on just another DOA wet techie fantasy.

arton Rotaru wrote: Maybe LL should limit the possibilties how to run a club, to make SL more successful to anyone... It´s a matter of tools and talent, too. The club owner relies on things made by people with inadequate tools while being forced to use inadequate tools for his special activity. LL failed to improve the native toolset and never optimized them for the specific needs of an online VR. They had 12 years to do do, but all they did was making things even more complicated, more abstract, more absurd, more off-world based and more laggy.