This past weekend, August 12th-14th, marked the 7th Annual Second Life Community Convention (SLCC), which was held in Oakland, California this year and virtually in Second Life while being streamed over UStream.

I have to applaud Avacon, the conference’s organizers, as in my opinion this was the best the conference has been for virtual attendees.  The in-world SIMs were beautiful and well organized and the team made sure each of the 33 presentations were clearly streamed in-world and online.

In addition to the many community presentations, there were several Linden panels.

Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble gave a keynote address announcing:

• 16,000 people a day are signing up for and joining Second Life
• Linden Lab will be working on other new products in addition to Second Life.  Specifically they are working on other shared creativity tools/spaces, and addressing tablets and mobile markets as well.
• Linden Lab is focusing their current Second Life efforts on improving usability, lag, and service.
• Linden Lab is looking at several future new features including a Linden made curated area, ending the need for HUDs, improvements to UI/sidebar, more in-world creatitivy tools and more.
• Read more and watch Humble’s full keynote

Linden Lab’s product team announced several new ways they are trying to address community needs:

• the team created a prototype game in order to learn about building and better understand limitations and problems in order to work on solutions
• Linden Lab may develop a gamified new user experience
• the team has been focused on improving usability and engagement
• each member of the team is becoming a subject matter expert in order to understand and support those communities better
• Read more and watch the product team’s full presentation

Linden Lab’s mesh team addressed several key concerns:

• Meshes (and objects with a physics shape type) will use the newly introduced prim equivalent to measure impact and count against land prim capacity
• theft and IP concerns  are unlikely
• meshes offers several advantages over sculpted prims, but traditional prims are still an important part of Second Life
• Read more and watch the full mesh panel

Brett Atwood/Brett Linden presented on updates to the Destination Guide:

• the Destination Guide now has dynamic, time sensitive channels that feature hot events and locations as they are going on
• the Destination Guide is intelligently removing a location if it becomes too crowded
• the Destination Guide has an Linkshare affiliate program through which you can create a widget for your location and place it on your blog or website allowing you to earn money for visitors derived from your site
• the Destination Guide now appears on the front page of the new Second Life login screen
• the team monitors resident suggestions, blog activity, and social media for new locations
• they are looking for high quality locations with broad appeal, active communities, and unique locations
• in order for your Destination Guide submission to be approved you need to include a compelling and visually interesting screenshot and text that accurately describes your location
• your submission could also be denied if it is a duplicate, your location currently violates the SL Terms of Service, your snapshot contains promotional text over the image, or the text is incoherent or inaccurate
• Destination Guide entries are non-paid; they are not meant to be classified ads
• View the slides then watch Brett’s full presentation on the Destination Guide

The commerce team presented on economical and commercial concerns:

• the Lab has been focused on new users, registration, usability, service, performance, and growth to drive traffic and increase sales for merchants
• Q2 stats show positive growth in several areas
• Marketplace moving towards direct delivery
• users will receive purchases as a folder hierarchy directly in their inventory (without the need to unpack items)
• merchants will no longer need to use a magic box, but will simply have to drag their folders into an outbox
• users will receive notifications of deliveries and will not need to be online to accept them, they will be pushed into inventory
• eventually there will be guided warnings to aid new users (use this item right away, you need land for this item, etc)
• Linden Lab looking to expand the LindenX to additional countries/currencies to in to serve more and increase sales
• View the slides then watch the commerce team’s full presentation

Marc Viale/Viale Linden presented on social experiences and communities:

• the lab is moving away from Linden run events like “Kiss a Linden” towards “sustainable communities” like the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life and LEA’s Month of Machinima
• community gateways have not disappeared and are highlighted in the Destination Guide
• Viale says Linden Lab respects privacy declaring “we don’t care what your parents named you, you can be whoever you want to be in Second Life”
• Watch Viale’s full presentation on social experiences and communities

For a closer look at the more funny and social aspects of the SLCC experience check out Draxtor’s footage from the event below:

Mesh support was formally announced at last year’s Second Life Community Convention (SLCC).  Since then we have learned more details about mesh, and Linden Lab officially began rolling out the feature to the main grid in July, with the promise for it to be completed by the end of August.  So, it was fitting that Charlar Linden opened this year’s SLCC mesh presentation by declaring “The future of mesh is now.”

During this presentation Charlie Hite/Charlar Linden and Dave Parks/Runitai Linden made several key points:

1. Traditional prim count vs. the newly introduced prim equivalent

Charlar explained that there is really “no relationship between prim count and the actual impact that objects have.”  As an example he said that a torus has more impact than a cube even though they are both one prim.  Therefore, to help residents better understand how an object will impact performance, Linden Lab have introduced prim equivalent (PE) as a easy way to display the computational/resource weight of an object in terms of traditional prims.  All mesh objects (and all objects with a physics shape type) will have a PE weight that will be subtracted from a land parcel or regions prim capacity.

PE is automatically determined by the highest weight of 3 performance factors:

• download weight (how much bandwidth is required to download and view the object)
• physics weight (the complexity of the object’s physics mode)
• server weight (the impact an object has on Second Life’s server resources)

To better help you understand here are some in-world examples:

This Buddha statue created by our own Reed Steamroller is only 1 prim, but because of the detail it is equivalent to an object made of 72 prims, therefore, it is 72 PE.

This adorable boat created by Bunnie Mills is 20 prims, but 133 PE because of it’s hidden details and scripts.

2. Theft/IP

Charlar addressed concerns of content being pulled from sites like Turbosquid and brought into SL in the masses by assuring the audience that this is unlikely because these meshes would “not look good” in Second Life.  Charlar further explained these meshes are often not efficient, result in bad performance, are missing physics and LODs which are then auto generated by SL making the objects look like “crap” when you zoom out, etc.

Charlar emphasized that content creation is “a craft and an art… it’s not magic”  He said creating mesh objects requires work and skill.    Charlar also pointed out that the Lab has put several other features in place to protect against theft by requiring uploaders to have payment information on file, complete a quiz, and pay additional upload fees for mesh objects.

3. Prims vs. sculpties vs. meshes

Charlar also reassured concerned content creators and artists who are afraid of prims being replaced by meshes that the Lab still loves the idea of prims and in-world tools (CEO Rod Humble echoed these same sediments during his keynote address, even stating they were interested in adding additional in-world tools in the future), he did however state that they would be encouraging residents to use meshes over sculpted prims because meshes offer several advantages:

• custom UV mapping
• custom LOD
• physics support
• rigging to the avatar skeleton
• more control

You can view the entire “Future of Mesh” panel below:

What do you think of the Mesh panel, PE, theft, and the other announcement by this team?

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The product team (John Laurence/Durian Linden, Sarah Kuehnle/ Esbee Linden and Michael Gesner/Gez Linden) announced at this year’s Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) that they have been building, exploring, and working on a prototype game in order to learn more and examine the current limits and problems that come up when creating in Second Life.

The game requires you to collect and place puzzle pieces in order to gain access to new areas.  While doing this you encounter box monsters and turrets that can “kill you” and send you back to the beginning of the games.

The team says the game uses point and click controls, but with the physical aspects of Second Life, they would like to examine click and drag in the future.  They also faced difficulties working in a “live environment” where for example a turret would be above on a platform, didn’t respect distance, and begin shooting at them and returning them to the beginning of the game while they were trying to work.  They also dealt with building complications where for example the buildings were originally more plain and they decided to add black outlines to give them more detail and then discovered they would have to change every texture on every face of every building by hand in order to update them.

This particular game is separate from the curated area that CEO Rod Humble spoke of, and is not currently part of any new user experience. Gez Linden addressed concerns about the game stating that the Lab does not plan on releasing the game, they just wanted to show users the work they are doing to learn more in order to better serve and address the communities needs.  Gez did however express that he thinks something like this game would be useful in acclimating new users to the Second Life platform:

“I do think that there is some value in creating an experience that is simpler, it’s more guided, it gives you prompts, it gives you almost quests or achievements, things that tell you what you need to be able to do to learn how to use Second Life, but I will completely agree with the fact that Second Life, itself, is not a game.  However, you can make some great games inside of Second Life, and you can use game mechanics, and game tutorials, and game systems to help people become more engaged and comfortable in Second Life.  So, we recognize that there are a number of different experiences that you can create in SL, we’re always in awe of the things that you’ve created, but we are trying to find a way to get people over that initial hurdle of using the software and taking our gaming experience to help get people over that.”

In addition to working on the game, the product team explained LL has been focused on two main areas:

1. Usability

• rez times (including avatars appearing as a cloud and prioritization of rezzing)
• avatar customization
• basic/advanced modes
• sidebar of Viewer 2
• direct delivery from the marketplace
• inventory management

2. Engagement

• mesh support  (the mesh team also presented updates at SLCC)
• creating and selling
• NPC (non-player characters)
• web profiles, interests, groups

The team also pointed out that to further understand and support the community each member of the team has an area which the are subject matter experts:

• Art – Durian Linden
• Gaming & Breedables – Gez Linden
• Roleplaying – Esbee Linden
• Adult - Charlar Linden
• Education – Geo Linden
• Music - Nya Linden
• Fashion - Cassandra Linden

View their the full panel presentation below

What do you think of the work the product team is doing to better address the communities needs?

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Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, gave a keynote address today at this year’s Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) revealing more about his current and future goals for Second Life and Linden Lab.

In addition to being informative,  Humble was also quite entertaining and humorous even joking about his own “inevitable firing” sometime next year.

Here are some of the key points he made:

1. There were 4 key elements that attracted Humble to Second Life

• Strength – Second Life is still growing!  Humble says there are about 16,000 people a day signing up for and joining Second Life.     Humble says that the fact that after 8-10 years there is still this huge level of interest in Second Life is an “amazing achievement” that you never see with other MMORPG’s.
• Creativity – Everything in Second Life is created by its users and Humble finds this to be a “phenomenally important and powerful thing.”  He says there is “no better feeling in the world” then you get when creating something.
• Shared Space – Not only can you create in SL, but Humble loves that you can do so in shared space and it can be a shared experience.
• Identity – Humble says he believes in and supports “the right for you to choose your identity and the ability for you to put barriers between various identities, particularly on the internet.”

2. Linden Lab is currently working on other new products

Linden Lab is a company, Second Life is ONE of it’s products.

Humble says the elements that attracted him to Second Life (listed above) are powerful, needed, and have a large audience.

With that in mind, Linden Lab is currently creating a new product (separate from Second Life). While this new product doesn’t have a proper name yet, Humble referred it it as “shared creative spaces”  or “shared creativity tools.”

Humble also said the Lab will be “addressing tablets in part and some mobile stuff as well” with these new products.

Even with the new products, Humble said Linden Lab’s role and goals will remain the same and that the Lab will continue to

• put customer privacy first
• allow customers to make the content (while only creating themselves in order to learn how to make tools to help their customers)
• develop spaces that are shared and social.

3.  Humble’s goal for Second Life is halfway complete

Humble wants a computer user of average intelligence to be able to get-in, use SL, and be grateful to have been introduce to it.  In order to achieve this Humble said the Lab focused their efforts in 3 main areas:

• Usability – In order to make the product more useful, the Lab created “basic mode” for new users.  Humble says they originally created this mode separately so that they could make changes quickly without annoying current customers, but that it will eventually be merged back into the regular viewer.
• Lag – Humble says you can already feel many of the changes in this area including a larger cache, improved chat and group chat experiences, progress with search, and better SIM crossing among other things.
• Service – Humble says customer service was improved, ticket times have gone down, and better quality service is coming.  In addition to these changes with customer service, Humble says in the near future they are working on “making life unpleasant for griefers, in an inhumane way.”

Humble says Second Life was losing 15,000 new users a day before these changes were complete.  He says originally most people wouldn’t even make it through the registration process.  Once they added a new signup page/process they found users couldn’t understand basic concepts such as movement and camera controls, but Basic Mode changed this.  Once users understood how to explore the virtual world, they couldn’t find places to go, but the new and improved Destination Guide now highlights areas of interest.   Humble says the Lab will now focus making shopping, buying, wearing, and creating easier for new users.

4. New features and upgrades are coming to Second Life

While Linden Lab is focused on the above aspects to improve the SL experience for new and current users, Humble also gave us some insight into some new features and upgrades that will be coming to SL in the future.

• Linden made curated area – Humble says the Lindens created this area for newbies in order to learn and make tools that would improve the SL experience.  One example of something they are looking into is one permission request/button that would allow you to define an area and remove the need for additional permission/controls or HUDs.
• Marketing Campaign and PR push to bring in more users – Humble said this should help merchants and service providers and assured them that LL doesn’t plan on “taking a cut” from their sales.
• Improvements to the Viewer 2 User Interface.   Humble conceded that it’s “not an ideal UI,” but said that there are “so many new bits of tech embedded in that new code (that they) just can’t give up on it (they) have to somehow fix it.”    Humble also said that he doesn’t “like the way that whole sidebar thing works” and is working to improve that as well, but don’t expect that until sometime next year.
• New features for Premium users (without additional costs)
• More in-world creativity tools
• Addressing Intellectual Property (IP) theft and Piracy in Second Life
• Continued balance of Open Source and Proprietary
• Improved and additional social aspects/features (including to web profiles and groups)

5.  Humble wants to be accountable/available

“The only reason I’m on twitter is because you guys asked me to be,” said Humble.  He pointed out that the best ways to contact him were his SL profile, twitter, and SL Universe.

You can watch Humble’s full keynote address below.

What did you think of Humble’s address and the changes/improvements he announced?

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In addition to Linden Lab’s official viewer, users can access the virtual world of Second Life through a number of customized third party viewers.  This has created much debate throughout the Second Life community as to whether these third party viewers are safe to use.

While Linden Lab does provide a Viewer Directory that highlights viewers that have self-certified their compliance with the Lab’s Policy on Third Party Viewers (TPV), they have also stated that it is the responsibility of the user to take reasonable precautions, before installing or using a third-party viewer as it is the user (as well as the developer) who is accountable for all risks, expenses, and actions while using a third party viewer.

While these rules and risks apply to all third party viewers, the Emerald viewer has been surrounded in far more controversy and concern than all the viewers put together.  However, it is also believed to be the most popular third party viewer.  While we don’t know for sure the number of users who access Second Life using the Emerald Viewer, most estimates place the figures around 20-30% of all users.

Emerald Controversies

For those who are unfamiliar, the controversy around Emerald begins with the actions of a number of the developers behind the viewer.

Initial apprehension stemmed from the fact that several of the developers were well known griefers and had previous accounts permanently banned from Second Life.  These concern were then followed by a slew of others such as:

• privacy concerns
• reports that developers were data mining and had compiled a database of avatar names, IP addresses, and geo-location information for SL users
• controversy over Onyx and the Client Detection System (CDS)

In addition, last week,  (now former) Emerald developer LordGregGreg published a sharp-tongued post questioning Emerald’s integrity and the moral compass of it’s developers, citing issues such hidden code “that braodcasted your viewers title bar and executable path in a obfuscated manner” and stating ”To the people who have took my word on emerald’s credibility, I apologize deeply for my claims.”

Denial of Service and the TPV

As if that wasn’t enough over the weekend news came to light that Emerald lead developer Fractured Crystal, committed a crime by launching a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) and used the computers, bandwidth, and (blind faith) trust of every Emerald user to do so.

Emerald PR representative Arabella Steadham denied the attack stating that is was just a prank or “shenanigans” as she called it.

“This idea was to target a blog owned by a creator of a malicious viewer, and boast of the traffic Emerald has captured. The method for doing this was to add links to the Emerald log in page linked to said blog. Each time anyone logged in, our page loaded up and also the other page loaded up – simply to show off our volume of traffic.

This was not a DDoS. This was a poor attempt at boasting that failed miserably. Once we discovered this, these links were deleted and the dev concerned was disciplined.

The entire Emerald Team offers it’s sincere apologies for concern, panic, worry, mistrust and disappointment felt by our users because of this. I can most strongly assure you that this will not happen again.”

As news spread on Twitter under the hashtag #EmeraldGate, Linden Lab began to take notice.  The Security Technical Lead for Lab, Brian McGroarty (aka Soft Linden) responded by stating:

“’Crosslinking’ drops the context of hiding gibberish requests to a critic’s website in a hidden frame that will never be revealed to the user. This isn’t a mere hyperlink to another page or naively stealing someone else’s image hosting.

My read (but I’m no lawyer) is that this looks like 2.d.iii of http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php and we’re already having that discussion. If anyone can come up with specific reasons why this might have had legitimate reason to be there, or how this one could be yet another oversight or mistake, that would be helpful. I sure haven’t heard any to date.”

The TPV policy section referred to states:

“d. iii. You must not launch Denial of Service (“DoS”) attacks, engage in griefing, or distribute other functionality that Linden Lab considers harmful or disruptive to Second Life or the Second Life community.”

Some time later, the Emerald Viewer was silently removed from the viewer directory by Linden Lab.

Eventually Fractured Crystal admitted the DDOS, removed himself from the project,  and transferred control of the project and the web server to Arabella Steadham.

A New Emerald

New owner Arabella Steadham and Emerald Quality Assurance officer Jessica Lyons appeared on the Tonight Show with Paisley Beebe to discuss the entire cluster of events as well as to announce that the Emerald team had undergone a massive restructuring and would be applying again to the viewer directory.

Today the new Emerald site went live.

Trust Issues

While the appearance on Tonight Live was reassuring to some users, many are still questioning  whether the Emerald team can be trusted.

As of this date, the Emerald viewer has not be re-included in the viewer directory, despite the fact that it advertises the listing on the About page of the new site.

Is the Emerald Viewer compliant with the Second Life Terms of Service? Yes, Emerald is compliant with the ToS, the Community Standards, and the Third Party Viewer Policy. We are also listed in Linden Lab’s Viewer Directory.

In addition, while it was announced that the development team was restructured the new site’s team list includes previously scandal-plagued members Skills Hax and Lonely Bluebird (aka Phox).

New owner Arabella Steadham has now also come into question.  During her appearance on Tonight Live she told host Paisley Beebe that she did not lie when she called the DDOS a prank.  She states that she herself was lied to about the attack.  Her lack of technical knowledge has led many to question how she can ensure Emerald’s integrity.  Ms. Beebe also asked her if she would now be accountable to users by providing real world contact information.  She declined stating that she was accountable to Linden Lab and “they know who she is”.

In fact all that Arabella Steadham could offer Emerald users was her apology and her word.

But is that enough?

Project Snowstorm

Third Party Viewers aren’t the only ones who receive criticism.  While users of official Second Life viewer have no concerns about security, privacy, or ethics, they do have trust issues.  Many users anxiously waited for the new elusive Viewer 2 while Linden Lab worked on it behind closed doors.  When it debuted many were not only disappointed, but annoyed by the changes.  In fact, it was these changes that led many to download a third party viewer.

At this year’s Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) Linden Lab announced several significant changes including Project Snowstorm.  Project Snowstorm hopes not only to improve the viewer, but CEO Philip Rosedale says that the Lab wants to “win back the lead”, and have the best viewer overall.  With Emerald users wary of the Emerald viewer, Linden Lab is positioned to do just that, but first they will also have to regain user’s trust.

Project Snowstorm is prepared to begin rebuilding that trust by promising transparency and allowing users to participate in the process.  It sounds like a good plan, but many users are still skeptical that the Lab will follow through with what they say.

Rebuilding

It seems like both Emerald and Linden Lab have a lot of work to do if they want to gain back their users trust.

My suggestions:

1. “Acta, non verba”  - I borrowed this phrase from Crap Mariner who applied it to both Emerald and Linden Lab.  Declaring trust does not create trust. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do that counts.  If you want your users to trust you, show them by your actions.  You are what you do.
2. Lead the debate, don’t hide from it – In our new culture of social media, we now have the ability to identify and address potential crises as they surface.  Users are listening to what you have to say and are eager to hear your response.  Defensive posture implies that you have something to hide.  However, when you are silent, others can create the truths about you.
3. Be Accountable – Trustworthy messages must come from a trustworthy source. Say what you mean and mean what you say.  If you were wrong, or made a mistake, admit it.  Give users a way to communicate.  Robert Scoble is the perfect example of this. Here’s a guy who is an internet celebrity, worked at Microsoft, has just as many haters as followers, and was willing to put his cell phone number on his website.

Update 2:20pm - This afternoon at I received an email from Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale that informed Second Life users of the denial-of-service attack and that Emerald had been removed from the viewer directory.  Philip explained that the Lab takes take privacy, safety, and security very seriously and work to protect it.  You can read the for email on (which has been posted on the official blog as well) here.  I applaud Linden Lab for their action throughout this manner.

As users the ball is back in our court.

Who do you trust more?

Can you trust Emerald again?

Are you willing to trust the avatar Arabella Steadham?

Has Project Snowstorm met your expectations?  Have you participated?

The above picture was taken by Jeff Lowe.  The caption reads, “The SL Name Tag simply displays your real name and whatever affiliation you choose as text above the tag. Seems simplistic, but it’s really handy to have a quick visual reference to an avatar’s physical world identity.”

Second Life users have long wanted a way to change their avatar name in a way that did not destroy the history and links associated with it.  In attempt to solve this “identity crisis”,  at the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) amongst a slew a new features, Linden Lab announced that users would be getting Display Names.

What are Display Names

Display Names will allow Second Life users the ability to choose two names: a unique user name that cannot be changed and an optional Display Name that you can periodically change and that can be set to almost anything that you would like, whether it be an avatar name, your real name, a pseudonym, gamer tag, or even a description.  The change also means that new users will no longer be forced to choose from a limited set of last names (for current users, your existing Second Life avatar name will become your unique user name).

Torley Linden created the below video in order to expand on that what you can do with this new feature and why it’s so important:

Overall, Display Names offer increased freedom to express identity while still providing the ability for users to retain anonymity if they choose.  It sounds good on paper, but many long term users (also know as residents) are not happy with how it is being deployed.  In fact, the announcement seems to be causing more disappointment and concern, than enthusiasm.

What’s Wrong with Display Names

Some of the reasons I have been hearing are:

• It’s the end of an era.  Creative avatar names like Am Radio, TheDiva Rockin, GoSpeed Racer, and Space Dinosaur will most likely become John and Jane Smith.
• It adds a new level of confusion for new residents (as if there wasn’t enough to confuse them already)
• It’s too easy to “grief” someone using Display Names.
• It makes it difficult to report abuse, identify avatars, or find chat logs.

While all of these are valid reasons, with some scrutiny they are mostly inconsequential.

• I agree, it is sad to see the end of the last names lists.  We have come to know a lot about avatars by their last names and have grown found of them and the creative avatars they spawned, but if Second Life wants to move into the future, many potential users were lost at this part of the signup process and simply will not tolerate being forced to choose a limited name.  Virtually every other platform allows you to choose your own name.
• I don’t see Display Names adding a new level of confusion to new users.  In fact, as I stated above, a think it removes one and makes the sign up process that much easier.  Display Names are most likely not something that new users will even be aware of until after they have a better understanding of the platform and the more basic features of SL.
• I think abuse of Display Names will be more annoying than it will actually cause any real problems.  While they might fool someone at first, they won’t end up being any more effective then any of the other ways to speak as someone, etc
• The same thing goes for other methods of identifying avatars.   It might be a little confusing at first, but it is not any different from a friend changing their display name on something like Skype and having to resort to their user name to locate them.

The Real Problem

My concerns are not the result of the uneasiness that often accompanies change in SL, but my belief that we are comparing apples and oranges.  To me, my disappointment was not based on the details of how Display Names are being implemented, as much as that they are being implemented.

Users didn’t ask for a way to display a nickname, they asked for a way to CHANGE their avatar’s name.

It’s the difference between correction tape and an eraser.

While I am excited for this new level of expression, I still consider this a missed opportunity for Second Life/Linden Lab and I hope in the future there will be a better way to link our online presences, if we so choose.

The 6th annual Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) took place in Boston this past weekend.  It was an exciting weekend packed full of Linden Lab announcements as well as a plethora of resident-led discussions and presentations.

The theme that resonated throughout the Linden Lab keynotes was Fast, Easy, Fun which are also their new strategic goals.   While a vast wealth of information was delivered at SLCC, there were 5 announcements in particular that that I think will bring forth some  significant changes to Second Life.

1. Mesh Support

Mesh support  was actually first announced at last year’s SLCC by Linden Lab’s (now former) Chief Product Officer, Tom Hale.  After the recent layoffs of several key Linden Lab employees including Hale himself, there has been much speculation as to the status of mesh support.  Linden Lab Founder and CEO Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden) cleared this up in his keynote address when he candidly declared,. “We are going to ship mesh.”  He also stated that we can expect Mesh to go into Open Beta before the end of the year.

I was relieved to hear this, as I have been very vocal in regards to how critical I think mesh support is to the future of Second Life.  Not only does it allow developers an unparalleled level of control, but it could also decrease lag and increase overall performance.

2. New Users Directly to Content

Instead of the orientation experience current users had, new users will be sent directly to the content that they are interested in.  For example, if someone was interested in live music, they could click a link and be sent directly to a show and the orientation process would then be shifted.

Philip himself admits that this is a gamble, but he thinks it’s a good one.  I agree that in theory this could be very successful.  By sending new users directly to content, they have the opportunity to find the  communities and content that interests and engages them, therefore making it more likely that they will stay, explore, and return. How this feature is implemented though, will make all the difference.

3. Display Names

Currently we all use avatar names that we created by entering a first name and choosing a last name from an available list.  This is very different from most current platforms and while cute, it is simply no longer acceptable to limit avatars in this fashion.  With the addition of display names, new users will no longer have to chose from a list of last names.  They will be able to define their own user names and display names.  For us current users, our avatar names will become our user names and we will be able to define our display names.  This feature is currently slated for release in the next few days!

I still have a lot of questions about display names, but I am thrilled at the prospect of them.  They will allow users like myself to easily link their avatar to their real world persona while also allowing users who wish to remain anonymous the ability to do so.

4. Closing of the Teen Grid

Not all the announcements were happily received.  This announcement in particular has upset many educators who have worked hard to establish opportunities on the Teen Grid.  Unfortunately for those involved, the Teen Grid will be closing.  However, users that are 16 or 17 years of age, will be transfer to the main Second Life grid.

While I can understand the hurt and frustration of the educators and community leaders involved, I also understand that tough decisions had to be made.  I’m hopefully that Linden Lab and the educators involved can come to some agreement to make space and certain content available to younger users, but that is certainly a daunting task that must not be taken lightly.  Philip himself said that he would like to work with them to find a way for the younger teens to have a place on the main grid.

5. New Development Methodologies

The Lab is changing the way they develop things.  Instead of spending large amounts of time working on a project, they are switching to short release cycles and implementing the use of an auto-updater.  This will allow Linden Lab the ability to quickly implement changes and present the community with the opportunity to provide essential feedback along the way.   The Lab currently has about 15 scrum teams working on different areas of development.  During this weekend we were introduced to one of the teams focusing on improving the Second Life Viewer aka the Snowstorm Team.  Project Snowstorm hopes to improve the performance, reliability, and ease of use of the Second Life Viewer while rapidly releasing new improved “development” viewers as often as bi-weekly. The best part is they plan to be completely open about the whole process.  Each day, the Snowstorm team will meet in Second Life for an open Daily Scrum, where each team member will give a short status update. The status updates will also be published on the Wiki and the team will be blogging as well.  They will also be looking to the open source community and welcoming them to contribute to the viewer development.

Philip outlined upcoming fixes to several bugs including fixes to group chat and region crossings.  He also stated that they plan to make SL twice as fast on start up and improve the crash rate.  In addition they are also working on having more avatars per region,  and reducing lag issues by implementing controls on avatar complexity.   He promised that these fixes and others would soon be outlined in a official published roadmap.

These change are quite radical compared to some the recent methods of the Lab, and I am looking forward to this new level of transparency and accountability.  The lab is not only welcoming feedback and new ideas, they encourage and asking for them.  They have asked though that these ideas be well thought out and constructive.  Several months ago, I wrote about how much of the Second Life community had adopted a sort of culture of complaining.  I suggested ways that the community could bring forth their complaints in a more constructive manner, and proposed that by doing so, they would have a better chance of being heard.  That time is now.  Assuming the Lab honors their part of the deal, the ball is now in our court.

Philip’s Keynote

Project Snowstorm Keynote

What did you think of the SLCC announcements?

Here are some of my favorites from SLCC ’09:

• The biggest and best announcements came from Tom Hale as he introduced Second Life 2.0: and some of it’s key features such as the new SL viewer, the new website, and the interactive web media API. You can read all about these new features and changes in detail here.

• Tom also announced the long awaited features of mesh support and global illumination. These concepts might be a little complex to some non-content creators, but they look stunning! Learn more about what these features are and what they mean for Second Life here.

• Mark Kingdon and Philip Rosedale gave joint keynote speeches at SLCC.  Philip discussed how we are still at the very beginning of what virtual worlds will be and how we will need to weather tremendous changes as we move towards a more global digital world, but no matter how hard, we must endure them, because these changes are not just evolutionary, but revolutionary as well. You can view parts of his speech here, here, here, and here.   Mark discussed all the changes and amazing features coming to SL and how they are working on growth and making SL a better place. You can view parts of his speech here, here, and here. You can also view his slides below.

• We also had our own workshop/panel with Draxtor Despres that went quite well. We discussed the California Legacy Project and premiered the latest episode.

• Apollo Manga of the San Francisco Examiner, has day-by-day reports of his SLCC experience: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

• Keiko Takamura my favorite SL performer (along with Max Kleene) finially performed live at SLCC this year, with her new band The Shebangs. The performance was fantastic. You would never believe she previously had such fears as documented on her MTV documentary.

What did I miss? Post your links in the comments!

The biggest news coming out of the Second Life Community Convention this year was delivered by Linden Lab Chief Product Officer Tom Hale, aka T. Linden, who announced a dramatic user experience roadmap and gave a tour of several of its features including a new SL viewer and website.

The new SL viewer, which will debut later this year, was designed with user experience in mind. The navigation is a updated so that you can easily go “back” and forth between previous locations and easily use SLURLs as locations. The most used features of the viewer are clustered into a single drawer that opens to a right hand panel and then can be shut when you are not using it, in order to unclutter the display. It promises “no more panel proliferation”.

Also coming by the end of this quarter is a vastly improved Second Life website with a machinima to entice visitors, an interactive keyword searchable map, and an improved XStreet SL shopping experience. They also updated the registration process and provided new users with a PDF quick start guide. The user dashboard is also updated as well and will eventually be your social networking homepage.

Another feature that was previewed was Mesh Support. Since this is a more complicated feature, we have had our Chief Creative Officer breakdown this feature, and you can read about it here.

Lastly, over the course of next year interactive web media files displayable in SL will be introduced. These will be in the form of collaboratively documents like being able to work on a Google Doc with other avatars, and in additional Flash-based media applications like YouTube. A “LL Media” API plug-in for media is also expected to allow for developers to create their own media plugins as well.

UPDATE - Tom has details on the “LL Media” API plug-in and how you can get the code up on the official blog.

Related Posts:

• Second Life Launches its New Website
• SLCC 2009 Wrap-Up
• Everything You Need To Know About Second Life Viewer 2.0 (Beta)
• CNBC Segment on Business & Social Media Highlights LinkedIn, Second Life, and More
• The Future of Mesh: Key Points from SLCC’s Mesh Panel
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

]]> http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/second-life-2-0-tom-hale-presents-the-new-second-life-viewer-website-and-interactive-web-media-at-slcc/feed 10 http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/linden-lab-offically-announces-mesh-support-in-second-life-at-slcc http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/linden-lab-offically-announces-mesh-support-in-second-life-at-slcc#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:18:10 +0000 Gianna Borgnine http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/?p=303

At this years Second Life Community Convention, Linden Lab Chief Product Officer Tom Hale, aka T. Linden, showed video of a polygon mesh object responding to a dynamic lighting system much more advanced then the current lighting and shadows that are available in several Beta viewers. (videos below) With the new system, light is able to be reflected off of objects to their surroundings. Both are much sought after and desired features of advanced and experienced content creators, especially those who want to make use of existing polygon meshes made in Maya and other industry standard modeling tools. Unfortunately, Hale did not give any indication on when theses features might be available.

To help us better understand these features, I have asked our co-founder and Chief Creative Officer here at Sand Castle Studios, Reed Steamroller, to tell us a little more of what this means and what we can expect.

Linden Lab Offically Announces Mesh Support in Second Life

Second Life has been in a probationary period for me since I first logged in. On that faithful day back in October of 2006, I asked a question that has lingered with me since. Can I bring things into Second Life from 3rd party software? The answer I got was, of course, a big, nasty no, as this was the state of affairs of the time. Since then, there has been one giant improvement to the situation: sculpted prims, which do, technically, allow you to import shapes from 3rd party 3D modeling software. However, due to their limitations, sculpted prims are no final answer to that question I asked those years ago. As it turned out, as announced at this year at the Second Life Community Convention 2009, sculpted prims are merely a taste what’s to come, and polygon mesh support is soon to arrive.

Since the dawn of the new millennium, most video games have presented their virtual environments via something called a polygon, and while Second Life isn’t a game per se, it does run on game engine technology. A polygon, in reference to computer graphics, is a simple, two-dimensional shape that can be represented by your computer in three-dimensional space. Normally, most game engines use three-sided polygons, which you may also know by their technical terminology; “triangles.” Although, polygons can have four sides as well. If you guessed these four sided polygons are called “squares”, you are absolutely…. WRONG. We call them “quads” here. Polygons can also have more than four sides, but after that, to the world of computer graphics, they’re just referred to as “n-gons” to keep things simple. In the end, what you need to know is that these are the tiny building blocks of everything you see in Second Life.

Well, you can’t do much with just a triangle, and that’s why we have polygon meshes. A mesh is a bunch of polygons linked together. For example, a prim cube in Second Life may look like just that, a cube. However, if you go into wireframe mode, you would see that each face of the Second Life cube is actually made up of 18 individual triangles connected on their sides. We call this a regular mesh, because of how the polygons are laid out nice and neat across the faces of the cube, in somewhat of a grid-like pattern. If you look at all of the other prim shapes in wireframe, you’ll see their polygons laid out in much the same manner. Even sculpted prims, while they can be bent and formed into a wide variety of shapes, are still made up of these very grid-like, regular meshes.

There are pluses and minuses to these regular polygon meshes. Linden Lap supports these shapes because they are very conducive to a virtual world that is constantly changing, and which constantly needs to be streamed back to its residents. It is much easier for the Second Life asset servers to define a cube as “cube” and be universally understood what is meant by this across all of the viewers, as opposed to defining the coordinates of each individual vertex along the corner of each individual polygon that makes up said cube. From the viewpoint of a builder, however, the problem with these prims is that they are very restrictive, in that they force you into placing groups of polygons at a time, instead of defining for yourself just how these polygons will be positioned individually.

The guts of the question I asked back in 2006 really lay at the feet of irregular meshes. You can think of an irregular mesh as a polygon mesh in which the polygons are NOT laid out in neat or predictable pattern. These meshes are dependent only on the wishes of their creator, and are not restrained by any prerequisites of form. Irregular meshes give the creator access to manipulate the polygons themselves, instead of being limited to manipulating groups of polygons aligned in regular meshes. What is important to know is that allowing user-created, irregular, polygon meshes on the grid will give builders a higher level of freedom in not only what they build, but just how they build it.

You may be surprised to find that Second Life already uses irregular meshes, it’s just that we, the people, haven’t been given the ability to create any of our own. The most visible example of this is the Second Life avatar, an irregular polygon mesh created by Linden Lab to be especially good at deforming to the users will into all the different styles seen in Second Life.

If you’ve never been taught, or learned on your own, the correct way to model 3D objects out of polygons, you’ve got some work to do. Characteristics such as edge flow and poly count can make or break a polygonal mesh, and it takes time to get a handle on things. As with most disciplines, be prepared to make a lot of crap before anything worth showing to people.

Those of you out there with experience in making sculpted prims will be ahead of the curve, in that you won’t have to learn a new user interface. Chances are the software you already use for creating sculpted prims (be it Blender, Zbrush, 3D Studio Max, Maya, etc…) is primarily geared towards modeling irregular polygon meshes, and that sculpted prim functionality was added by some friendly Second Life resident as an afterthought. Really, the only place I’ve found that makes a distinction between regular and irregular meshes is Second Life.

Also demonstrated at SLCC was a new feature in the Second Life client that Linden Lab is referring to as diffuse, or reflective lighting. This seems to be a new lighting scheme allowing whats called indirect lighting. To visualize indirect lighting, think about when the sun shines through your window and hits the floor. The sunlight doesn’t just illuminate the parts of your floor that it hits directly, but instead bounces off the floor and illuminates the entire room as well. This is indirect illumination, and normally it is a VERY resource hungry, ray-trace intensive process. I imagine Linden Lab has figured out some sort of work around with regards to ray-tracing this effect, in order to keep frame rates up, but you really can’t tell from the results. This looks SPECTACULAR!

All in all, we have a ton of things to look forward to in the coming months. Kudos to Linden Lab for all of their efforts. Second Life 2.0 can’t get here soon enough!

Hale’s Presentation with Sound

Up close view

Related Posts:

• The Status of Mesh Support in Second Life
• Mesh Imports in Second Life (for Maya Users)
• Breaking Down Rigged, Polygon Mesh Objects in Second Life
• The Future of Mesh: Key Points from SLCC’s Mesh Panel
• SLCC 2011 Wrap-Up
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

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