Linden Lab Planning to "Deal With Sub-Optimal" User-Generated Content in Second Life Successor (Updated)

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg didn't reveal much about Project Sansar, its successor to Second Life, at yesterday's SVVR conference presentation, but as HyperGrid Business reports, he did offer a strong hint at how it'll treat user-generated content in Sansar:

Additionally the Lab is working on how to “deal with sub-optimal” content. “Users don’t necessarily know how to create extremely optimized content like a gaming studio would,” Altberg said.

This suggests some kind of filtering system (automatic or human-curated) against some user-generated content -- likely content that causes lag or other performance issues, or is just not up to a professional gaming studio's standard. [Note: Linden Lab disputes this interpretation -- see update below. - WJA, 5/20]

At first glance, I'm of two minds: It's definitely good to give new users an extremely curated, high quality experience, so some level of UGC filtering in a user's early stages is totally understandably.

At the same time, "extremely optimized content like a gaming studio" really concerns me:

That pretty much implies that the only user-generated content that can reach a "optimized" standard will be created by professionals or the small minority of dedicated hobbyists proficient with industry standard 3D modeling tools and other high-end software. That would be a high bar that few can reach -- much higher than that set by Minecraft, or for that matter, the prim-based creation Second Life originally launched with.

But of course, it's early days, so let's see what happens with this optimization plan for Sansar as it gets closer to launch.

Update, 5:40pm: Linden Lab spokesman Peter Gray disputes this interpretation in Comments. I've updated the post title accordingly:

Ebbe didn't say anything about "filtering" content of any sort, nor did he imply it, let alone announcing plans like your misleading headline suggests.

He was commenting on the challenges of providing a platform for user-created virtual experiences, which go beyond what pro studios creating VR content face. Whereas those pros may have a great deal of experience in creating optimized content, our platform needs to also empower non-pros to create high-quality and highly performant virtual experiences across a wide variety of use cases. That could involve providing tools to help users create experiences that are optimized for performance with HMDs, for example. It's still early in the development of our new platform, and how it will handle this particular challenge is a topic we'll address in the future, but at this point no one has announced any plan for content filtering.

 

Image credit: Linden Lab.

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Comments

[Issa Heckroth]

Definitely agree. "Professional standard user generated content" seems like an oxymoron to me.

[Cube Republic]

I think it could mean that there's a filter to reduce polygon count on non optimised meshes. In a lot of cases it's possible to remove 2 thirds of polygons without losing the silhouette of the mesh object. For example there's not that much of a difference between a cylinder of 32 vertical loops and one of 16 and so on.

If someone is proficient enough to make meshes, then they're probably able to spend a day researching how to make low poly game ready meshes.

[Pete Linden]

Ebbe didn't say anything about "filtering" content of any sort, nor did he imply it, let alone announcing plans like your misleading headline suggests.

He was commenting on the challenges of providing a platform for user-created virtual experiences, which go beyond what pro studios creating VR content face. Whereas those pros may have a great deal of experience in creating optimized content, our platform needs to also empower non-pros to create high-quality and highly performant virtual experiences across a wide variety of use cases. That could involve providing tools to help users create experiences that are optimized for performance with HMDs, for example. It's still early in the development of our new platform, and how it will handle this particular challenge is a topic we'll address in the future, but at this point no one has announced any plan for content filtering.

[Sean Heying]

@ Pete Linden

Unsure how you watched the video but was a point what ebbe said gave most people the same impression.

[Sean Heying]

Myself somewhat skeptical here considering Second Life primitives have not been upgraded in 9 years.

[JJay]

It's a pretty big leap from "deal with" to "filter." Filtering would be one way of dealing with it, but it's not logically "implied".

[Wagner James Au]

Pete, I'll add that to an update, thanks, but Ebbe saying “deal with sub-optimal [content]” in relation to "optimized content like a gaming studio" definitely suggests some kind of demarcation, curation, or another synonym between the two.

[Edgar Button]

Filtering User Created Content sounds like a management nightmare unless it's script based.

[Birch]

I'm so glad I made my move to InWorldz. Yes I still have some RP regions in SL that bring me back to play, but most of my friends are in IW now and you know, in the past month, three places I was living in SL shut down. (two of those Regions had been around a long time)
I love that in IW I can afford to upload images, textures etc.. learn how to expand on the same skills I learned in SL but at no cost. *happy dance* - If I want pro type content and game experience I'll go play Witcher or spend the evening playing WoW -- but if i want to create or express myself, it is no longer going to be done on a platform that has grown bored of itself.

[JJay]

*** definitely suggests some kind of demarcation, curation, or another synonym between the two. ***

Then I'd suggest that your facility with the English language, or perhaps basic logic, isn't quite what you imagine it to be.

Any platform containing unoptimized content, by definition, must deal with unoptimized content. It is a simple logical truism. It's there. You must deal with it.

[JJay]

Here is the precise quote "We have to understand how to deal with suboptimal content and find ways to automatically optimize content."

And from that you get "filter."

Yikes.

[Amanda Dallin]

Hamlet always interprets anything about SL or LL in the most negative way possible. I guess it promotes comments. It must work since I'm posting a comment.

[Metacam Oh]

Another walled garden eh? They never learn.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The assertion that users don't know how to model/texture is presumptuous. It's more to the point to say that users at any skill level are hardly going to be willing to optimize content when optimization standards are not only not enforced, they're not even published.

If you think professional studio artists would hew to optimization standards if the studio refused to give them any such standards, you've never worked with artists.

If you want optimized content, bake the optimization algorithms into the integrated object creation suite. If you're not willing to provide a comprehensive integrated object creation suite, stop bitching about the users. We're not the problem. We do the best we can with the tools we have available. You want better work, give us better tools.

[amy]

Sorry but Ebbe is right.

As a creator I can tell you all it takes is a LITTLE EFFORT to make content optimal. But competitors just want to make their products LOOK BEST. They don't care about SL as a whole. This FORCES ME to make sub-optimal content in order to compete.

And I hate having to do that......

[amy]

And if you want to make content optimal then.....

ENFORCE MUCH HIGHER MARKETPLACE FEES ON POORLY OPTIMIZED CONTENT

The noobs will still be able to sell, but you can bet they will learn to optimize their content fast....

[sirhc deSantis]

Easy answer - the Lab know that nothing will fly without content ergo they need to somehow shoehorn content thats available (ie peoples stuff) into the New Thing. So they will - and yeah without guidelines (take a look at how ARC reborn/render weight is calculated per the wiki as its hilarious as in designed as we go along) the crease gets moved, let alone the goal :) Sorry, play off thingie there.

Without stuff new platform is as dead as all the other wannabe grids. But hey its easy to 'optimise' for SL. Just not a lot of incentive unless you are outside that 'vertical' target thats mentioned over in the search engine fiddling post.

[zz bottom]

Less and less interested on Sansar, guess ill stick up with SL and if it ends ill move to Open sim as i did once.

[Issa Heckroth]

For those putting a positive spin on this, I am also trying to remain positive, but lest look at LL track record here.

*Look at prims - Horribly inefficient from the word go.

*Look at sculpties (yikes!) - Did we really even need to even bother with these? Could we not (with a dash of competence) just skipped straight on to mesh?

*Look at the current PE/LI system. Specifically the focus on penalizing geometry and giving huge texture maps a free pass (Penny Patton has hammered this home ad nauseam).

So based on LL track record, I think its pretty understandable people are jumping to conclusions. This has never really worked out well in the past.

[zz bottom]

Linden lab needs to be reminded, Second Life is an amazing tool to build in world, even dated and perhaps badly managed. No other allows as easy as Second Life to build without any knowledge of any other tools (even mesh can be made just by manipulating the reg prims and converting them with help of in world tools made by users).
If this is not the main goal of Sansar, obviously both projects can co exist but it will not attract a lot of the ones that are in SL now. The reason for me to hope that SL still will co exist for long with the Sansar project.
If Sansar goal is to replace Sl but with a better management system, then really is to soon to say any but as yet of what i know, it just does not attracts me in any way, 1st cause it was aiming to a level of audience i don't wish to be with (13+) and the few i know, like Ebbe's remark about not understanding the need of maps in Sl, makes me fear the worse about what i like more of Sl, Its' mainland continents and its remarkable effective building tools.

[A.J.]

Ebbe's half-baked statement is worrisome, but everything about Linden Lab is worrisome and that's a bigger problem than build tools.

Sansar will launch some day... half-baked and with a new CEO.

As SL residents, we shouldn't worry about Sansar. It's never been for us, anyway. It's a plaything for LL to distract attention away from what they consider to be a failure. Our only job is to pay for it while we languish in the remaining half-baked world that is ours.

Nobody at Linden Lab has been asking what we think.
We just parse what we are being told and pretend that our opinions matter.

Ebbe will be gone and Sansar will definitely be half-baked. It's just their nature.

[Ronnie North]

@ zz bottom

"1st cause it was aiming to a level of audience i don't wish to be with (13+) and the few i know, like Ebbe's remark about not understanding the need of maps in Sl, makes me fear the worse about what i like more of Sl, Its' mainland continents and its remarkable effective building tools."

That! the map thing reminds me of the no-text policy of Philips in High Fidelity
both seem to miss the mark in understanding that sometimes too different is worst then not enough.

[Ronnie North]

@A.J.

"Nobody at Linden Lab has been asking what we think.
We just parse what we are being told and pretend that our opinions matter.
Ebbe will be gone and Sansar will definitely be half-baked. It's just their nature."

Disagree i think he will be CEO at the latest until the Creative Spaces grid is 10yrs old & SL going on 25yrs old.
It was in the nature they had but part of Ebbe's job has been to change office culture and ways of business.

2 things..
Myself i think they are being mum regarding something about the new grid some part that is going to raise a huge amount of hell unlike seen in yrs so i think the secrecy thing is to make sure whatever bomb they are hiding goes off when they want it too.

They are lying about something and its not about SL or Sansar and whatever it is is going to be the cries in the dark heard around the world.

I agree they do not take in account our options as much as they do bloggers and linden elitists
but they have been warned many times seeking that advice is a double edge sword.

[djehan]

I agree with Amy, some content creators just take advantage of the fact that there aren't really any limitations in the mesh uploader...I understood that what Ebbe proposes is an automated way to force optimization. That would depend on what you upload, for instance, if an uploader sees that the inworld scale of your object is around 1 meter it shouldn't allow you to upload a 1024 texture with it, even though it is more complicated then this, but well just as an example...or when I see the flat part of a virtual bed sheet that still contains a lot of poly divisions, either the content creator isn't familiar enough yet with optimization or he/she didn't take the time to do it, an automated tool to control such issues within the uploader should be mandatory, in fact just like when you want to upload a picture somewhere and it refuses to upload it because the size doesn't comply with the limitations

[madeline blackbart]

this is really silly. you don't need big name programs like maya to watch poly count or use smaller texture sizes. I assure that a hobbyist with a free copy of blender and gimp can do those things to with no problem what so ever. the issue is generally people choose not to because it's more work.

[joe]

Here is what Ebbe was really saying:

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship.

The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The minnow would be lost, the minnow would be lost.

The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The Skipper too,
The millionaire and his wife,
The movie star
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligans Isle."

filter THAT