Linden Lab Responds to Second Life User Reader Questions About EEP Failures, Viewer Revamping, the Return of Last Names, and Much More

Linden Lab's communication team kindly sent back follow-up questions from readers after they watched my interview with CEO Ebbe Altberg, including reported problems with EEP, the possibility of instancing SL regions, and the return of avatar last names, if ever:

Will SL be moving to a new engine like Unreal or Unity, and if so, will our scripting etc still work? If not, why not?

There are no current plans to move over Second Life to a different engine. We'd rather focus our engineering efforts on continuing to improve our existing engine to ensure that there is no interruption to ongoing compatibility for our millions of Residents.

EEP has ruined teleports and region crossings for a lot of people. As well as TP crashing, crashing and unseating has increased by many time since EEP was put into the server code in March. When will that be fixed?

We are aware that some Residents have had an increase in disconnects during a teleport. These occur when an avatar attempts to teleport to a new Region (or cross a Region boundary, which is handled similarly internally) and the teleport or Region crossing takes longer than usual. We’re working quickly to fix the issue. Incidentally, while the wide deployment of the bug that we believe is behind the TP disconnects did coincide with EEP server deployment, it's actually unrelated to the EEP features. Readers can check out our Tools & Technology blog for updates as we continue to roll out any fixes.

Several more below the break:

Any plans for redoing the Viewer?

We are constantly revising, updating, and fixing the Viewer as with the rest of Second Life. There are no plans currently for a complete overhaul of the Viewer.

Second Life's limitations when it comes to max avatars per sim were mentioned, which got me thinking about instancing and events. Has Linden Lab ever considered some form of sim instancing?

We are always looking at ways to reliably expand how many avatars can be in each region.

Will we get SL name change options?

There are some more back-end changes to SL which need to be made before Last Names can make a return (actually, it's really name changes that are the hard part), but we are working on it and hope to have it ready later in 2019.

My personal take: Declining to consider a new industry standard engine for Second Life is a huge, huge miss, as is refusing to totally overhaul the viewer. The vast majority of Second Life users don't even use the official SL viewer, while the vast majority of new users are so overwhelmed by that viewer, they quit on their first try. So what the hell do they have to lose by, say, hiring a UX developer who's a veteran of Apple or Maxis or another great design company, and totally revamping it?

(Which is a follow-up question to the follow-up answer which I just sent to Linden Lab.)

Comments

[Clara Seller]

I agree with Hamlet. Incrementalism is the way to go when things are thriving, not dying. Since the real world seems incapable of making bold changes, it would be refreshing to see SL actually try to save itself. I think LL actually did something good, recently. with the new Linden Homes. It captures some of the spirit of long ago. I don't think that everybody that has left SL is a lost cause. Maybe some bold changes would be enough to pull a chunk of those people back. It would be a start. If it were easier to bring some of the people we know in RL into SL, I think many of us would like to do that. It's just too big of a burden to do that right now.

Like with mesh, people will follow if it's good. Part of life is, shedding skins, throwing things away, and accepting loss.

[Ryan Schultz]

Wagner, Linden Lab cannot simply swap out their in-house SL engine to Unreal or Unity without breaking the backwards compatibility of millions of user created items. Which they are not going to do because it will piss off hundreds of thousands of users. It simply isn't technically possible.

[macfan]

I would have asked him if they plan on making more add on attachments as well as increase in groups. 32 is really not enough for add on attachments and the group amount is still very small.

[bristle]

I was on a quest to find a virtual world that was viable and Second Life seem like it was so I joined in the fall 2007. At the time, Linden Labs has a open source client and was working on the open source server. There was a some problem with the server but in 2008 I discover Opensimulator.

At time same time, both Intel and IBM was interested in SL, and one had hypergrid; you could connect with hypergrid but you had to have your own server. I decided to work at Linden Labs but they had a layoff and the whole management was changed.

The biggest mistake that Linden Labs had was not partnering with Opensimulator. Instead they took out the part where you can get to a opensimulator-- make it only for SL.They took a web page that was for SL and Opensimulator and dump it. Instead of the hypergrid, they decided to go it alone and make a $50,000 server instead; that didnt not work well.

Opensimulator has some problems and they have to use a SL (modified) client. But now you can convert the server (C#) to run on an ARM for about 7-15 watts. Everyone could have one-- even RPi3 server. I have done with old computers and use a different computer for the client.

Instead they want everyone to go into Sansar. SL is a cash cow.

[Trilo Byte]

Good on LL for circling back and responding to those questions. While they may not be the answers people wanted to hear, they do read as honest answers. I say let them continue pushing the envelopes of what they can do that engine for as long as they have a meaningful userbase. Meanwhile, there are a number of next generation alternatives, for those who looking for better tech, scalability, features, etc. The one I'm partial to that runs on Unity, built by one of the creators of the opensim grid....

[sirhc desantis]

Erm getting a bit old school again? That kink you have on viewer usage is from 2012.. https://tinyurl.com/yyflca7f

No prob really - I am a Sing user :) And tp issues are a bit random - been ok for a week.

Serious side - wtf is a 'a new industry standard engine' ? What industry is SL in again? As a user/consumer/creator - what exactly is this? What 'industry' in this pixel world can you mean. Engine? Hell I have tried a lot and none come close.

Nice sine plug too BTW (Trilo)

[Skate Foss]

EEP is also causing users computers having fatal crashes. Will the Lab address this? We’re still crashing while teleports.

[Wagner James Au]

" Linden Lab cannot simply swap out their in-house SL engine to Unreal or Unity without breaking the backwards compatibility of millions of user created items."

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[vwfan]

On the topic of compatibility, let's not forget that the extended support cycle for Windows 7 is ending at the beginning of next year. Give about a year or so after that when they drop support for Windows 7 like they dropped support for Windows XP after it finished its cycle? Win 10 currently dominates OS market share 50% compared to Win 7's 18%.

[JohnC]

unfortunately you are talking to a divided company.If SL were its only product then of course everything would be concentrated there. But there is this Sansar thing, that secretly has priority, although of course this must never be said openly, because the favored product needs the lesser to survive. SL is the dumb sheep that is kept in a pretty pen and fed relatively well in the hope that it does not notice the slaughterer hovering in the background, or hear the constant grinding of the carving knives that, in very small almost unnoticeable ways, constantly removes thin slices of flesh from its bones. Let is not fool ourselves SL is the cash cow that is fed and watered to provide funding for the pathetic creature Sansar, that is nurtured on the blood of and life of the far superior sacrificial victim .

[Brittany]

Sl a pain but still addicting but when will sl start looking into reports file by free users I reported people long ago for breaking tos and are still in sl and feel was told sl only does something if your a paid user when will that change and not be one sided . I have reported people for breaking tos and even child predators and harassment and bullying on here...

[Nethya Emor]

Swapping engine? At that point you might as well just switch to Sansar. From what I know it means everything has to be redone, I might be wrong though, but that seems what the purpose of Sansar was.

Not revamping the Viewer seems like a big mistake, the whole entry and tutorial is garbage, and for new users the viewer isn't friendly enough.

Switching to Amazon servers will help a lot, since LL won't have to get new hardware, and Amazon is everywhere.

Not removing some legacy content seems like a waste of a good cleanup. Also timing out creator MP stores that haven't logged in last year or two.

Viewer and engine should be more optimized and upgraded, and they should post good system recommendations and toss some marketing on interesting tech shows and news.

[Soda Sullivan]

What do we gain from using a standard engine like Unity? If there is a legitimate benefit to it, then shame on LL for worrying about breaking old content and a large amount of stuff that needed to vanish from Sl already.

Also, just going by mainly what i have read here. EEP has not just caused TP issues, but has essentially broken the sky in SL. I STILL have these black pellets in the sky, especially in day settings, that look like bunny poops that people who i thought were smart are telling me are supposed to be "stars". Will any of that be fixed.

As for viewers, LL knows that no one is using their viewer, right? I mean they HAVE to know. If you are a business, and you have a product that NO ONE is using, you either improve that product significantly, or you get out of that business. It might be better for LL just to get out of the viewer business. You have to viewers, Firestorm and Black Dragon that are far superior to anything LL is even attempting, so why not just turn the viewer development over the them?

Great news on the names. The fact that it is even happening speaks volumes about the quality of the current head of LL compared to his recent predecessors who essentially just lied about it and then refused to discuss it.

[Issin Denimore]

Bristle nailed it with the cash cow statement. Well said.

Anyone laughed at the system requirements lately? LL states that you should only need 4 gigs or more of ram and 2GHz or higher for it's recommended specs. At infohub's I'm seeing 10-12 gigs of ram being used out of 16, with no browsers running in the background, no security software, just the firestorm viewer. And upgrading to get better performance for SL is JOKE. This program needs a high performing single core to get better FPS, buying a current gen AMD Ryzen cpu would be a waste of money (unless the Zen2 chips begin to perform on par or above the current 8th/9th gen Intel chips)

They have the $$$ to do things right but they won't. Which is pathetic.....

[Anonmyus]

Breaking the backwards compatibility would be awful. An engine upgrade is unfeasible. EEP is nowhere near as big a change as that, and you can see how much work is still required to have it function properly. Unity is a huge mess with severe limitations, Unreal is too but also has periphery issues because Epic owns it. No one uses the main viewer anyway so what does it matter? It's a basic core program that is functional but not pretty. Anyone coming into SL new is going to be introduced via friends already familiar with it and directed to a viewer that suits their needs/specs. I know people who have no option but be on dial-up or are using almost 10-year-old laptops on SL, and while it doesn't look the prettiest on their screens it's still functional and I can enjoy spending time with them.

These demands are ridiculous and are surface level pleading towards just a vague idea of upgrading or "modernizing," ignoring that things like amazon servers force LL into a spot where they are beholden to someone else's demands and terms for their project. A good portion of SL's audience is there for the adult content - and giving Unity, Epic, Amazon or whomever the option to threaten LL if they decide that having such things on SL becomes "objectionable" is terrible.

What do you actually want from SL in the concrete? This is an old virtual world and it's got a core audience. Asking for LL to make it easier for a wider audience to get into is a monkeypaw wish. Because any time that happens in any other game - online or series - the company which does so throws their core audience under the bus.

If you want more people in SL, introduce your friends and help them up the learning curve.

[DaviD Cartier]

Breaking backwards compatability would be a godsend in my view. Nobody is wearing the old clothes, driving the old cars, living in the old houses. There are six million things on the Marketplace and five million are crap.They could also do Linden refunds for any purchases made in the last year and that would jump-start the new economy.

[Anonmyus]

@DaviD Cartier
You're actually incorrect on that. There's a large portion of stuff people use which are well over 8 years old. Some items like clothing or furniture are simply used because they have a particular style which no one has replicated since due to changing trends or style, or for which existing visual replacements are overpriced, gacha items or inferior in functionality. Some are items people use just for fun and their awful appearance is part of the joke - intentionally or not. And some are simply purely functional items for managing a sim, home, club, business, or so on which cost an arm and a leg to replace, are complicated to learn and set up, or which really don't need "upgrading" very often.

I know a lot of people who use old items for these purposes. I include myself in this because I have items of clothing that have long been since discontinued, which the original creator has made no replacements for nor intends to and in some cases has left SL for their first life entirely.

You can easily sort the marketplace, just because you don't like such things does not mean it has to go away, and it would break far more than you estimate. I don't want to assume about where you hang around on the grid, but you should take some time to explore a bit and see what crazy things you'll find and just how many subcultures exist in the virtual space. This is part of the fabric that makes SL interesting.

[Ava M]

two words - f*ck gacha

[Too Fat, Too Hungry]

I think JohnC is right on the money, others making excuses for the lab just being in denial of themselves, fact that sansar is the replacement for secondlife in the future.

Heard they even did away with last names in Sansar as well, i guess the lab will never learn.

[Sheep]

DaviD Cartier wrote:
They could also do Linden refunds for any purchases made in the last year and that would jump-start the new economy.

And who would they get the refund from? the creator? who likely already cashed out! communism will never work even in a virtual world just ask the 350 million people brutally murdered by the devils ideology the last century.

[Fleeced]

DaviD Cartier - you make some valid points and it's not a sin to just float some possibilities around.

Sheep- are you talking about that type of "communism" that the US practiced when it bailed out failed banks? Of course, "capitalism" has murdered it's fair share of people too by "freeing" them of their rightful resources and holding their lives for ransom, gaslighting them, feeding them poison, or just bombing them to increase the demand for bombs. Why get so rabid at the mere mention of giving people some kind of break? How you gonna pay for that? It's going to come out of the same deep well that has funded Sansar all of these years. The only difference is... this dog will hunt.

[bristle]

I never understood that last name removal. I thought SL was going to do something with the last name like: resident, bot, dealer, hooker...

[Jake and the Fat Man]

Sorry but hard to understand real motives from Sansar & High Fidelity since HiFi claimed to be creating a free universe but charged for names in the beginning while LL cannot seem to get past the SL business model with Sansar( no one wants locked in these days) both do not offer any robust creation tools for users instead requiring expensive 3rd party programs..wake me when someone creates something ground breaking and new that blows peoples minds while being as simple to use as texting while driving (BTW both do not even have phone applets but i digress)

[Geenz Spad]

There are at this time no engines that would be able to easily facilitate SL due to a myriad of reasons including but not limited to:
- Rendering many thousands of objects
- Breaking backwards compatibility with existing content
- Rendering many thousands of 10k triangle belts.
- Rendering more than a few avatars
- Rendering even more thousands of objects. Hm. Noticing a trend here.
- Managing the sheer amount of texture cruft that the viewer has to consume every second of the day.
- Oh hello graphics crashers that no engine is likely to account for.
- Rendering many thousands of generally terribly constructed content. Hello high poly shirts, pants, and hair that just barely uploaded.
- Oh cool, a trick that basically breaks LOD and object culling that people are sure to scream about. Yep, gotta figure out a way to keep that working in a new engine. Add it to the pile.

SL is not designed with modern engines remotely in mind for many reasons, such as the volumes of frequently unoptimized content. More specifically, content on SL is not designed with modern engines remotely in mind, forget even a broad hardware target beyond whatever will render on the content creator's machine. Best bet is to profile the existing viewer, find performance pitfalls, fix them as best as possible, and add features as needed. Basically slowly refactoring the viewer as needed. Believing SL in Unity or Unreal would be a great idea is not a well informed opinion.

[C]

Excellent interview. Ebbe seems like a good guy to have running the show.

[duytruongmmo2]

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