New World Notes

Linden Lab Should Bring the Latest Technology to Second Life -- Even If It Means Breaking Old SL Content (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: SL animesh, circa 2017

During my GDC week interview with Linden Lab's Ebbe Altberg -- I'm running it in a few days, promise! --  we talked a fair amount about trying to improve Second Life graphics and performance without obsoleting old SL content. Reader "Seph", however, argues otherwise:

[A]t what point are the possibilities of new, better looking, better functioning, and more attractive to modern audience content worth more than stuff in our inventory from 2012 or before? The Internet is used to having old features deprecated and then taken away to usher in the new. Why is Linden Lab so religious about content from 2006 still working today when often it means falling even more behind your peers in tech? Because of this devotion to not breaking olds things, Second Life will never again be apart of GDC or other trade shows that're about evolving with and pioneering new tech in rendering and simulated experiences. Linden Lab would probably be ashamed showing off Animesh and how it works to a room full of creatives at whatever gathering you met with Ebbe at, and the reason for that shame is Linden Lab religiously embracing technical debt and backwards compatibility to stuff creators are desperately hacking around and trying to get rid of.

But won't obsoleting content cause the community to revolt? Seph's reply to that concern:

Reader Questions & Comments I Wish I Put to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg

Last Friday I had a long, fascinating, occasionally testy talk with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, and plan on posting the video later this week. I asked variations of some questions suggested by readers, but here's some other solids queries I wasn't able to put to him that still deserve an audience:

It's very quiet about the possibility to choose a second name for the "Resident" avatars. Is that cancelled - or can we hope to see it this year?

Posted by: Yadleen (Clara Mayef)

Why can't we have a modernized prim system that allows for more constructive modelling and voxel terrain editing? IOW, make Second life on par with many of the dozens of games and systems that it is competing with for attention?

In the older days, people would stand around and watch other people build things. They would have conversations and learn to build together. With the arrival of sex toys and mesh, that is all basically gone.

It was the community that made Second Life to enthralling. Now it's just a cesspool of deviant behaviour.

Posted by: Todd Adams

Several more, about the mainland, Premium accounts, and an intriguing idea to certify content creators:

I Came to Second Life Looking for Cybersex; I Stayed for Creating & Community (Comment of the Week)

Amid all the talk about Adult content in Second Life (helpfully illustrated by Nylon Pinkney), Cindy Bolero makes an important point:

This is the reality: Many, if not most new users heard about the sex, log in, and are looking for it. It's up to greeters at venues or attractions to understand that. You can be mean and ban them, or you can tell them to open the search window and/or suggest an ideal Adult place to go.

Why be helpful to these rude characters asking for sex? Because some will eventually get over that curiosity and become customers and contributors. The SL economy needs all the help it can get.

She speaks from, ahem, personal experience:

Linden Lab Needs a Heavily Regulated PG-13 Continent in Second Life -- And More SL Presence of Linden Staff & Mentors (Comment of the Week)

Expanding on the idea that Second Life needs a PG13-only content, reader Gingir Ghoststar proposes a way to make that happen:

I've said for years that if SL would provide a maintained PG to PG13 area that it would thrive. I get it, it would be work, possibly [cause] increased cost of living and [provoke] the argument "nobody wants to be told how to live" but I beg to differ. Linden Lab thrives on all the private sims that they're paid to host that are then locked down with strict land rules, building rules etc and people pay through the NOSE to live on these super landscaped country club like estates. There is a market for it. If LL could create a continent and build it up like an actual city and enforce land/build codes I can almost guarantee that it would fill up in a heartbeat.

More than that, she adds, what's really is missing is a lack of Linden Lab activity in Second Life:

Linden Lab Should Have Created a PG-Rated Showcase Continent for Second Life, Instead of an Adult-Only One (Comment of the Week)

ZEXPO 2011 photo by Ginette Pinazzo

Responding to a recent report that 1 in 4 Second Life sims are now Adult-rated, longtime SLer and blogger Emilly Orr blames this on Linden Lab's move to create an Adult-focused continent called Zindra in 2009, writing in Comments:

This entirely fails to surprise me, for what it's worth. This was EXACTLY why so many of us were begging the Lindens to make Ursula-now-Zindra a showpiece of how good PG content could be, instead of the new 'adult' continent. We knew trying to funnel everyone who wanted adult content in SL to one place wouldn't work.

But they didn't listen.

And if you think Ms. Orr is saying this because she's personally opposed to graphic content, the opposite is the case:

Is Second Life Too Technically Limited to Create a VR Version for It?

I'm intrigued with Peter Kappler's open source VR viewer for Second Life, but longtime SLer and heavy duty VR user Adeon Writer is unconvinced, writing in Comments:

Nothing about Second Life was made for VR. The avatar motion will make you want to puke after a few minutes, and since all that's serverside, nothing can be done about it.

And even if we had a 100% working VR view, you'll never be able to move your arms or legs around and have other people see it. It's not VR except in raw technicality only... not worth it.

This is all true, except possibly the last point. I've tried an early version of a VR viewer for Second Life, and didn't get nauseous; however, it's definitely not a full-featured VR experience as we understand it now. As for arm and leg tracking, while that doesn't exist now, that strikes me as an addressable issue.

But perhaps it's a matter of changing the experience metaphor:

Can a Multiple Texture Upload Feature Improve Second Life Performance?

Here's a new feature request on the Second Life JIRA worth following, submitted by Firestorm developer Beq Janus, who explains her reasoning for it in a New World Notes comment:

As was raised in the past in this blog, one of the problems we face in Second Life is inefficient content design, and a move that encourages the creation of high resolution (1024) textures as part of a default workflow is going to lead to a worsening of this situation. To this end I have proposed an amendment to the viewer (and server) that would allow for the simplified creation of multiple resolutions in a single transaction. Ultimately I would like to see this generate a range of resolutions from a single (high resolution) source image, for a single upload fee. I think the feature has value without the single fee change, but the take up would be far lower. The hope is that with such a feature, artists and creators can work with high-resolution images and the viewer will produce multiple resolution uploads allowing the creators to test the appearance and make better decisions about when a 1024x1024 image is really needed.

The UI mock-up pictured here is part of Beq's proposal in the JIRA, a way to subtly encourage mesh creators to avoid uploading unnecessarily resource-heavy, poorly optimized textures which are now choking SL performance:

Firestorm QA: Yes, It's Possible to Use Debug Settings to Get Super-High Quality Second Life Images -- Here's How

Last week's post on improving SL image quality via a workaround from SLer Frenchbloke Vanmoer caused a lot of skepticism, mostly due to some poor technical wording on my part. (My bad and mea culpa!) However, Firestorm support and QA volunteer Whirly Fizzle came by Comments, and confirmed that this does, indeed, apparently work:

When I first read this blog post I thought it was a load of cobblers. But Frenchbloke is actually correct! The blog post just explains it badly. [Sorry! - ed]

This will also work just as well on the Linden Lab viewer & probably every other viewer. Those debug settings are from the Linden Lab viewer, they are not Firestorm specific.

It's easy enough to test for yourself. Get hold of a super high quality 8192 image with lots of fine detail & make sure it's saved in a lossless format - I used PNG in my test.

Set the debugs max_texture_dimension_X and max_texture_dimension_Y to 8192.
Upload your 8192x8192 image.
This image will upload and the uploader will resize the image to the maximum allowed size of 1024x1024 - this limit is enforced server side, there is no way around it.

Now open your 8192 PNG in Photoshop & reduce the image size to 12.5% using the Bicubic Sharpen (best for reduction) & save this image.
Set the debugs max_texture_dimension_X and max_texture_dimension_Y back to default & upload your image.

More from Mr. Fizzle, including a sample comparison images they took:

Decade-Old Second Life Innovations Now Embraced as "New" by Mainstream

Vega in SL in 2006; Marshmello in 2019

When Marshmello performed in Fortnite last weekend, more than a few people were irked that media outlets like The Verge proclaimed it as a "first" or "unprecedented" -- when in fact, Second Life pioneered live music performances over 13 years ago.  Which is actually not all that long ago! But as reader Madeline Blackbart writes, it took that amount of time for many Second Life innovations to finally seem acceptable to a mass market:

I think as mainstream culture and the average person becomes more and more involved in the virtual world we're going to see a lot more of this retreading of old ground being called "new". Things like virtual "influencers" and virtual popstars and concerts aren't new to those of us who have been playing in virtual worlds like Second Life but they are to mainstream media and the "average" person. To be honest, I'm noticing it more and more, and it's interesting how what used to be something "misfits and shut ins" did (AKA living a virtual life) is just now becoming commonly accepted. I think years from now even if Second Life isn't around anymore we'll still see concepts from it integrated into mainstream life.

This is very true. Along with real world musicians performing virtually, here's a couple other SL-based innovations recently treated by the media as the Next Big Thing:

• Virtual celebrities and models for real life brands (including Kim Kardashian)
• Virtual land rushes and real estate speculation

Best accept the collective amnesia made inevitable by the Internet's eternal present, because we're likely to see many more new (old) innovations arriving (returning) soon. Even though they never really left.

How Linden Lab Could Pay Back Its Original Investors (Including Jeff Bezos) and Split Into Two Companies (Comment of the Week)

Above: Linden Lab's Crunchbase listing

Last week's reader comment from "Irihapeti'" suggesting that Linden Lab should sell off Second Life provoked so many further comments that I looked up the startup in Crunchbase. I believe there was a round of seed funding around 1999/2000 that's not reported there, but according to Crunchbase, since 2004 the company has raised $19 million in total investments -- most recently in 2006, when a lead investor was Jeff Bezos. (Which yes, suggests that the future of Second Life may be impacted by Bezos' upcoming divorce settlement.) That's less an investment than I had recalled last week. With Second Life still returning relatively reliable revenue of about $60-70 million a year, the company could probably find a buyer for SL-- at, perhaps, $250 million -- give its original investors a very decent profit, and still have enough to function.

However, Irihapeti returned to write out an even more intriguing thought experiment: Turn Linden Lab into two companies, one running Second Life, the other running Sansar and other projects. As she argues:

It doesn't have to be sold to a single buyer. Concerns over a sale can be ameliorated by issuing new additional shares in the Second Life company to new investors who put their money into dividend-returning (cash cow) investments. A cash cow investment is what Second Life now is from an investors' point of view.

The existing Linden Lab shareholders would get some buyback cash from this, and can either retain their existing shares in the Second Life company, or sell them on the open market as they choose. While also retaining for themselves all the shares in Linden Lab Research (Sansar, and the other Lab games) with a cash infusion to the Lab from the sale of new Second Life shares, and a second cash infusion from a sale of additional shares in Linden Research if they so choose.

In that scenario, Sansar "will stand or fall on its own merits in the marketplace. And not be tied to the continued success or otherwise of Second Life." And then this second company could focus on SL and its established customer base -- a good thing for them, Irihapeti argues: