New World Notes

SLers Are You Feeling the Uplift Into the Cloud? 'Cause It's Happening

Originally announced to happen by end of 2018, it looks like Second Life will finally move into the Amazon cloud by end of 2020, says Oz Linden as only Oz can:

We've been working hard on the Uplift of Second Life. If you have not been following this project, that's what we're calling the migration of our Second Life simulators, services, and websites from a private datacenter to hosting in The Cloud (Amazon Web Services)... Overall, the Uplift project is on track to be complete or very nearly so by the end of this year (yes, 2020… I know I've said "fall" before and people have noted that I didn't say what year 🙂 ; the leaves haven't finished falling at my house yet…). It's likely that there will be other (hopefully small) temporary disruptions during this process, but we promise we'll do all we can to avoid them and fix them as fast as we can. This migration sets the stage for some significant improvements to Second Life and positions us to be able to grow the world well into the future.

More here. Cloud transfers are even being announced in grid status updates. Substantial performance improvements are promised. But are you feeling it yet from your part of the virtual world?

Second Life Bans Political Billboards from Public Lands After Pro-Trump & Anti-Trump Signs Choke the Virtual Sky

Photo credit: Animats

Another US Presidential election year, another clash of ideas in Second Life. As has been the case since 2004, the virtual world has recently been festooned with political billboards, much or most of them pro-Trump or anti-Trump -- though as with Facebook, it seems like the pro-Trump forces have had the upper hand.

"There was a couple of people setting up lots of mini ad farms for Trump and some places had been plastered in far right slogans and adverts," SL veteran "0xc0ffea" tells me. 

Some commonly trafficked areas in Second Life have devolved into a veritable battle of billboards, with "Re-elect Trump" and other Trump friendly signs such as "Police Lives Matter" having to share the same space with snarky rejoinders like: "Trump/Putin - Make America Hate Again". 

This time, however, Second Life owner Linden Lab responded, updating its policy on virtual world advertising to prohibit ad content that are "political in nature" from the SL mainland, which the company maintains. (This policy does not apply to privately-owned regions and continents.)

I've contacted Linden Lab for an official reply and will update this post if I receive one. It is a marked departure from Second Life during the 2016 election, when a skyscraper-sized Trump billboard spewing fireworks freely loomed in the sky, while Bernie Sanders' unofficial campaign headquarters in SL was invaded by swastikas and literal pro-Trump gargoyles.

To judge by user reaction in the official community forum and Second Life's subreddit, most seem agreeable to the banning of political ads -- both for being an eyesore, and reflecting their desire for a place online that's free from election news:

Is SL's Move to the Amazon Cloud Really Improving Sim Crossing, Or Is It Just a Temporary, Unintentional Side Effect?

Update, 8/14: Linden Lab confirms some recent code changes have improved sim crossing.

Virtual world explorer Luca is the latest to stress test the new deployment of Second Life running on the Amazon Web Services cloud, which seems to make region crossing near seamless. Though as you'll see above, region crossing delays vary by vehicle, being near-instantaneous with a World War II-era fighter, but being pretty muddy via, say, submarine.

"Maybe it depends on the amount of linksets now more than ever (the sub and steamboat have a lot of them)," Luca theorizes, "but I might need to do further testing to verify that!"

Luca adds that he got pretty good performance with more than one vehicle too: "I was able to do some sort of formation flying around Bay City with my friend earlier in our planes, which would've been a lot more difficult with the old crossing performance." I'm curious if performance would remain decent with many more vehicles.

But is this performance improvement real, and lasting? Reddit's /SecondLife co-host "0xc0ffea" makes a very good case that it's not:

What It Would Take to Truly Upgrade Second Life (Comment of the Week)

Fascinating conversation in response to Luther Weymann's somber analysis of Second Life's prospects under new ownership, featuring many comments by readers who seem to be longtime veterans of the game/tech industry, or at least write with that level of expertise.

Among them is  Russell Skyther, who wrote this really sharp breakdown of what it would take to upgrade Second Life. It's partly a response to an earlier comment arguing that "Updating SL isn't really all that hard cause they have done it is how we got mesh and rigged mesh and now animesh. They can continue to keep layering new content and it'll work just fine."

Skyther argues otherwise:

The issue isn't that you can't update Second Life's code. or even rewrite it from scratch. BOTH have been done, see: OpenSimulator, an Open-Source clone of SL functionality that's close enough [that] most 3rd party clients support it out of the box.

But ability isn't the same thing as willingness. And far from being 'not all that hard' as the above comment states, each one of the examples features: Mesh, Rigged, animesh, and now Bakes on Mesh are all hacks onto an engine that wasn't designed for it. Now you can do that, and they did. But that incurs a serious performance penalty unless you redo the entire graphics pipeline (which they didn't). That's what this guy's talking about. It's not that you can't update or rewrite SL, it's that it's not cost effective to do so on a level that would give you acceptable performance.

To better explain SL's codebase issues. This is what I would consider a minimum for a true SL-like game in 2020 (VR Chat isn't really SL-like, but more of a Sansar that worked):

SL Enthusiast & Veteran Tech Exec Predicts Dark Future for Virtual World

You read the optimistic view of Second Life's future from a top SL brand owner, now here's a necessary counterpoint from longtime reader Luther Weymann, a retired technology industry veteran who last ran a company with 1000 employees, and is an eloquent supporter of SL's creative power. Despite his love for the virtual world, his view as an experienced tech exec is quite bleak: 

The software that runs SL cannot be radically changed or updated, too much will break and the time it takes to fix massive changes only results in more problems. This is the inherent problem with very old software that a lot of people have worked on and the code is now very difficult. Happens to many legacy software that never gets a full rewrite every four or so years to stay competitive.

SL is not a growth business and any review of the user base will tell a good business person that diluting their investment so they can raise the capital to rewrite a new SL from scratch for use by the current user base is not good business. It's better to take the current profit and don't rock the boat.

That in mind, here's the scenario for SL that Luther sees coming down the road:

Want to Understand What Linden Lab's Acquisition Means for Second Life? Ask the Owner of a Top SL Virtual Content Brand

Above: Mishi IRL and her Blueberry brand on Facebook

While the SL community's opinion over the world's new corporate owners is decidedly mixed, I put a lot of stock in the analysis of Gizem McDuff, owner and founder of Blueberry -- which has been, since its founding in 2012, one of the most successful and popular virtual style brands in SL. As such, Mishi has some of the best insights on SL's economic operations and Linden Lab's relationship to it:

I see a lot of speculation and fear over Linden Lab's acquisition.

First, Lindens want you to know that nobody is even considering touching the adult content on SL. The new future board members are very aware that SL comes with adult content and they are just fine with it. They do not want to mess with anything that's working. That includes adult content. It would be cool to give them a warm welcome when they are officially on the board.

Let me explore two chief concerns with y'all.

1: SL will be dismantled and shut down.

2: SL will be milked for what it's worth and shut down.

Mishi goes on to break down these scenarios in-depth:

Survey Results: Under New Corporate Ownership, Plurality of Second Life Community Pessimistic About the Future of Their Virtual World

Here's the results of our not-super-scientific survey asking SLers how they feel about the future of Second Life under its new corporate ownership. With 212 respondents (a quite large sample size), the plurality chose "Pessimistic" as their attitude, while 1 in 3 chose "Optimistic". Meanwhile, 1 in 4 say it doesn't change their opinion either way.

As with surveys like this, there's alternate ways to read these results:

Survey: What's Second Life's Future Outlook Under New Ownership?

Read the news here, then make your choice above! And be sure to discuss your answer in Comments!

Update, 7/14: Bumped up for Tuesday morning voting!

Second Life Users Enthuse & Fret Over News of Linden Lab's Acquisition

Pictured: Linden Lab headquarters in San Francisco

Lots of reader comments over news that Linden Research is being bought by an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager, ranging from "sky is falling" panic to bullishness. Some samples, starting with the bullish:

Oh, that was masterfully executed...

1) Dump the bottomless pit of wasted money that was Sansar;
2) Spin-off Tilia (just as eBay did with PayPal);
3) Move everything into the cloud (i.e. better infrastructure — no CPUs will be idle on empty regions — for a fraction of the cost), which allows extra available cash (can be turned in more profits, more staff, both, etc.);
4) Get acquired by a very long-standing, solid company that follows the Graham and Dodd value investing school of thought, which has famously been adopted by Warren Buffet.

I'd say the future looks bright! :-)

... then again, I'm known to be the eternal optimist.

Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn 

As Gwyneth is a longtime virtual world analyst and developer, I tend to agree this is a likely take. However, I suspect the cost-savings associated with moving into the cloud won't be significant, especially as it'll encourage virtual land owners to demand more discounts to their monthly tier. 

On the other hand, reader "Alicia" sees a bright future for Linden spinoff company Tilia -- but a dark future for SL:

Ebbe Altberg & Other Linden Lab Team Members Answer (And Don't Answer) SL User Questions About the Company's Acquisition

As promised, here's the questions I asked Linden Lab after they announced the imminent acquisition of the company:

• How will this acquisition change SL specifically? Will management or staffing change at all (layoffs, etc)?
• Will it create a cash injection into Linden Lab?
• Since the acquisition is led by the Waterfield Group which specializes in buying profitable but slow growth companies, is it fair to say Linden Lab is in that category?

Spokesman Brett Linden replied by saying this:

"We aren't 'formally' commenting beyond pointing people to the official announcement."

And as legendary journalist Bob Schieffer once told Philip Rosedale and I during dinner (but that's another strange story): "When someone refuses to answer, that in itself is an answer."

However, Brett added, "Grumpity and I have answered a few questions on the forums - but the key message is that this is a good thing for the Second Life community and operations are status quo. Here is what I said on the forums:"

A few folks are speculating that this is the end of SL and nothing could be further than the truth. Any talk of dismantling or radically changing the fundamentals of SL that we know and love is inaccurate. While we can't get into specific details about the deal itself, I want to emphasize the fact that this keeps Linden Lab as an independent venture led by two investors who have a great deal of awareness about what SL is and isn't. They are excited to join and help us grow both SL and Tilia while also respecting and recognizing the needs and sensitivities of the existing culture and community.

Brett also notes that Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg has been on Twitter taking on all questions posted to him there -- here's some highlights: