Thoughts on Second Life Views

Well,

They met. What did they talk about? The stupid open registeration problems? Griefers?

No.

They talked about some techinology that is not important to the problems we are facing now with this open registeration. They should had talked about the constant griefing from the no credit card requirements. If their purpose was only to talk about some animation techinology then they need to re-think their purpose. People are being griefed. I have seen an increase of 200% the number of griefers on the private sim I am a member of plus I am getting more griefers now than ever before on my land on the mainland.

And if you think setting the land to allow only credit card holders to have access is going to do the trick... Guess again... One of the griefers to my land on the mainland had credit card information on file.

I think they need to change the name of Second Life Views.

Commentary by Magnum Serpentine

yeah but the techology they did discuss could mean to say that when you do get orbitted you tumble through the air realistically like a ragdoll! Kewl!

Of course, this will be after Havok 2 is implemented...

LOLOLOL!1!!!one!

You're right Magnum, those problems are huge and mostly easily solved with disabling Push effects. I hope this gets in sooner than later.

As for comments on the actual Views session posted (remember there was more than one):

1. Finger and facial technology would have been a lot more useful. The comment near the end about expressiveness being compelling isn't matched by the lack of fingers/facial movements which are more widely used than flailing arms and legs.
   
2. If Poser is still the better/more powerful way to do things, why not just upgrade the model and support Power 5 additions? Or switch to Havok 4 and Havok's animation system?
   
3. Is this ragdoll coming from Havok Engine or another system? Havok 4 would be much more useful than shrugging shoulders both in performance and feature gain.
   
4. Is this an indication of Linden Lab's focus? More features that are basically only of use to an online virtual chat system?
   
5. Is this an indication of the types of questions raised by the Views resident attendees? With this question list it appears none of them were concerned with lower-level technologies that are still causing trouble (poor LSL performance, outdated physics engine). They asked good questions about implementation and UI but nowhere challenged the fact that developer resources are essentially being wasted on features I rarely see used in-world. And how about system AOs instead of requiring scripting? It might have been there, couldn't really follow the layout too well.
   
6. Is the fact that Typepad is down any indication that it would be better to have a little in-house web software? One could clone Typepad's functionality in hours. (Sorry, not directly related to Views, but had to be said)
   

Oh well... hopefully the other topics were more on your point Magnum. And yes, Kris, I'd prefer to see rag-doll when I get orbitted as well, the current flailing arms has lost its amusement factor!

Well, in case you hadn't noticed, bugs do get fixed. Every release has a nice list of things that got fixed, even some of the older stuff.

On the other hand, LL is also trying to grow SL, give its residents more room for creative ventures, money making or not.

The Physical avatar session we attended was actually the fourth session at the end of the day on Friday, June 30. It was the last session and was more a showcase of upcoming features.

The very first session we went to on Friday morning was the one titled, "Of Previews, Feedback & Testing." If the order of the sessions was any indicator of their priority than this one was most important. It was lead by Joe Linden who stated (and I quote), "Performance and stability are at the top of the list." He said (now I'm paraphrasing and inferring) that the performance and stability of Second Life were key in establishing and maintaining trust and confidence in the software and in the folks at Linden Lab.

I took quite a bit of notes during this session and will get them posted as soon as I can. Either here or at my web site. IM me inworld for the password. There are some things I'd like to keep just between us residents if possible.

a little birdie tells me you, Salazar, are the only one that took pictures. *ahem* I invite you to the IRC channel to share.

Hells yea! And the incentive to make a insta-rezzing-av-targeting-by-name catapult just gets better.
I wonder what it'll look like when we try to walk up some of the "stairways" in sl. Or better yet, when certain appendages attempt to penetrate other avatars.

Oh I've got pictures, Jerry.



Here's one I took from inside the "Fish Bowl." Various Lindens and residents caught unaware milling about outside on the perimeter. I think this may be one of the places that Ventrella Linden keeps avatars that he is studying. The doors don't seem to be lockable, but there may be script calls that he can make that override the doors' abiliity to open. I never saw him use this area for that, but I did manage to sneak inside his private lab for a few minutes. More to come...

Thank you very much for your input, Magnum.

What is most crucially troubling, however, is what you left out.

These individuals had the opportunity to discuss the destructive effects of the preview grid. As we all know, as first reported by Magnum, the existence of Australia and the Preview Grid have a deleterious influence on the performance of the entirety of Second Life. Magnum, his impeccable logic and outstanding deductive reasoning in tow, has been leading the fight to expose this menace.

Linden Lab, of course, has covered it up. Don't cower before them, Magnum. We can't destroy Australia (yet) but we can certain strike a blow against the preview grid. Don't give up, sir. Do not allow the suppression of this crucial information.

I demand to know why this was not discussed at Second Life Views. Indeed, I also demand to know why Magnum no longer leads the investigation into this dastardly plan. Have you intimidated him into silence, mm, Lindens?

Hey!

carefull magnum if you open it too much you might swallow a wasp ^^

There was quite a bit of discussion regarding the open registration, account identifiers (verified/not verified) and more. It came up during the third session held Friday afternoon led by Daniel Linden, "Governance and the Future of the SL Mainland." The Lindens seem to be bent on giving landowners the tools to better control their part of The Grid. The tools are very landowner-centric. Nomadic residents might not have as many tools to defend themselves as a landowner or group member on group land might.

The new group tools and group roles/abilities will allow for more customization and delegation of landowner owner abilities. The new covenant system will be a way that landowners and group officers/members will be able to not just define the rules for an area, but also provide a way for them to enforce it without the intervention of the Lindens. I have some notes on this session as well that I will post soon...

Just allow us to disable push, for the love of god, that would solve half the problem and would help everyone, landowning or not.

It's. Really. Simple.

This was brought up also and I totally see what you mean. I don't recall exactly how it was brought up, what was discussed, and what the Lindens' had to say about it... my notes on this issue were not as complete. But I will try to refresh my memory, ask some of the other residents who were there and see if I can get more info from the Lindens on this. It would make living one' second life much, much easier.

Thank you, Salazar.

Be sure to listen to the recent Town Hall Speech Philip Linden made on July 7th. He talks about many of these issues to some degree.



Might as well get it from the horse's mouth! He's our little Philly... wah ha...

I worry about the thrust of landowner tools vs the ability of people to, well, move about and do stuff, given the lack of public rights of way and some of the more recent paranoia about omgriefers.

But that's me. And there's no point bitching about it until there are actually solid proposals out there to talk about.

In the meantime, I want to see more pictures of LLHQ, ideally with Highlight Transparent on.





...what? I'm just curious.

Funny you should mention this. I managed to snap a few with that very filter. I'll have a few posted soon.

Sir, you are a credit to explorers everywhere.

Lindens with Primdongs? Flexi transparent primdongs? ... probably with glowing lights, flashing colour changes, bling and particle effects...

This is actualy being worked on I believe. I think Philip mentioned it at the last Town Hall or something, I heard it mentioned somewhere. I think it was said it was going to be in 1.11 but I didn't see it in 1.11 preview (before it got 1.10.6ed).


As for the meetings, again as Salazar said we covered a lot of other topics which Robin hasn't posted yet, but she intends to do so (note how Physical Avatars are "Part 1". I think we actualy made some good headway in discussing things and giving feedback. It's hard to cover every topic in SL though because theres so many and we only had one day, so inevitebly some things got passed over or only mentioned in brief.

I personaly thought the Physical Avatars were awesome even in the somewhat bug testing state we saw them in, there are still some things that need to be worked out but hopefully they won't take too long.

Keep in mind the topics were mostly Linden chosen, although we did stray off topic a few times. So if you have any gripes, it's all their fault! ;P

Also you totaly can't see me in that picture, bwahaha!

And threads like this one (and others) are just as much a part of the process and communication between us residents and the Lindens. As we all discuss these more, the important stuff will rise to the top.

Well thats the hope, somedays its not true though with some threads going to the top, hehe. ;P

oh and I read something wrong that I have to fix in my other post.