Jeska Linden: This Town Hall will be a bit different, in that Cory will be focusing on outstanding technical 'puzzles' the SL Developers have on their desks and also invite SL users to provide suggestions on the best technical puzzles/challenges in Second Life.
Jeska Linden: If time permits, we will also open it up for questions. Questions can be sent to me (Jeska Linden) in the form of an IM. Questions will be answered in the order they appear on my screen.
Exposition Linden: OK, away we go . . .
Jeska Linden: Now I'll turn it over to Cory, who will start with a few questions and puzzles posted in the forums.
Exposition Linden: The purpose of this townhall is for Linden to talk a bit about the challenges, technical and otherwise, that we think that residents could help with.
Exposition Linden: Obviously, this is a bit of an experiment but we'll see what comes of it.
Exposition Linden: The general format that I'm going to use is to kick out the list that I've come up with, divided into general categories. I'll then follow up with ideas submitted by residents.
Exposition Linden: Finally, I'll answer some of the technical questions that were inserted into the forum thread. After that, we'll turn it over to questions.
Exposition Linden: Game and experiences in Second Life that I'd like to see and play (in no particular order):
Exposition Linden: 1) A working, golf game that takes advantage of animations and physics to allow multiple players to play together. I'm not talking about mini-golf, but full size.
Exposition Linden: A pefect implementation would allow people to play both on premade holes and to play across other parts of Second Life.
Exposition Linden: I suspect that this would work as Frisbee golf as well.
Exposition Linden: 2) 3D Joust. For anyone who hasn't played the classic arcade game, Joust allowed one or two players to joust on a verticle 2D screen. The key elements were whoever was higher wins the joust and you had to pound the flap key to move up.
Exposition Linden: The correct behavior could be accomplished via scripted attachments, one could imagine an array of different 3D playfields, and could maintain high framerate on an island, since the total object count could be kept low.
Exposition Linden: 3) Create a collectable, tradable card and/or miniature game. Magic the Gathering is the obivous example, but there are many other forms in existence.
Exposition Linden: Perhaps one could even be based off of teddy bears
!Exposition Linden: Many other games could fall out of this one, of course, but the key would be leveraging SL's strengths while working around the UI limitations.
Exposition Linden: 4) Build a game around the mechanic of a vehicle that could be "stolen" by others. Interesting opportunities in everything from the theft mechanic down to how it would then be found.
Exposition Linden: 5) Carnival crane game, where an arm is controlled by the avatar in order to select fabulous cash and prizes.
Exposition Linden: 6) A social fishing game, that allows residents to chat while trying to catch the biggest fish. Could really lend itself to contests and betting as well.
Exposition Linden: 7) Create a street-fighter style game (but maybe turn-based?) that relies on custom animations and attachments that gain power via use. Again, lends itself to spectators and to betting. Also, SL-wide rankings.
Exposition Linden: Objects that would be cool to see:
Exposition Linden: 1) A dump truck or cargo van that could deliver objects to specific locations in world.
Exposition Linden: 2) Bring back the cannons and launchers that provided point-to-point transportation in the Beta grid. I still remember Charlie's launcher that would take you from the outlands to the original start area.
Exposition Linden: 3) Better musical instruments that drive appropriate animations.
Exposition Linden: 4) Vehicles and objects that get dirty as your use/operate them.
Exposition Linden: 5) Sky writing planes
Exposition Linden: 6) Buildings and rooms that work with attachments to better script avatar motions -- for example, ladders that you climb, ropes that swing on, etc.
Exposition Linden: 7) Pets that require interaction and that can interact with each other.
Exposition Linden: I just got IM-ed that a fishing game exists already! w00t!
Exposition Linden: Technical challenges (these are the really tough ones):
Exposition Linden: Neo-realms is where the fishing is
Exposition Linden: 1) Create an algorithm and OpenGL demo for converting SL geometry into 3D imposters. This is different than traditional 2D imposters. A 3D imposter is a reduced geoemetric representation that can still be lit.
Exposition Linden: A good place to start might be here: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/b-cam/Papers/Shen-2004-IAI.pdf
Exposition Linden: So, for example, a large building (this is a simple case) could be represented by a single, large cube. Imposters need not be constrained to SL primitives and should instead be created from polygons (albeit, a small number of polygons).
Exposition Linden: 2) Build an Open GL application that allows you to build flow charts, where output from specific elements act as inputs to other elements, with the ability to make different shapes and proper path finding for the connections.
Exposition Linden: Used as a UI element, this could allow for visual script building, material definitions, etc.
Exposition Linden: 3) Create an optimizer for transforming arbitrary 3D mesh geometry into SL primitives. The optimizer would need to be able to tradeoff processing time, error, and number of created primitives.
Exposition Linden: This would be an incredibly useful addition because it would be the major step in allowing data from applications like Max or Maya to be imported into SL.
Exposition Linden: 4) High quality machinima. Given the flexibility of SL, especially with private islands, it seems possible to create some truly amazing machinima.
Exposition Linden: 5) A cross-platform speaker dependent speach recognizer. There are a host of features that this would allow, but sadly most of the products in this area are either not cross platform or are speaker independent, resulting in much lower recognition rates.
Exposition Linden: 6) A high-quality text-to-speech system (again, cross platform) that allows dynamic blending of speech fonts or truly synthesized speech. Again, many interesting options appear if this technology was around.
Exposition Linden: 7) Demonstrate high-quality procedural locomotion cycles for different combinations of legs. More importantly, demonstrate methods for blending those cycles with non-kinematic and prebuilt animations.
Exposition Linden: OK, that was my list (thanks to all the Lindens and residents who helped me put it together)
Exposition Linden: Now, on to the questions from the thread
Exposition Linden: Where possible, I'm trying not to repeat answers from previous townhalls
Exposition Linden: Strife Onizuka: What challenges need to be overcome for 1.7?
Exposition Linden: The most important issues are scaling and database load (visible to everyone as blocked logins, teleport problems, etc). As I'm sure that you've noticed, we're finally starting to get a leg up on the database, although we still have a lot of work to do.
Exposition Linden: A core group is now meeting weekly just to monitor db load and scaling.
Exposition Linden: Beyond that, we have Havok 2 and interest list improvements. Interest list improvements include a revamped scritp scheduler that gives much better control over sim performance.
Exposition Linden: Adam Zaius: What is the status of the Linux client, does LL have need of beta testers yet, and who is doing the port? Also, is the person doing the port [if they have been contracted already] availible to have a linux client townhall?)
Exposition Linden: The Linux port is being worked on. We don't need beta testers yet, nor am I ready to talk about who's doing it, but I agree that a town hall would be a great idea.
Exposition Linden: Sidra Stern: Are there any plans to develop a small IM program outside of SL for your friends list ? (Can be used on a computer that cannot access Sl, either on a second computer or on a mobile phone.)
Exposition Linden: I suspect that residents are alreay working on this and agree that there are many mobile opportunities for SL.
Exposition Linden: Trifen Fairplay: [A bunch of good questions about border crossings]
Exposition Linden: Part of our scaling work is to revamp how agents transition between sims. Currently, border crossing and teleport use completely different paths and agents, vehicles, and attachments are not handled via an atomic transition.
Exposition Linden: This is the core problem driving most of the bugs you described.
Exposition Linden: Fortunately, as part of our general scaling work, we're unifying the process of moving an agent from one region to another and converting it to an atomic pass. This will help these types of issues tremendously.
Exposition Linden: Unfortunately, I don't know right now whether or not that will make it into 1.7.
Exposition Linden: Emperor Dalek: Will LL's focus on bugs continue for the length of the 6.x cycle and fix long-standing issues like texture distortions (my fav to hate) and alpha sorting (far on top of near), or will those repairs be part of the new renderer?
Exposition Linden: Our focus will remain on bugs and scaling. The texture distortion is a tricky one, because we can't make a change that will break content throughout SL. What will likely happen in the long run is to enable better texturing controls,
Exposition Linden: but keep old content the same. This will not happen before the next generation renderer.
Exposition Linden: Waves Lightcloud: [Asks about remote cameras to view events]
Exposition Linden: This is something that we've talked about a lot. The work that Doug has done cleaning up the interest list actually makes it possible for us to do this, although it isn't yet on the schedule.
Exposition Linden: Jeffrey Gomez and Strife Onizuka: [Asks about permissions and changes to the permissions system]
Exposition Linden: Permissions changes (other than those required to fix bugs and exploits) are on hold until we have caught up on bugs and scaling issues and/or have significantly expanded the development team.
Exposition Linden: As I've stated before, we have a ton of developer positions open (in fact, two have signed on this week) so we should rapidly acquire a lot more development horsepower.
Exposition Linden: Huns Valen: Current status of parcel-based script memory allocation/performance throttling?
Exposition Linden: Largely on hold for the same reasons. However, Doug's work on the script scheduler should ultimately give estate owners mroe control over script execution.
Exposition Linden: Apotheus Silverman: Will we ever have verifiable LSL-initiated transactions? IE, return codes or events that a script receives notifying it if an item or money was successfully delivered.
Exposition Linden: Yes, but not until we have more developers. There are many aspects to script-driven sales that we want to improve, and a better API with more feedback to the script itself is part of that plan.
Exposition Linden: eltee Statosky: [Asks about changes to simulator performance with 1.6]
Exposition Linden: The script scheduling and interest list is being rewritten for 1.7. At the very least, we will regain any performance lost in the 1.6 transition. In addition, we should have much better control over what the CPU is working on.
Exposition Linden: Gwyneth Llewelyn: [Asks about graphical scaling issues]
Exposition Linden: The approach with the 2.0 renderer is to allow for more scaling than with the current system. This scaling applies in both directions, so on the one hand we'll be able to handle higher end cards
Exposition Linden: and actually get a better view of the world, while on lower end cards we'll be able to better control what we do draw.
Exposition Linden: Adam Zaius: There is a rumour floating around that 1.7 will include the ability to script the interface
Exposition Linden: That rumor is false, at least in the 1.7 timeframe. I agree that WoW's Lua-based UI is a great example of the power of scriptable UIs.
Exposition Linden: blaze Spinnaker: What's your toughest challenge on your desk at the moment / in general?
Exposition Linden: Doubling the size of developer team this year without hiring feebs or choads.
Exposition Linden: Strife Onizuka: What are the issues involving alternate skeletons, additional limbs (tails, arms, ets.), new clothing types & meshes, built in client animation overrides.
Exposition Linden: Most of the issues around different skeletons are tied to animation issues. Spore, Will Wright's new game shows how far a lot of bright people working for years can get on solving these issues and I suspect that we'll eventually move in a similar
Exposition Linden: direction.
Exposition Linden: Strife Onizuka: Will Havok2 break existing vehicals?
Exposition Linden: We are making every effort to ensure that Havok 2 does not break existing vehicles.
Exposition Linden: Olmy Seraph: [Asks about object oriented programming style improvements to the build system]
Exposition Linden: Better tools for managing large numbers of objects is an excellent idea. Improved creation tools are yet another reason why I want to hire more developers.
Exposition Linden: Jeffrey Gomez: How soon will we see Mono? What about other scripting languages?
Exposition Linden: We hope to start integrating Mono back into the main codebase in August. How long after that before it actually is released will depend on testing. Support for other languages will come after we have improved existing LSL performance.
Exposition Linden: Jeffrey Gomez: [Aks a bunch of questions about rendering technology]
Exposition Linden: As we hire, we will devote substantial resources to supporting more modern graphics features in an additive way. This way, older cards will always have a fallback rendering option. Specific areas of focus include:
Exposition Linden: Moving from a texture model to a material model, better utilization of shaders, a focus on screen space solutions, and an ongoing analysis of how to improve solid body rendering.
Exposition Linden:
Exposition Linden: OK, that's all I had prepared coming in, so I've got some time to try and answer questions or to comment on other problems and ideas.
Jeska Linden: Please send your Technical questions to me -
Jeska Linden: Ok, here we go: Ice Brodie: Will there be improvements to object-object communication? if so, what timefrae?
Exposition Linden: Unless I get hit by muni walking to work, there will be an improved object-object system for objects in the same sim for 1.7
Exposition Linden: also, I was just IM-ed that some sweet musical instruments with animations exist in world . . . double w00t!
Exposition Linden: next, please
Jeska Linden: Keknehv Psaltery: Are there any plans to allow 3-d scaling of linked prims, as opposed to overall scaling?
Exposition Linden: If you mean, non-uniform scaling, the answer is currently no, since that would require that we be able to shear existing primitives. However, that is a feature that we'll want in the long run.
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Tyler Rocco: Is there any chance of ocean sims happening ?
Exposition Linden: sims that are all water? I think that there are already some like that . . . if you mean sims with different water effects, not before the new renderer.
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Jeri Zuma: Anything new in the war on lag? are there any new thoughts about how to get hundreds of functioning avies into one sim for an event?
Exposition Linden: as I talked about a bit in the info-dump, we're pulling apart the interest procesisng and script scheduling, two of the high sim nails performance wise . . .
Exposition Linden: plus havok deux should help sim performance with lots of avs as well . . .
Exposition Linden: however if you're talking about client side performance, that's more of a renderer issue and we are looking at improving that . . .
Exposition Linden: but not until the next renderer
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Ally Cain: When can the 1.7 user database be updated so fairly new users can help test?
Exposition Linden: that's a good point . . . when we start preview for 1.7, we'll move a snapshot over and that will set the date
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Storma Amarula: Will there ever be an action menu put into the UI tjat would allow scripts, gestures (what have you) activated from icon menu (similar to how other MMOG's use spells, actions, etc.)?
Exposition Linden: yes, although that will likely not happen until we have a more fully customizable UI in place
Exposition Linden: good idea, though
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Pendari Lorentz: Question: Are Avatar "Keys" the same as avatar "Names" and if so, is it possible for someone to use these "keys/names" to spam/contact/etc residents, while NOT logged into the SL client?
Exposition Linden: avatar keys can be used to IM a resident in world via a script. note that using these to spam someone is a community standard violation, so don't do that.
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Enchant Jacques: We was told at the last meet that work was being carried out on making SL stable - Many of us are still having crashing Issues. When do you expect this issue to be corrected?
Exposition Linden: please send questions to Jeska, not me directly, btw
Adam Linden: I got that deana
Exposition Linden: we are focusing most of development of stability and scaling issues . . . for example, most of you have probably noticed that logins are mostly working again . . .
Exposition Linden: also, many problems (as I talked about in the info dump) are related to avatars moving between sims and we are moving to change that architecture to provide a more stable experience
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Torley Torgeson: Are there any plans for a more flexible animation control system, in regards to playback and manipulation? For example, ability to play animations backwards and reset loop points, or change priorities after they've been uploaded?
Exposition Linden: Once we have hired more folks, we really want to hit animations out of the park. We feel that animations are an area that SL can really shine. WHat you listed will likely only be the start of what we can do.
Exposition Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Dave Eisenberg: The new ability to snap objects to the grid was a good idea that helped in building, but will there be a way to snap objects together, without messing around with the coordinates. (to snap 2 cubes together at the center, corners and cente
Jeska Linden: r sides)
Exposition Linden: That's an excellent suggestion and when we have the resources to improve the building tools that is almost certainly one that we will take on. Note that you can create an object directly next to an existing one.
Exposition Linden: next
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