Jeska Linden: We'll be taking technical questions and Cory will be providing tons of answers for you.
Cory Linden: The real question is whether I can still go as fast ;-)
Jeska Linden: Questions can be sent to me (Jeska Linden) in the form of an IM. Questions will be answered, as time permits, in the order they appear on my
screen. Please don't submit your technical support questions, as they will be skipped over.
Cory Linden: OK, Jeska, we ready to go? If so, I'll start with questions from the forums.
Jeska Linden: Go ahead :)
Cory Linden: First, the info dump portion of our day . . . with Jeska's help, I've collected questions and tried to answer as many of them as possible. I've shorted
the questions where possible to make all of this more readable.
Cory Linden: OK, everyone recording? Here we go:
Cory Linden: "Nekokami Dragonfly: Is SL more likely to get scriptable avatars for NPCs or building tools to create animals, monsters, etc?"
Chad Linden: HELLO ALL!
Cory Linden: There are some tradeoffs here. Historically, an avatar == a human, but there have been requests to change that. The tricky part is that rendering
skinned avatars with big textures is relatively expensive, so we'd have to limit NPC choices in some way.
Cory Linden: The other direction would be to enable interesting jointed, animated, and/or skinned creations via the building tools. My personal desire is to head
in the latter direction, but it would take more development work than just scripting avatars.
Cory Linden: Neither in the current schedule for either 1.7 or 1.8.
Jeska Linden: [btw - By technical support I meant individual support issues (like "my computer is broken") - sorry for confusion]
Cory Linden: "Candide LeMay: Can we get more access to the client's sound library (FMOD)?"
Cory Linden: This is an interesting question and broaches the much larger question of client-side scripting. Right now we haven't decided in what way we're
going ot tackle client-side scripting, but we do know that we need it.
Cory Linden: Once we have a system in place for that, it would be possible to expose more audio functionality.
Cory Linden: "Grims Ingersoll: Are there plans for an offline sandbox?"
Cory Linden: No
Cory Linden: "Jillian Callahan: Is Havok 2 on the 1.7 schedule?"
Cory Linden: Yes
Cory Linden: "Francis Chunk: Is the LSL virtual machine moving to Mono? What does that mean?"
Cory Linden: Yes. In the short term, it means that scripts will run at least 100 times faster than they do today. In the longer term, it means that we can allow
scripts to be written in any language that supports the common language infrastructure,
Cory Linden: such as C#, Python, Java, etc. Mono is a 2.0 feature, so Q1 of 2006.
Cory Linden: "Pepplar Sklar: New renderer details?"
Cory Linden: The 2.0 renderer is multithreaded, is designed to scale much better with increased CPU and GPU capabilities, while also being able to scale down
more effectively for low end hardware.
Cory Linden: The biggest change is a move to Open GL Vertex Buffer Objects, which largely eliminate most of the current differences between our ATI, NVIDIA,
and Mac render pipelines.
Cory Linden: The primary goal with the new renderer is to enable higher framerates across the board while also allowing significantly longer draw distances. The
change is quite stunning.
Cory Linden: "Aibu Hornpipe: Why don't you have Voice over IP? What about Skype integration?"
Cory Linden: Richard Bartle wrote a pretty strong argument against voice chat in digital worlds --
http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28/not_yet_you_fools.html -- that I generally agree with.
Cory Linden: However, it is clear that SL has unique requirements for creators that don't exist in other worlds. We have been exploring some novel approaches to
the problem, but they are lower priority than bug fixing or scaling.
Cory Linden: The Skype suggesting is quite interesting thought. I also know that plenty of folks use TeamSpeak.
Cory Linden: "Dallas Williamson: Why is the group limit so low?"
Cory Linden: It's an artifact of one of our internal messages. There are also scaling issues related to how we currently handle group permissions, so changing
this is sadly not easy.
Cory Linden: "Cristiano Midnight: When do we get an increase in prim limits?"
Cory Linden: A large part of the 1.7 effort is related to scaling and reliability on the sim side and involves fixing aspects of our culling and visibility calculations.
We expect the new approach to be faster which, when combined with Havok 2,
Cory Linden: should allow for an increae in prim limits with 1.7.
Cory Linden: "larry Clymer: Could it be possible for a user to set a waypoint for another av?"
Cory Linden: Landmarks sort of have that function now, but I agree that a dyanmic (or scripted) option is a good idea. Add it the feature voting system!
Cory Linden: "Olmy Seraph: Do you do usability testing?"
Cory Linden: Not as much as we should. Forutnately, our new digs are much more conducive to bringing in folks for observed testing, so I fully expect us to do
this more often.
Cory Linden: "Tiknker LaFollette: How does development work at LL? What tools and buzwords do you use?"
Cory Linden: We use the standard development tools (VC, XCode, gcc) with the usual gaggle of editors and IDEs (VC, XCode, EMACS, VI, EditPad,
SubEthaEdit, others), CVS for version control, we're replacing Bugzilla with JIRA for feature/bug tracking,
Cory Linden: and use IRC in the office. We do hourly builds, don't do unit testing, and use scripting languages where appropriate (mostly Perl and Python plus
shell scripting).
Cory Linden: We do code reviews for nearly all checkins and you could identify our process as XP, although many of us were developing that way long before it
had a label.
Cory Linden: Laukosargas Svarog pointed out an object limit bug that I didn't know about. It's now a bug and is in Jira.
Cory Linden: "Nekokami Dragonfly: What happened to the permission overhaul and Creative Commons?"
Cory Linden: Right now we are more concerned with scaling and bug issues. There are also some tricky legal issues around using CC in a digital world that
unfortunately makes that harder than it should be.
Cory Linden: I would estimate that by 2.0 we'll be talking about this again as it is important that we continue to strike the right balances between creator and
owner rights.
Cory Linden: "Cristiano Midnight: Could we allow avatars to sit on attachmnets of other avatars?"
Cory Linden: The current object model special cases avatars a bit too much to make that easy. However, after Havok 2 we plan to clean up that code a lot.
Cory Linden: "Huns Valen/Nekokami Dragonfly: When do we get outbound XML-RPC? When do we get larger and more flexible RPC packets?"
Cory Linden: Improvements to XML-RPC need to wait until after 1.7, but the plan is to make it much more usable. We're fixing scaling issues with communication
within the SL grid first.
Cory Linden: "Araiya Bomazi: How are you going to prioritize ideas from the voting system?"
Cory Linden: Well, the whole point of the voting system is that the residents will do a lot of prioritization. After that, it comes down to how to align tasks with
resources. Developers aren't just cogs,
Cory Linden: so not every task is doable by everyone, which means that there is a scheduling and resource management problem after prioritization.
Cory Linden: "Unda Kinsella: Is there a plan to have private rooms without having to script doors?"
Cory Linden: No, although if you look around SL there are many different ways to make private areas.
Cory Linden: "Doctor DeFarge: Is there a plan to make it easier to advertise for and/or find residents with different skill sets?"
Cory Linden: A major topic of internal discussion is what needs to be added to the system to better enable groups to create together. It isn't yet on the schedule,
but is moving in that direction.
Cory Linden: More broadly, I see search within SL as one of our next big challenges.
Cory Linden: "Francis Chung: What is the proportion of development work focused on new features versus bugs/scaling?"
Cory Linden: 75% on bugs/scaling.
Cory Linden: "Francis Chung: Can LL offer different sims at different prices?"
Cory Linden: That is a topic we are actively discussing. If there is a lot of demand that I suspect that the answer will be yes.
Cory Linden: "Grims Ingersoll: What about prerendering or precaching areas of the environment to improve performance?"
Cory Linden: Much of the 2.0 effort is focused on better caching to allow better performance in areas that you've been in before. Prerendering is, to a certain
extent, already possible as Bedazzle showed in Chinatown.
Cory Linden: "Araiya Bomazi: Will PNG (for textures) or Ogg Vorbis (for audio) be supported?"
Cory Linden: If there is sufficient demand, neither would be that hard.
Cory Linden: "Araiya Bomazi: Will longer audio uploads be allowed?"
Cory Linden: No
Cory Linden: "larry Clymer: Will lights be more controllable in the future?"
Cory Linden: Yes, lights are being improved for 2.0.
Cory Linden: Arito Cotton had some questions about functionality changes in 1.6. Please make functionality requests on the feature voting page.
Cory Linden: "Doctor DeFarge: What about a functionality to manage resident quests?"
Cory Linden: You could do some of what you wanted today with scripting. Alternately, you could do it via a website where you allowed people to determine
whether or not the quest requirements were met.
Cory Linden: "Francis Chung: Why is there still no unlit material?"
Cory Linden: On the 1.7 list.
Cory Linden: <deep breath>
Cory Linden: OK, everyone got that? Have a nice day.
Huns Valen: tyvm
Cory Linden: Just kidding
Nauv DeFarge: ty
Nauv DeFarge: cu later
Jeska Linden: I've got more for you :)
Cory Linden: That concludes the prewritten answers and leaves us a bunch of time to play "stump cory"
Cory Linden: OK, Jeska, let's go
Jeska Linden: Keknehv Psaltery: Is there any plan to implement individaul pixel manipulation for textures in LSL?
Cory Linden: As in LSL can toggle pixels? I doubt it and think that it is more likely that we'll adopt a vector standard that LSL can address. That and client side
scripting could enable a lot of texture effects. Plus,
Cory Linden: we're spending a lot of time rethinking textures in general so that we can eventually work on a more modern material model instead of textures,
allowing more use of hardware, blending, etc.
Cory Linden: Next.
Jeska Linden: Nauv DeFarge: When can we expect 1.7?
Cory Linden: Havok 2, lots of scaling and stability improvements. Beyond that I'm not ready to say right now. As I said in the comments, most of our effort is on
scaling/bugs + hiring more developers, so less new feature work for 1.7.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Prokofy Neva: Does LL anticipate needing to slow growth and will this take the form of longer log-in lines?
Plastic Duck: OMG ONLY ONE LINE
Plastic Duck: I think prok is broken guys
Cory Linden: The log in delays are a bug not a feature (sadly) and we are working hard to correct it.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Chandra Page: Does Linden Lab have a contingency plan in place for when the SL grid inevitably becomes self-aware?
Phoenix Byrd: lol
Cory Linden: Yes, the Doug Linden bot will become your insect overlord
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Sexy Partridge: When can some of the old servers be replaced. I am losing business because of lag issues, old server and too many scripts. ?
impose script limits like prim limits.
Cory Linden: sorry, just pointed out that 1.7 was a when not what question -- 2 -3 months
Cory Linden: Sexy: we are putting new servers on as fast as we can right now (did I mention that WE ARE HIRING?) and once we have a surplus we'll revisit the
problem of old sims. There
Cory Linden: is a serious demand for those older machines for internal testing and build machines, so we will address it.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: StoneSelf Karuna: What's the status of unicode support?
Louis Neutra: what
Cory Linden: What do you mean by status?
Cory Linden: If you have the correct fonts, it works for IM and chat. Beyond that we'll add it into other components as desired.
Cory Linden: next (Jeska, if you get a follow on, pass it along)
Jeska Linden: Aio Robertson: Are there any plans to add a field to prim/objects in the Edit window such that when they're attached to you, you'll see which body
slot they're attached to? Also, any plans to be able to attach mutliple objects to one body slot?
Hiro Pendragon: *cough* fingers
User not online - inventory has been saved.
Ontay Drago: 0
Cory Linden: The first one is a good idea, please add it into the feature voting page. The latter is less likely. Fingers . . . hmmm . . . feature voting page for that one.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Enchant Jacques: I would like to know when we can expect this sytem to be stable as so many of us invested a lot of time and money in SL and it is now un acceptable
Cory Linden: As I've mentioned, we're putting the majority of our effort into stabilizing SL. Again, did I mentione that we are hiring developers? If you rock, you should email me.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Nexus Nash: Will array's ever be considered in LSL. + Will llGiveMoney() ever return a bool value on succesfull tranfer?
Cory Linden: With the mono conversion, many new data types become relatively easy to add in.
Cory Linden: wrt llgivemoney, we'd like to create a better sales API in LSL that would provide better data to sellers on several levels. Bugs are taking priority right now.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Hiro Pendragon: When can we expect an API for the GUI so that we can customize it?
Cory Linden: Not in 1.7 but hopefully for 2.0 . . . very high on our list of new features once we are on top of bugs.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Delorus White: About lagging will it be a control on it in the futue?
Cory Linden: A set lag to 0 dial? No, but the two primary sources of lag -- viewer framerate and sim framerate -- are both being improved for 1.0 and 1.7
Cory Linden: s/1.0/2.0/
Louis Neutra: dials that go to 11
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Jarod Godel: A follow up to NPC's: wouldn't giving us access to a client-side API solve both problems?
Delorus White: ty
Cory Linden: Building that API is a lot of work, but I would agree that in the medium to long term it is critical that we better leverage the enormous talents of our residents.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: April Firefly: Has SL techies tested Tiger Mac OS 10.4 with SL yet?
Cory Linden: Yes and last seed it worked fine (well, it worked no worse than 1.3)
Cory Linden: "seed" == developer release of Mac software
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Icon Serpentine: Is an expanded keyboard control interface in the development plans between now and 2.0?
Cory Linden: yes, but on the 2.0 side of "between now and 2.0"
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Huns Valen: Phantom prims in link sets so that we can have (among other things) vehicles with more prims. Yes/no and when?
Cory Linden: yes, after havok 2
Cory Linden: next
Huns Valen: tyte tia
Jeska Linden: Plastic Duck: Can more technical specs be published? I'd like to see specific info like the client/server performance hits of various things such as
prim shapes, texture sizes/alpha, and LSL functions,
Louis Neutra: oh what is this..
Cory Linden: To date, the scriptors have generated some of the best numbers for those types of data, but as LL grows I expect that we'll be much better with our
documentation.
Cory Linden: next
Plastic Duck: Jeska ask the other half of the question too
Jeska Linden: Travis Lambert: Q: What is the status on better land tools to prevent grief? And delegate-able ones, at that?
Plastic Duck: loller
Cory Linden: There is a broad class of features in being discussed about land permissions, group permissions, and group business features. As we get on top of
bugs and scaling I expect to be asking you all lots of questions about what is needed.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Leran Charlton: Can we know why the degree markers were removed from the roataion wheel and could they be returned?
Cory Linden: You need to have grid on now to see them.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Baron Grayson: Will there be the possibility of using prims to create holes in other prims....to help create new complex shapes?
Cory Linden: Sorry, meant to answer that from the forums . . . boolean nots are a harder rendering trick. I suspect that we'll eventually add them (and it would be
very cool) but it isn't on the current list.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Alexa Hope: Is there any chance of bringing back free drag, even if not default?
Cory Linden: Make sure that is on the feature page . . . we've talked about it being an option.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Kali Dougall: How much time do the devs spend playing/building in SL, and experiencing it the same way residents do? In other words, are the
changes they make mostly theoretical or more based on practical experience?
Cory Linden: We try to use SL as much as possible, although actual usage varies per person quite a bit.
Cory Linden: And we try to base changes on our in-world experiences when possible. Also, as I mentioned, with our new home we're in a better position to do
user testing of new ideas.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Jarod Godel: When can we expect a white board/prim for collaborative writing?
Cory Linden: hah . . . one of my most wanted features . . . not for 1.7, but we are continuing to debate the best way to implement it.
Cory Linden: next
Jeska Linden: Catherine Omega: Are there plans to expand the XML control over the UI, and if so, what would it take to get a simple way to create a toolbar that
would allow us to llSay text on a given channel? It'd be great for games and the like.
Cory Linden: The UI overhaul (2.0 timeframe) is very much focused on these changes. We want objects and experiences to be able to customize the UI as needed.
Cory Linden: next