The SLocalypse? or the Year of Second Life Maturing?

Hello Everyone!

In a previous thread reply I posted about how upsetting it is that the Second Life grid has become so unstable, well more like it is STILL unstable and how that irks me as a resident, educator & content creator; However, after sticking my thumb up my bum and thinking it over, I had realized that the post was a little harsh, only a little, and I should have given LL some credit.

To their credit, I was zooming around the Mainland and it is lookin' better than ever before, although I still managed to come across some sticklers (Floating Ad Signs, Public Adult Content) but only once or twice in the period of roaming 30 or so regions. The Second Life Official Viewer is more stable than ever. Linden Lab actually listened to their customers when they introduced majors changes (Homestead changes, Adult Continent Parcel Comps, Etc)

2009 should be known for the year of transition considering nearly all of the management has been replaced, and that they have had time to put their ear to the virtual ground to hear the needs of the customer. They started several big projects, Second Life Viewer 2009 (AKA 2010), started a intellectual property complaint process overhaul to help content creators protect their work, and hired a bunch of people to get the ball rolling. Granted it is probably taking the new coders a while to get acquainted with the convoluted Second Life code-base. With all of that in mind I can honestly say 2009 was the year of transition for Second Life.

M Linden has posted about what is upcoming for Q1 of 2010, and I must say it makes me happy to know what we have to look forward to just beyond the horizon. Now that the dust of management change has had time to settle I think we will really see Linden Lab hit their stride in 2010. Second Life Enterprise, better content management tools for creators, easier to use SL Viewer (hopefully more than just UI), focus towards New Residents, and the much needed grid stabilizing (Still holding my breath on that though).

Second Life still needs a lot of work though, they really need to get the website worked out as it has become a more convoluted experience than ever before, including making XStreetSL upgrades, maybe a new user web experience. Possibly multiple portals for different types of people (Social, Business, Gaming, Education) to really guide people to content they want to see vs a generic single portal targeted to the single demographic of 40 Year Old Housewives. How about a "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for finding awesome locations, you could probably profile the locations they visit to come up with suggestions to other locations they may be interested in.

So, my question: What changes are you looking forward to, what changes do you want to see, and what are you thankful for (if anything) that Linden Lab has done in the last year?

Well it looks like what i was afraid off, new heads everywhere == company is pretty much ran by someone else.

I'm not sure i want of this...

At least the original crew had real ideas and talent, not like the sorry bunch of talentless money grubbing losers we have now who's main concern seems to come up with more ways to tax the few peoples who make a buck here and turn sl in a high profit scam.

they aren't working for us anymore, they want us to work for them, for peanuts if possible.

I would not call the veteran UI Designers and Programmers and successful CEO Talentless, not to mention your statement makes no sense from a business perspective, if Linden Lab dose not improve Second Life they run the risk of loosing residents, not to mention their is more money in it all if they look to grow the platform. Second Life is not a one purchase pony where you are stuck with what you get, Linden Lab makes money from a service and thus it stands to need constant improvement because the source of income can dry up and leave. Interestingly enough Second Life sparked OpenSim which could be one of Second Lifes biggest competitors in 2010-2011, need not to forget the potential for Blue Mars to heat up competition, and that naturally means Linden Lab will look for ways to keep an edge.

Although I can totally see where you are coming from with new heads running the show, and the ideas part too. Ideas & Innovation was part of my original mini rant too But yeah, knowing SL is in the hands of a whole new set of people makes my stomach feel uneasy at times, but then again they brought in fresh meat who are not familiar with Virtual Worlds, so it could be a good thing to have them see Second Life in a whole new light without preconceived notions about it, and that generally leads to innovation.

They just need to make sure to respect the residents who have been living in the building before they arrived.

the Point Kyrah is making (and I happen to agree) is that SL's managment has turned inward to making their cash, rather than looking outward. in the short term this will make them some extra cash, but it's not sustainable in the long run.

why? simple... digital content is as permanent as the system it resides on (for the most part, exception database errors. so once you have saturated content in the existing user base that source of income dries up, and the only way to renew that cycle is to attract new users.

unfortunately the same practices that pull more money from the existing user base also discourage new users, forcing a higher reliance on the existing base, in a nasty cycle of diminishing returns....

the good news is that competition from other sources may actual fuel the need for new users if those services can't compare to what SL is offering. of course if they offer better for less then LL is in deep crap.

Hey there Fanboi...

Your surname: Xiao != "Ex-eye-oh" <----- Incorrect pronunciation.

Xiao = "She-ow" <---- Correct pronunciation.


Kyrah - Somatika is exactly who LL is marketing to now, read his profile. Of course he loves where LL is going.


Kinda funny, yet sad, to have a name for 3.5 years and not know hot pronounce it...Go figure.

Half the problems in SL stem from the fact that none of the ORIGINAL designers had any experience with virtual worlds. They really need to bring in some people with MUD/Mush/Muck experience.

I'm looking forward to the 'efficient scripts', stability and lag improvements. I want to see more DELIVERY of fixes instead of more new broken functionality. Although it's very unlikely I'd like to see LL start listening to its residents before leaping into another ultimately pointless unheaval like the Adult Content debacle. No, I don't think all our dissent was outweighed by 'millions of potential customers', because they don't exist and the platform couldn't cope with them anyway. I'm thankful for the general stability and performance gains made during 2009.

I reckon SL's pretty good. Performance has fallen back a bit from a good peak a few months ago for me, but that might just be a 'me' thing.

I'm using a less powerful computer these days, which might account for slower rezzing.

What I'm really looking forward to is when we get properly sorted shadows - I have had them working but they are buggy at the moment.

Well Connifer I thik it isn't you- I don't have the fastest machine in the world far from it- but I USED to be able to walk about with out everythng being grey. It seems a few months ago it all went to hell no matter what machine, no matter what viewer I use
(New machine being picked up today.. so we shall see)

Attracting more casual users isn't Linden Lab's goal. They want "high end" users- corporate, non-profits (with grant money to spend), and individuals with a lot of disposable income to throw down (big merchants who spend on land and XStreetSL fees, and residents willing to spend $15-30 US or more a month patronizing those merchants). Linden Lab isn't just extracting more from the current user base, it is also weeding out the residents who don't spend enough money.

I can pronounce Xiao however I care to, if it was in the native language that may be a different story. Multiple people had pronounced it this way before I put it in my profile, without me eluding to it.

Rather be a "Fanboi" being more positive with my time, instead of trolling the forums picking apart people (not their posts) and adding nothing to the conversation.

You went out of your way to point out something in my profile, which has absolutely NOTHING to do with this thread.

Is this part of the communications management we've been hearing about? Massaging errr managing the message?

I could care less about that the "mainland" looks like. I want a grid that works. As it is right now, if I'm not in a skybox at 3000m, the lag is so bad that I can hardly move, rez or even TYPE. That is what I call an unusable platform. A world of grey in which I can't even effectively communicate with text.

LL can't run the grid at current populations. I'm not quite sure how they expect to run it attracting more population.

I really don't care about LL's hype. It's all hype until they spend the money on the server capacity to run the grid without crippling lag and stop blaming the residents for it.

My answer: apocalypse

Reality Check

The grid has never REALLY worked. There have always been up times and down times with performance. Sim restarts, a grey world, Lag etc

I just hope for level of tolerable anymore.

Reality check? My post was 100% reality. You just made my point. Unfortunately, those rare tolerable moments are becoming an endangered species.

Did someone say shadows?

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_N3W3ksl-Xiw/S0-NRa8xrrI/AAAAAAAAAmI/IqPNBfzAMTk/s1280/Modern%20House%20Interior%20Sunlight.JPG


http://lh3.ggpht.com/_N3W3ksl-Xiw/S1AFXet5uZI/AAAAAAAAAmc/fGCHq6N9zkk/s1152/Shadows.JPG


(Those are from the house I am building in Blue Mars)

Your profile betrays you young jedi!

Deal with it.

LL let bugs fester by not providing interim viewer updates for 9 months (and counting).

Some homestead owners were actually in favour of a price hike? But then you're an educator... you might feel differently if LL wasn't cuddling that useless section of SL with 50% discounts on all tier. Educators get homesteads cheaper than openspaces... I'd be happy with that deal too .
The adult continent wasn't their finest hour of "listening to their customers" either...

Bingo.

I included corporate with casual users... unfortunately weeding out casual users is going to be a turnoff or the corporate types too, since they'll have to fight harder for the same market share of a dwindling populace (because in SL other corporations aren't much of a consumer base, if at all)...

TBH I'm not sure that SL does have a large scale sustainable market unless they come out with a paradigm that nearly everybody "has to have".

Interesting, the Blue Mars lighting model doesn't do shadows for local lights (see the first picture, above, the fire is a light source and there's no shadow for the edge of the fireplace), so if you're doing an interior scene you're going to have to provide baked shadows. I thought shadow branch lighting model in SL was more sophisticated than that.

Also, that looks like the Linden "Wright House" rock texture. Naughty naughty.

Leave it to Argent to ferret out that piece of info from those pics.

Hi, Soma! /waves

I really only look closely at my sim, but I have lived there all but about 6 months of my SL. I first rented land there based on an ad I saw in the classifieds and the parcel being the size I need. Later I purchased property on the same sim. I have always lived in the sky so what is at ground level doesn't really bother me (it would if I were on the ground...lol).

The sim is a water sim. When I first rented land there, ground/water level looked like one huge flea market not very well organized. Just a huge platform with stuff set out.

Over time, it has turned into a really pretty sim at water level. When I see a spinning for sale sign, I send in an AR and generally within days, sometimes hours, it's gone.

So Mainland...or my little part of it...has definitely changed for the better.

I read this several times to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding......you are saying that this is how SL is *for you*. Right? Because it sounds like a general statement of fact, as if it's that way for everyone. Which it's not. I don't have these problems, at all. It's just not that way for evryone. If it were, I'm sure we'd all be gone, it wouldn't be fun. At least, I'd be gone if it were that way for me. I wonder why it's that way for you. All the time? If they 'can't run the grid at current populations', why is it just fine for some, and for others, as you describe?

Actually, it does cast shadows if I remember to check that box (casting shadows is a per-item thing). I thought it would be obvious from the second photo above that the avatar and table shadows were coming from the local light.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_N3W3ksl-Xiw/S1eULbpQBiI/AAAAAAAAArs/pyeHFeTUMJk/s1152/Fireplace%20Shadows.JPG


And before you go accusing me of stealing stuff, the rock textures came from a legitimate source:

http://cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=24091

http://cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=8065


(Odds are if they are the same, that SL got them from the same source)