A few more scenes of the Relay track. This picture shows what various sized contributions can fund.
The "Turtle Club." Whether or not this has anything to do with the Turtle Award given to Relayers who successfully complete one to nine complete laps in a Relay Weekend.
The Sunbeamers camp. We're not showing the whole thing, but here's the pink fox statue representing Artistic Fimicloud of the Passionate Redheads, who continues to inspire her neighbors years after her passing.
Just three days until the Relay Weekend, which is from Saturday June 8 to Sunday June 9, with the Opening Ceremonies starting at 10 AM SL time. But watch for smaller events on the track this week, such as the Tailgate Party on Friday.
Last Friday's Lab Gab started with a video. Grumpity Linden, the head of
the Product team, talked about the upcoming SL mobile app viewer,
showing it off at the Kaleidoscope sim. "Yeah, it's true, it's so early,
but we're super excited to share a first peek at something new, Second
Life Mobile. Look it's me on my phone." She would say this wasn't the
first time they've tried to build a mobile viewer, "because of course we
want to have all the glory." But it was "the most exciting result we've
seen so far." They were starting with the more difficult details, such
as being able to view the "hardest" avatars and most detailed areas.
Plus they wanted the app to work on all platforms, "And so it is with
joy and trepidation that we share with you the early results of these
efforts." They did say things were still very much a work in progress,
so "you will see very little functionality or user interface for now."
Still, she spoke, "it is a vibrant Second Life on Android and iOS."
Mojo
Linden, the VP of Engineering who would later say he's been with Linden
Lab for about a year and a half, would say that he was working with the
development team "to make sure that the community can experience
everything they love about Second Life while on the go with our upcoming
mobile viewer," repeating they were starting with some of the more
difficult details first such as full rendering of avatars and the full
rendering of complex environments. The viewer is built on Unity and can
use multiple mobile phone and tablet platforms, including Android and
iOS. Mojo described himself as "blown away" by the ammount of detail
they can get on it, saying they haven't had to "compromise too much on
graphic fidelity." He did admit "there's much work to be done" before
the mobile viewer's ready to be launched.
Patch, the VP of
Product Operations, was next. "Imagine being able to connect to Second
Life from anywhere, chat with your friends, visit your favorite inworld
hangout spots, and later do pretty muchanything you do with the desktop
Second Life viewer without being tethered to your computer. ... We can't
wait to show you more in the coming months as our development progress
continues."
The scene then changed to the three seated with Strawberry Linden, and would introduce themselves, Grumpity musing she had no real power but was still responsible for a lot ot things. Mojo joked he felt tlike the "baby" in the group. Later on, Grumpity would say she wasn't in her usual stick figure as it wasn't rezzing properly in the mobile viewer.
Questions about the mobile started 6:45 into the video. Mojo would state development started in October 2022, saying that using the Unity engine "really helped with quick progress and portability to IOS and Android." He was condident they would be able to make a mobile viewer that could show "Second Life in all it's glory." A beta version "with some limited functuality" should be released sometime in the second half of the year, adding "our play is to layer more features over multiple releases after that." Later in the video, Mojo would call being able to work on the mobile viewer "such an honor."
At nine minutes, Strawberry brought up the price changes. The lower sim prices were talked about first. Grumpity would say since 2017, they've been working to lower the price of land and making it "more accessible for all our residents," saying it wasn't easy as Linden Lab's income had been built on land. So they had to find ways to make up for the income loss there, "We try to find the fairest way to do it ... and, um, we decided that Linden dollar fees were really the way to do it. ... We know your prices are going up, and our prices are going up, and the cost of everything up. ... We took as long as we could before raising fees. But it's happened. ... We're watching very closely to see what happens in the markets so far."
At just before 11 minutes, Strawberry would also bring up the new option to pay for a sim with Linden dollars. Patch called it an exchange being done "on the Lindex basically behind the scenes ... and so yes, the price is a little higher."
At just after 12 minutes, Strawberry brought up the concerns about bot activity. Patch stated the Lab has been working on a new policy, including some talk with lawyers, "We had to take some time and get it reviewed by our legal team ... that took several weeks to get all of the necessary reviews in place for it." Patch would say they were expecting to bring it out the following week (the week of this article). Grumpity would add they're planning on giving extra ability to estate owners to ban bots, "will be able to choose access levels for scripted agents going forward, and those should be rolling out soon." She estimate the time as "weeks."
Just after 13 minutes, the PBR (Physical Based Rendering) development was mentioned, that it will bring "more realistic lighting to Second Life," Mojo saying it brought that particular technology about ten years ahead from where it was, "It allows content creators to define materials based on how they reflect light in the real world." He added there was already a project viewer with the feature currently out and people looking at it and giving feedback, "We want to be sure we are not going to cause content headaches for people as we've been fixing bugs for quite some time." He wasn't giving a definite release date, "it might be another three months." When asked if people would beed higher-end computers to see the feature, Mojo would say no, saying they were working to better enable current computers to see the new featurejust fine. But if people had any kind of performance issues, they could simply "just turn off Reflections" to get lighting back to where it was. There will also be tutorial videos about it later. It was stated that while PBR puts Second Life on the way to having true mirrors, for the moment they're not around just yet, at least the (virtually) real deal, "You can sort of fake it now with PBR." The Lab plans on working on technology to allow mirrors next.
At just after 18 minutes, they talked about inventory updates. Grumpity would say one project they were workiing on was "Inventory Thumbnails." They would also add a single folder inventory view. Of updates to the viewer, they were working on an "emoji viewer" that Grumpity called "a third party contribution from Catnip" amd that they've been "trying to make sure everything works." A project viewer should be availablt in "weeks."
Just before twenty minutes, Strawberry asked if there were plans to make Second Life "VR ready." Mojo's response was "probably not this year" saying the render rate would have to be at least around 60 frames per second. Of the possibility of a Linux viewer, Mojo did say there were internal tools that benefit from a Linux viewer. But for now what they have can run through Wine and Proton. But an outright official Linix viewer isn't in the Lab's plans for this year.
At 21:30, Strawberry brought up Marketplace saying there's been "a lot of changes." Grumpity would say a week earlier, the Lab released an update to Marketplace search. She would go on to say they were "taking your feedback, we're making changes." The fifty-page cap on search results has been removed. Strawberry asked about inworld office hours. Grumpty's response was, "We have user groups for all sorts of topics ... choose your favorite and come talk to us."
Just before 26 minutes, Strawberry would ask about the upcoming New User Experience (or NUX) avatars, which one was shown off at last year's Second Life Birthday. Patch answered they were "quite a ways along in their development." The avatars themselves are done, he stated, and the work at the moment was getting them a line of clothing and attachments. They will also be "PBR ready." The avatars, he reminded, were to help new users have "better simpler easier fun," and there should be an update about them soon.
Around 27:30, Strawberry brought up Linden Homes. Patch stated there would be some information coming soon. They were working on the homes for Premium Plus resident accounts, which were "nearing completion." They were also working on expansions and additions to current themes, Victorian being named. Of Second Life's upcoming 20th anniversary celebration theme (which was announced Thursday March 16), Patch would only say "It's really, really, really big" and that they would have an announcement soon.
Before the Lab Gab ended, Patch would say they might make a "blooper reel" of errors made during the filming of the movile viewer video.
Of the theme, Patch explained the "theme will be 'Vacation and Road Trips.' Other than that, we cannot share too much information." Of when will it open, the "Soft opening" would be on June 18, when the sims are open to those in the Second Life Birthday group. June 19 is the full opening in which everyone can enter. The event's end date is yet to be determined.
Exhibitors will have more parcels this year. They will also have more freedom to design their exhibits as there will be less of an emphasis on building within the theme. Still, keeping with it is encouraged.
Applications for the event will be "coming out every couple weeks for the next month and a half," starting Feb 28 with Musicfest.
There will be more cross-promotion between the SLB and the shopping event. The shopping event itself will have eight sims.
Patch answered a couple questions sent in by residents. One was will the Cake Stage and Stage Left from the days when the SLB was resident-run be coming back. Patch responded Stage Left is still around, renamed as Main Stage. Of the Cake Stage, "We just decided to diverge and diversify. ... But you never know. We might decide to bring something like that back. ... if it fits somewhere at some point, it can come back, "I don't know if it will be this year".
Another question was if the SLB would have an adult section. Patch's answer was, "That is something that we put some thought in to, and it may happen. We still have some logistics to work out ... when it comes to different types of content that are rated at different levels in proximity to one another. That's one of the things we have to ... figure out. It's not a 'no,' but I don't have a firm 'yes' on it."
Mischevious Mole had this to say about the SL17B, "It's really about and focused on the community of Second Life. We want to encourage everybody to participate. In the past, it has very much been 'let's do exhibits based on the theme, let's do programing based on the theme, and this year, whatever your passion is.' Please think about how you can bring it to (the) Second Life Birthday and share it with everyone else."
There was more talked about afterwards on the Linden Homes and other subjects. To see the video of the whole Lab Gab, Click Here.
The thirteenth of Saffia Widdershin's SL11B videos, "The podcar tour is definitely one of the highlights of the SL11B Community Celebration. But YOU need to make sure that it has all the right details. The Madman explains."
