Second Life's Lab Gab - April 2024 Update, Progress on Mobile Viewer and PBR, Child Avatar Policy "Strengthening"

 

 

On Friday April 19, Linden Lab had a pre-recorded episode of Lab Gab. It included the following shorcuts to certain subjects. Strawberry Linden would interview Grumpity Linden, then later in the video (on the Beta Grid) Signal and Kyle Linden, then Kiera Linden.

00:00 - Introduction 01:00 - Grumpity Linden Introduction (Senior VP of Product and Engineering) 01:15 - Mobile App Questions 02:55 - Premium Plus subscribers can sign up for Second Life Mobile Private Alpha testing here: https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000171885-premium-plus-second-life-mobile-private-alpha-sign-up 03:27 - Mobile App progress and updates: https://second.life/mobilenews040524 06:45 - Second Life Mobile App - Developer Update Video (April 2024): https://youtu.be/ciRARYhZcZ4 09:25 - Feedback Portal: https://feedback.secondlife.com 10:15 - Rapid fire questions for Mobile app features 10:27 - Will there be support for HUDS on Mobile? 10:31 - Ability to create and build on Mobile? 10:52 - What about voice on Mobile? 10:55 - Region Estate management on Mobile? 11:03 - Mobile-specific features like GPS, vibration, and webcam integration? 11:20 - Support for keyboards and mouse control on tablets? 11:29 - Will Mobile access be free? 12:03 - Mirrors, PBR Terrain, and 2K textures: https://second.life/technews032824 12:49 - Teleporting over to the beta grid! 12:56 - Signal Linden (Director of Engineering) and Kyle Linden (Product Manager) Introduction 13:50 - Mirror Demo by Signal Linden 15:48 - 2K textures information - pricing and performance impact 17:27 - PBR Terrain Demo by Kyle Linden 17:37 - Location is Rumpus Room 2048 on the Beta Grid 18:40 - Materials Featurettes Viewer: https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/7.1.4.8270899680.html 19:14 - Accessing Aditi (the beta grid): https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000156725-accessing-aditi 20:05 - Teleporting back to the main grid! 20:23 - Keira Linden Introduction (Manager of Support Operations) 21:14 - Second Life age requirements and Child Avatar Policy information and update 23:30 - Governance and Conduct Policy updates 23:59 - New content moderation tools for both inworld and on the marketplace 24:14 - New Community Roundtable with Second Life Leadership coming in late May 25:23 - SL21B Updates: https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/blog/4-featured-news/39-second-life-birthday 26:22 - Mark your calendars - https://second.life/calendar 26:26 - Follow the Featured News Blog for upcoming updates: https://second.life/featurednews

 

Among what was discussed, Grumpity stated there were "No plans to charge for access" to the mobile viewer. It will be able to use HUDS, but of being able to build inworld and manage estates, maybe, "For serious creation, you're still going to have to use desktop." They are hoping to open the mobile viewer access further to include Premium residents "soon."

 

Progress is being made on mirrors in the Beta Grid, as well as PBR terrain, "you can see the sunshine bounce off the surfaces." There is no scheduled release date, though they felt "weeks and not months." 

 

Of the issue of underage residents in areas with clearly adult content, Kiera Linden would say, "one thing we are looking at closely is strengthening our age verification process, something we'll be sharing more about soon. ,,,Let me be clear on this one, we do not and will never allow sexualized ageplay. We do have a policy on this, and it is strictly enforced. In addition, we want to acknowledge and recognize there are residents who enjoy roleplaying as child avatars, and we have no intention of preventing that." They wanted the community of child avatars to continue to feel welcome, "but child avatars should not be present near or in regions that also have adult-rated activities. We're in the process of strengthening our child avatar policy right now, and you'll see us roll that out soon. But one of the guiding factors to these changes is to ensure an even stronger separation between child avatars, and adult-rated content and activities." 

Kiera would also say there would soon be "better clarity and stronger guidelines on conduct and policies both within our community and in our organization. Internally, we're finalizing an update to the conduct policy which addresses a wide range of topics such as how Linden Lab employees interact with the community, and policies that address perceptions of conflict of interest, or favoritism."

 

There was also a mention of a "Community Roundtable" in late May, which Grumpity called part of the desire for better communication with the residents.

Strawberry would also talk about the upcoming SL21B

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Video: "Second Life Mobile - June 2023 - SL20B Update"

 

 

 (Click here if the video does not play)

From Linden Lab, a five minute video with Grumpity, Mojo, and Patch Linden about the Lab's progress on the Second Life Mobile Viewer. It's looking like it's release won't be until 2024 as Grumpity was saying, "More features are coming in the next couple quarters as we work towards a beta." Grumpity was saying some of the latest work was about getting the viewer to unload old objects so new ones could be loaded as people move to different areas.

 

EOTB: SL Destination Guide Still Being Worked On

Although Linden Lab completed the move of it's data from old servers to The Cloud a few weeks ago, the job isn't quite finished. A few days ago in the official blog, Strawberry Linden stated that the way the Second Life Destination Guide is updated developed bugs and glitches in the move that are still being worked on. There will be no new updates "for the foreseeable future."

On December 22nd I announced that the Second Life Destination Guide was being uplifted to the cloud. That process is still underway, however, we have run into some errors. For this reason, the web publishing tool that allows us to update the Destination Guide is still unavailable and will be for the foreseeable future until these errors can be corrected. I am hoping it won’t be much longer than another week or two. I will continue to update you on this status every Friday.

The submission form for the Destination Guide is also giving errors because of this, so please continue to email your submissions to editor@lindenlab.com and we will add them as soon as we have access again.

To read the blog post in full, Click Here.

News and Commentary: Sansar, One Year Later

With the attention on InWorldz's collapse, it went almost unnoticed that a week ago it was the one year anniversary of the official release of Linden Lab's newer virtual world, Sansar. Initially simply called "the next generation virtual world" for over a year of it's three year development, once most Second Life residents had a look at the place or talked to someone who had, interest in the place by the users of it's established world quickly plummeted. So a year later, is the place any better? In short, maybe a little, but ...

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Sneak Peek: Harmony For Hope's Relay Track Campsite

Taken at Second Life Spirit from the American Cancer Society sim. Team Harmony for Hope's campsite is still "Under Construction." But they'll have it done in a few days.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Reader Submitted Picture: Sunbeamer Camp Sneak Peek

Yours truly usually gets early access to the Relay Weekend sims, partially to help keep up public interest, and partially as I usually show enough discretion to avoid giving away too soon. But as it hasn't arrive yet, Cynthia Farshore decided to send over this picture of their progress of the Sunbeamer Relay camp. The "NO!" blocks are to avoid building on.

They've only just started setting things up. So the place will end up looking much different by the time it's finished.

Furry Avatar in Sansar

It seems one issue I felt would be a turnoff to many Second Life users to Sansar, the lack of nonhuman avatars, is already being addressed.

On Wednesday August 2, "Sixfootblue" posted this picture on Reddit of what appears to be the first furry avatar known to have been created in Sansar, an anthro bat. "I had a creative kick yesterday and spent about 8 hours putting this guy together," he stated, "Unfortunately it seems arm attachments are only for the right wrist and hand, so he only has one wing for now."

"The head and armwing are just accessories I uploaded and attached to my avatar. I just used the male avatar reference on the knowledgebase to make sure the custom head fit the default one fairly closely, and then used some trial and error to match the head's colour to the body's skintone as best I could."

So just a few days after Sansar's opening, the residents themselves are making some of the improvements the virtual world needs to become more popular. What else they will come up with before the month is out should be interesting.

Hat Tip: Hamlet Au

Bixyl Shuftan

Progress on the SL13B Sims

Almost a month since the Second Life 13th Birthday sims first went up, there's been some progress on the land. From the map, the "13" symbols are gone, and it looks like some of the infrastructure has been built.

On a greater scale, the SL13B sims are just south of the Social Islands, where newer residents can get advanced tutorials about Second Life (if they can avoid the trolls in the more packed ones). Some distance away to the south are Torley Linden's watermellon-colored sims, and to the southeast the Second Life Mainland continent of Heterocera.

"The Birthday" is still two months away. Much has yet to be done, the applications for exhibitors and entertainers yet to be given out. But progress is ongoing. We'll report on more details as they come in. Keep an eye on the SL13 blog for more information.

http://www.slcommunitycelebration.info/

At the SL12B Exhibit Plot

With Qwark Allen gone, it's up to me, and longtime Newser friend Ranchan Weidman, to build the new exhibit. Yours truly isn't a professional builder, so while Ranchan was building part of the exhibit at her carrier high above HV Community, yours truly was tweaking a few things on the plot to at least make some progress. But after some work, it was time to rest.

Stay tuned for more details as The Birthday approaches.

Bixyl Shuftan

Team Firestorm Holds Public Meeting

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Saturday August 10 at Noon SL time, Jessica Lyon and others of Team Firestorm held a public meeting concerning developments with their viewer. Staff included, the meeting was attended by close to 80 residents. Jessica talked about the CHat User Interface or CHUI, and that putting it into the Firestorm Viewer was taking some work, "Linden Lab put a lot of stuff in" with code that conflicts some with Firestorm's own programing. Fixing it was proving to be something of a "nightmare" with "broken" codes.

Of Linden Lab's Project Sunshine, Jessica thought it was going smoother than she believed it would. She had earlier predicted that it would take three rollouts before the first part of it could get going, and the Lab had gotten it right on the first try. She told the audience Project Sunshine and it's server-side baking currently covered about 20% of the Grid.

Jessica and others in the staff, such as Tonya Souther, talked about other issues, such as the "chiclets," or mini pictures on the Linden and Firestorm viewers, Jessica commenting, "We've been trying to kill chiclets for ages." Whirly Fizzle stated in chat, "we have chiclets as optional for the next release." Of the next Firestorm update, Jessica promised it would be a major one.

For those who were more than a little critical of Team Firestorm's work, and it's discontinuing work on the old Phoenix Viewer, Jessica reminded that they were a group of volunteers working for free, and telling them what to do was a bit like "herding cats." This got some chuckles as Jessica'a avatar is a neck catgirl with ears and a tail, and teammate Tonya Souther a furry tigergirl. There were also reminders about filing JIRAs, "seriously, file a JIRA issue and explain as concisely as you can what the problem is and what you want to see changed and if we need more clarification, you'll be asked."

Someone also brought up the old Emerald Viewer, and there was a short explanation to newcomers that Jessica and others on Team Firestorm were once part of the team behind that old popular 3rd party viewer before some "drama" with Linden Lab, and they left to form Team Phoenix.

The Firestorm Viewer is the most popular among supported third party viewers. Except possibly for the old Phoenix Viewer which it developed but no longer supports, no other Second Life viewer is as popular.

The Phoenix blog is on http://www.firestormviewer.org/. Tonya Souther, who leads the Mac development team, has her own blog at: http://secondden.blogspot.com/.


Bixyl Shuftan