The Future Of SL Events Past And Future

Now you may get a sense of deja vu when you hear that Jessica Lyon is organising a discussion on the future of Second Life event. However fear not, there’s a future of Second Life event from the past and there’s one set for the future, although if you read this post after the date of the future event it will have happened in the past!

Inara Pey also reports on the new event and points out that the discussion is about the future of Second Life, not the future of Linden Lab’s planned new world. Personally I think they will have difficulty avoiding discussion about the new world but it would be better all round if those attending stayed on topic.

The full details of the event are :

A very special Question and Answer meeting is planned for Wednesday July 2nd at 7AM SLT in the Firestorm Auditorium with Oz Linden (Technical Director of Second Life) and possibly Pete Linden (Director of communications at Second Life (AKA Gray of The Lab from San Francisco)).

The discussion will ONLY be about the future of our current beloved platform ‘Second Life’ and will not venture into the new platform currently under development. Lets hear what LL has planned for Second Life as there is plenty of time for questions about the new platform at a later date.

  • Seating is limited, come early.
  • The event will be recorded and posted here once rendered, as well as transcribed and summarized by Inara Pey.
  • The event will be live streamed http://www.livestream.com/metaworld2 Questions will be monitored from the stream.
  • If you have questions to ask please leave them in a comment on the Firestorm blog post and Jessica will try to get through as many as she can during the show.
  • All questions must be on topic about Second Life and not the new platform.

Location And Time :

Wednesday, July 2nd at 7am SLT

SLURL : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Phoenix%20Firestorm%20Support/171/128/4002

 

Obviously a lot of people won’t be able to attend the meeting at that time but that’s an issue no matter what time a meeting is held. However an interesting meeting has already been held on this subject, with Jessica Lyon leading the conversation.

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Slink – A Refreshing Shopping Location

I’m not a fashionista, I’ll never be a fashionista, so I’m not going to post about fashion. I don’t generally post about shopping either. However this evening I happened to find myself at Slink. Now Slink are famous for their mesh hands and feet. I’ve never shook a mesh hand or kissed a mesh foot, I’m way behind the times with things like this and I’d be doing Siddean Munro a great disservice if I tried to talk about Slink’s products.

However what I can talk about is the design of the sims, which totally took me by surprise because they’re both pleasing on the eye and the graphics card.

Slink West

Shopping experiences are often not much fun due to the fact that they can be busy and people pack a lot into small spaces. Not so with Slink which makes good use of the space as well as making good use of not making all textures and buildings in your line of sight. Whether this is on purpose or not I don’t know, but it definitely works well. Some buildings are down alleys, others are in a nice open square but the fact that some textures are out of line of sight is a good design technique.

Slink Mainstore

 

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Danko Whitfield’s Photographs Of Winterfell In Second Life

The Storytellers Pub

The Storytellers pub stands proudly near the water’s edge in the sim of Winterfell Laudanum. The pub and surrounding area are extremely picturesque. The pub has as its landlord one Danko Whitfield, who as well as having a home in Second Life also has homes in Opensim and Kitely.

Danko has also decided to open an art exhibit in one room of the pub, where he is currently exhibiting his photographs of Winterfell in Second Life. Winterfell itself is compromised of a series of sims that make up the Winterfell estate, it neighbours Caledon and  there is some light roleplaying involved in these areas at times, don’t let that put you off!

Danko Whifield Exhibition

 

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Ebbe Altberg Throws Down The Gauntlet Regarding Fixing Second Life Group Chat

I like Ebbe Altberg, he talks to the community, he’s not afraid to tell people they are angry :

Wow, you are an angry person. Ok, so, why are you so angry?

He talks to the press and has recently been talking to Re/Code in an article entitled : Second Life Creator Linden Lab Says Virtual Worlds and Virtual Reality Belong Together. Early on in that article we see that Ebbe has learnt how to talk the talk :

“We don’t call it a game,” says Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, almost before our interview has begun.

He’s talking about Linden’s most famous product, Second Life, now 11 years old. That’s old by game — sorry, “virtual world” — standards, but its “significant revenue” means the 185-person company is profitable, Altberg said. Coming to Linden from BranchOut after the departure of CEO Rod Humble in January, Altberg does not mince words about Second Life’s past mistakes.

That article also talks about Oclus Rift usage in Second Life, including a shout out to Jo Yardley of 1920’s Berlin without mentioning her name :

“One creator went into her virtual world in Oculus for the first time and was crying,” Altberg said. “It’s very powerful stuff.”

Philip Rosedale also features in the article with talk of High Fidelity but I’m going off on a tangent here, the point is Ebbe engages and it’s very encouraging. However one of the problems with engaging is that everything you say is dissected, analysed and at times misunderstood. Then there’s the fact that what you say is remembered, especially on the internet. So it was with some surprise that I witnessed Ebbe getting involved in a Twitter exchange about group chat. Not only did Ebbe get involved, he actually suggested that group chat will be fixed before the new world launches, an extremely bold claim indeed.

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Why Linden Lab Should Not Open The Content Migration Can Of Worms

When buying this package of textures, what you are really buying is a legal limited license to use and modify them according to your specific needs insides Second Life. You do not actually own them, nor the copyright.

The above are pretty standard terms for content creators within Second Life when they purchase textures. Textures really need to be sold as full permissions for people to use them in their creations and therefore the person selling the textures wants to place restrictions on use outside of Second Life. There are other items that will come with similar terms, building kits etc.

However they highlight an issue when it comes to Linden Lab’s new world because I’ve seen a lot of talk of people wanting to know if they can bring their content across into the new virtual world Linden Lab have planned. Some content simply won’t be compatible, some will. However even when it comes to content that is compatible Linden Lab should tread very carefully because of issues such as the Licence terms I opened this post with. Mesh and Textures are likely candidates to be compatible with the new world but just because they are compatible it doesn’t mean Linden Lab should facilitate transfers.

Then there are issues that have arisen since Linden Lab’s controversial terms of service change. Website CG Textures announced :

6th September 2013: Terms of Service update, using our images in Second Life is no longer allowed.

What has changed?

From 6 September 2013 you are no longer permitted to add our images to Second Life or other Linden Lab products. The use of textures downloaded prior to this date is allowed.

CG textures did not like the Linden Lab terms of service change and it remains a problem today, ten or so months on from when they were changed. The word on the street is that Linden Lab are trying to change the terms to reflect their intent but it has been an extremely slow process. However that’s an aside, the simple matter is that migrating content that has been built with CG textures content would be controversial to say the least.

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