Oz Linden talked to Jessica Lyon of Firestorm Viewer fame and Saffia Widdershins, of Prim Perfect fame at SL12B this evening. Now if you want the full skinny on the lowdown, you’ll have to wait for Prim Perfect to upload the video, which should not be too far in the future. However, if you want to read some frantically scribbled notes, that may contain inaccuracies, carry on reading here.
Oz discussed current issues, past issues and future issues in what was an extremely engaging interview.
I crashed a few times whilst taking my notes, but I’ll try not to start any blasphemous rumours. However crashing is a good place to start as that was part of the discussion. Oz explained how in the past he had worked for products where a 1% crash rate was considered pretty bad, however the crash rate for Second Life is higher than that and the panel agreed that Second Life users seem to accept these crash rates.
However Oz went to great lengths to point out that Linden Lab do not accept that crash rates should be as high as they are and they have been working on improvements and continue to work on improvements.
One point that Second Life users should bear in mind is that some viewer side crashes are out of the control of Linden Lab, for example, when someone has a graphics card that suffers from a memory leak. This is an issue that the people who create the drivers need to fix, and that’s not within Linden Lab’s remit.
The wide range of hardware that Second Life residents use is of course problematic when it comes to bug fixing, but Oz gave a tip on how to improve one’s Second Life experience, it’s a tip that I heard many many moons ago in relation to Microsoft Windows. Whereas a funky new graphics card can improve your experience in Second Life, a cheaper option may well be to increase your RAM.
Oz also discussed how new features in Second Life are received by the community, some people love them, some people hate them, some people are indifferent. However, Oz pointed out that whether people are criticising or praising a new feature, the level of intensity shows that people really care about Second Life. There was also a discussion of how some features introduced by Linden Lab won’t be appreciated by everyone because they simply don’t have the hardware to take advantage of them. A glaring example here is of course materials, whereby if you can’t see the new texture types, then you won’t see the enhanced texture on your screen. The beauty of this though is that people will still see textures as they’ve always seen them.
Oz also discussed how working with the community has been beneficial and gave an example of a recent survey on Inventory loss. The feedback from Second Life residents helped Linden Lab identify some issues that they could see would reduce the chance of inventory loss, they also got a boost from an unexpected source when a Linden Lab developer suffered inventory loss!
What about the future you may be wondering? Well one thing is for sure, Linden Lab do not sound like they are treading water when it comes to Second Life and Oz teased the audience by suggesting that they have some new features in the pipeline for Second Life that we would genuinely not believe they would ever do. I’m not sure about this, some of us have very vivid imaginations, but it sounds exciting! We won’t see these features in the next few weeks but there is testing going on. Oz refused to give us any clues as to what these features are.
Oz was more forthcoming in other areas, Linden Lab are still working on improvements to Windlight and Oz suggested that parcel Windlight may arrive. However they have to be careful as to how it’s implemented and there may be a minimum parcel size requirement.
Linden Lab are very excited about developments such as Oculus Rift and we should see further development of these technologies from a Second Life perspective.
What of Project Sansar, Linden Lab’s nextgen virtual world? Oz couldn’t reveal too much, largely because he is so committed to Second Life that he does not pay full attention to all of the Project Sansar developments. Oz’s enthusiasm for Second Life really shone through in this interview and he admitted that he really wouldn’t want to do anything else right now. Oz believes he will be working on Second Life for quite a few years to come and that this is a job that he gets a lot of job satisfaction from.
One reason for Oz’s expectation is almost certainly because he knows what Linden Lab are developing for Second Life. However another reason was touched upon, and it’s a reason I have cited for Second Life’s longevity likely being greater than people predict, Second Life is where the people are and that’s a really great advantage over other offerings.
Oz left the meeting after admitting that he had to go and play in a pool league, a real pool league that is, so he’s someone who is familiar with all the angles 😉
There was a hell of a lot more in the interview than I’ve covered here and I really would suggest watching the video in full when you get a chance, or looking for a transcript, it’s around an hour long but well worth your time.
I crashed a lot too when I was there, but one thing that I was really wondering about was that a large amount of people in the audience had Linux group tags.
Which is interesting when you consider the comments made by Oz and Jessica Lyon regarding development of viewers for Linux.
Linux is becoming the main governments OS, all over the world but in Usa,
Besides linux works much better for open sims (again sadly i don’t use it but host my regions on win xp sp3) so i guess a few attending where users on both virtual worlds.
Still, as me, that im to lazy or stubborn to make the change from a os that im 2 used to since 1995, most Sl users will keep using Windows or even worse, Apple for the yeras to come.
Now about OZ, nice to see his full commitment to Sl and He really makes a point when he states that most don’t even use Sl to it’s full potential, graphics and Ui one.
Funny that Jessica, the leader of the team that i and a few (read Black dragon’s blog) consider the most responsible for the fact that majority of users are aware of the graphics progress on Sl in last years (Mesh bodies did more for that then any firestorm release) was the one behind the questions.
Sad if one does wonders if Ll is betting all the horses on Tpv viewer dev on firestorm team, the same ones responsible for keeping majority of usrers still using the old v1 interface, that is to bad to be true, after one starts using LL official 1.
I do wish sometimes that, despite all limitations, LL official viewer was the only one allowed.
At least would force all to use its interface.
I concur with ZZ, i sometimes wish there was one viewer to rule them all. When trying to create stuff and built experiences there is always a ‘Which viewer are you using’ moment in customer support. As recent as this week at SL12B where I’m using the new Experience Tools, some people were able to get the experience to work fully, while others it failed. I don’t think it was a viewer issue, more a user habit issue, but i still had to ask what viewer they were using. Singularity, Firestorm, CtrlAlt. I knew the latest Official Viewer is set up for Experiences, but i have no idea bout all the third party viewers. And the amount of times I’ve had to help Firestorm users set their graphics to display my clothing range properly, it should just work!
I’ve never been a fan of thirdparty viewers but i understand sometimes these devs come up with a tonne of fixes that help the development of SL. But when people use a third party viewer and are like “ooh this is much faster than the officaly viewer” i wish then they would not complain to me when the grid does not display as it should.
There are things in Firestorm that I absolutely love, such as how it’s far easier to set the time of day for Windlight settings.
However I definitely understand where you’re coming from when it comes to developing experiences.
I used the official viewer from day 1. I never complained about Viewer 2. But just a few weeks ago it just stopped working for Linux systems. All new versions crash right on start, some less recent have no sound. So I was forced to switch to Kokua now. Its working fine and they even provide a 64 bit version, something that Oz says would take years to develop and would not be appreciated by most users!!???
To be honest, I do not understand why they keep piling more and more new features on a foundation that is not working well. I like Materials or Experiences, but if I had the choice between them and that my group is actually loading or a notice is sent to all of my members and not just a subset of them or that certain mesh objects would actually render, I would choose the latter.
Oz said that LL will be making changes to to the interface in some regards, but the user interface isn’t really his area.
if quoted correctly “new features in the pipeline for Second Life that we would genuinely not believe they would ever do” , while my imagination can think of tonnes of new features LL could add, most of them i don’t believe LL would do because i don’t believe they have the skills or interest in doing so.
I remember a discussion at a user group about adding an ability to animate rigged mesh objects, not attachments like we have for avatar and clothes. This would allow us to make pets, animals and NPCs that move rather than static jerky stuff. If i remember right Linden Lab said it was a feature that would be better suited to their ‘Next Thing’ (Sansar). This left me thinking how many other feature ideas just get passed over as being more suited to Sansar.
I have a tonne of features i want added to SL, Better Notification display and management, custom facial expression morphs, Custom Marketplace store fronts, Support for all manner of VR Peripherals from Leap Motion, to Vive, Facial expression mapping, and mocap suits, Better Groups management… Any of these things would be a ‘WOW, they actually decided to do it” moment.
The full interview will certainly be well worth a viewing when it’s available. I hope I haven’t misrepresented Oz’s comments.
He did mention that there are features that are better for Project Sansar and Jessica suggested that some of those features whereby you wouldn’t start from where Second Life is.
However there’s no doubt that Oz wants to enhance Second Life.
Btw, Loki loved your exibt and i used Ukando:)
In fact there are only right now a v1 style viewer that has all latest LL code:
Henry’s Cool vf viewer.
Of the v3 interface, besides LL, Ukando, Black Dragon, Kokua, Rlv and Alchemy Viewer.
All the rest are outdated viewers.
For your viewing pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPmpchJ6yfM
Thanks very much 🙂