Linden Lab – Page 99 – Ciaran Laval

September 13, 2014

RIP Joe Miller Linden Lab’s VP of Platform and Technology Development From 2006 To 2010

Joe Miller (AKA Joe Linden) passed away on July 27th after a battle with cancer. Joe was Linden Lab’s VP of Platform and Technology Development between 2006 and 2010. The sad news was reported yesterday by Linden Lab in a blog post : Remembering Joe Miller and a further blog post by Hamlet Au over at New World Notes : RIP Joe Miller, Linden Lab’s Beloved Former Platform VP. Hamlet’s post contains a link to a memorial page about Joe.

Joe joined Linden Lab in 2006 and in a press release from Linden Lab he said :

I’m thrilled to join the team responsible for Second Life, the most interesting interactive platform in existence today. By drawing upon my background in product design and user experience, I look forward to helping make Second Life even more accessible to residents worldwide.

Joe was interviewed by Catherine Smith (AKA Catherine Linden) back in January 2008 regarding the work Linden Lab were doing in Second Life. The interview was part of a podcast series called Inside The Lab and can be listened to here. In the podcast Joe talks about how the Lab were moving away from their downtime procedure. Older residents will remember that the grid used to be taken down for several hours whilst updates were rolled out to the grid. Joe also talked about :

Sim stability – with the launch of Havok 4.6
Sim performance – with the introduction of Mono for script compiling
Viewer stability – by introducing a new crash reporter and graphics card drivers
Viewer performance – via Windlight and the new Dazzle UI

Whereas this podcast is more than six years old and many improvements have been made during that time, it still makes for interesting listening because it talks of the challenges of a user generated content virtual world and those challenges are still very relevant today.

Joe also worked on one of the large changes to Second Life, the introduction of voice :

For me, Second Life has always been more about human communication, collaboration, and spirit than about technology. When I talk to Residents about their experiences, one of the recurring themes is improving our communication methods. For so many, Second Life is a place to make and meet new friends and collaborate with others, whether that’s in a business, educational or purely social context.

That’s why today I’m pleased to announce our intention to bring integrated voice capabilities to the Grid. This will enable all Residents to speak with each other if they wish, in addition to the existing Instant Messaging and group chat functions.

Many of you know that voice has always been part of the long-term plan for the Grid, and we truly believe voice can be a transformative technology that will lend more immediacy and dynamism to the way Residents communicate.

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September 9, 2014

The 24 Squared Fashion Event Appears To Be Well Designed

This is all a bit outside of my comfort zone, it involves fashion and shopping in Second Life. These are two activities I’m not that enamoured with. Now if there were Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, fashion and shopping, then I’d be more interested in events such as The 24 Squared.

However for some reason this event, which has been running since September 5th and runs until September 13th, caught my eye. According to a blog post from Siren Productions the event features :

1 Week…
98 Designers…
Menswear!
Womenswear!
Accessories!
Skins!
Hair!
Make-up!
Oh My…

Unfortunately there don’t appear to be lions or tigers or bears. However there are models around.

Now even if this really isn’t your sort of event it’s worth a visit because this seems to be a well designed location, low lag, plenty of wide spaces, but also making good use of scenery to prevent your graphics card trying to eat every texture on the sim too quickly.

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September 5, 2014

Does The Virtual Skin You’re In Matter?

I am not quite sure how long Linden Lab have been pointing people to a Flickr pool for promotional snapshots, but I will say it’s a bloody good idea and I’m going to dip into it! Discover Magazine had the same idea as me for the above picture too … wait wait I’m getting confused, I saw it there first! Anyway, Discover Magazine have an article up regarding skin colour in Second Life : Skin Color Still Matters in Video Games . The headline is a little misleading, I’ll get to that shortly.

The article is based on research by Jong-Eun Roselyn Lee : Does virtual diversity matter?: Effects of avatar-based diversity representation on willingness to express offline racial identity and avatar customization. I haven’t read the research paper, only the brief information on that linked page but Discover Magazine delves into it a bit deeper and explains how the study worked :

Lee gathered 56 study participants — half identifying as white and half identifying as black. She then had them read a fabricated magazine story titled “Meet the Coolest ‘Second Life’ Residents.” The eight “Second Life” avatars profiled in the story were either all white, in the low-diversity scenario, or an equal mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian, in the high-diversity scenario.

She then had them perform two tasks: Create and customize their own virtual avatars, and rate their willingness to reveal their real racial identity through the appearance of their virtual avatar.

She found that black participants reported less willingness in the low-diversity scenario, and that they also created whiter avatars, as judged by objective raters. By comparison, white study participants were largely unaffected by either the high-diversity or low-diversity scenarios.

So this is a small study and doesn’t involved enough people for it to be the sort of vibrant study many would like to see. Another interesting fact is that the 56 people did not actually engage with Second Life in a social sense. They weren’t left to wander around and report their findings.

However the problem with a study such as this is the environment. There are quite a few issues with skins in Second Life. I’ve often seen people bemoaning the lack of choice of darker skins. There are several reasons for this but the main ones seem to centre around darker skins being far harder to give life to in a world like Second Life. The textures don’t stand out as much and therefore fewer content creators want to make them and fewer customers find them appealing. This may explain why the black participants created whiter avatars, those avatars may have just looked more appealing on the screen due to the design challenges of darker skins.

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September 2, 2014September 2, 2014

Drax Files World Makers Episode 22 -Virtual Health Adventures

Episode 22 of The Drax Files World Makers – Virtual Health Adventures, has caught me somewhat by surprise as I thought the final edit was being published today, with the actual episode going live tomorrow. This is all my own fault as we can see from the blog post from Linden Lab, sponsors of the series and from the excellent review of the episode from Inara Pey, others understood that the final edit meant it would be published today! I’ll embed the video at the end of the post.

This episode deals with usage of virtual worlds, why their immersive nature can be far more productive than a traditional website and it even exemplifies people using The Oculus Rift for even greater immersion. Pay careful attention to that because you’ll see how that issue of where the keyboard is, is a very real issue when you’re using The Oculus Rift. However also pay attention to how important the immersive environment is to this episode and of course The Oculus Rift can help to make an environment even more immersive. The main theme however is one that people probably don’t associate with a virtual world such as Second Life, that theme is working with amputees to assist them to overcome emotional trauma.

Sandra L. Winkler, assistant professor at NOVA University in Florida, who teaches occupational therapy says :

“Second Life is the perfect place for amputees to overcome emotional trauma by sharing stories and realizing they are not alone!”

Dr Winkler, who unlike her namesake Henry, hasn’t yet jumped the shark, is working on a three year study funded by the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That study is roughly halfway through its three years and whereas Dr Winkler admits that at this stage it’s too early to draw any definitive conclusions from their current work, she does feel that the virtual world environment combined with new technology is a significant next step in tele-healthcare.

Dr Winkler’s research is aided in Second Life by the development work in virtual worlds of Virtual Ability Inc. who have long had a presence in Second Life.

In the episode we see amputees embracing the virtual world and going through exercises as well as putting a virtual wheelchair into a virtual car. There is scientific evidence that this sort of process does indeed help people to be able to transfer these skills to the real world and this was something we also saw in The Drax Files: World Makers Episode 13: Creations for Parkinson’s.

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September 2, 2014

Skill Gaming Policy Arrives With Sensible Late Twist

The new Skill Gaming Policy officially arrived in Second Life yesterday. However it arrived with an apparent late twist to who is authorised to participate. The last blog post on the subject stated :

If you live in a jurisdiction where skill gaming is permitted and you plan on playing these games in Skill Gaming Regions in Second Life, you should not need to do anything differently. However, adding payment information on file now is a good way to help ensure you’re able to play as soon as Skill Gaming Regions are live.

However it seems that there had either been an omission or Linden Lab decided they needed to be a bit more careful regarding who can participate. On August 29th, after some venues had been approved, a change appears to have been made to the FAQ. The change to the FAQ is a sensible one and one that really should have been mentioned before. The change to the FAQ points out that to participate you must have current payment info on file and you must be 19 years of age or older. On top of this you can’t be connecting from a prohibited state or be a resident of a prohibited state.

The change to requiring current payment info on file is likely to throw those who wanted to go play on their alts, although those who are determined to do so know what needs to be done to allow them to access Skill Gaming Regions.

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