Mything the Mark

I thought I’d flip the topic around, Mark Kingdon opened when giving a keynote address (via MetaMeets TV) to the MetaMeet conference being held in Dublin, The topic being ‘Old Myths and New Realities’, and talk about some of the new myths that are forming about Second Life today and some of them are new myths that I’ve been helping create; and since I’m helping to create these new myths, I’d like to try and debunk some of those new myths…

What follows is a 22-minute insight into the future of Second Life directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

And it is both a fascinating and worrying insight into how those at the top see SL developing over the next year or so.

On the fascinating / welcome side of things Kingdon is candid in his view that while the core emphasis of his tenure to date at LL has been a drive to bring in new users, he is well aware that this is not enough to ensure the continued growth of the platform. Indeed, he openly states both consumers (“new users”) and creators are vital gears in the engine of SL’s economy, and both need to be supported. He then goes on to point to shared media as being a prime example of supporting creativity in SL and the forthcoming (i.e. end-of-year) arrival of mesh imports.

But then things start to get a bit worrying, as Kingdon intrinsically links “creativity” in SL with “art” and the Linden Endowment of the Arts (LEA). The LEA is a hand-picked group M and his colleagues have determined to be the “thought leaders” in the SL arts community to set a direction and curate submissions which we can display in our new arts centre. so Linden Lab’s contribution to this venture is going to be to contribute land…and lot of sims…maybe 70 sims…

BOING!!!

SEVENTY sims? Pardon me, but that is one BIG land mass. Now, art in SL is not a new thing – as Kingdon notes – and much of it is currently supported out of the artist’s own pocket (in terms of tier payments) or- more pertinently – by sim owners themselves who lease & run arts-related sims entirely out of their own pocket. If nothing else, the prospect of having to compete with up to seventy sims being provided (apparently) gratis to the arts community is something of a slap in the face with a large, wet fish for those who have supported arts and artistry for so long and so altruistically.

And it isn’t even as if this new facility is going to by open to any and all artists within SL: the selection of whom gets to display what on these sims is to be left in the hands of what amounts to an appointed quango.

Now, obviously, when setting up something like this, there needs to be a filtering of content to some degree – but one cannot help but wonder just how the filtering of submissions to this new “art continent” will be skewed by the “thought leaders” appointed to the LEA – and how many are simply going to find themselves excluded from participation on grounds that have less to do with the quality of their artistry and more with how the LEA’s own perceptions of what constitutes both “art” – be it visual or performance – and the “artist” making the submission.

Another niggling concern that tickled my mind on listening to Kingdon arose as I casually flipped through recent e-mails…and found one advertising LL’s latest “competition”: the chance to win L$50K in return for hoping your way through the Destination Guide.

Ciaran Laval is my hero on the call to arms over Search. He’s been unremitting on his calls to get Search fixed – and rightly so; and LL are promising “incremental improvements”. But…one cannot help but look upon a sudden and incentivised (to the tune of L$50K) drive to get people to use the Destinations Guide as perhaps being indicative of something deeper: could it be that LL want people to use the DG in preference to the borked-up Places in search? If so, then one cannot help be feel concerned for those that try to maintain private art-related sims; if they are reliant on getting listed on the Destination Guide to attract visitors…they are liable to be very small voices crying out against the background “noise” of LEA-approved offerings…

Another worry that crossed my mind while listening to M on this, was whither goeth the mesh creators? He seems to strongly align “art” and “content” as being one-in-the-same. Questions have already been raised on the subject of mesh and its potential to impact the economy (and creativity) within Second Life – by both myself and others. Tom Hale himself admits that the concerns need to be addressed….are we going to see the LEA somehow involved in this as well? Combined with some new “Gold Content Providers Program”?

If so…whither then for the “amateur” content creator?

Beyond this, M did lay to rest one welcome ghost: that LL are trying to “out” everyone. The paranoid androids of the blogrum have been rattling on about this every time words such as “face”, “book”, “tweet” and “plurk” have ended up strung together in sentences uttered / printed by LL. So much so, that this isn’t the first time Kingdon has sought to slay this particular beast – but this doesn’t make his clarifications here any the less welcome. And, to be honest, while I am no “social networking” fan (I don’t facebook, I’m no Twit and I still think “plurking” to be the kind of sound a man makes after a particularly filling meal) – but I can see the value in making tools available that make broadening the social reach people can enjoy while using SL as being potentially beneficial.

Another welcome point Kingdon made was around the subject of third-party development and the recognition – at least around the Viewer – that LL cannot possibly meet the demands of every single segment of the user community in terms of wanted / needed Viewer functionality. As such, M was at pains to point out that LL in fact need TPV developers if the needs of the more experienced users are to be met, and that Viewer development is very much a symbiotic relationship – with the given caveat that LL must gate keep the safety and security of the SL environment.

If there was anything here I would really liked to have heard, it would have been that the TPV policy itself is not the end of the process: there is much going on around SL that is causing concern due to a lack of some transparency that really needs to have LL themselves to be more forthright about. While I am not suggesting that there is anything remotely nefarious about these “private sector” programmes, one cannot help but feel that much of the FUD, misinformation and outright angst that they are causing could be done away with were LL to issue guidelines to help govern such activities.

Perhaps the most fascinating element of the presentation was in Kingdon’s “look ahead”, which formed both a part of his address and an answer to a question from the “floor”. I’m not sure I go along entirely with all of the ideas and memes he set up at this end of the presentation, but there can be no denying he has a deep-seated belief in what he perceives as being the future for SL and the Internet as a whole. But that said, I’ll leave you to listen and judge for yourselves in this aspect of things.

This is the second such “free talk” event at which I’ve hard Mark Kingdon speak – and, as with the first time at his February “meet’n'greet“, I was impressed by his sincere passion for SL, although I remain genuinely concerned for the future of arts in SL. This whole LEA thing, while it has been on the cards for a while now, smacks unpleasantly of a further effort to control, define and promote by proxy, and one that if “successful” could well (like Linden Homes) see further sims thrown at it “magnanimously” by LL – to the death of “art” anywhere else in SL.

Changes ahoy!

Yesterday saw what marks a major set of announcements – and linked comments – from Linden Lab. During her appearance on Metanomics to promote the Beta launch of Viewer 2.0, Amanda Linden admitted that LL’s track record in communications with to and with users has been pretty appalling over the last few years, and she made mention that things were going to be changing.

Later, Amanda popped up in the Forums (nothing unusual there) and proceeded to actually respond to critiques and concerns voiced by users (which, given the general preference for senior LL executives to cherry-pick comments in the forum and sway towards answering those more given to praise than critique, was a little unusual). Now we get the “start” of a process of “Coming Soon” announcements designed to highlight upcoming changes  / implementations, etc.

This in itself isn’t new per se. We’ve had similar “programmes” in the past, taking a variety of forms from website announcements all the way back to special town hall events. Few have stuck over the years once the heady thrill of the first few posts / sessions has faded. The cynic in my says this effort also won’t last: the timing of its arrival suggests it is an attempt to show the “new influx” of users that SL is an alive and vibrant place, and LL are working hard to keep it so.

Nevertheless, kudos for the effort, and well done on presenting what is for the most part, very exciting news. Long may it continue.

While I’m not overly fussed about Viewer 2.1 (I’m still bouncing between Emerald and KirstenLee’s S20 viewer); it will hopefully bring some kind of decent stability that will enable TPV developers really sink their teeth into it via Snowglobe, and generate some really first class Viewers.

Similarly, I can’t get excited about the new Second Life Marketplace that is entering beta. This looks like it will be superseding XStreet in the future, and goes some way to explaining why Pink Linden has been conspicuous in her silence. I’m finding it hard to get excited by this new venture, for a couple of reasons. OK… more than a couple.

First off, Pink appears to be in charge. Sorry, but she is someone I have very little respect for and has proven herself less concerned about user’s views and legitimate concerns on matters than she is in pushing through policy and earning (one assumes) corporate brownie points. Beyond that, this new market environment looks like it’ll be the place where some of the more unpopular commerce policies will be enforced, and given Pink’s attitude at OH meetings, the control is liable to be draconian.

Most of all, however, there is the fact that however it is dressed up, this seems to be geared towards pushing shoppers into buying on-line, rather than in-world thus generating revenue for LL. As Pink herself states: The portion of Second Life Residents using XStreetSL has gone from 8% to 20%, with 2/3 of Residents telling us they shop on Xstreet before checking inworld. Now, I’ve no idea where or when the surveys and meetings relating to the gathering of these figures were held – I didn’t see or hear anything, and I’ve been an SLx / XSL merchant for well over 2 years, but the upward trend is something LL are very keen to see continue. XSL itself already enjoys many advantages over in-world shopping. For a start, Viewer 2.0 search can make finding what you are seeking unnecessarily complex at times – but more than that, XSL gets pumped straight to the user’s desktop “dashboard”, and faces no real competition from the forums…because there is currently no real classifieds forum (although we are being told that “will change”). Indeed, many policies and actions on the part of the commerce team have been directly geared toward pushing buyers to Xstreet, rather than towards in-world stores. Therefore, one cannot help but worry that this direction is going to be more aggressively pursued when the Marketplace is formally launched.

As it stands, given the information provided in the Merchant’s Wiki, those advertising on XSL will have their work cut-out in the coming weeks to gain “compliance” with the new standards for the SLMP.

Of a much brighter note are the announcements of forthcoming technical changes. First among these is the new that LL have listened to the complaints about Search and are putting effort into fixing it, particularly where Land and Events are concerned. Good!

We finally have official confirmation that Havoc 7.0 and full Mesh imports are coming down the line, with Havoc 7.0 due to arrive in the summer, and Mesh going to the beta grid around the same time, for public testing ready for a hoped-for end-of year launch.

Hopefully, the lessons of Havoc 4.0 are ingrained on a wall somewhere at LL, and the update to 7.0 will progress smoothly and effectively. Again, it has been on public test on the Beta grid, and those I’ve spoken to about it say it seems more than OK. If all goes according to plan, Havoc 7.0 will roll-out with Server 1.40.

Mesh is something a lot of people have been calling for a long while now, and it could possibly be the thing to revolutionise SL in terms of content. Demo videos on the subject have been around for ages, but assuming the implementation is well-handled, and allowing for the learning curve many content creators will face, mesh presents a lot of new opportunities for established 3D modellers.

That said, mesh will bring a substantial can of worms with it, and there are important aspects that need to be addressed:

• Impact on the economy. Two things here: not everyone is going to be able to get to grips with mesh and the creation import of objects…thus the sudden influx of seemingly high-quality items could well put a lot of content creators out of business; also the sheer “wow” factor of mesh object might lead to their prices being massively over-inflated, creating an unexpected (and possibly damaging) spike in economic returns
• Performance. Again, so far as I can tell from my cursory reading, two things: first off will be the risk of those of us (me included) who are far from experts in 3D modelling creating complex models withtens of  thousands of polygons that…grind a sim to a standstill when rezzed in-world. Also, with the masses of 3D content (legal and ripped) floating around the web, the risk of the grid suddenly getting overloaded with a gazillion uploads
• Related to the above: IP rights, use of copyrighted material, etc., etc. Some form of safeguard needs to be implemented or SL /LL risks becoming home to even more copyrighted material & open to accusations of violations of the same.

Speaking in the discussion thread following the announcement, T Linden indicates these things are “front and centre” of LL’s thinking, and rightly so. But these aren’t the only concerns. There is potential here for LL to completely overhaul the commerce environment and mandate strict controls (I could say “licences”, as this seems to be the Linden Word of the Quarter) governing who can and cannot upload creations to SL and define the fees they pay in order to do so. As I’ve said elsewhere, eyes at Battery Street are probably looking over the fence at Blue Mars to see how well commerce and content creation runs there….

The feedback to the announcement has been largely positive – and rightly so. The concerns raised by some have been valid, and it again appears as if concerns are being taken on board. SL needs to stay abreast of developments elsewhere if it is to properly expand, and much of what is mapped out in this announcement will help in that regard. Nevertheless, as a couple of commentators in the discussion thread have pointed out, it would be good to see other “coming soon” features finally implemented – such as smooth sim crossings, something that has been “coming soon” since I returned to SL back at the end of 2006…!

P.S. I’ve ignored the comments around Avatars United simply because I don’t use it nowadays (never did really), and I don’t see anything there to attract me.

Moving towards script limits

Well, it took longer than originally planned, but server 1.38(.1) has rolled out onto the grid. With it comes new LSL extensions and (for those using Viewer 2.0 and its derivatives) the initial script management tools.

The latter take two forms: a breakdown of scripts running on a region (sim), and an Avatar’s personal script load; the former will only be visible to those “owning” land, or who are members of a group with land “ownership” (and then only on the land they “own”), while the latter should be available to anyone wherever they are in the grid.

Currently, both are limited in their meaning, because a) we don’t actually know what the overall limits are going to be for either in-world scripts or for the “pool” of resources to be allocated per server / sim to avatars; and b) the tools don’t accurately reflect Mono script usage – Mono scripts can utilise any amount of memory up to 64Kb (with the average apparently being around 9Kb), but only the 64Kb reserved for a Mono script (whether or not it is using less) is reported. Thus, Mono scripts currently appear to be hogging resources, when this may not be the case.

A further problem with the current tools is that, when looking at in-world script usage, they are simply too broad-based. Details can only be displayed for the entire region rather than for individual parcels. Hopefully, this will become more granular in the future, but for now it does possibly invite the kind of knee-jerk reaction the promotion of Avatar Rendering Costs created (albeit on a far smaller scale, given the limited access to script information), with people with access to the information screaming blue murder at the sim owner because a) the sim is laggy, and b) their neighbour is running XX “gigantic” scripts, and so must be responsible for the lag.

Access to the in-world script list is obtained by going to ABOUT LAND and then clicking on the SCRIPT INFO button in the GENERAL tab of the About Land pop-up.

Script Info - Land (note avatar names purposefully hidden to preserve individuals' privacy)

The list can be sorted in a number of ways – by script size or via avatars names (alphabetically ordered by first name, etc).

There are three buttons on the list – REFRESH – self-explanatory; HIGHLIGHT – which allows an object to be “red beamed”  after selecting it on the list, thus allowing its physical location to be confirmed) and RETURN – which allows an object highlighted in the list to be returned to the named owner’s inventory. In the case of this last item, I sincerely hope the functionality is restricted to SIM owners / Estate Managers, for obvious reasons.

At the top of the list is a small information area entitled “Parcel Script Memory” – possibly indicative that the display will be further refined to parcel level, rather than listing the contents of an entire sim. This section also gives a practical indication that script limits have not been set, as it will report that the sim is using XXXXXXXKb out of 0Kb.

For those who are not land “owners”, their personal script info can still be accessed through one of two ways: either via the SCRIPT INFO button in the GENERAL tab of ABOUT LAND, or via the SCRIPT INFO button that is displayed in the APPEARANCE editing window. Clicking on the MY AVATAR tab at the top of the script listing pop-up will then display the relevant information in both cases.

Avatar Script Info Display

At the moment, both displays are purely informational, and will have no real meaning until final limits for scripts are set by Linden Lab.  But the process has now started, and it is going to be interesting to see how things develop and whether LL stick to their promise of being open and communicative as further elements of this new policy are rolled out.

Server 1.38 rolls outs

Following the recent announcement on the subject, sever release 1.38 has started arriving, and with it the first steps in script management, together with other goodies.

Some 20% of the grid will be used as a pilot environment during the roll-out, with the rest of the grid receiving the update (assuming the pilot goes well) by the 6th April.

For scripters / builders, there are a series of new LSL commands than mean that (a) a lot of us are going to be busy for a while and (b) overall script counts / memory loading for certain functions should be reduced as the new functions are adopted. Initially, the ability to incorporate the new functions (for those that use them) will be limited to those working on 1.38 server sims (obviously) – so many of us are going to have to wait until after the roll-out has been completed before we start determining what needs to be changed.

As far as the script management tools are concerned, these are only available for those using Viewer 2.0; the functionality is not being back-ported to Viewer 1.2x (unless third-party developers opt to do so).

Ciaran Laval currently gives an overview of the new About Land script information tabs, and if it is not old hat by the time my home sim receives 1.38, I’ll likely have a few words on the information displays as well – unless, of course, Linden Lab keep to Jack’s stated promise and provide the necessary Information themselves. In this regard, and even allowing for the current roll-out being a pilot, I was somewhat surprised that nothing on the situation was posted in the LL blog (although a brief note did eventually appear in the Grid Status links).

Reaction to the new server code has so far been good –  those in the pilot are reporting good stability and overall improvements in sim performances. Doubtless, part of the latter is down to 1.38 fixing the Mono rezzing / start-up bug that would cause massive lag spikes.

Providing LL communicate the new script management tools and their limitations clearly, and estate owners can communicate matters to their tenants as well, 1.38 will hopefully be a boon to SL overall.