So the clock said 23.44 and I was about to go to bed, when an email arrived. What’s this? AI Characters? I thought it was some kind of AI based avatar creation tool for new residents, but no. It’s like the old SmartBots system but you control an alternate avatar account instead of an object.
As I read through the information I got more excited and couldn’t wait until the morning to let you know what’s coming.
It’s a web interface that lets you define personality traits, behaviours, ways of speaking etc, the information provided says, basically the more you put in here the better it works. Then further along the process you provide the name and password for the Alt you intend to control.
These are screenshots of the beginning of the process, which look very promising so far. Even better given the time right now, the pages seem to work on a mobile.
This is more than a ChatBot or Greeter though, as well as simple instructions like “follow me” (given by private IM or local chat), you will be able create more advanced commands for interacting with objects and the environment.
To me this could dramatically improve immersion in Roleplay situations, particularly for new arrivals to a location when no regular players are online, or an ever present barkeep for example. Maybe I’m hoping for too much, but from what I’ve read, hopefully not.
I’m going to have a more thorough look at this and share some more, but for now, here’s the link to the official Announcement.
Linden Lab, THIS is the kind of stuff you need to be briefing your Blogger Network on!
Salt Peppermint (aka Salt Perry apparently) is the owner of the Salt & Pepper clothing brand.
The below document was shared a little earlier today(approximately 9am SLT). It’s a summary of a Merchant/Creators Zoom call with Linden Lab that happened on Monday 16th, I was not present. The accompanying message when first dropped said it could be shared. I’ve made no changes. It’s as it was at the time of being shared.
—Document Start—
1. Marketplace Challenges and Improvements
Delivery Issues:
Significant delays in item delivery have been reported, especially during high-traffic times (e.g., holidays).
These delays often result in duplicate purchases, leading to customer frustration. Creators have to handle customer support, reducing trust in the system.
Search and User Interface (UI):
The implementation of ElasticSearch caused issues with item discoverability, requiring creators to adapt keywords and descriptions to maintain visibility.
Visual changes to the Marketplace layout, such as repositioning related items, negatively affected usability and sales.
Feature Requests:
Bulk upload options for demos and related items.
A better redelivery system that prevents duplicate purchases automatically, similar to the CasperVend system.
Improvements to mobile responsiveness, which is currently under development but remains incomplete.
Resource Allocation for the Marketplace:
Linden Lab explained that the Marketplace is maintained by a small team and does not always receive consistent engineering support.
Creators suggested redistributing resources from less critical areas to prioritize fixing Marketplace issues.
2. Documentation, Tools, and Education
PBR (Physically Based Rendering):
PBR was a highly anticipated update, but its introduction revealed gaps in creator understanding due to inadequate documentation and tutorials.
Second Life’s unique implementation of PBR deviates from standard workflows, adding complexity for creators.
Lack of Centralized Resources:
Creators emphasized the need for a centralized hub of reliable information, such as a “Creator Corner,” hosting:
Tutorials on new features like PBR.
Best practices for creating optimized content.
Guidance on minimizing lag and improving performance.
Miscommunication and misinformation within the creator community exacerbate confusion.
Community Collaboration:
Creators proposed partnering with Linden Lab to co-produce tutorial videos and guides.
They suggested engaging prominent community figures (bloggers, experienced creators) to develop and distribute accurate content.
Linden Lab indicated a willingness to collaborate and explore these partnerships, including leveraging contractors.
3. Communication and Feedback Loops
Customer Support:
Merchants expressed frustration over the lack of direct communication channels for high-priority issues.
Response times for support tickets can take up to 11 days, which is considered too long for merchants.
Bug Prioritization:
Creators called for better prioritization of bugs affecting critical systems like the viewer and Marketplace.
There’s a need for clearer workflows to help creators identify whether issues are caused by bugs or user error.
Engaging Experienced Creators:
A tiered communication system was suggested, where experienced, high-earning creators could have direct contact with Linden Lab for urgent matters.
This would also allow for feedback on critical updates and enable creators to serve as intermediaries for their communities.
4. Broader Platform Goals and Marketing
Economic Overview:
Linden Lab highlighted that Second Life creators have earned $1.4 billion collectively, which exceeds the revenue shared with creators by platforms like Roblox.
This statistic underscores the platform’s commitment to supporting its creator economy, despite limitations in resources.
Marketing Plans:
Linden Lab is preparing to launch new marketing initiatives in 2024 to attract new and returning users.
Creators were invited to contribute ideas, such as leveraging customer lists or campaigns to revive interest in Second Life.
Accessibility and Retention:
The platform needs to become more accessible to new users, addressing barriers like technical complexity and outdated hardware requirements.
Simplifying the onboarding process for both users and new creators was identified as a priority.
5. Acknowledgments and Shared Goals
Platform Challenges:
Linden Lab acknowledged Second Life’s challenges as a longstanding platform with aging systems. For example, Marketplace and chat functionalities were built before modern equivalents existed (e.g., Discord).
The company admitted resource constraints and sought input from creators on prioritizing fixes and features.
Collaboration Focus:
Both parties emphasized a shared goal: improving Second Life for the benefit of creators, users, and Linden Lab.
Linden Lab expressed gratitude for creators’ contributions, stating that the platform’s success is intertwined with their efforts.
This meeting represented an important step toward addressing long-standing issues and improving transparency. It highlighted the need for collaboration between Linden Lab and the creator community to ensure Second Life remains a thriving virtual world. Generally it sparked more hope in creators, more motivation and an overall positive mindset.
—Document End—
I found it an interesting read.
Original Google Docs file which may contain changes made since publishing this post beyond my control.
If you’re a Merchant and not in the “Creators Supporting Creators” Discord server (where the invites were sent), you can apply here.
On Friday night I was in a Zoom conference call between a collection of bloggers and Linden Lab Executives.
If you’d told me that 5 years ago when I started my little blog, I wouldn’t have believed you. So thank you Linden Lab for the opportunity. Brad Oberwager (CEO of Linden Lab) did say that they wanted our honest opinions, so here it is.
The focus was on the Second Life Mobile App and what’s on the horizon. There’s a lot to go through, so please bear with me.
I’ve addressed these not in the chronological order that they’re going to arrive, but roughly the order I think they should have, with their ETAs.
Address Bar – Q1 2025
Notecards – Not on the slides but Grumpity Linden said “Three Months Plus”
New account creation – December 2024
Persistent chat logs & Group Notice Push notifications – December 2024
Item level avatar editing – Early Q2 2025
Lobby – Q1 2025
Franky I think the app shouldn’t have gone to Public Beta until the first three were added, but they’re finally coming. Simply because if you told someone about the App, they’d go try it and find they couldn’t do much and delete it. Maybe a New Year big splash release with these features might have been better.
Address Bar: One of the major missing features in the mobile app is getting around. Currently in both the Alpha & Beta versions, you can only go to the Mobile Showcase locations and your Favourites (the ones stuck at the top of your desktop viewer). Fortunately this feature coming soon that will allow you to enter SLURL location addresses and also Share them using your device’s native Sharing system.
Notecards: One of the bloggers raised a question about notecards, particularly for CSRs (Customer Support Representatives) for creators. If a customer has a problem, they may send a notecard detailing the issue.
However on the mobile app there’s currently no way to open them,so the CSRs are tied to a PC in order to read the notes and respond. Grumpity Linden revealed that they are working on a way to read them. However it’s likely to be in a different way. Since there’s no access to avatars Inventory on mobile, the in-progress solution is to have the notecards read out in a chat dialog. This will be a great step forward for this group of Residents, but sadly they’ll have to wait a little longer. The timescale for this ability is estimated at three months or more.
Note: this was right at the end of the call, past the official end time, so several attendees had left and not many people will have heard the above.
New Accounts: Pretty self explanatory, despite the app not being targeted at new signups, this needed to be here at Beta Release. If people see screenshots or hear about there being this cool new app and they weren’t an existing Resident, they’d have been stuck.
Persistent chat logs: Peviously on the mobile app, if you log out and back in your conversation history will be lost. In an update this month, the chat history will be stored locally on your device.
Item level avatar editing: Something that wasn’t mentioned much, but is featured on the presentation slides is individually worn items adjustment.
Lobby: Basically a holding screen showing you stuff while the world loads. They probably spent ages on it (speculation) but I don’t see it as a big deal. The only tempting point on the slide image is “Reach mid-tier and lower end devices”, perhaps this needs a little more emphasis, if the intention is to attract users with older tech.
Comment on Unity
A last point made by Philip Linden regarding a pre-submitted question. Paraphrased: “Now that Linden Lab have a working visual rendering engine on the Unity platform, will the desktop client move to Unity?” In short, no.
The reason for this is fairly simple, according to Philip: “The Unity engine can’t render as many avatars in close proximity.”
I know for a long time people have been harping on about this at Meet the Lindens events, now they have an answer and a reason.
Summary:
Well done Linden Lab, your mobile feature set is nearly level with the Lumiya Viewer (2012-2017 RIP), except with additions of Mesh & BoM but minus Inventory. I’m sure they’re sick of that comparison, but it was ahead of its time and is an unavoidable benchmark.
The Zoom call on Friday is likely to be the first of several to come. Perhaps this process of reaching out and connecting with Bloggers & Vloggers, allowing early previews, should have started before the Beta public release. That way the Lab may have been dissuaded from releasing an under-developed product.
So as I said in my previous post on this subject, do give it a go, but don’t expect too much yet. Then come back in a month and try again, it is after all still a Beta version.
Last year I signed up for the Alpha Testing programme for a Second Life mobile app, restricted to Premium Plus subscribers. It was pretty flakey back then. But fast forward to Thursday 14th November and it’s now been made available as an open Beta for every Second Life resident and works pretty well.
So should you download it? I’d say Yes, but limit your expectations. This is not a desktop equivalent or replacement, more a companion app. You can walk about, change between saved Outfits and Teleport to your set Favourite locations and a few specific places. Chatting in groups and nearby chat works well enough and you can pay items such as rent boxes or shop vendor boards(making a use-case). Streaming music as you may find playing in a club is a feature too, but I’ve not tried visiting such a location on the app yet.
I have been giving the latest version of the Android app a go and it’s a great improvement on the early Alpha builds. One thing I’d definitely recommend when first trying it out is make sure you have a lot of space! It can take a while to get used to the controls and you don’t want to be stuck in the corner of a sky box while you experiment.
I used my homestead Bloodrose Bay simply because that’s where I happened to have been last. It turned out to be quite a good choice. The buildings I have set out are spacious inside and there are some with and without doors to enter. There’s also what’s often the bane of SL exploring..spiral stairs, indoor and out.
While this all looks pretty good for a mobile viewer, nothing apart from the trees have PBR (Physically Based Rendering) textures. Hopefully Linden Lab will get their shiny new texture system to work in their shiny new app.
The unrezzed white things down there are trees with PBR textures.
Screenshots taken on a Google Pixel 7 using default app settings.
The aim of the app is to try and bring back old residents that have left SL, because “It’s not on mobile” is apparently a reason many no longer log in. I wasn’t amongst the bloggers invited to a Zoom call with Linden Lab executives (Edit: turns out they sent the invite to a different email address, so I’ll be watching out for the next one!) to discuss/announce all this, so I’m going on quotes from a couple of people that were:
I’m impressed with what Linden Lab have created and would have been great all round, if it weren’t lacking PBR support. However the target audience (old users that haven’t logged in for ages) are unlikely to have any PBR clothing in their inventory anyway.
PBR clothing is just blank without any fallback textures. Which is the way many creators are going.
I renamed an old account with the Last name “Witch”. However they didn’t have much of an inventory, let alone Halloween stuff, so I took them to Halloween Shop & Hop. With 0L balance I wanted to try and make a decent Witch avatar from the gifts and other free items. It was surprisingly easy using the FabFreel chart that listed them all. By “not much” I mean they literally needed Everything including basic mesh body parts.
Since I intended to use the Free version of the Legacy mesh body(only because it’s free), that allowed me to narrow down clothing to items that would fit that body, I still ended up with too many outfits!
Trickier things were body parts like a mesh head, skin & hair. I only found a couple of stores offering these items on the list, a red skin & a green skin.
That left me with the final piece,a mesh head. Fortunately BeSpoke still has their Faun head out as a freebie. Also since I started this Freebie looks idea, BeSpoke have released FREE Hunan heads as a permanent freebie too. Since both those heads come with a skin too, I now had plenty to work with and decided to make a few avatar looks instead of just one. I’m going to spread those over a few posts because the credits list got insanely long!
Right after releasing Western Rider featured in my last post, Salt & Pepper released another outfit, simply called Burlesque. It really does speak for itself.
The store Salt & Pepper released a new outfit recently called Western Rider at the Teegle Dog & Pony Show. This obviously resulted in a slew of photos on social media of people wearing it, usually on horseback.
While that’s all very well and good, I felt like trying a different take on it. I got an idea when at a Western theme party not long ago I heard the song lyrics “Save a horse, ride a cowboy”. It made me think; any woman can be a “cowgirl” she just needs the right kind of ride….
While that might have been fun, I like to keep my blog PG rated, so I veered away from that train of thought,instead I thought “Why ride a horse when you can ride a Centaur?”
Imagine if Centaurs weren’t the graceful beings we see them portrayed as in stories and Second Life community. What if they were as Wild as the old West? Could they be tamed, made civilized? Intriguing questions that may lead to an interesting story in the future.
I want to say a big thankyou to Tori Landau for playing the part of the Centaur in the photos and suggesting the idea of Wild.
Rider Credits:
Clothes: Western Rider by Salt & Pepper at Teegle Dog & Pony Show (Western Rider does have a matching hat you can purchase)
Hat & Hair: TRUTH Montana – Redhead with Hat – TRUTH
Skin: SANDY CHLOE’ NB BODY MAITREYA*-Lelutka evo X – WoW Skins::
Freckles: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Freckles.013
Scars, mud, blush and scratches from Izzie’s Izzie’s – Body Aged Claw Scars 6 Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Face Aged Claw Scars 6 Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Dirt & Mud medium Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – 04 Ear Dirt more (dark) Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Winter Blush (light) Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Scratches Nose (light) Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Scratches L Cheek (light)
Avatars posed using the Jinx Passenger System for Centaur.
Location: Copper Canyon created by Camilla Runo, now sadly closed.
Everyone has had a busy few weeks with festive celebrations and the start of a New Year. None of which I blogged about because, well everyone else was, and given the year I had in 2023, I skipped the “Year Review” post too.
However I couldn’t let today’s news go by without comment. The dates of Fantasy Faire 2024, the event of the Second Life year for many, have been announced. So it’s time to mark your calendar and cancel/make no plans for just under 3 weeks:
18th April – 5th May 2024
Below is the announcement post by Sonya Marmurek.
Somewhere in the Mists the giraffes graze. They reach for the leaves of Yggdrasil, wade in the waters of Glimmering Meadows. On occasion a clip-clop of unicorn hooves can be heard in the distance. A snuffle of a hedgehog under the most royal of shrubberies feels more sleepy than alarmed. The Fairelands winter in the […]
After a rather tedious trip to the libary in my last post, I’ve now got some lovely stuff to show you. More from PixelBox, an absolutely gorgeous skin from Fallen Gods and flying ship from En Pointe.
Today’s outfit is the kind of thing you’d often see me in, steampunk style turned rocker.
The photos were taken on my fabulous flying galleon, created by Ketsui Naidoo. If you’re a Fantasy Faire Fan you’ll notice it looks remarkably like the FaireChylde (the venue for many parties), that’s because she made that too! If you want your own, she currently has a 35% sale on here entire store (excluding very new items) for a whole month.
You do need a bit of space for one of these, because that’s the tower of a full-size castle at the bottom of the photo.
