ATG Grid News – Week 10
ATG Grid News – Week 10
ATG Grid News – Week 10
Our top stories:
– Lab Gab is back with new project announcements
– New Fee changes on Second Life already in place
– Marketplace search system overhauled
See full broadcast text below.
Video
Text
This is ATG Grid News.
I am Missoni.
I am Zack Haiku.
I am Katheryn Llewellyn.
Our top stories:
– Lab Gab is back with new project announcements
– New Fee changes on Second Life already in place
– Marketplace search system overhauled
Hello and welcome to ATG Grid News
Patch Linden, Senior Director of Product Operations at Linden Lab, will be making an appearance on Lab Gab later today to discuss upcoming projects from the virtual world creators. However, Linden has been teasing their followers about one specific project in particular.
On March 8th, Patch posted a photo on Flickr of himself standing next to a barn. However, there were some mysterious buttons at the bottom of the screen. This led many to speculate as to what new features Linden Lab could be working on. The following day, on March 9th, Patch tweeted a short video of his avatar walking and included arrow keys on the screen.
Based on the evidence presented, it appears that Linden Lab is developing a mobile app for SecondLife. Followers on Flickr and Twitter have been eagerly anticipating the app, with one user stating “I look forward to SecondLife’s return on iPad.”
We will have to wait until Patch Linden’s appearance on Lab Gab to see if there is an official announcement and if there is any information about the app’s release date. Stay tuned for updates on this exciting news.
On Friday, March 10th, three high-level executives from Linden Lab will be making a special appearance on Lab Gab. The focus of the discussion will be the upcoming changes and plans for 2023.
During the pre-recorded video, Second Life’s VP of Product Grumpity Linden, VP of Product Operations Patch Linden, and VP of Engineering Mojo Linden will be sharing their insights on all the latest features and changes that are coming your way.
If you have any burning questions, then be sure to submit them in advance using the Google-document link provided. The deadline for submissions is tomorrow, Thursday at 9AM SL time, so be sure to get your questions in soon. However, there is no guarantee that all questions will be answered.
The Lab Gab episode will air on the official Second Life Youtube channel on Friday, March 10th at 9AM SL time. So mark your calendars and don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity to learn more about Second Life’s plans for 2023!
Second Life is a virtual world that’s often hard to explain to friends and family who aren’t residents.
While most people understand computer gaming and online forums for specific interests like arts, nature, or photography, Second Life is a virtual venue that’s none of those things and all of them at the same time. It’s a place where you can build and create anything you can imagine, and even long-time residents are often surprised by how people use it in unexpected ways.
So what is Second Life® exactly? It’s whatever you make of it! All aspects of human life can be found here, from the glorious to the sleazy. If you’re curious about Second Life, Owl Dragonash, a well-known figure in the SL art world, has attempted to answer this question on her blog called “Owl’s Eye”. You can read it and share it with your friends who are curious about Second Life®. And if you think there’s more to add, you can submit an article to The Gazette with your own perspective.
Monso, a popular hair shop creator, has had their account reinstated after being suspended last week.
The suspension had caused quite a stir in the Second Life community, with many fans expressing their disappointment and frustration. However, after a thorough investigation, the owner was able to prove that the suspension was a mistake and that there was no wrongdoing on their part.
Monso has since released a tweet letting their supporters know they were back and that they will continue to create high-quality content for the Second Life community.
Fans of Monso can once again enjoy their products and can rest assured that the popular hair shop creator will continue to be an important part of the Second Life experience.
On Monday, March 6th, Linden Lab made an announcement that has sparked a lot of debate among Second Life users. The company announced a series of fee changes and payment options that are set to take effect soon.
The announcement started with the news that the monthly fee for a “standard” Full private region, which is a region with the standard 20,000 Land Capacity, will be reduced by US $20 a month. This means that the monthly tier will now be reduced from $229 to US $209 per month. The reduction is in honour of Second Life’s 20th anniversary, which is happening this year.
It’s important to note that the monthly Homestead tier and the US $30/month for the Full Private region land capacity bonus will remain unchanged.
Additionally, Linden Lab introduced a new payment option that has been requested by users for years. Users will now be able to pay tier on regions obtained directly from the Lab using Linden Dollars. However, there are some caveats. This option is limited to only one region per Premium Plus subscriber, and it is only available for Premium Plus subscribers. Furthermore, this option is currently in beta and set to end on September 6th, 2023. However, this date may be subject to change or extension.
To facilitate these payments, Linden Lab has created a Land Payments region where users can make payments. For more information on using Linden Dollars to pay tier to Linden Lab, please refer to the blog post on L$ Payments for Land.
These changes have sparked a lot of discussion among Second Life users. Some are excited about the reduced fees, while others are concerned about the limited availability of the new payment option. It remains to be seen how these changes will affect the virtual world and its users in the long run.
In a recent blog post, Linden Lab have announced some changes to their fees for virtual currency purchases on their platform.
Effective immediately, from Monday, March 6th, 2023, the buy fee for Linden Dollars (L$), the virtual currency used in Second Life, will be increased to 10%. The minimum and maximum fees charged for L$ purchases will remain unchanged at US $0.99 and US $9.99 per transaction, respectively.
Linden Lab also notes that the sell fee for L$ will be increased to 5%, regardless of the transaction size.
These fee changes are meant to offset the reductions in land prices and reduce their reliance on a single revenue source, as well as the rising operational costs.
Linden Lab has provided a brief FAQ section in their official blog post for any additional questions related to these changes. Specific inquiries can also be made through the forum thread associated with the blog post, or potentially submitted as a question for the Lab Gab session to be broadcast on Friday, March 10th.
Inara Pey, of modemworld.me, brings us some updates from the Second Life Content Creator’s User Group Meeting, held on Thursday, March 3rd. These meetings provide a platform for discussing work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming projects, community requests or comments, and viewer development work. The meetings are chaired by Vir Linden and can be found on the SL Public Calendar. Here are the key highlights from the meeting:
– Second Life is set to move away from the OpenGL API and adopt Vulkan for Windows and Linux, and MoltenVK for Mac.
– Linden Lab (LL) is considering implementing a feature similar to the Firestorm Local Mesh capability by Beq Janus and Vaalith Jinn as a result of a code contribution.
– LL has flagged the use of the Animesh checkbox on upload as an exploit to get around large mesh objects having heavy Land Impact values. This will be patched, and users are advised to stop using this workaround.
– Despite allowing for mesh, the current Land Impact formula still has some shortcomings, but redressing this would require significant work on bandwidth and server memory, which is not currently planned.
– The move to support glTF mesh imports is expected to offer a means to address LOD issues and Land Impact, bringing about a fundamental shift in the data model.
– LL sees PBR reflection probes as a means to test data gathering, which could eventually be used in cull distance volumes. This would enable users to set up volumes inside rooms, and the viewer would not render anything within that room until a camera is within a certain distance. This could make Land Impact more dynamic and assist in privacy matters.
In recent news, Linden Lab has announced that they have commenced moving their Marketplace search to an up-to-date version of ElasticSearch, the application they use for full text searches, in order to improve the shopping and selling experience of their users. Despite some initial bumps during the transition, Linden Lab has upgraded their technology, indexing and searching filters, moving from ElasticSearch version 2.3 to version 8.4.
The primary aim of this upgrade is to bring Marketplace search results closer to web search, ensuring faster page loads, and increasing the number of relevant results. In practical terms, this means that merchant and store names will no longer be included in product-specific searches. Linden Lab has also added several new features including the ability to do exact matches with quotes around a word or phrase, asterisk(*) wildcard searches, fuzzy matching, and search operators AND, OR, NOT which will continue to work as before.
Linden Lab has received some reports of issues during the upgrade process including an inaccurate count of matching items on the search results page, and a bug with how relevance of search results is determined. However, these issues have been addressed and Linden Lab continues to fine-tune the search function. Linden Lab encourages its users to report any issues they encounter and provide specific details, so that they can be addressed.
Overall, the ElasticSearch upgrade is expected to improve everyone’s Marketplace experience and provide a more efficient and effective search function for its users.
This has been ATG Grid News.
Enjoy the grid!
