This week we discuss SL9B, tech turnarounds, Apple’s WWDC, the Second Life mesh deformer, ads in social media and more with special guest Eclectic Wingtips!
This week’s topics include:
- More info on Dio
- Gez Linden Leaves Linden Lab
- SL9B Update
- SL9B Flickr Group
- MetaReality LIVE at SL9B - Thursday (21st) 1pm SLT!
- Tech Turnarounds
- Is the desktop dead?
- Apple’s WWDC
- Mesh Deformer Update
- Shed me no tiers
- The New Application Botgirl Would Love
- New Web to Avatar Motion Capture System from Japan
- The Habbo incident
- Shaker
- Facebook, ‘Likes’ Become Ads
- Kinect’s Emotional Ads
- How I Met Yoko Ono in Second Life
- Eclectic Apparel
Guests:
Eclectic Wingtips is a avid Second Life user and virtual clothing designer since 2008. She is best known as the owner of Eclectic Apparel. She is also an active plurker.
Saffia Widdershins (brief appearance providing an SL9B update) is a well known Second Life user, community leader, and blogger. She is best known as Owner and CEO of Prim Perfect Publications, publisher and editor of Prim Perfect Magazine and as a co-host of the Treet.tv show Designing Worlds.
Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden) is visual effects artist, software developer, and interactive designer extraordinaire.
Thank you to our sponsors, Botgirl’s Identity Circus and Pretty Feet!
WRT to the Tier articles, I would point out that while Tateru and I discussed matters, we came to the same conclusion from different directions.
As such, while Tateru focused on the in-world side of things (and took a lot of heat for doing so), I focused more on what a tier reduction would potentially mean to Linden Lab – which is a very different kettle of fish to the question of estate holders passing-on tier reductions to their tenants.
Looking at the realities of revenue and cuts, my argument is that even a 10% reduction of tier by Linden Lab could have enormous ramifications on their revenue stream with little or no guarantee that it will generate any form of real or lasting uptake through increased land sales.
Or in summary: the gamble isn’t worth the risk to LL at this point in time.
Will it remain that way for the future? Probably not, and that is where I see the new products being very beneficial to LL (and SL) because it stands to remove the dependency the former has on the latter for its financial survival.
I would strongly disagree with Qarl’s points however (as I do also touch on the subject of tier reductions being passed on:
While it is true a tier reduction doesn’t necessarily have to be passed on in full by an estate holder to tenants, there are two problems that emerge if at least some of it isn’t passed on:
1. Those estates that don’t pass on at least some of the “saving” (please note the use of quotes around that word!) to tenants, they do risk people upping stakes and moving to greener (and cheaper) pastures elsewhere – thus risking an exacerbation with their own problems of unrented land, empty regions and pondering the question of further returns.
2. If estates, either individually or collectively (i.e. by watching to see what one another do) opt to withhold all or part of the tier reduction or opt to pass a minimal amount on to the land market then absolutely nothing will be achieved: people will still feel land is too expensive, people who aren’t renting land will continue not to rent land, those who might otherwise expand their holdings won’t (granted, and as I’ve argued elsewhere these will likely be a minority anyway). Instead, LL will simply see their revenue stream shrink with little or no benefit.
Again, and as Tateru and I point out – the fact is that SL is “too big” in terms of land – and estates and Mainland both have huge amounts of unrented land (unrented land being a reason why private estates are returning regions to LL). Therefore, while a reduction in tier passed on to the users may well fuel an uptake in land rentals – this does not automatically equate to an increase in new regions being “sold” by Linden Lab – it will simply mean that the available unused land will diminish as people opt to rent what is currently available.
This may well be good for estates and for how SL looks when viewed on the Map (no more huge swathes of yellow appearing across regions) – but again, and at the end end of the day, it doesn’t offer Linden Lab a secure means of recouping the inevitable hit that they will take on revenue as a result of lowering tier.
So again, in summary: the gamble (of tier reduction) isn’t worth the risk to LL at this point in time.
A further issue with “having more land” is that in many cases – regardless of the current cost – those that have a pressing need for land already rent what they need. Period. As such, the idea that people will automatically rush out and obtain more land is at best questionable and at worse a complete fallacy.
For example: I’m a merchant (of sorts). I have land for my home (not, I hasten to add, my Linden Home – I treat that as my “holiday retreat”!). I have room for my store. I even have room to offer land space to my closest friends so they can have a home. Why on earth would a reduction in tier go anywhere else but in my purse? Do I need another store in-world? No – the miracle of the landmark and the teleport bring my customers to my door, so why should I start setting-up elsewhere on the grid when all it will do is increase my costs and the amount of work I need to do? Expansion within my current space? Nope – I have all the room I need.
And I’m hardly going to be alone in this.
So, while a tier in tier could well benefit some of us in-world (again, estates seeing a reduction in the amount of land they have up for rent / “sale”) – there is no automatic or guaranteed linking from this to an overall benefit to LL’s revenue. And as long as this remains the case, then any question of tier reduction is moot where Linden Lab is concerned. It is really that simple.
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Another really great show Kim!
Electric was an awesome guest. Lively, quick witted, knowledgeable and funny!
Love the updates from Saffia and Qarl did a really great job too.
I might write a few more comments later but something that came up in the show brought up something I had been pondering. The “New Web to Avatar Motion Capture System from Japan” segment about using a web cam to control facial expressions on an avatar brought up an idea I wanted to put fourth to Qarl.
I was searching creativecrash.com and found a few plug-ins Qarl had made available there for Maya. While checking out the plug-ins I ran across a link back to Qarl’s qLab blog and discovered a really interesting code he made named qDisplacement.
My immediate thought after watching the video about it was could this be adapted for SL. Could a displacement map be made on the fly from a web cam of someones face then streamed into SL to create an instant 3D version of someones face on their avatar?
Maybe have the displacement map converted into a streaming series of sculptie maps and then of course you would stream the images of the person’s face to texture the sculptie.
I don’t know just wild idea but it be really wild if it worked.