This week we recap and discuss all the news and gossip coming out of this year’s Second Life Community Convention (SLCC).
This week’s topics include:
- Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble’s Keynote Address
- Linden Lab creating new products
- Blue Mars Lite takes 3D avatars to Google Street View
- Linden Lab still debating rebranding Second Life?
- Linden Lab company goals
- Linden curated area in Second Life
- Rod Humble’s business style
- In-world experience
- Linden Lab’s areas of focus
- Pricing
- Community Gateways
- Prototype game by the product team
- Identity/anonymity & social media
- Mesh Support announcements
- Second Life affiliate program
- Destination Guide
- Marketplace & directly delivery
- Draxtor’s video coverage of SLCC
- Full recap of SLCC with slides and videos
Guests:
William Reed Seal-Foss (Reed Steamroller) is a 3D artist and virtual world content creator for Sand Castle Studios, LLC.
Bernhard Drax (Draxtor Despres) is a musician, new media producer, and machinima journalist.
Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden) is visual effects artist, software developer, and interactive designer extraordinaire.
I agree with Qarl that Charlar was not very honest when describing resource usage of prims and weather sites like TurboSquid can be used for finding efficient content for SL.
The whole Prim Equivalence scheme they came up with is way too complex, and makes meshes too expensive. PE is the Achilles heal of the whole project and has a potential to convert big win into meh.
I call BS on Charlar. He is propagating Mesh, at the expense of the truth. He jokes about Google Sketch-Up because while LL shouted from the rooftops how it was free and could be used by anyone to make mesh all along they knew they wouldn’t be supporting it. Then they changed the cost of mesh to PE, and even qarl admits it was stupid and meaningless. Now, in order to keep a huge PE costs down, creators will need to use a low LOD so everything across the grid will just look like unrezzed blobs. That should turn the public perception of the grid around, NOT. Combine this with the increased lag and demand on graphics and LL has accomplished the exact opposite of what they said.
When it comes to mesh, I’ve been complaining about these some things as well as the bigger copyright and IP theft implication for over a year now, and at this point it can all be summed up in one word – irresponsible.