By Prokofy Neva, Virtualator
"Friends of Philip," formed by Philip Linden himself not long after he returned to Second Life as a kind of "sounding board" to bring him up to date, has morphed into an ungovernable free-for-all like these groups tend to do and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Philip never appears in it and it's not the way to reach him.
Some of my friends have left it because it is noisy chatter all day long about everything under the sun, like some party line in Penn Yan, NY in 1962 and I know because we used to have one. Or like an AOL chat room which I was never on but I was told was like that.
It's just yammer yammer bitch bitch and grief grief and beg for Lindens all day long. Mainly coders, old and nouveau FIC, and a few big prim-a-donnas have taken it over.
Occasionally, because of its large and sometimes relevant and influential membership, it is worth tuning into at moments when there seems to be actually something to be determined about What is Going On in Second Life, a closed, authoritarian society on the web with a concurrency of about 30,000-40,000 which means that its population might be oh, 300,000 or 500,000 maybe? Like Buffalo.
So in today's episode of the hour we learn that Vir Linden has left the Lab (not be confused with Sir Vix Linden who was let go months ago). Inara had this news yesterdya buried in a SLUG report which is usually eminently forgettable and unreadable but "VIEWER LINDEN VAMOOSES" should have been a Herald headline -- if the Herald still existed.
Curious minds want to know if this Linden who ran open-source projects, i.e. third-party viewers, had any falling out or kerfluffle with Ms. Beq, Goddess of Firestorm, and how this sad news might tie in, if at all (and please don't say "oh, that's how rumours get started" in our closed society where we are fed bullshit and kept like mushrooms in the dark).
Sure, people leave jobs after 20 years, perhaps to "spend time with their family" or perhaps drop acid in an ashram and find their way before repurporsing or whatever it is they do there in Silicon Valley. But suddenly? With no good-bye party? No bear by the campfire to pluck? Nothing? No "hey guys, in fact this is my last office hour *cries*". That suggests some sort of falling out, some sort of real disagreement or crisis.
And we see these weeny little nerdy coder boyz and girlz still thinking they should force PBR down the throats of us rubes. Shame on them! Honestly, I barely have time for these obnoxious tech bros that are defending the Lab at every turn and never have to actually live on sims with their handiworks. PBR has literally MADE SOME OF MY TENANTS LEAVE SL
But for them it's an artistic/aesthetic/academic/technical problem that is "interesting".
I'm trying to think who "Gray Mainlander" is. "Mainlander" is a fairly recent name you could buy for $40 so with a 2008 rez day, it's somebody else who has been an annoying LL fanboi and tech-botherer possibly from the dawn of time.
Notice how the tech set try to spin the departure of a Linden dev as "normal" and "natural" although it almost never is when it comes to Linden Lab. For lots of reasons. Because the long-haul types that have been in the Lab for 20 years are unemployable elsewhere in some regards; it's very specialized and also ridiculed in Silicon Valley although it shouldn't be. As I often say, my son put Second Life and his experience in making a mall and a public quest game called "Sewer Safari" on the Teen Grid, and learning to build and script and run a business, were a valuable lesson in online media work. It was like he was putting "AV Club in High School" on his resume from the old days. And employers who are ordinary people at some company needing media work do NOT laugh, but say "Oh, cool! Oh, is that still going? I've heard of that..."
These departing Lindens are probably NDA'd out the wazoo so "We'll Never Know" but you can always ask and dig. Yes, Runitai left, leaving his bear near a burning campfire for people to pluck, which felt heavily symbolic. Vir leaving when it's about the viewer -- this should be a huge red flag. Why? Over what disagreement?
Notice how readily Gray Mainlander wants to shift the problem of PBR and customer losses as a problem of the customer's crappy computer or low-end amateur crappy designers.
No. No.
PBR is a highly technopolitical plot that was imposed with social Darwinism on an unwilling population without consent or knowledge, in service to an utterly stupid and unnecessary gamerz vision of "how worlds should look in games so we can have SL compete with gaming."
When you hear this kind of code-cave dreck, you need to shove back hard. In fact, people have been shoving -- shoving out the door of SL back to RL or other worlds like VR whatsis.
BJoyful wins the Polyanna Positive Prize of the month once again for this thread as she has before on the forums and I cite that Twilight Zone episode with good reason! BTW, I have that book as a gift in my quest in SL which you will see as a BBB stamp venue next week.
[14:16] Gray Mainlander: just watching yesterday's tpv meeting and apparently vir linden, one of the main devs of the LL viewer has departed the lab.[14:16] Sunni Mystiere: I wonder why :/
[14:16] Gray Mainlander: they didn
[14:16] Gray Mainlander: they didn't say, rather
[14:16] Ty Bombastic: 🤔
[14:16] Sunni Mystiere: Ahh ... makes sense.
[14:17] Gray Mainlander: he was a fixture for a long time as far as i remember
[14:17] Valencia Skydancer: people quit jobs all the time.
[14:18] Sunni Mystiere: Yes, they do.
[14:18] SarahKB7 Koskinen: Runitai left a couple of weeks ago too
[14:18] Sunni Mystiere: SL just needs all the help it can get :P (said warmly)
[14:18] IceCold Skytower: why are all the main devs of SL leaving
[14:19] SarahKB7 Koskinen: Best not to speculate.
[14:19] IceCold Skytower: meanwhile im now able to make SL look like present day video games with the PBR features
[14:19] Alta Thiemen: SL is over 20. They're getting old :P
[14:19] Gray Mainlander: change in directional focus is my guess , but its just a guess
[14:19] IceCold Skytower: PBR is a great addition
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aoefh5VPRYVVidJvnipLAqDC8cbl2w
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aoefh5VPRYVVidJtx0q8_a7bCmLPUg
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aoefh5VPRYVVidJp4-B5TQOas4d9ng
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aoefh5VPRYVVidJlp7POk_uzAryWOw
[14:20] IceCold Skytower: https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aoefh5VPRYVVidQhKV01Dv_UNTmtig
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aoefh5VPRYVVidQqVjNjZqn4-WV_Zw
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aoefh5VPRYVVidQskmAom643DvjHIA
[14:20] IceCold Skytower: :P
[14:20] Kinda Vile: Because attrition is a thing and people want to move on in their career or settle down? I mean there's so many reasons why you'd might want to move on from LL.
[14:21] BJoyful: People come and go for any number of reasons ♥ I'd not panic as the Sky ahas been falling every day for almost 22 years and I'm not letting go
[14:21] Gray Mainlander: for mac peeps, LL has confirmed an internal apple silicon build that is on the future roadmap
[14:21] Sunni Mystiere: I wish many things for SL ... but that would take a ton of work.
[14:21] Sunni MystiereJade Mystiere (sunni.mystiere) listens and smiles
[14:21] Aglaia: they could start by simple things
[14:21] Alta Thiemen: Sculpties will kill SL! (But it's gonna take some time)
[14:21] Aglaia: like ordering llDialog buttons from top to bottom
[14:22] Kinda Vile: >mfw not all video games use PBR and look amazing regardless.
[14:22] Kinda Vile: >:3
[14:22] Valencia Skydancer: people are getting old
[14:22] Gray Mainlander: i wish them well , i just hope all it was is a change in jobs and not life throwing curve balls like it tends to do
[14:22] Kasabian ConstantineKasabian Constantine shakes his zimmer frame, who you callin old?!
[14:23] Kinda Vile: Can't believe I'll be 30 this year. ;n;
[14:23] Gray Mainlander: that would be a walker for americans lol
[14:23] Prettykitty Gumbo: I think the older I get the more free I feel.
[14:23] IceCold Skytower: im 36 :P
[14:23] Janus Afarensis: I can't believe Conrad will be 37 next year.
[14:23] IceCold Skytower: but yea all the people who actually know how SL works under the hood leaving
[14:23] Janus Afarensis᾿ (janus.afarensis) is 37 now. =p
[14:23] IceCold Skytower: will be a challenge for new additions to learn
[14:24] SarahKB7 Koskinen: Philip left once... in 2010
[14:24] Prettykitty Gumbo: They will be back. A lot of people come back. They miss it.
[14:24] Alta Thiemen: Fibs! *Nobdy* knows how SL works under the hood!
[14:24] Kinda Vile: One guy leaving doesn't equate to there being a mass exodus of devs leaving tho...???
[14:24] IceCold Skytower: quite a few devs left lately
[14:24] IceCold Skytower: not just one
[14:24] SarahKB7 Koskinen: Andrew left too, and he's back
[14:24] Prettykitty Gumbo: The sky is not falling.
[14:24] Alta Thiemen: SL will have to have proper weather before the sky can fall anyway
[14:24] Gray Mainlander: runitai's departure was kind of surprising, he was the pbr guy
[14:25] Medea Destiny: The sky is falling! It has been ever since I joined SL.
[14:25] IceCold Skytower: i already added my weather to my place no rain yet xD rain is acutally hard
[14:25] IceCold Skytower: i use PBR sky
[14:25] IceCold Skytower: and insane scripting lol
[14:25] IceCold Skytower: i got most of the rain figured out except for the actual rain drop effects
[14:25] Aglaia: PBR is nice but considering that it requires more efforts than usual to learn how to take profit of it, i don't know if it was a good idea
[14:26] Kinda Vile: I think PBR is a pretty good idea. But it doesn't instantly equate to good content.
[14:26] Kinda Vile: You don't just slap
[14:26] Kinda Vile: PBR on something and suddenly it's better.
[14:26] Valencia Skydancer: tech jobs are usually contract and temp, to work on a project.
[14:26] Gray Mainlander: they can only control whats in the viewer, they can't control shitty content creators, of which there are untold numbers lol
[14:26] Medea Destiny: eh PBR is easy, there are so many tools for generating PBR materials.
[14:26] BJoyful: Remember The Zimmers covering My Generation? I knew I guy named Peter in that video!
[14:26] Sunni Mystiere: Yes, Can be Valencia
[14:26] Alta Thiemen: PBR takes some learning, but I think it will be worth it
[14:26] Valencia Skydancer: long term employment is rare
[14:27] Aglaia: if Linden had made a better communication about how to take profit of PBR (like what environments settings to use and/or how to creat them and why reflection probes are important and how to use them), that would have helped
[14:27] Sunni Mystiere: With SL is was somewhat common to stay around for a while.
[14:27] Kinda Vile: It's like the same kind of people who think that they make a large project using LSL and suddenly they're the best around, but in reality their code wouldn't be up to snuff in a professional environment.
[14:27] IceCold Skytower: should see Lost Empire estate with its 3 regions, Fractal region, and Riddings, Astylus, and their neighbouring sims for good PBR content ideas
[14:27] SarahKB7 Koskinen: But how many people here have had the same job for 20+ years?
[14:27] Prokofy Neva: Wasn't Vir let go as the same time as Tommy and others? so this isn't new news I don't think?
[14:28] Medea Destiny: Just the normal learning curve with something new. There's plenty of information around to explain PBR, reflection curves etc.
[14:28] Gray Mainlander: it was news to me, i don't hang on every bit of babble out of the lab
[14:28] Sunni Mystiere: I would say over the past 10 years, that is less common, Sarah :)
[14:28] Kinda Vile: I'd probably honestly say
[14:28] Kinda Vile: Solares does amazing work with PBR.
[14:28] Medea Destiny: We are missing vitally needed script functions for PBR though.
[14:28] Prokofy Neva: Agliai, why do you have to fiddle with all that nonsense to see a thing? If the point was to "be like gaming worlds," when you go play WoW or Fortnight, do you sit with a package of settings and probes and stuff and nonsense? OF COURSE NOT. It just works! you just see it! So sorry, no sale.
[14:28] Kinda Vile: Really shows what it is capable of.
[14:28] Aglaia: not saying PBR is bad. i find PBR amazing. i've changed my whole private place and my store to use PBR materials and setup a proper environment. But i'm saying that most people, including landscapers and builders, sadly don't care about PBR and don't understand that it requires to change their habits
[14:29] Kinda Vile: Well I don't think it's a requirement to swap all of your stuff to PBR.
[14:29] SarahKB7 Koskinen: I like Geenz Linden. Fairly new but very good.
[14:29] Kinda Vile: In fact there are certain applications where the standard materials (blinn-phong) may be better for efficiency reasons.
[14:29] Alta Thiemen: similar to when materials first arrived in SL. It took a while for them to catch on
[14:29] Medea Destiny: People will shift over to PBR, it just takes time.
[14:29] Aglaia: no but at least setting up reflection probes otherwise PBR is just needless, and even ugly
[14:29] Medea Destiny: Or mesh
[14:29] Prokofy Neva: but why must it be so brutal? says who? PBR is not all that. I have some nice things with PBR; some badly made things: I make some things myself with PBR; they all look to me like shiny teapots in the antique stores of Upstate New York in 1962. They are not all that.
[14:29] Kinda Vile: For example; if your content is inherently unrealistic, PBR might be less useful for you.
[14:30] Gray Mainlander: they dont necessarily have to take up pbr, but they do need to love fs's next release with the options in there for older machines, its the only way that webrtc is getting rolled pretty much
[14:30] Gorgeous Aurelia: @Prok - Vix Linden left awhile ago, along with Alexia. Vir Linden is recently. Their names are similar, so it's confusing...
[14:30] Medea Destiny: Prokofy, there's a ton of badly made mesh around, that doesn't mean that mesh is bad.
[14:30] Prokofy Neva: PBR is fine without reflection probes in fact. It all depends on what your aesthetic demands are, and for most of us, gotta break it to you my dude, they are not high. Our draw distances are at 64, gentlemen.
[14:30] Prokofy Neva: Yes it does Medea, if it is so easy to make it badly then here's a thought! don't inflict it on the world!
[14:30] SarahKB7 Koskinen: Is anyones mesh eyes blurring in PRB when you cam away then back again?
[14:30] Gray Mainlander: folks have had a year now knowing that vivox was likely going away, i say chop it off and be done...
[14:30] SarahKB7 Koskinen: PBR*
[14:30] Aglaia: PBR materials are horrible most of the time, without probes. cause they will reflect the blue sky even inside your house
[14:30] Gray Mainlander: just do it.
[14:30] Prokofy Neva: oh right you are, Sir Vix and Vir different, of course
[14:30] Medea Destiny: Everything's easy to make badly. Let's close down SL!
[14:30] Zada Bury: Yes, it ws, Sarah
[14:31] BJoyful: I like Wendi and Izzy and... well all the Lindens. I've not met one I didn't like (or at least respect)
[14:31] Prokofy Neva: Aglaia, they do not, unless you have fussed with windlight and not put bog standard "Midday (Legacy)"
[14:31] Kinda Vile: Yeah, LSL is a scripting language that actually encourages certain coding practices that are actually bad in a normal environment.
[14:31] Aglaia: they do
[14:31] SarahKB7 Koskinen: Wondering if its a texture memory problem
[14:31] Kinda Vile: So... Yeah you can do things poorly in SL easily
[14:31] Prokofy Neva: It's a GOOD life, BJoyful. Good thing there are not AnthonyFremont Lindens, what?
[14:32] Zada Bury: At least Firestorm is a mess with the cache management at the moment, Sarah
[14:32] Kinda Vile: When you make something in Java, for example. It's good practice to avoid putting complex code into your 'Main' method. Whereas in LSL, which shares structural similarities, using too many methods can eat up memory fast and lead you closer to stack heap collisions.
[14:32] Medea Destiny: Sarah, are you using release viewer, or a preview?
[14:33] SarahKB7 Koskinen: 7.1.12 Forever
[14:33] Kinda Vile: So sometimes it's just better to write the same things twice (which is bad practice).
[14:33] Gray Mainlander: beta
[14:33] Aglaia: well you can do shit in lsl as you can do shit in java or any other language
[14:33] Matheo Finchfield: hi
[14:33] Kinda Vile: I'm mostly talking about how LSL is compiled.
[14:34] Kinda Vile: And how you may want to write for efficiency reasons, vs readability (which is usually preferred in any other language).
[14:34] Medea Destiny: There's a change to texture loading that will present smaller textures at smaller sizes. It's currently too aggressive, and causing smaller attachments to display at a texture low enough to look blurry.
[14:34] Aglaia: i always prefer readibility unless i really need something performant, which is rare
[14:34] Medea Destiny: It *should* be working so that textures are scaled proportionately to screen area, so textures don't blur, but it's not.
[14:35] Gray Mainlander: there was also talk of disappearing things when teleporting the other day in preview group, its a persistent thing apparently , that beq has experienced a lot
[14:35] Kinda Vile: Ehh... Depends what your writing. If it's a rather small script, sure.
[14:35] Kinda Vile: But not everybody writes small scripts.
[14:35] BJoyful: OMG Yes, Prok! Too true!
[14:35] Gray Mainlander: beq is lead dev of the fs project for those who aren't nerds
[14:35] Aglaia: even more for big complex projects for sure. readibily before
[14:35] BJoyful: Beq is a coding genius, I think
[14:36] Alta Thiemen: Awww, where's the fun in that. Think of the adventure you can have when you return to a script six months later and have to re-decipher it
[14:36] Kinda Vile: I'd agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that when your scripting projects get large, you also have a higher risk of running into a stack heap collision. Which then means that you have to consider how much memory your using, and things like many methods /can/ get in the way of that.
[14:36] Kinda Vile: Luckily a lot of LSL is somewhat self-documenting. ^^
[14:37] Kinda Vile: Due to it being high-level.
[14:37] Medea Destiny: Compilation to Lua is reportedly producing far more efficient bytecode that compilation to Mono. That should ease the memory problems significantly
[14:37] Kinda Vile: I hope, but I am not holding my breath. LL has promised a lot of things in the past and haven't delivered to expectations at first, then it needs a lot of updates to get there.
[14:37] Aglaia: stack heap collision is per-script. can have a little project with only script that will run out of memory, or a big project with several scripts that won't reach the limit
[14:37] Snowlord: I think the biggest issue with pbr is inconsistency. before we had alm on or off. a simple switch. and now that it's always on it was said we'd all see the same thing, however with probes.. if you have them off, if your not inside one, or if they are not setup correctly.. it's all over the place. even if you get a great look at a shop or home with a pbr outfit, as soon as you walk or drive on the mainland you look horrible. if it just worked by default as Profoky mentioned with gaming environments it would be so much better.
[14:37] Kinda Vile: PBR is just another proof of that.
[14:38] Gray Mainlander: the fs beta now has hdr and emissive off toggle, that should give you something closer to non pbr..but not exact
[14:39] Medea Destiny: Lighting has been fundamentally inconsistent since Windlight was introduced.
[14:40] Prokofy Neva: Beq is a coding genius but she was willing to impose PBR on all FS users and deprecate previous viewers on a harsh timetable so yeah
[14:40] Aglaia: would say biggest "issue" with lsl is the lack of simple things like nested list or key/value lists
[14:40] Gray Mainlander: she had no choice in the matter
[14:40] Gray Mainlander: fs must maintain parity with LL
[14:40] Aglaia: and the 64k limit, too
[14:40] BJoyful: Any change will be slow when there are so many content creators, with their own customers to satisfy and goals to achieve and 46,698 users online with their own opinions and expectations Its chaos theory in real time
[14:41] Prokofy Neva: Snowlord, frankly mesh is like that. Some skyboxes hae horrid floor bounce; some don't; some disappear at 10 pages; some don't. Etc. etc. LOD, LI, vertices, huge variety of bad to good
[14:41] Gray Mainlander: the other viewers do what they want because they dont have the user numbers that fs does
[14:41] Medea Destiny: That'll be fixed with Lua too, Aglaia
[14:41] Aglaia: this 64k limit is counter productive because it will force you to split your script in several parts, which results in something that consumes actually more memory than if it was in a single script
[14:41] Gray Mainlander: fs has to maintain what LL does lockstep pretty much
[14:41] Snowlord: even if everyone is on a pbr viewer. you still have pref options to turn off probes on various levels so still very inconsistent.
[14:41] Prokofy Neva: Gray, then you rebel, when you own 90% of the concurrency. Hello! that's what you do. the right thing.
[14:41] Aglaia: Medea i hope so... i mean i hope Lua will really become a thing
[14:41] Prokofy Neva: and frankly, that's what they ended up doing because LL itself put the brakes on their social Darwinism
[14:41] Prokofy Neva: because they saw they were losing customers, something FS never worries about
[14:42] Prokofy Neva: honestly you kids sit in the code cave all day and never talk to normal people
[14:42] Prokofy Neva: it's a national disgrace
[14:42] Gray Mainlander: yeah sure they can go rogue, and then what if LL says only our viewer can be used from now on
[14:42] Gray Mainlander: that would majorly suck
[14:42] SarahKB7 KoskinenSarahKB7 Koskinen remembers LuaLua fondly :)
[14:42] Prokofy Neva: Um, Oz Linden anyone? Who forced 2.0 on the population?
[14:42] Prokofy Neva: and FS saved search back then. Remember?
[14:42] Kinda Vile: Nested lists?
[14:42] Prokofy Neva: we have an economy today thanks to Cinders at FS then who saved search in that form.
[14:42] Prokofy Neva: FS is not some sacred goddess we must worship
[14:43] Kinda Vile: Hmm, oh yeah I suppose.
[14:43] Aglaia: lists of lists
[14:43] Prokofy Neva: It has performed good deeds but it is fallible like all anonymous unaccountable avatars giving away free stuff in SL
[14:43] Gray Mainlander: its still a better experience than the shitty LL viewer, regardless
[14:43] Kinda Vile: I know what you mean, I'm just trying to think why one would need nested lists out side of OOP design.
[14:43] Gray Mainlander: but to each their own
[14:43] Prokofy Neva: And Gray Maindlander who are...who? When you are at home?
[14:43] Prokofy Neva: Awfully blank profile
[14:44] Gray Mainlander: sure because people who cram their profiles full of things are the only ones to be trusted here lol
[14:44] Gray Mainlander: dont worry about my profile or who i am
[14:44] Prokofy Neva: I really don't have the time to sit and stand up to you people because I have rentals to take care of but you truly should be ashamed of yourself, the crap you inflict on the public
[14:44] Prokofy Neva: shame
[14:44] Gray Mainlander: surely you have better things to do
[14:44] Kinda Vile: I think you can code around a nested list by parsing a string value within a list using a separator that has separated values.
[14:44] Prokofy Neva: yes Gray, that's right. That's the ticket. Because a gray profile with nothing and mud as their picture is so reilable and trustworthy, yes indeedy
[14:44] Kinda Vile: Having that natively in the viewer would be nice... But I've rarely needed to do anything like that.
[14:44] Aglaia: you can always work around everything. but it's better and easier when it's native
[14:45] Gray Mainlander: you are a weird person prokofy thats all i can say lol
[14:45] Prokofy Neva: Your behaviour is so noted Gray and others. You wonder why LL loses customers. Look into your own souls.
[14:45] Prokofy Neva: Bye bye
[14:45] Medea Destiny: "you people"? :D
[14:45] Kinda Vile: There is a point to be made that when something memory intensive is native, it's more encouraged than when it's not there.
[14:45] Kinda Vile: Thing RISC chips for example.
[14:45] Kinda Vile: Doing less incentivizes programmers to think outside of the box.
[14:46] Aglaia: then no need list at all if you go this way
[14:46] Aglaia: let's just use strings with separators
[14:46] Kinda Vile: That's a very 'all or nothing' statement. :/
[14:47] Aglaia: many people use json to compensage the lack of structures in lsl. would be much nicer to just have proper structures in lsl, which means key/value lists and the ability to have a list as an elelment of a list
[14:47] Kinda Vile: I mean if that were the case I'd also like the inclusion of arrays for reducing memory.
[14:47] BJoyful: I really like the SLViewer but I'm so indulged with my AO in the taskbar and planar texture alignment and chat opening in separate windows... I can't go back now
[14:48] Kinda Vile: It'd be better to have a list of arrays than having a list of lists and if possible to design that around it, it'd save a lot on already limited memory.
[14:48] Medea Destiny: I think you're being added to an upated 'Feted Inner Core' list Gray, watch out.
[14:48] Aglaia: what do you call arrays? "array" has different meanings in each language. in PHP an array is actually a key/value list (aka a "map" in some other languages) which can also contain some arrays as values (like would nested lists)
[14:50] Kinda Vile: Static and fixed size linear data structures.
[14:55] BJoyful: (makes notes ;-)
[14:57] SarahKB7 Koskinen: Third Party Viewer meeting (14th February):
And so on and so forth.
The group is open to join, look it up in the book.