Second Life Basic mode seems to have progressed with what one might call unseemly haste. One day from alpha to beta, and just eleven more from beta to production, it having been released today. Mind you, only seven of those eleven days were working days.
That might not seem so bad if there had been any communication during the process.
Right now, though, the only major difference that I can discern in the new viewer thus far is that it does not actually work – at least not from where I’m sitting. It’s the only viewer that Linden Lab has put out in my memory that fell at the starting gate.
It appears to be looking up a DNS name ( _https._tcp.login.agni.lindenlab.com ) and failing – because it doesn’t exist – but where other viewers attempt to resolve additional DNS names when this one (invariably) fails, this particular viewer doesn’t seem to have the knack, and just resorts to whining.
Every other viewer works just fine for the moment.
I wish I could say I was astonished.
UPDATE: Rod Humble, Linden Lab’s new CEO, (and thus, Linden Lab itself) is aware of the problem. Rod messaged me to say that “the team is looking into it, and will post an update on status or a fix within 24 hours”.
| Second Life Basic mode seems to have progressed with what one might call unseemly haste. One day from alpha to beta, and just eleven more from beta to production, it having been released today. Mind you, only seven of those eleven days were working days.
That might not seem so bad if there had been any communication during the process.
Right now, though, the only major difference that I can discern in the new viewer thus far is that it does not actually work – at least not from where I’m sitting. It’s the only viewer that Linden Lab has put out in my memory that fell at the starting gate.
It appears to be looking up a DNS name ( _https._tcp.login.agni.lindenlab.com ) and failing – because it doesn’t exist - but where other viewers attempt to resolve additional DNS names when this one (invariably) fails, this particular viewer doesn’t seem to have the knack, and just resorts to whining.
Every other viewer works just fine for the moment.
I wish I could say I was astonished.
UPDATE: Rod Humble, Linden Lab's new CEO, (and thus, Linden Lab itself) is aware of the problem. Rod messaged me to say that "the team is looking into it, and will post an update on status or a fix within 24 hours". | |  | |
Tags: Linden Lab / Linden Research Inc, Second Life, Second Life Basic mode, Second Life viewer, Virtual Environments and Virtual Worlds
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Day seven, Second Life 3.0.0 now available in beta, Not a good day for all concerned, A very notable day, Second Life basic mode goes beta
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Worst.
Viewer.
Ever.
The viewer works just fine for me. Connected first try no issues, and like all official viewers post 2.5, is performing a lot better than TPVs in dependably rendering avatars and environments fast and completely.
That aside, the “mouse steering” complaint you had last time Tateru still seems to be the case. Except, there seems to be some rationale to it in that at least I can’t really click and focus on my avatar for mouse steering anymore like before, it seems to instead click on the ground through my avatar and the camera steers around the instantiated ‘walk to point’.
That behavior works fairly good and ideally it could be expanded upon to include looking up and down as well without the need of the keyboard. Still, for mouse-steerers the old behavior is still broke or outright deprecated without notice ‘less I’m doing something wrong
All and all its really mostly the same as the beta with some minor differences.
Now comes the relevance of Tateru’s post from earlier this month about the need for Linden Lab to actually iterate on new features. I have no doubt they’ll improve ontop of Basic eventually, but that ‘eventually’ needs to be predictable. Part of iterative software development is definite timeboxes. If this was 1-2 weeks from initial feedback to new release, then that’s a new timeframe expectation given to us. It isn’t really iterative software if the next improvement to Basic isn’t until 3 months from now, or worse the next release had nothing to do with Basic at all.
Let’s hope this is further movement in the direction of the Viewer team gaining some Chrome-like zeal in continuously deploying features and fixes; of course all properly tested and fielded for feedback.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:User_Groups#Calendar
Viewer Evolution User Group
When Wed, March 30, 8am – 9am (SL time)
Where http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hippotropolis/205/118/22/
Description Review of proposals for new features and changes in the Second Life Viewer, for both developers and users.
—-
If you’re not busy in the morning, you should drop by and let them know what a fabulous job they’ve been doing.
While not everyone seems to be affected by the issue, there are signs that it is moderately widespread. I’ll see if I can get an official comment.
On a plus side, Mr. Humble himself contacted you Tateru. That is a sign of respect, which is a nice touch for once. I’m neutral on this new viewer thing; I’ve not gathered enough info to form any opinion at all. But this is the first experience I’ve had related to Rod himself, and it’s a small but positive one.
Always nice to start off on the right foot. : )
There has been a couple viewers along the ways, around 2007 and 2008, where the download link failed, the ye olde updater would crash, or the viewer would crash upon opening. The only time LL fixes something, is when it’s a catastrophic failure.
_https._tcp.login.agni.lindenlab.com
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Oh, er. Pardon me. Ahem.
How ridiculous.
Well, at least it wasn’t released on a Friday.
I am just a bit flummoxed as to why they would introduce this backwards seeming camera steering for the “basic” if it is not a preview of how to move in SL? Why on earth would you have an introductory viewer that doesn’t teach a person how to move around in SL? I did use the viewer, and the steering has an understandable internal logic certainly, which is picked up fairly easily. But to what end?
I learn how to move using the basic viewer. Then it doesn’t work when I move to advanced. How frustrating is THAT going to be?
@Solo That particular DNS name is an optional item. Part of the Service Location Protocol (RFC 2782). As far as I know, while the viewer looks it up, it’s never been assigned.
Having just defending the new viewer’s basic mode on the SLED list, for first-hour student orientations anyway, I then read this from the CEO:
“it is now the default download for new users.”
Not good. It’s simply not ready to be the default download. Why do I sense this flailing about, as if from a company in trouble?
I believe the Lab is trying to be faster and more efficient.
However, the shorter your beta and release cycles are the more you need to publicly communicate progress and direction – otherwise people are inclined to feel that the job is half-arsed, even if that is not actually the case.
I remember when Philip took back over as interim CEO after M gutted every last drop of the company’s good will and human capital.
One of the first things Philip did was apologize for viewer 2 sucking.
I thought, “This is AWESOME! We’re finally going to get a decent viewer from LL, and maybe I’ll be able to use its new search to explore the world like I do with the snowglobe search” (you can’t find sims based on a theme or interest in v2 search) Then Philip did nothing. I never got the impression he’s even interested in being around SL since then. I can’t blame him, after having to sit by on the sidelines as M dismantled a company he spent most of his adult life building, that has to effect a person.
So, Phil quit and gave it to Rod. Instead of hitting the ground running with a speech like Phil gave, we get screen caps of him messing with basic prim shapes and a noob avatar. He obviously doesn’t get it. As his first major move, instead of making a decent viewer, he goes backwards.
I run an academic sim, so I get noobs coming up to me and asking for help all the time. So far I’ve grudgingly relogged into v2 to help them out. I’m not going to do that anymore, because the lab has shown no inclination to listen to us when we tell them what is broken. I need some kind of sign of good faith from them before I go out of my way to help the noobs.
It had better be a HUGE sign of good faith if they think I’m going to support this POS.
Maybe loosing that support from little old me doesn’t matter to a ‘big’ (cough cough) corporation like LL, or maybe it does. You see, LL’s tech support doesn’t help noobs at all. They only help premium accounts, which makes me the closest thing LL has to a tech support rep for a lot of new residents, and I just now fucking quit. IDK if that sends LL a message or not, but it should.
How many man hours did they waste on this monstrosity when they could have been fixing search or the side bar or doing… well, everything the Phoenix team is doing with their viewer?
Oh, and before they say it, I’m just saying right now that I simply believe that they are lying again when they tell us that their focus groups want a viewer like this. This has nothing to do with focus groups or what people want or even money. It has everything to do with somebody at LL not being able to admit that mistakes were made.
Well, likely none of the work on this could have been spent on Search. Different areas. V2 was Philip’s baby, btw, to the best of my knowledge.
The “it’s different teams working on different areas” rationale is wearing thin. LL is, after all, *one* company which allocates its resources to the teams and projects they deem important.
Sure, you cannot pull people from one team to put out fires in another project, but after having fired and hired what amounts to roughly half the company, we must assume they have reallocated the resources to where they want them.
@Tali At the broad scale you’d be correct, yes.
At a finer level though, putting a viewer programmer onto the Search team is – at best – a waste of time for the first couple of months, and at worst just makes for crappier Search systems and wasted time. For much the same reason that you don’t expect a dentist to do cosmetic surgery (or vice versa).
It’s easy to assume that a programmer is a programmer, and that a programmer who deals with databases could work with user-interfaces with equal facility, just as many assume that a manager is a manager and can apply their skills as easily to managing a company that builds virtual worlds, or sells potted plants. In both management and programming you have superstars who can turn their hands easily to many things, but they’re very rare. Regular folks, even very skilled and talented ones, tend to specialise more.
So, yes, during all of the tumult, the Lab made its choices – and pulled in more search specialists, while cutting the number of viewer and sim specialists. Alas, for the search issues, I believe that the fundamental premise under which the Search system is operating is flawed, and that you can pour money and manpower into that project almost endlessly without obtaining more than minute gains. Until the Lab’s fundamental approach of Search is corrected to fix that fundamental flaw, I don’t see Search improving substantively for the foreseeable future, if ever. The problem is not one of engineering, but one of design.
How the Lab is allocating or reallocating its resources internally at the moment is something of a mystery. It’s clear that they’re trying to accomplish a mammoth number of tasks, by tackling them piecemeal. Whether that is being done optimally or not, it is too soon to say. “Big Rod” is still just getting his feet wet, and the Lab doesn’t change direction very quickly.
Bubblesort: “So, Phil quit and gave it to Rod. Instead of hitting the ground running with a speech like Phil gave, we get screen caps of him messing with basic prim shapes and a noob avatar. He obviously doesn’t get it. As his first major move, instead of making a decent viewer, he goes backwards.”
Actually, I’m going to defend Rod on that one. Here’s why: one of the major mistakes Linden Lab made with hiring Kingdon was bringing in a man who knew zip about Second Life… or about VR at all. He was a businessman. He had no commonality with the average customer at all.
Unfortunately they’ve repeated that with Mr. Humble… but at least Rod has extensive background with virtual worlds. He has a MUCH better handle (I hope) on how customers think. But… he didn’t know Second Life. How to fix that? Spend a couple of weeks toodling around the grid, exploring, building, and yes, messing with basic prim shapes as a noob avatar– because that’s where we ALL started, isn’t it?
How better for Rod to understand how SL works… than to start out as a newb.
Now… what I would have LOVED to see (and I very seriously doubt happened)… would have been for Linden Lab to sit him down at a computer, with zero help or assistance, with a totally anonymous avatar and say, “There you go. You’re on your own.” Because that’s how most of us got started. Maybe some of us had friends to show us around, but I think that’s not the norm.
Or alternately, I’d have loved to show him around SL myself. I’d have taught him all the tricks and power plays. I’d have had him building in two days, scripting in two more. But I’d have also shown him the problems and helped him understand why it is Second Life is floundering.
The question is: how is Rod going to know how to design the viewer properly– or anything else– or where to guide Second Life… if he doesn’t understand Second Life and his customers?
I can’t say Linden Lab made a bad choice with Rod. I would much rather have seen them find an experienced SL user with CEO qualifications (there are such people out here). Instead they did second best: they brought in a man very well acquainted with the industry itself. Such a man can quickly see the system, examine its strengths and flaws and– IF he “gets” it and IF they leave him alone to do his job… he could very well bring major positive changes.
Those are two very, very big IFs. It is far more likely that we will either see the power factors of SL constantly interfering with his vision (who knows how LL internal is structured these days?)… or equally bad… he will try to bring in HIS vision of what SL should be… ignoring OUR vision (remember us LL… the paying customers?).
But… that’s okay for two reasons:
1. I think SL is already beyond the point of no return, has seen its maturity level at its current form, and at BEST it will continue to flump along in stagnant level before slowly declining in popularity
2. We now have alternatives. If SL died tomorrow, the customers would for the most part go “meh” (as people did with THERE) and turn to something else.
Now, it would be nice if the changes Rod makes turned out to be GOOD ones… changes that many of us could explain are necessary and essential. I have openly stated that given the power, I could turn around SL in 90 days. That’s not bragging; Tateru could probably do the same thing, as could many old-time, heavily-experienced “pro-users” on SL… especially those of us with RL business expertise.
Second Life has been in a severely declining slump– and now in stagnancy– for over two years. I flat well know based on my observations and professional RL business experience that given the power I could turn it around… and pretty quickly. So certainly Rod Humble with his even more vast secular experience can do the same… IF he understands Second Life and its customers. If he doesn’t… he may turn it around anyway– but likely none of us will want to stay on the train.
Myself, I don’t dislike Humble or anything I’ve seen so far. He’s got the creds… so I’m giving him benefit of the doubt. Do I think he’ll succeed? No, I don’t. Linden Lab itself has a way of undermining everything and throwing both sand and monkey wrenches into the gears. I doubt even Rod Humble can overcome that. To overcome that… he’d pretty much have to carry around a baseball bat. ;D
We’ll just have to sit and wait and see what happens.
Tateru: “Alas, for the search issues, I believe that the fundamental premise under which the Search system is operating is flawed. How the Lab is allocating or reallocating its resources internally at the moment is something of a mystery. It’s clear that they’re trying to accomplish a mammoth number of tasks, by tackling them piecemeal. Whether that is being done optimally or not, it is too soon to say. “Big Rod” is still just getting his feet wet, and the Lab doesn’t change direction very quickly.”
Tat, I think that entire comment above is even better than your original blog. I completely agree with you; a lot of the problems currently on Second Life is because they’re trying to fix an engine that is clearly broke past all fixing. Sometimes a person can rebuild the block… and sometime the block has to be replaced. I believe the later is the case here.
To this day I wonder why Cory left Second Life. I’ve never heard the “true” story (has anyone?) but I’ve always suspected it was because he knew the entire system needed re-written from the ground up… and Philip wouldn’t let him do that. Which is a shame, because likely Cory and his staff could have done so in one year or so, and most of SL’s current problems would have been fixed. Hard to say; Cory and his staff made some real blunders in the original design. But he’d had several years to learn and grow as a coder; I think he could have pulled it off.
So yes Tat, nail on the head: they’re trying to fix something that is too severely broken. They need to completely re-do search and totally replace the entire search engine and database, from scratch. Sometimes to build a new, solid house, the old house has to be torn down to the very foundation… and even that foundation ripped to bare ground.
I don’t think that things are necessarily unfixable, but I think that the essential principles on which many subsystems are founded need to be looked at and revised, and that is further and more (immediately) costly than the Lab has been willing to go thus far.
For Search? I actually believe that with the right attention at the right levels, it could be fixed in a week, and very functional in four. A matter of approach, rather than necessarily the tearing up and rewriting of code.
I don’t really care how they split up their money on the back end. They could have a seperate team for the mini-map and a seperate team responsible for how plants rez, as a user I couldn’t care less about the company structure.
As a user, the search is a HUGE stumbling block to my adoption of anything v2 related. What I care about is being able to easily explore the grid, and in v2 I can’t do that because of the search engine v2 uses. v2 search is broken, but snowglobe search works. To me these are not separate issues. This is a viewer problem.
To LL search and v2 are different issues. To me it’s the same problem.