User:Andrew Linden/Office Hours/2009 03 10

Transcript of Andrew Linden's office hours:

[11:02]	Kitto Flora:	Do you need to market?
[11:02]	xstorm Radek:	looks good to me
[11:02]	Helena Lycia:	Hello
[11:02]	Simon Linden:	No, just thought I
[11:03]	Simon Linden:	I'd add it in case people wander by
[11:03]	xstorm Radek:	hi Andrew
[11:03]	Kitto Flora:	YEah... this place is close to Waterhead BA
[11:03]	xstorm Radek:	hi open
[11:03]	xstorm Radek:	*GIGGLES* :)Andrew Linden 20:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
[11:03]	Opensource Obscure:	ciao everybody
[11:03]	xstorm Radek:	oh come on the new people at waterhead are ok
[11:04]	Kitto Flora:	Right. Its the older ones who make the riots :)
[11:04]	Andrew Linden:	I don't have much to report today. I'm just fixing misc bugs last week and this one.
[11:05]	xstorm Radek:	ok yes JJ can make problems at times but he is verry smart
[11:05]	Kitto Flora:	jjccc!
[11:05]	xstorm Radek:	yup
[11:05]	Morla Mubble:	Hi people!
[11:05]	Andrew Linden:	The Waterhead references just go over my head. What is the deal with Waterhead?
[11:05]	Rex Cronon:	hi everybody
[11:05]	xstorm Radek:	hi Rex
[11:05]	Rex Cronon:	hi
[11:05]	Kitto Flora:	Its one of the ... more problematic WAs
[11:06]	Kitto Flora:	Before push was 'fixed' I'd never go there, always getting shot at
[11:06]	Andrew Linden:	Ah ok.
[11:06]	Kitto Flora:	It was like gangland
[11:06]	Andrew Linden:	Maybe I should troll the Waterhead WA one of these days as an alt.
[11:06]	xstorm Radek:	there not to bad same old same old waterhead problems i keep a eye on them from time to time they are not that bad
[11:07]	Kitto Flora:	Its .. . amusing at times, see what people try on
[11:07]	Rex Cronon:	u should try swt and rausch also:)
[11:07]	Andrew Linden:	I'm sure it would give me some ideas for anti-grief projects.
[11:07]	Kitto Flora:	Couple weeks back .. I Was accosted by some man .. "HOW OLD ARE YOU"??? I see the kid thing coming
[11:08]	Morla Mubble:	I just came here to ask Andrew a question but maybe you all can help me
[11:08]	Kitto Flora:	I was about to feed him the usual line... and apparently he read my Profile
[11:08]	Arawn Spitteler:	It's kids who want to know if others are their ages
[11:08]	Andrew Linden:	Go ahead Morla and ask. I don't have anything on my agenda today.
[11:08]	Kitto Flora:	He says 'Woah! 2004!! I didnt mean it. Really!
[11:08]	xstorm Radek:	there just is some new griefer group going in to waterhead and korea and some other sims to get the people there going
[11:08]	Kitto Flora:	and he runs away
[11:08]	Simon Linden:	What's up, Morla?
[11:08]	Morla Mubble:	hi
[11:08]	Morla Mubble:	i am writing about sl
[11:09]	xstorm Radek:	just old problem makers thats all
[11:09]	Morla Mubble:	it is my thesis in university
[11:09]	Arawn Spitteler:	What's the Field?
[11:09]	xstorm Radek:	oh welcome to secondlife Morla :-)
[11:09]	Morla Mubble:	performance studies
[11:10]	xstorm Radek:	as in the arts ?
[11:10]	Andrew Linden:	Ok Morla. Ask whatever you want.
[11:10]	Kitto Flora:	Performance of what?
[11:10]	Morla Mubble:	yeah
[11:10]	xstorm Radek:	good you will love SL
[11:10]	Andrew Linden:	The whole discussion, however, will eventually be posted on a public wiki.
[11:10]	Arawn Spitteler wanted to suggest that the llSetPrimitiveParam Issues be examined.
[11:10]	xstorm Radek:	there are many groups like that
[11:11]	Morla Mubble:	well, i thought about the graphics of sl and why the developers made it the way it is. how it is linked to the idea of the world.
[11:11]	Morla Mubble:	could you tell me something about it?
[11:11]	xstorm Radek:	hi Teravus :-)
[11:11]	Rex Cronon:	don't expect to have a show with more than 60 people concurently:)
[11:11]	Helena Lycia:	Hiya Tera :)
[11:11]	Helena Lycia:	Still got a toilet roll tube I see :)
[11:12]	Teravus Ousley:	yes maam
[11:12]	Andrew Linden:	Morla, when you say "graphics" that is slightly ambiguous. There are technical graphics issues but I don't think you're interested in those.
[11:12]	Morla Mubble:	ahh ok, i am no english native speaker soo;)
[11:12]	xstorm Radek:	i think if you look in search you can find people doing plays and much more
[11:12]	Andrew Linden:	You're wondering more about the avatar styles we enabled and the look and feel of the world?
[11:12]	xstorm Radek:	there are even librarys in sl for it
[11:13]	Andrew Linden:	I can certainly tell you about the eraly development of SL. I was one of the co-founders of Linden Lab so I've been around since we started.
[11:13]	Helena Lycia giggles
[11:13]	Morla Mubble:	I mean the design of the visual , how the avatars look, the surrounding, the items,etc
[11:13]	Morla Mubble:	grat
[11:13]	Andrew Linden:	When we started we had to make some decisions about what the avatars would look like.
[11:14]	xstorm Radek:	we did ?
[11:14]	Andrew Linden:	Philip (Linden) had a strong opinion: either the avatars should be totally non-humanoid by default, or else we should try to make the avatars look as realistically human as possible.
[11:15]	Arawn Spitteler morhs into his favorite Human Avie
[11:15]	Andrew Linden:	When development started we had a few early versions of avatars...
[11:15]	xstorm Radek:	Phillipis great about how av's look
[11:15]	Andrew Linden:	we started with some that looked like flying saucers, complete with cylon-like rotating lights.
[11:15]	Andrew Linden:	Then we had flaming eyballs
[11:15]	Andrew Linden:	then an avatar that we called "primitar" which was a humanoid that was made entirely of prims
[11:16]	Andrew Linden:	it was at that stage that Philip posed his assertion, and we decided to go for the human-like avatar
[11:16]	Morla Mubble:	and why the human?
[11:16]	Helena Lycia:	Any chance that decision could be reversed - lol
[11:16]	xstorm Radek:	what human ?
[11:17]	Andrew Linden:	in fact, the original design was to limit the avatar to the humanoid form, but to give people lots of sliders to totally customize their avatars so they could be as unique as they wanted
[11:17]	Morla Mubble:	so you went on from an open perspective?
[11:17]	Andrew Linden:	It was Philip's theory that a cartoony human form would not be as interesting as a realistic human or totally abstract
[11:18]	xstorm Radek:	hi morgaine
[11:18]	Morgaine Dinova:	Hiya
[11:18]	Andrew Linden:	We decided to try the humanoid form. It was a consensus, considering the two options that Philip proposed we sided toward the humanoid.
[11:18]	Rex Cronon:	hi
[11:18]	Andrew Linden:	Besides, we had already made some design decisions about how the rest of the world should look.
[11:18]	Morla Mubble:	would you say, that you tried to make everything look realistic like in rl?
[11:19]	Kitto Flora:	If you want long-term large sales - you have to have human forms. The majority of the general public understand that best.
[11:19]	Teravus Ousley:	You could also deform the human avatar by passing in position keyframes for non mPelvis joints ㋡
[11:19]	Andrew Linden:	We intentionaly made sure that the ground looked kinda like real-world ground, and that we had a blue sky, with clouds, water, and somewhat realistic trees.
[11:19]	xstorm Radek:	im never human
[11:19]	Andrew Linden:	It was another of Philip's theories that we wanted to make the virtual world a place that we would recognize.
[11:19]	Morgaine Dinova:	In January 2008, Philip said on UK TV that photorealistic SL was coming. Wonder what he meant, specifically.
[11:20]	Morla Mubble:	and then people came and formed their world into something completely different?
[11:20]	Rex Cronon:	u r kind of looking at it morgaine:)
[11:20]	Andrew Linden:	Humans are hardwired to appreciate a horizon, a ground, and vegitation (that was the assumption).
[11:20]	Rex Cronon:	that is , if u have a hot computer:)
[11:20]	Andrew Linden:	Well, we added features over the years.
[11:20]	Morgaine Dinova:	Heh, Only the water could claim to be slightly photorealistic atm :-)
[11:20]	Andrew Linden:	Early on we added attachments and suddenly the potential avatar variations really went to infinity.
[11:21]	Andrew Linden:	Including very abstract avatars.
[11:21]	Kitto Flora:	Prior to SL - and graphical worlds, all the worlds (like this) were text worlds - but there were two main camps - those with humans, and those with furry animals. (All described in text)
[11:21]	Kitto Flora:	Early on the furry camp tended to outnumber the humans
[11:21]	Andrew Linden:	However, we also added customizable animations, and those were used to make even more variations of avatar possible.
[11:21]	xstorm Radek:	some of us work and live in SL to help others get a feel for this world but to some it will not matter how some one looks or what form they take on
[11:21]	Rex Cronon:	u forget the robots kitto:)
[11:22]	Morla Mubble:	is there still a fur avatar to choose as a standard avi when you begin?
[11:22]	Opensource Obscure:	Andrew, this is really interesting.
[11:22]	xstorm Radek:	it is the understanding of the world they bring in with them and how they wish to live with in it
[11:22]	Andrew Linden:	Morgaine, I think Philip was saying that SL's graphics were tending toward photorealism gradually
[11:22]	Arawn Spitteler:	Check your library inventory for Furry
[11:22]	Andrew Linden:	we don't have any major photorealistic feature set in the pipeline
[11:22]	Opensource Obscure:	(this whole story is interesting, i meant )
[11:23]	Kitto Flora:	I see new arrivals appearing in a furry form, so I think theres one or two in the select list
[11:23]	Andrew Linden:	but if you consider the improved lighting, sky, and shadows over the years... the trend is positive toward a photorealistic render engine
[11:23]	Andrew Linden:	but there is a long way to go
[11:23]	Rex Cronon:	wait until flexible sculpties r here:)
[11:23]	xstorm Radek:	but there is a large number of people bringing in real world in to SL and what they do in RL
[11:24]	Andrew Linden:	Also in the very beginning we thought that what would be interesting about the virtual world would be the natural setting
[11:24]	Andrew Linden:	so we wanted to have interactive water, animals, plants that coudl grow
[11:24]	Andrew Linden:	and we had breakable objects in the very beginning
[11:24]	Arawn Spitteler:	Assuming that Watermelons are naturally splattered all over Torley
[11:24]	Opensource Obscure:	when you refer to the 'pipeline' term , you mean .. let's say next 18-24 months? more?
[11:24]	xstorm Radek:	gee i must be the crazy missfit *GIGGLES* :)Andrew Linden 20:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
[11:24]	Morgaine Dinova:	Andrew: not sure about that though. There's a general push towards more features, but not to photorealism really. Eg. never has there been a push towards larger texture limit, better terrain, denser av meshes, draped clothing, etc. Not only is it not happening --- it's not even suggested as a goal.
[11:25]	Teravus Ousley:	I recall seeing that in the LindenWorld video ㋡
[11:25]	Andrew Linden:	That is, we thought what would be interesting to explore would be a virtual natural landscape
[11:25]	Andrew Linden:	that people would wander into a virtual forest and be interested
[11:25]	Teravus Ousley:	also, the water appeared to be a heightfield.. that changed based on how many bombs you dropped in it ㋡
[11:25]	Morla Mubble:	would you say more realism is more immersion?
[11:25]	Morgaine Dinova:	Yeah
[11:25]	Andrew Linden:	however, we soon realized that what was TRULY interesting was the capability to create stuff in a collaborative environment
[11:25]	Helena Lycia:	What happened to interactive water?
[11:25]	Morgaine Dinova:	The water does it for me.
[11:25]	xstorm Radek:	i like VR caves
[11:26]	Kitto Flora:	In the other grids - the OpenSim Grids - theres a big push to include "better" Avatar meshes. Its a huge job thhough.
[11:26]	Helena Lycia:	Gads, I wish I could build caves with terrain rather than prims
[11:26]	Andrew Linden:	One of the very first features we had (back when we called it LindenWorld for lack of a better name) was interactive water
[11:26]	Morgaine Dinova:	I wish terrain would be evolved towards photorealism. Add land to water, and oh my, it would be stunning.
[11:26]	Andrew Linden:	you could poke the water surface, and waves would propagate into neighboring regions
[11:26]	Opensource Obscure:	If this can help you, Morla, I find that using a 3D mouse (Spacenavigator for me) also increases immersion
[11:26]	xstorm Radek:	in time that 3d landedit may be part of SL
[11:27]	Andrew Linden:	but once we realized that the really interesting stuff was content creation we had to remove water -- it was too expensive in CPU cycles to compute and stream
[11:27]	Kitto Flora:	Splash waves and fringe effects are the current big 'missings' for water
[11:27]	Andrew Linden:	so interactve water was removed as an optimization
[11:27]	Helena Lycia:	Oh
[11:27]	Opensource Obscure:	can it go back as a feature in the future?
[11:28]	Andrew Linden:	We'll eventually add interactive water back, but I should note that it is not a necessary feature for SL to be a success.
[11:28]	Morgaine Dinova:	Oh, so that's why I no longer have wave effects when swimming. How sad :-(
[11:28]	xstorm Radek:	you can script splash water
[11:28]	Andrew Linden:	So it was a good thing to remove when we were in startup mode.
[11:28]	Teravus Ousley:	as far as I know, the client isn't capable of reading it on the stream right now.. (I've tried to send it)
[11:28]	Andrew Linden:	Similarly, we removed breakable objects, and animals.
[11:28]	Helena Lycia:	Poor animals
[11:28]	Andrew Linden:	We had some demo animals in the early beta
[11:28]	Opensource Obscure:	breakable animals! i'd like them.
[11:29]	Helena Lycia:	Breakable buildings would be nice... rather than hurting my head when they fail to rez until I'm banging into them
[11:29]	Kitto Flora:	A lot of that stuff can be made here though - splashable water, ripples, andimals that break - but its all prims scripts and particles
[11:30]	Helena Lycia:	Were have an epidemic of exploding sheep on our sims
[11:30]	Andrew Linden:	Right, the current feature set allows content creators to approximate breakable stuff and water splashes with workarounds
[11:30]	xstorm Radek:	*GIGGLES* :)Andrew Linden 20:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
[11:30]	Andrew Linden:	so we haven't had to add those featurers explicitly yet
[11:30]	xstorm Radek:	i love the sheep
[11:30]	Kitto Flora:	Can I raise a physics problem?
[11:30]	Arawn Spitteler:	Is Sindy not here?
[11:30]	Teravus Ousley has a 'hatch egg' that you sit in.. and when you stand up.. it falls apart.
[11:30]	Andrew Linden:	So what happend a long time ago... we had a board meeting back in... late 2001 or so
[11:31]	Morla Mubble:	so you went for less realism and for more...??
[11:31]	Andrew Linden:	we were going to be demoing some new features we had added... the ability to rez various shapes and adjust their sizes/scales
[11:31]	Andrew Linden:	some people were in the board meeting, and others were in another room
[11:32]	Andrew Linden:	the plan was that we would just build some content in world for about half an hour while the board watched
[11:32]	Morgaine Dinova chuckles
[11:32]	Andrew Linden:	they had a projection screen up on the wall
[11:32]	xstorm Radek:	crash ?
[11:32]	Andrew Linden:	We did it, and had lots of fun. There were about... 5 or 6 of us just building stuff
[11:33]	Andrew Linden:	meanwhile the board quickly got sidetracked in a discussion and stopped paying attention
[11:33]	Andrew Linden:	after about a full half hour they looked back at the screen
[11:33]	Andrew Linden:	and whe had built a litte town with all sorts of creative stuff
[11:34]	Andrew Linden:	including some stuff that was self referential, and collaborative
[11:34]	Andrew Linden:	somone had built a big snowman
[11:34]	Morgaine Dinova:	Heh
[11:34]	Andrew Linden:	and someone else came along and built an army of small snowmen bowing and paying homage
[11:34]	Andrew Linden:	we had all sorts of small buildings
[11:34]	Morgaine Dinova:	HAHAHA
[11:34]	Helena Lycia:	Snowmen are notoriously religious
[11:34]	Morgaine Dinova:	Very cool
[11:34]	Andrew Linden:	a little town that had grown organically, and collaboratively
[11:35]	Morla Mubble:	how many peolpe did build?
[11:35]	Andrew Linden:	so anyway, the board realized that this was far more interesting than the natural landscape that we were planning on making
[11:35]	Andrew Linden:	about 5 or 6 people building max
[11:35]	Andrew Linden:	and the build tools were more limited then
[11:36]	Andrew Linden:	we just had very basic shapes (boxes, spheres, cylinders, mabye cones)
[11:36]	Andrew Linden:	no cuts or hollows
[11:36]	Andrew Linden:	this was very early... 2001, before our first demo of march 2002
[11:36]	xstorm Radek gave you SL s Second Map in Dec 2002.
[11:36]	Morla Mubble:	wow, sounds great
[11:37]	Morgaine Dinova:	This is a lovely story, wish I hadn't missed the first part of meeting :-(
[11:37]	Andrew Linden:	We were in stealth mode at that point.
[11:37]	Andrew Linden:	Our first public announcement was at a conference called "Demo" in March of 2002
[11:37]	Andrew Linden:	and I think it was still called "Linden World" at that point...
[11:38]	Andrew Linden:	The thing about the Demo conference is that you can't show anything there that has been publicly shown previously.
[11:38]	Andrew Linden:	We were selected to open the show.
[11:38]	Andrew Linden:	And the attendees are only venture capitalists and journalists, more or less.
[11:39]	Andrew Linden:	Anyway... I think maybe we had started or were about to start our private beta program.
[11:39]	Andrew Linden:	We must have had a few demo "users" at that point.
[11:39]	Andrew Linden:	Hrm... maybe not. We only had about four distinct avatars.
[11:40]	Andrew Linden:	No sliders yet.
[11:40]	Andrew Linden:	You'll have to prompt me for more stories. I don't want to ramble about stuff that no one is interested in.
[11:41]	Kitto Flora:	Can I raise a physics problem?
[11:41]	xstorm Radek:	tell her about 2002
[11:41]	Andrew Linden:	Sure Kitto.
[11:41]	Rex Cronon:	u should write a book "SL. How it all started" :)
[11:41]	Morla Mubble:	ok! its very interesting! but what do you think is motivating peolpe to do not uhmanoid forms as avis?
[11:41]	Kitto Flora:	I found a persisten ghost object that does not register on any scan
[11:41]	Morgaine Dinova:	WOW! "Not intersted" indeed, lol -- this is rivetting Andrew :-)))
[11:41]	Andrew Linden:	There is already a book on "The Making of Second Life"
[11:41]	Kitto Flora:	Its survived sim restarts
[11:42]	Kitto Flora:	All it has is a collision shape
[11:42]	Andrew Linden:	I'm skeptical Kitto, but willing to look into it.
[11:42]	Helena Lycia:	I've seen that problem too a couple of times Kitto, I think... an invisible object that prevents movement but doesn't appear to exist as prims/objects
[11:42]	Andrew Linden:	Actually Kitto, I bet I know what the problem is...
[11:42]	Kitto Flora:	?
[11:42]	Andrew Linden:	It is either:
[11:43]	xstorm Radek:	i have seen it too
[11:43]	Andrew Linden:	(1) rotating object that someone should have set phantom
[11:43]	Helena Lycia:	Not in the cases I've seen
[11:43]	Andrew Linden:	(2) extreme sculpty that looks nothing like its collision shape
[11:43]	xstorm Radek:	its some sort of ghost server side
[11:44]	Helena Lycia:	I worked out what one incident was...
[11:44]	Andrew Linden:	(3) a mismatch between the terrain's shape and its apparent shape
[11:44]	Andrew Linden:	That's it, it must be one of those three
[11:44]	xstorm Radek:	or bad ssculptys
[11:44]	Helena Lycia:	I prim got deleted just before/after a sim crash
[11:44]	Morla Mubble:	So what is motivating you people to do non humanoid forms as avis?
[11:44]	Kitto Flora:	THis item (above ground) is ~10M dia and ~10M tall
[11:44]	Helena Lycia:	the object was somehow in a cache but no longer existed... a restart of the sim following the crash made it go away
[11:44]	Helena Lycia:	However another one I encountered I could not account for
[11:44]	xstorm Radek:	i look like this in real life ;-)
[11:45]	Morla Mubble:	yeah! ;)
[11:45]	Andrew Linden:	Kitto, tell me the region name and location of the object. I'll try to look into it and tell you which one it is.
[11:45]	Helena Lycia:	An object where there had been no object and the sim was stable but I just couldn't move through an area of apparently empty space
[11:45]	Kitto Flora:	Its near a tree, which has a sculpty trunk. BUT the tree is set phantom, AND you can walk between the ghost and the tree - theres a BIG offset
[11:45]	Kitto Flora:	Its in Moritz 68, 64 on the ground
[11:45]	Andrew Linden:	Ok
[11:46]	Helena Lycia:	I've also noticed a couple of objects that claim to be phantom but interact physically but the problem seems to be temporary and I've never been able to get anything reliable to JIRA
[11:46]	xstorm Radek:	yes dirty data on the server side can do that with sculptys
[11:46]	Kitto Flora:	Theres been lots of 'ghosts' in SL, but they usually vanish on sim reset, also show up on scanners
[11:46]	Helena Lycia:	Loads of ghost AVS recently
[11:46]	xstorm Radek:	i work with sculptys every day
[11:47]	Kitto Flora:	The 'rotating' possibility I dont understand, Andres
[11:47]	Helena Lycia:	If an object rotates non-physically it appears to be in a different location than it actually is...
[11:47]	Helena Lycia:	So you walk into something that appears somwhere else
[11:47]	xstorm Radek:	them was the days :-)
[11:48]	Andrew Linden:	this is a world map that claims to be from... Dec 2002
[11:48]	Andrew Linden:	we first started with about 16 regions... the 3x3 square, and the key shape... 9, 10, 11, etc
[11:48]	Rex Cronon:	20 sims
[11:48]	Andrew Linden:	Region 1 is "Da Boom"
[11:49]	Andrew Linden:	Well, this is Dec 2002. When we first opened there were only 16.
[11:49]	Helena Lycia:	Do any of those sims still exist?
[11:49]	xstorm Radek:	do not forget the linden labs sandbox that was around that time :-)
[11:50]	Morla Mubble:	how many are there now?
[11:50]	Opensource Obscure:	Helena: Da Boom still exists for sure
[11:50]	Andrew Linden:	Philip wrote a little internal "whitepaper" where he outlined our plans for the virtual world and how he thought it would turn out.
[11:50]	Kitto Flora:	I think all those still exist
[11:50]	Andrew Linden:	Turns out years later we read it again... and it was remarkably on target.
[11:50]	Kitto Flora:	And some of the geography is little changed
[11:50]	Andrew Linden:	All the regions here are still around.
[11:51]	Andrew Linden:	I think there are about 33k regions now
[11:51]	Opensource Obscure:	is that 'whitepaper' plan .. accomplished now?
[11:51]	Morgaine Dinova:	Is there some sort of Wayback Machine for SL, to capture things for posterity?
[11:51]	Morla Mubble:	did it turn out how Philip thought?
[11:51]	Andrew Linden:	Most of the whitepaper came true to pass, I think.
[11:52]	Opensource Obscure:	morgaine: that would be really an important tool! think all stuff that disappeared ..
[11:52]	Andrew Linden:	The paper was written before we launched, probably before Demo... 2001 or 2000 I would guess.
[11:52]	Rex Cronon:	is called the asset server:)
[11:52]	Morgaine Dinova:	I'm thinking things like Gibson, that really were historic.
[11:52]	Morla Mubble:	so you went for realism but total control of the residents?
[11:53]	xstorm Radek:	?
[11:53]	Andrew Linden:	yes, we wanted the virtual world to be "realistic"... not abstract
[11:53]	Andrew Linden:	When making a new virtual world you have lots of possibilities...
[11:53]	xstorm Radek:	total control :-)
[11:53]	Morla Mubble:	control in forms of aesthetic
[11:53]	xstorm Radek:	is that real ?
[11:54]	Andrew Linden:	we could have made it an empty space, with arbitrary gravity
[11:54]	Andrew Linden:	and the rendering style could have accentuated the possibility of abstract forms
[11:54]	Andrew Linden:	but instead we went with normal ground + sky + sun + moon + trees
[11:54]	Morgaine Dinova:	Surely both are needed, no? An SL that is just pixellated FL for the augmentists, and an SL that is not FL-like for the immersionists who want a break from FL?
[11:54]	Teravus Ousley:	+water
[11:54]	Andrew Linden:	we were trying to make the virtual world feel like a real place
[11:54]	Kitto Flora:	Interesting orbital parameters though :)
[11:55]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, well the orbital params were arbitrary... we just wanted day and night, and moving sun
[11:55]	Andrew Linden:	originally we had equal day and night
[11:55]	Opensource Obscure:	remember that the Earth is Flat
[11:55]	Andrew Linden:	but it turns out it was hard to build at night
[11:55]	Andrew Linden:	nighttime was lest interesting and just frustrating for the users
[11:55]	Morgaine Dinova:	That's one of the biggest limitations of SL, the Flatland. I want planets!
[11:55]	xstorm Radek:	no its not i fly and work at 3000 all the time
[11:56]	Andrew Linden:	so we ended up increasing the ambient light at night, and made the nighttime shorter
[11:56]	Andrew Linden:	but we didn't eliminate it
[11:56]	xstorm Radek:	it looks round to me
[11:56]	Andrew Linden:	so now it is... 3 hours of day and 1 hour night
[11:56]	Andrew Linden:	the flat topography was done because it was easy
[11:57]	Andrew Linden:	Also, an early part of the design was to have one big world instead of lots of small separate worlds
[11:57]	Andrew Linden:	that was a requirement
[11:57]	Andrew Linden:	that if you were somewhere in the world, then anyone else in the world would be able to walk or travel to your location
[11:57]	Andrew Linden:	Here's a little story...
[11:58]	xstorm Radek:	tell about the telleport back then :-)
[11:58]	Morgaine Dinova:	Coo:-)
[11:58]	Andrew Linden:	Way back in 2000... there were about 4 or 5 of us in the lab
[11:58]	Morgaine Dinova:	This should be around a campfire :-)
[11:58]	Andrew Linden:	we had barely started on the project... we had some very basic regions lined up, no objects, but water that would propagate between regions
[11:59]	Helena Lycia:	That was inevitable
[11:59]	Andrew Linden:	and we found out about ActiveWorlds... we hadn't even heard of it until then... maybe late summer 2000
[11:59]	Andrew Linden:	turns out ActiveWorlds had been out since 1996 or something
[11:59]	Andrew Linden:	we played around with it for an hour or two
[12:00]	Morgaine Dinova:	Heh. I used the precursor to ActiveWorlds in 1996. I remember it because I started one specific job in 1996, and it was at that client site I discovered it.
[12:00]	Morgaine Dinova:	I loved the space station
[12:00]	Andrew Linden:	and I remember thinking at the time, "AW doesn't have the features we're planning on making --> We're going to blow AW out of the water."
[12:00]	Andrew Linden:	The funny thing was... we had barely written *anything* yet.
[12:00]	Morgaine Dinova:	Hehe
[12:01]	Andrew Linden:	But the planned feature set was clearly going to eclipse AW, at least in my mind at the time.
[12:01]	Morgaine Dinova:	But it had the space station! And we don't have that even now :-(
[12:01]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, well... I never made it to the AW space station.
[12:01]	Arawn Spitteler:	Might be a lesson there, Active Worlds couldn't fix what had been accepted
[12:01]	Kitto Flora:	Theres space stations here
[12:01]	xstorm Radek:	there are spacestations in SL
[12:02]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, that is a worry about SL now... if we can't improve fast enough we might get eclipsed by the next best thing
[12:02]	Morgaine Dinova:	You don't feel in space though. In AW you did.
[12:02]	Andrew Linden:	something to think about when doing the development on the project
[12:02]	Andrew Linden:	anyway... I've got to run. I've got a 12:00 meeting starting now.
[12:02]	xstorm Radek:	no no this is my home i will never go
[12:02]	Teravus Ousley:	ok, take care, thanks for the stories.
[12:02]	Qie Niangao:	thanks, Andrew
[12:03]	Opensource Obscure:	that was cool, Andrew, thanks!
[12:03]	xstorm Radek:	bye Andrew :-)
[12:03]	Kitto Flora:	Others are trying to catch up to SL, but is a struggle :)
[12:03]	Morgaine Dinova:	Andrew: found a Blue Sky team within LL ... keep the future humming :-)
[12:03]	Ellla McMahon:	thank you very much Andrew .. it was great to hear about the early SL :))
[12:03]	Rex Cronon:	bye andrew
[12:03]	Kitto Flora:	TY andrew
[12:03]	Kitto Flora:	Was interesting info :)
[12:03]	Opensource Obscure:	i'll ask to you what I wanted to ask earlier then -
[12:03]	Opensource Obscure:	I often visit SL places to see if they changed with time. I'd like a Second Life tool that lets me quickly spot new / updated objects within a region. Should it be a client or 3rd-party feature? Are you aware of any resident-created tool that goes in this direction? Would it make sense to include it in the viewer? Any other idea or tips?
[12:03]	Morgaine Dinova:	That was wonderful Andrew, thanks for the stories, loved it :-)