Top 10 Interesting Updates From The Recent Town Hall Event

Ebbe Altberg At Town Hall Meeting

Here are some of the updates that I found most interesting in simple terms during the recent town hall event with Ebbe Altberg the CEO of Linden Lab on Thursday 13th September 2018. To see the whole video of the Town Hall session, see my previous blog post. It’s definitely worth watching. I hope there will be many more Town Hall sessions in the future with more announcements.

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1. Return of Last Names

Linden Lab set a goal to return last names in Second Life in 2018. It’s now probably going to be returning either at the end of 2018 or sometime in 2019. There is no date when it will be deployed but the team are on it.

2. Animesh

It’s apparently very close to release and the Environment Enhancement Project is close to public testing very soon.

• Bakes on Mesh is still progressing and should appear before the end of the year

3. Second Life In The Cloud

Moving Second Life to a cloud infrastructure will not be completed until 2019 as it’s a long-term project. There may be more water spaces to connect between existing continents (TBC).

4. Linden Homes

The land team are working hard on things at the moment and it’s being determined if the new land will be deployed in stages or all at once. More details will be revealed before the end of 2018.

5. Tier Rates

Currently there will no plans to further change the tier rates in Second Life. The lab is still absorbing the data from the June 2018 private region restructure. The reducing of the price of land has definitely helped and the overall responses have been positive.

6. New Premium Subscription Options

There may a project that can start to be rolled out before the end of 2018. The main goals is to offer greater value to users and motivate more users to sign up to Premium levels.

7. Linux Viewer

There is a project that will try to produce a 64-bit .DEB version of the Linux viewer. This is not a priority for the viewer development stage at this time. The lab finds this a difficult issue and Linux represents a small percentage of Second Life users.

8. Second Life Economic Metrics

Apparently some metrics have been restored but not all metrics will restored. Not all of the economic data is suitable for public consumption as the lab is a business in competition with others.

9. Apple Metal Framwork (OpenGL Support)

The lab are in discussions over what steps to take next. As it stands there no plans to drop mac support as a result of Apple’s decision.

10. Re-Introducing 24 Hours Support For Non-US users

There are no plans to bring it back on the basis of the cost, covering time zones and languages etc.

Other updates worth mentioning

• New games and experiences are coming very soon
• Marketplace improvements are starting to show up and more on the way soon
• The new land auctions process has been deployed and the Mainland land auctions are still yet to come
• Grid-wide experiences may not be deployed before the end of 2018
• The lab have done a number of tests for the new themed learning islands

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I would love to know what you found most interesting during the town hall event ?.

Feel free to comment below.

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