Viewer Clarifications; Big Picture
There is a fair amount of speculation going on with only a very short period left before the OnRez Viewer 1.0 is launched next week. I will try to clarify some here, and I want to remind everyone that this first launch is a 1.0 release, and we have a lot more work to do to get the OnRez viewer where we want it.
We have designed it with the brand new Second Lifer in mind, but we hope the current community finds it useful as well. Speaking as a longtime resident, I can say that it was a bit strange for me at first because you get used to the quirks of the default LL client, but now I love our new Viewer and wouldn’t go back.
There have been a lot of questions about Search in the new Viewer. Here is the scoop. There are two input boxes at the top of the OnRez Viewer. In one you can enter a location name (complete or partial) OR a url and it will teleport you or open a website inside the viewer. The other search input box queries Linden Lab’s standard mix of services [All, Classifieds, Events, Popular P laces, Land Sales, Places, People, and Groups] and pops up the tabbed window you are all used to seeing (see picture here). As of next week’s launch, that is the only search feature in the Viewer but we are actively working on improving Second Life’s search since it is, to put it rather mildly, flawed. To be explicit, we eagerly await Linden Lab’s improvements and as most people know, we are experimenting with solutions of our own and we will roll them out when they are ready (and ready encompasses many things like data coverage, data accuracy, scalability, accessibility of privacy options, etc).
Most of the changes you will notice are at the top level of the Viewer: the UI and menus. All the core features that current residents use such as building tools, client and debug menus, taking snapshots, etc, are all in there. We felt that it was very important to simplify the button options. As for the next layer into the SL interface, we have not had time yet to work on things like the pie wheels, appearance mode, inventory, etc.
Other than redesign and simplification, the two new features are the back/history button for SL locations, and the ability to navigate the web inside the Viewer (this is basically using the existing capabilities Linden Lab built in, and we do not yet support flash or other plugins). There is also a Shop button that pops open the embedded browser and takes you to Shop OnRez. We have not had time to provide a seamless login experience between the Viewer and Shop for 1.0 but I hope we can add that soon thereafter.
To step back for a second, I’ve often said that there are four things that need to be solved for Second Life to grow now that the initial PR-driven growth is slowing (which is not a bad thing). If we can make the landing and initial experiences better, retention should rise and newcomers will start exploring the broader world in all its glorious diversity.
We need reality to catch up to the vision with:
1. better technical performance and stability
Linden Lab is working on the server side. They, open source coders, and ESC as part of the dev community are all trying to improve the client side. While we have a commercial license, we want to contribute to the open source effort, especially around bug fixes.
2. better usability
ESC is obviously trying to tackle this with the OnRez viewer.
3. better content and experiences
SL residents, ESC’s consulting group, and many other companies are trying to solve number 3 (the CSI experience is a case in point). Number 3 is also reliant on progress on number 1 in a huge way (SL desperately needs better script performance, physics capabilities and general stability).
4. better information services
It is no accident that many of the most important websites out there help solve information inefficiencies: Google, Yahoo, eBay, Facebook for starters. The OnRez team wants to help solve some of the huge information inefficiencies for Second Life (and other virtual worlds as they open up to outside innovation). Right now it is ridiculously hard to find things, places, friends, events, opportunities, etc etc. There are some interesting tools that have been developed over the last couple years, but only a tiny percentage of the population hears about them! As a population gets bigger, word of mouth as the primary means of information flow becomes more and more untenable.
We are working on ecommerce and small business tools, search functionality, group and social communication tools, and even an ad network. As we roll out some of these services, it is possible that we will put them side by side in our OnRez viewer with existing Linden Lab functionality. It is possible we might replace some functionality. That will have to be decided on a case by case basis. When we come out with search efforts, our intention is to provide both services and let the user choose. Long term, I really want to see a skinning and plugin architecture where we can open up our viewer to 3rd party developers and applications. A skinning system will also allow us to support different UIs for different types of users (novice versus power builder, for example).
This might sound wishy-washy, but the OnRez team really cares about providing useful services to residents. You are our customers, not BigBrand XYZ, and we want to provide services that make your virtual world experience run smoother. A proof point is Shop OnRez, where we treat everyone equally whether a huge corporation or a tiny part time business (and we turn down requests from big business all the time that would make Shop OnRez less equal opportunity). We want to create things that help us move from a horrible retention/churn rate to a growing, thriving virtual world of significant size. If we do our job right, you will choose to use OnRez services, and we very much appreciate that it is a choice.
Some of this will become more tangible next week when the first version of the OnRez viewer is available!
October 18th, 2007 01:02
[…] Some speculation amongst various Second Lifers prompted me to write a (rather long, I apologize) post clarifying some details and explaining some views. For those interested, it is on the OnRez blog here [link]. […]
October 18th, 2007 08:29
[…] Giff Constable has posted on the ESC blog about some of the issues the Prok has raised, and goes on to mention that the SL search will be the only search in the OnRez browser initially, but they are working on their own search saying that Second Life’s search is flawed, which it is, and that they are trying to improve it. As long as the improvements don’t just mean adding the stuff they have for sale or their own sims, I look forward to trying it out for myself. There have been a lot of questions about Search in the new Viewer. Here is the scoop. There are two input boxes at the top of the OnRez Viewer. In one you can enter a location name (complete or partial) OR a url and it will teleport you or open a website inside the viewer. The other search input box queries Linden Lab’s standard mix of services [All, Classifieds, Events, Popular P laces, Land Sales, Places, People, and Groups] and pops up the tabbed window you are all used to seeing. As of next week’s launch, that is the only search feature in the Viewer but we are actively working on improving Second Life’s search since it is, to put it rather mildly, flawed. To be explicit, we eagerly await Linden Lab’s improvements and as most people know, we are experimenting with solutions of our own and we will roll them out when they are ready (and ready encompasses many things like data coverage, data accuracy, scalability, accessibility of privacy options, etc). Source: Viewer Clarifications; Big Picture […]
October 18th, 2007 09:28
I have decided not to let through two comments from Prokofy Neva to this post. Why, since I normally let Prokofy post to my ESC blog? Well, in this case, there is no attempt to have a productive conversation or to listen. We have tried to clarify things, and I welcome productive comments and questions. The Viewer will come out next week.
Prokofy had a chance to see the viewer in person last week and refused to take that opportunity, and is now resorting to spreading lies and misinformation based on no fact or real experience.
October 18th, 2007 12:34
Closed nature of the new viewer has caused some concerns about potential for undisclosed functionality — after all, much like web browser the SL viewer can be source of data that’s invaluable for any company interested in reaching SL audience. Could you then clarify whether the OnRez viewer will or will not collect/relay any information about its user and/or their activities and/or possessions to any 3rd party (which in this context would be anywhere but LL grid servers)..?
October 18th, 2007 13:09
I got confirmation on what data we are collecting in the OnRez Viewer right now — the only things we are collecting are Viewer version number and the Operating System you are using. This is not tied to avatar names.
Should we start capturing anything else, we will certainly disclose what and how we intend to use the data.
Shop OnRez tracks things like visitors, sales, and all the basic things you would expect an ecommerce site to do, and our privacy policy is on the website.
Thanks
October 22nd, 2007 04:45
[…] The airing of the epsiode is to coincide with the release of a new alternative SL client form the Electric Sheep company, anounnced as the OnRez Viewer. Details on its features can be found on the OnRez blog. […]
October 22nd, 2007 07:16
Why not publishing this viewer open source? This would be a great step to leverage more development in this field, don’t you think? :-)
A company stepping ahead with this would definitely be a good sign!
October 22nd, 2007 07:37
We wanted the ability to choose what we open source and what we do not. We might be building some custom functionality into our viewer and in an ideal world those could be proprietary plugins. Right now, with no plugin architecture, that’s not an option. We’ll continue to evaluate this issue of course, and I’m sure we’ll be contributing code back to community as we already have done (submitting a skinning system, for example).
October 22nd, 2007 22:40
[…] I’ve been debating whether to write something about Metaversed’s recent podcast where infamous Prokofy Neva lives up to the title “Second Rant” and sounds off on all sorts of erroneous speculation about the OnRez viewer coming out this week. The podcast was clearly an editorial piece, but it was editorial ranting based purely on false speculation (I tried to clear some of it up here, but the truth will out this week when people get their hands on the actual software). […]
October 29th, 2007 10:54
>> We wanted the ability to choose what we open source and what we do not
So it’s not open source. As a contributor to Linden Lab’s open source project for *their* viewer, I have now formally written to them requiring urgent clarification on whether future open source contributions will end up getting hawked out to third parties like ESC to then embed in *closed* versions of a “client”. There is a growing sense of rage among those of us who have worked hard to improve the SL client, out of a commitment to the community … not so ESC could profit from our work. Personally, I think the sooner somebody reverse-engineers the ESC browser just out of spite, the better. Please go and look up “code forking”.
October 30th, 2007 07:20
Alex, we have already contributed some things back to the open source code base and will continue doing so. You are clearly angry. Our goal has never been to fork the code base and spent a long time trying to promote/convince of the need for a plugin architecture. My understanding is that this kind of dual license approach for open source projects is not uncommon at all.
November 18th, 2007 15:37
[…] Zoals je ziet pakken ze flink uit en wordt er binnen de wereld van Second Life een relatief grote nieuwe wereld gecreëerd. Naast het enorm aantal eiland wordt er een speciale Second Life viewer gelanceerd voor de CSI fans. The Electric Sheep Company, de content creators uit Amerika die CSI:NY in SL brengen, heeft deze viewer gemaakt. Op hun blog wordt meer uitleg gegeven over de viewer. […]
December 3rd, 2007 19:41
What a snore. I think the OnRez viewer is totally superfluous. I used it a couple times, then went back to SL’s UI.