WTF More layoffs at LL - Kona gone

[Beebo Brink]

I keep forgetting the Official Forums even exist.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

What does it mean to be unoptimized?

What I don't get about Sansar is that for years - literally years - it was hyped as SL 2.0. We had threads upon threads of what we'd be willing to give up to have SL 2.0 - I wanted to know why I would have to give up anything since usually a 2.0 means everything I had and then some more besides. But, that's neither here nor there - except it was hyped to be SL 2.0, and then the final product was like WTF? I can't even log into it. I don't have the goggles. Don't plan on ever owning the goggles, and seriously WTF LL?

 

[Sid]

I keep forgetting the Official Forums even exist.

Well I visited yesterday and today for the first time in many years.
I have to admit ............ nah, still not worth my time, although it seems to have improved a bit.
There were even a few posts here and there that had some form of criticism against SL and LL.

 

[Cristiano]

I keep forgetting the Official Forums even exist.

The SL forums are odd. I only use them to troll likes for my pictures. I occasionally chime in here and there, as I do love forums, but there's not much interesting there I've found to talk about.

 

[Fionalein]

There were even a few posts here and there that had some form of criticism against SL and LL.

Yes, but sadly only cherished LL pets are allowed to criticise them. Who gets sanctioned how much for what kind of transgressions is pure nepotism.

 

[Chalice Yao]

Soft Linden has commented on the news in the official forums

Linden Lab CEO Confirms New Round Of Layoff

https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2020/02/sansar-second-life-linden-lab-ebbe-altberg-kona-gurion.html

community.secondlife.com

That post makes me honestly carefully optimistic. Fingers crossed!

 

[Fionalein]

That post makes me honestly carefully optimistic. Fingers crossed!

I really hope we have reasons for optimism.

But I don't remember games by Rock Star to have impressive graphics...

 

[Clara D.]

I really hope we have reasons for optimism.

But I don't remember games by Rock Star to have impressive graphics...

 

[NyteWytch]

They said rock star...as in good...not as from the company Rockstar Games. And side note Rockstar Games has some of the fugliest avatars known to man.

 

[Fionalein]

Looks like they improved a bit since my win XP days

 

[Clara D.]

Looks like they improved a bit since my win XP days

Most of their newer games were console, which is why I hadn't really payed attention. They've started giving PC users some attention again.

 

[Khamon]

Most of their newer games were console, which is why I hadn't really payed attention.

Happy to hear someone else say this because I thought it was just me.

 

[Seven]

I'm not sure if this was mentioned anywhere. Were the people who got let go working on Sansar or SL?

If it was Sansar devs that's not surprising, but if it's part of SL's team I'd start to get worried about Linden Labs' future.

 

[Fionalein]

If it was Sansar devs that's not surprising, but if it's part of SL's team I'd start to get worried about Linden Labs' future.

No, rumors have it they were only Sansar. And I don't agree. Letting go some incompetent SL crew members and and keeping some of the smarter Sansar folks around but transfering them to SL would have been what a normal company would have done. But since when did LL behave like a company?

 

[Seven]

No, rumors have it they were only Sansar. And I don't agree. Letting go some incompetent SL crew members and and keeping some of the smarter Sansar folks around but transfering them to SL would have been what a normal company would have done. But since when did LL behave like a company?

Yeah, transferring people would make sense, who knows maybe they did. I'm not saying that the Sansar devs should have automatically been let go because Sansar didn't turn out so great. I'm sure that there were lots of talented people on that team. I'm just hoping that the layoffs don't negatively impact SL.

 

[Chalice Yao]

keeping some of the smarter Sansar folks around but transfering them to SL would have been what a normal company would have done.

I think that's what I'm partially reading into Soft's quote. He mentions that some of those devs missed the time 'Between Bento and BoM', which might indicate they were working on Sansar during that time.

 

[Fionalein]

I think that's what I'm partially reading into Soft's quote. He mentions that some of those devs missed the time 'Between Bento and BoM', which might indicate they were working on Sansar during that time.

See, that is where we differ, if they only left after bento, and need tutoring - they should have been layed off too, without hesitation - they have no business in development if they cannot get up to date themselves that small step.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

What does it mean to be unoptimized?

What I don't get about Sansar is that for years - literally years - it was hyped as SL 2.0. We had threads upon threads of what we'd be willing to give up to have SL 2.0 - I wanted to know why I would have to give up anything since usually a 2.0 means everything I had and then some more besides. But, that's neither here nor there - except it was hyped to be SL 2.0, and then the final product was like WTF? I can't even log into it. I don't have the goggles. Don't plan on ever owning the goggles, and seriously WTF LL?

LL never hyped Sansar to be SL 2.0. That was 100% SL users making it up, setting themselves up for disappointment despite LL saying over and over again that they should not be thinking about Sansar in those terms.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

This is actually one of the core problems, yes. The SL code is outdated-early-2000's-best-classroom-practice OO to the max, in all parts.

The classes (there are countless of them, and they are huge and stuffed with virtual functions in parts) are referenced and used all thoughout the various parts of the source, back and forth, all over - combined with (lots of) files that literally include multiple dozens of headers through headers including headers including headers.

The biggest result (and irony) is that the largest hotspot of CPU cache misses and unnecessary slowness is the rendering code.
The second irony is that this whole setup is what prevents SL going multi-CPU-core to the max.

It is an utter mess to untangle and fix the client as-is. It is the *textbook* example of people abusing the "Premature optimization is evil!" quote. Seriously, those people can just take a hike. This is exactly what they cause.

Once upon a time, SL's rendering engine was actually impressive for what it did compared to its speed. These days it's much much, *muuuuch* slower than it could be on any kind of modern(ish) hardware.

I'm kind of not sure it's possible to fix.

Anybody please correct me but I've never heard of any long-running MMO completely replacing its rendering engine, or renovating the game engine in such a way that a single-thread game becomes multi-threaded. Rarely, games will visually "upgrade" to more complex mesh or higher resolution textures when it's assumed most peoples' computers can handle the higher load, but that's about as far as things seem to be able to go with an MMO that runs concurrently for over a decade. I'm not sure that any amount of codefixing can ever make SL run "better" than it does right now. I don't think it can really be fixed; I think it has to be replaced.

The problem is, I tend to think a new truly optimised-for-2020 VW will tend to look closer to Sansar than to SL, and a lot of people wouldn't like that.

I think "future-proofing" is on the minds of a lot of virtual-world makers right now, and it seems like a popular approach is to try and establish a user base that will never expect your platform to look amazing, which is why so many of these platforms have avatars that look like they were designed by Fisher-Price.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

See, that is where we differ, if they only left after bento, and need tutoring - they should have been layed off too, without hesitation - they have no business in development if they cannot get up to date themselves that small step.

It's apparently been a long time since Linden Lab even encouraged workers to spend time in world.

Anybody please correct me but I've never heard of any long-running MMO completely replacing its rendering engine

Windlight.