Kitely Mentors Group meeting, 12 June 2013: summary

[Dot Macchi]

Update
Details of the update were published on the Kitely blog:
http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-new ... plemented/

Export permission
In response to questions, Ilan said that the export permission is different to the basic one used by another grid. The Kitely implementation includes a lot more data than just a flag stating whether export is allowed or not.

For items sold in the Kitely Market the value of the Export perm is used to decide whether an item is exportable. A no-copy item with Export enabled will be exportable. If they don't have copy then the purchaser won't be able to copy it in Kitely (or any other grid that enforces that permission). If they have export they will be able to export it from Kitely to OAR files and other grids. This enables merchants to mix-and-match perms without being forced to make the item full perm to enable export.

Ada remarked that this would be "Perfect for skins. No one ever needs to modify one of my skins, nor need to copy it, but might want to give it away, and I'm fine with that."

Hypergrid 2.0 has the concept of a suitcase. Only items in the suitcase can be accessed by third-party grids. Items can be removed and added to the suitcase while traveling so theoretically an "evil grid" could mess up items in that folder.

New report on exporting a world
Following a request made in the forum (http://www.kitely.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2417#p2417), Kitely has added an export world report that should help users determine which items were filtered out of OAR exports (you get the reason, the UUID, name, coordinates and the Kitely Market product it came from). This should help people know what they have a backup of so they don't delete a world and lose items.

Log-ins
Ilan asked if people had noticed a difference after the update. Most had noticed an improvement.

A few people encountered a separate problem logging-in using Twitter because Twitter have changed their API. One person reported it yesterday; the logs didn't show other people being affected by it but it needed fixing. Kitely updated to the new API (version 1.1), and now Twitter logins work again.

Mesh problem fixed
There used to be problems when using more than 6 textures per mesh. Dundridge confirmed that the latest update had fixed the problem.

Fix for llRequestUrl
The update fixed llRequestUrl so that it now works. Dundridge confirmed the fix.

Filters for History?
Dundridge asked about a filter for the History page: "i.e. visitors to my world, items sold, my visits elsewhere..." Ilan confirmed that this feature, like many others, is planned for the future.

Marketplace discussions
There have been a few changes to the marketplace merchant interface. While the layout remains the same, a few labels and help icons have been added to hopefully make it easier to understand.

Ada is using 1600x1200 images for the marketplace, resizing them to 512x384 via an "action" for inworld vendor boxes.

In response to user feedback, the product and store details have been increased to 5000 characters each (previously 2000). Ilan advised against copying and pasting from a Microsoft Word file: Word adds hidden formatting information that eats up the character allowance but doesn't visually change anything in a merchant's product or store pages. It's better to use a simple text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit instead.

Kitely is currently working on creating the product page that the buyer sees. They plan to roll that out with the market search interface in a few weeks so that merchants will be able to see how things look before the marketplace opens -- this will be done before the shopping cart is implemented. As Ilan said: "We want to make the product and search pages available as soon as possible so no delaying until the shopping cart is done."

Ada asked if there will be customer ratings on the Marketplace. Ilan confirmed that there will be reviews and ratings, but this will be implemented later. Each product page also has social media buttons integrated for easy sharing.

Mat asked about advertising. The Marketplace will initially have no advertising, but it is planned; it will be similar to SL "Featured Items". Several expressed their abhorrence of flashing and blinking ads; Ilan stated that Kitely does not intend to allow animated gifs or flash in Marketplace ads.

Mat also asked about search. Ilan explained that the product description will be used with search (not with attribute-based filtering so mentioning Blue in the description won't associate a Blue color attribute with the product but it will be found if someone types in "blue" in the search field). Product descriptions should be as long as is required to convince buyers of the value of the item (what it includes, etc.) but no longer.

Pricing items for sale in the Marketplace and inworld
Mat asked how he might sell a free item so it gets listed in the Kitely website sales log. At present he has to sell the item for 10 KC, not for free (as he would like to do). Cider also asked for advice re pricing: "I have no idea how to price things -- I mean, what range is too high, or too low..."

Ilan suggested that a good way to decide how much to charge for items sold in Kitely Market is to see how much similar items cost in SL marketplace -- convert the prices to USD to understand the exchange rate.

He also explained that you can't give away items in the Kitely Market. The minimum price is 10KC (roughly US$0.03) or $1 for items sold for USD. You can, however, give away items or sell them for 0KC inworld; those transactions will show in your History page. You see which item was sold, for how much, to whom, in what world, when, and a configurable comment.

Mat asked if items sold from the market place would also show as a sale on the History page. Ilan said that Kitely Market sales are separate from inworld sales.

Finding inworld shops
Several expressed the desire to find inworld shops. People's shops are mostly in their own worlds. Unfortunately most don't edit their world page description to contain relevant information that buyers may search for, and some of them haven't even added a world page picture -- this means that their worlds show after other worlds in search results.

Community growth efforts
Several at the meeting had talked to others about Kitely. One recurrent theme of these discussions was the pricing model: "They are not sure which pricing model would fit them best".

Ilan responded: "The way I explain it is that Kitely offers pricing options. You can get land using the standard land-maintenance for unlimited access model (in which case a region-sized private island with 100,000 prims in Kitely costs just $40/month). Or you can split cost between different people and have each person pay for their own time inworld, the benefit being a significantly lower cost per month for a lot more land."

Min suggested giving examples of optimum models for certain setups like roleplay communities or clubs.

Kitely Plaza issues; need to optimize texture use
Min commented that the Plaza is very slow to come up -- and that this does not create a good impression for new visitors.

Ada suggested that "Kitely Plaza needs rebuilding with sim resources in mind, the artwork is a lot of fun though."

Ilan said ruefully that the Plaza is VERY unoptimized even after all the work he has spent optimizing it. There are still too many textures hidden in places no one can even see them (and/or textures that are too big for their purpose, added Ada). It takes a long time for people's viewers to download them and then unpack the jpeg2000 format they are stored in. This creates a lot of viewer lag for people.

Dundridge suggested that if you are building something, the max size of the texture should be the max size it fits on the screen.

Ilan said he could give a few people Estate Manager rights to help fix things. Ada and Mat volunteered to help.

Discussion
Ada Radius: We can assemble our textures, with the help of the artists, then one person optimize them and set up texture boards

mat mahogany: What if the very experienced texturers got a team of about 8 together, and the experienced did a refresher/seminar, and then that team went in to search and change textures?

Cider Jack: maybe there's a way of adding metadata to textures, and Kitely-specific texture packs could be made, where they all call up the same file/database field, no matter who uploads them. The trouble is when these textures get applied outside the world, then they come back in as an entirely new file

Ada Radius: so the Kitely Plaza can't use those textures

Ilan Tochner: on our backend we actually do deduplication so we only store one copy of each unique asset but the viewer requires us to deliver them as separate assets (each with its own UUID)

Dundridge Dreadlow: I know it's impractical.. but textures could be hashed and scanned for identical pixels

Ilan Tochner: We could theoretically hack that but it would require a lot of work which we aren't willing to do at this time. We do that on the storage side but viewers expect assets with metadata so two different assets that are actually the same texture need to be delivered twice. We could replace things on our end but that would require a lot more code and some things would lose the proper creator information if we join them.

[Marstol Nitely]

Fantastic Dot. I was just logging on to ask a couple of questions and your summary answered those and more. Thank you!

[Ilan Tochner]

Thank you for yet another great summary Dot!

[Marstol Nitely]

Update

Kitely Plaza issues; need to optimize texture use

I have thoughts on this. Perhaps getting in touch with the individuals who created each area and letting them know what needs to be changed would be appropriate. I for one would not be adverse to changing things that might be problematic. I have already made several trips back to make optimizations that were mentioned after my first build was done at earlier meetings.