Comments on: Second Life – is the central server model its downfall?

By: Virtual Worlds and Australia 2007 Part 1 : The Metaverse Journal - Australia’s Virtual World News Service

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:43:13 +0000

[...] gambling ban put in place by Linden Lab. – VastPark caught our attention for the first time. – we questioned the long-term viability of Linden Lab’s centralised server model for Second [...]

By: Marsoups

Marsoups — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:40:31 +0000

I would say that the limit of 50 people is pushing the class 4 server limits to their extremes.

Call 5 servers ,which are slightly more powerful, have more processing grunt and can handle about 100 people well. Try the sim a 'virtual festival' to see this in action for yourself.

I think it's worth remembering how many processes and actions that take place on each sim - there are many differenct facets in controlling a virtual realm - every object feeds off one another, there is a lot of scripting / collission detection happening every moment you navigate the map.

Not only this, but rendering more than 100 highly primmed avatars on a screen is likely to do more damage to the framerate on your personal machine than on a class-5 sim...

The peer-to-peer model, I feel, may be a bit of a failure. Can you imagine trying to send an IM to a person say, 15 people away ? The lag will most likely be endless!

I feel that because SL has such an open model (and becoming more open, all the time), it's allowed people to create content and to sell that content at a very cheap US $ rate, that it has helped developed an infrastructure that many competing realms would have a long way to go to play catchup before any alternatives present themselves to me...

By: Marsoups

Marsoups — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:40:31 +0000

I would say that the limit of 50 people is pushing the class 4 server limits to their extremes.

Call 5 servers ,which are slightly more powerful, have more processing grunt and can handle about 100 people well. Try the sim a ‘virtual festival’ to see this in action for yourself.

I think it’s worth remembering how many processes and actions that take place on each sim – there are many differenct facets in controlling a virtual realm – every object feeds off one another, there is a lot of scripting / collission detection happening every moment you navigate the map.

Not only this, but rendering more than 100 highly primmed avatars on a screen is likely to do more damage to the framerate on your personal machine than on a class-5 sim…

The peer-to-peer model, I feel, may be a bit of a failure. Can you imagine trying to send an IM to a person say, 15 people away ? The lag will most likely be endless!

I feel that because SL has such an open model (and becoming more open, all the time), it’s allowed people to create content and to sell that content at a very cheap US $ rate, that it has helped developed an infrastructure that many competing realms would have a long way to go to play catchup before any alternatives present themselves to me…

By: Jean-Jacques

Jean-Jacques — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:03:05 +0000

I agree with your points and i must say that in my opinion lag is really an issue, as well as usability.
I would also like to add that the search engine is also really rudimentary and it wouldn’t hurt to have a more efficient tool, with for example some social features like digg or del.icio.us.
I think that a P2P architecture plus web2.0 features could unleash the real power of online virtual worlds.

By: Public relations and second life issues

Public relations and second life issues — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:59:26 +0000

[...] server) many issues are important to consider (some of them have already been mentioned by http://www.sloz.info . The most important issue is related to the number of people that you want to invite at your event [...]

By: Jean-Jacques

Jean-Jacques — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:03:05 +0000

By: Sardionerak

Sardionerak — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 15:51:41 +0000

To me, the fact that the whole internet will be 3D in a matter of years is a complete certainty. Just as certain to me is that Second Life won’t be the application that will “make it” – there are so many more issues with it than “just” the unbearable lag when building up a screen: very poor usability for one, difficult and annoying navigability another.
I am however also happy about Second Life as people finally start thinking about the next stage of the internet, past the mere 2-dimensional display.
As soon as somebody comes up with a better 3D space than Second Life, I will be gone. I agree with Eloise though, we would need the same types of freedom in such a new space.