The Metaverse Journal - Latest Comments in Second Life – is the central server model its downfall?

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

Marsoups — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:40:31 -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...

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

Jean-Jacques — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 03:03:05 -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.

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

Sardionerak — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 10:51:41 -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.

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

Eloise — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 09:24:00 -0000

If there was the same mix of freedoms and significantly better performance I'd go like a shot. That said, a system that lets us build, script and animate freely, import textures etc. and make money if that's our thing is quite a bit ask.

SL is moving towards a web-api rather than a centralised system as described at http://blog.secondlife.com/... - what that will actually mean is anyone's guess, but it could well be 100's of people in a sim with no problem.