08-01-2005 19:06
Okay .. . Appears SL is becoming too heavy for even my computer to run effectively and do the work/play I want to do in SL. I have a 2.0 GHZ Intel Chip, with 512 DDR RAM and an NVidia GeForce AGP Video card I purchased just to get into SL, with 128 Ram on board. When I try to do SLexchange business and SL in-world work, like to check for number of prims and such to list, I crash and get the dreaded Windows BLUE SCREEN, saying it needs to dump memory cache and that I need to take off all recent software and hardware and go into BIOS to disable cache and shadows. This would hamper the experience of SL dramatically, and besides, most users aren't going to go into BIOS to play any game. They'll dump it before they do that. And I wouldn't blame them - BIOS is NOT for the novice. I have some suggestions I think would remedy this problem, but first let me introduce myself and my background.

1995 to 2002 I ran my own 3D Business Application Design firm called VirtaCity Studios, LLC. We were housed in the Active Worlds virtual network. My team and I opened the first 3D Internet Mall, called Bizworld way back in 1996. We also developed a number of extremely functional biz apps that were slated for production with businesses, but due to the tech stock bubble burst, things went belly up. Such is life.
As such, I became intimately acquainted with what that did and didn't work online in MMORPG style environs like SL and others.

MY SUGGESTIONS:
I think the biggest bandwidth hog in SL is the fact that the payment and display system for goods in SL is duplicated inside and outside the environ system. I think if the payments and additional images for items were put into the SLexchange style web page and integrated into the SL GUI, this would streamline a lot of the work needed to sell and put up for sale items in SL AND reduce the lag in SL. No more would sellers have to use IN-WORLD VENDERs and thus clog up SL's pipeline with sales scripting and such. If someone wanted to buy a top, they'd simply click on the image to get a HTML sell page for that particular item. The SLexchange website would have to be dramatically reduced in size to a 4" x 6" window, but the tests we did for this in Bizworld proved that it could be done and quite effectively. The Internet window could be a slide out additional window that can be opened by click and dragging towards the center of your SL GUI. You could even make it so it slide over the SL IN-WORLD window completely to allow for regular size web pages, if the seller wanted or needed that much space to market their items. It would also allow users to shop in SL and never have to leave the world environ, which would be advantageous for Linden Labs user stats and the users themselves. I don't stay inside SL to shop on SLexchange, which means ya'll are missing me on your stats for hours. Us women love to shop together, so it would be a dream come true for us to be able to access both in world and SLexchange listing at will and simultaneously.

SO, that's my two cents. Hope it helps and is heard. My user name in SL is Tessa Harrington, if you need to contact me, and my gmail is [email]TessaHarrington@gmail.com[/email] or you can contact me through my old alias, [email]ladysilvanna2@hotmail.com[/email]
**** I certainly hope these get read. This is a serious problem that needs resolved ... like yesterday. ******