Modify the Map to be more scalable

The map is getting laggier and laggier.

In its current state, it's not really scalable. It has to track more and more sims and more and more avatars.

I suggest a redesign of the map. At the very least, and the simplest modification that I can conjure up, would be to section the map into geographic areas, and only be able to display one at a time.

I'd agree. If only because the length of the region dropdowns and the amount of scrolling you have to do these days is bloody silly.

I don't know about the geographical areas being cut up and displayed one at a time... I guess it would be ok as long as it's assumed in the UI that you have no idea where a given sim or area is, and that it doesnt make you browse 6 or 8 or a dozen areas just to see what might be going on.

Not really sure what needs doing, but something does!

I've never really had a problem with the map, other than when you zoom out it becomes less of a map and more a melée of green dots and pink stars showing where the latest "Hott Thong Contest" (painful) is taking place. It does show to new people just how extensive the SL world is in a way separate maps would not, however. I say keep it as it is, at least until we have 25,000 sims! I have a very slow computer by SL standards and have no problems loading the map.

I would like to be able to disable the telehub icons, at the minimum zoom level they take up most of the sim, making it hard to navigate.

Agree with eggy.

Prehaps we can get the map divided into continents, click the continent to zoom in on it - have the continent view flat shaded with statistics about the continent at that time (such as '190 active users, 29556736sqm' etc)

-Adam

zooming with the SL map auto adjusts the scale to accomidate the total size of the world map including hidden sims; with the outermost zoom showing the complete map if the map window wasthe size of the window. There are currently 570+ sims.

I think we need a complex map layout. Something sufficantly confusing to as to demonstrate to the users that SL is so complicated that we have an insane map layout.

The regional idea is good too.

Why do you want to confuse users? The current representation of SL as a small country and series of islands is excellent, in my opinion.

I've been resisting the urge to mention this before I'm ready for user testing, but since these map suggestions are coming up more and more I guess I will. I've been working on an off-line interactive grid map (GridChart) that has some of the features people are talking about. Here are a couple of screenshots (don't forget, this is alpha).

http://www.geocities.com/goreldin/2life/GridChartScreen1A.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/goreldin/2life/GridChartTable1A.jpg

Here are the features I've finished. The map colors sims according to thier type, i.e. private, sandbox, welcome, "normal", etc. You can zoom in on a section of the map by drag selecting a rectangle. The sims are listed in the tree view to the left. They can be sorted by name or placed under the region they're in (as in the screen shot). When sorted by name, typing a letter jumps to the first sim starting with that letter. Right clicking a sim or region and selecting "Go To" zooms the map to that sim or region. You can toggle on or off display of regions, telehubs, and mature/pg. A function key brings up a spreadsheet view of all sims, sortable by any column. And users can place "markers" of different types (i.e. landmarks) on the map and store them in named lists, which are displayed in the tree view.

Here are some features I'm working on to get this ready for user testing. One-click updating of the grid data from the net (not a big deal, just haven't written it yet). Ability to exchange marker lists between users and subscribe to marker lists on the net. This means you'd be able to send a marker list to a friend, and also automatically download lists created by someone else and placed on the net (this would theoretically allow competing alternatives to the Linden event system). And various UI stuff like preference editing and real icons, blah, blah.

This will only run on .NET, sorry, but I'll be giving it away. If people end up using it, I'll definitely be looking at other functionality. Depending on how busy I get with other things, I could be ready for testing in a couple of weeks.

Ya! like There (tm)!!! hehe, contrary to that beginning I do think this is a good idea. I'd even support multiple grids o.O but that's just crazy talk.

Better to be crazy than boring. I like the idea of stacked grids or metametaverses or even taking a section of a grid, cloning it, and see how parallel development splits off like "alternate virtual realities". That'd totally trip me out.

wouldn't that be a cool social experiment. Giving 2 groups the exact same materials and see what they have done with them 6 months later.