Virtual Worlds and work.

I saw this article in my morning newspaper, about companies experimenting with doing their daily work in Virtual Environments. Interesting, but nothing new. (full article here: http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_7134583 )

But there were a couple statistics cited that caught my interest: The first:

"Even consumer sites such as Second Life that have attracted a lot of press attention see relatively low traffic. According to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm, the Web destination attracted just 340,000 unique visitors from the United States in August, a relatively small number compared with other big-name Internet sites."

They are referring to the website. Do you think LL could be doing a better job of promoting their website, instead of relying on others to hype for them?

The second stat was this:

"During a presentation last month, Intel senior fellow Justin Rattner estimated that a virtual, 3-D environment could require a 100-fold increase in the computational power of servers and place three times the load on personal computer chips."

Is that why SL has so many problems? They are just ahead of what the hardware can do?

Thanks for any comments.

My only reference comes from my experience prior to SL playing first person shooters. Those games tend to be on the bleeding edge of graphics and 3d environments, at least as far as normal consumer use goes. A buddy of mine who works at Intel said they use them to test Intel products. I can tell you that even really souped up computers can scream in agony under the load some of those games generate. Mine is marginally modified and it was in agony over F.E.A.R. - Extraction Point. Those games have the graphics, but not the interactivity of SL. There aren't as many people using them at once and there isn't the same sort of user created content to deal with. Frankly, I think the load on the individual computers is not anywhere near as bad, but the load on the servers must be pretty intense, and I wouldn't be surprised if SL is trying to accomplish something that the servers just aren't designed to handle yet.

That's just my opinion, and I'm a noted idiot, so take it with a grain os salt.

Second Life is extremely scalable—it will default to an appropriate setting based on your hardware. This said, take note that Second Life will opt to take advantage of your hardware with an aggressive edge. This does not mean that a progressive computer will quake under ‘high settings.’ If you have a pretty current rig, you won’t just be able to enjoy all settings on high, but you will be able to multitask as well (Photoshop, Browser, Itunes).

Heck, I’m running dualie P3s (1ghz each), with a gig of SDram, and a Geforce FX5600 (256) and I run on high with multiple apps in the background. Now, I’m not going to lie, I get a pretty low performance in all programs when I stretch my multi-apping…but still very workable, and certainly still enjoyable.

And who cares if you’re using the majority of your processor? Isn’t that what it's designed for? Are [they] concerned about energy consumption? Gamers and designers love to push the envelope…nothing will ever change that. Until I see solar panels on [their] roofs, don’t even talk about processor energy consumption…

As far as server drain…yes, Second Life will continue to require a limit—because we will always want to drop as much detail and bodies into a virtual space as possible—even when we get all fiber-optic cable networks (dozens of megs a second)…we will still ride a ‘ceiling.’ But really though, who sees a problem in this? Bandwidth (just like pushing 1’s and 0’s) is meant to be exploited. As far as I’m concerned, I’m more than happy with what virtual spaces have given me so far…and before I know it, we’ll be submerged in worlds three times as detailed and vast as what we see now…I can wait.

If you want to see pre-SL virtual 3d worlds look up things made with Vrml 97 or if you want to pay for it check out Cybertown. The closest free version of this example of graphics is Runescape. Activeworlds is another example and free, yet incredibly annoying to use.
But they used Blender and Photoshop to make the game not sure if they used Vrml 97.

The reporter is either stupid or lazy. SL is not a website. Trying to measure it via traffic at the SL website is just silly. The majority of SL users have no reason to use the website.



I think they should concentrate on promoting their business, and not what some clueless reporter thinks is their business.

Well, I think it's a valid concern. New users have to visit the website at least once, otherwise how would they ever get registered and online? If only a few are visiting, that implies only a few are potentially signing up. Unless there is a way to get a new account without visiting the website?

Although impressive, the amount of 'new accounts' (ie. unique website visitors) per month, is not nearly as impressive as the overall in-world unique visitors and online residents. These stats are the 500 lbs gorilla, pounding truth into [their] cerebral cortex.

It's valid. But one of the questions raised was regarding whether SL was operating beyond the ability of the technology. The website puts no real strain on the servers. It would take a LOT more people to really blow the website up. The strain on the technology comes from SL itself - people using it to create, script, and it trying to render everything from everyone's POV at once. That's got to be a massive load.

As far as advertising goes and whether LL should be trying harder to bring people to the website, I just don't know.