How BIG is SL?

They always blame the Teacher......

/me passes Brenda a nice hot slice with the toppings of her choice and an ice cold soda.

Ok, so here's a dorky, newbish question...

Other than seeing Linden roads or protected water, how can I know I am actually on the main land and not a private island? What specifically is most telling?

I'm familiar with the well know privates such as Otherland, MC, Fairchang, Dreamland, etc. etc., there are tons of them. But, I'm sure there are others that are less obvious. Is it just a matter of looking at the owner or...

I believe there are over 25000 sims in SL, though I could be wrong.

At 4 sims per server, 25000 comes out to 6250 servers, plus the extras for sims that aren't yet up, the ones being put up, the ones taken down recently.. I wouldn't be surprised if LL actually has at least 10000 servers, once you add in th teen grid, the beta grid, and all those not-yet sims i mentioned

The fact that land will almost always have no covenant in about land. Also, if you go on the map and where you are is connected to a huge mass of sims, it is likely mainland not an Island (Not always true, but usually)

In all honesty one of the more telling signs is adfarms and floating 'for sale' signs. Sure they can exist on islands, but are far more scarce.

I think the Covenant tab of About Land will always tell you -- mainland has no covenants and private islands do.

(edited to correct the spelling errors from typing too fast)

The over all size is kind of irrelevant. I more interested in how well it is used. I have spent a lot of time flying over many sims these last few weeks and most of the land is either up for sale, filled with junk or another empty club and/or mall. Every now and then you bump into something that gives you a "wow" though. That wow can be either good or bad however.

I don't wanna say it's irrelevant, but the following questions are just as relevant:

1. How big is the internet, imean how many websites are there ?

2. How big is youtube, imean how many videos do people upload ?

Now to my point....

A much better question is:

How many people do actualy use the services, that said paying customers, not the super-duper-inflated figure of 8million ppl lol, how many ppl actualy regged their cc card and uses SL as a service ?

Also a prety damn relevant question is how many ppl do use the msot pop sims at same time, and how many are allowed ? (well with the current technology you cant have that many ppl visit your sim at same time, now can ya? )

The last question is selfexplained, and it's prety silly back in late 1990's when internet was still new and realy not very popular we had website stats that were way better than ANY sim on sl, so realy untill a sim can support 1000's visitors at same time the usefulness of this virtual world is prety much limited to what i'd say is a betatest phase, not a commerical virtual world, just a world for the fun of it. My point beeing SL is not ready for the mainstream, LL made a huge mistake in timing, they should have introduced opensims before going mainstream. Iknow some of you will get angry claiming you do have a biziz, but it's really a joke, what are you making realy ? Imean in operating profit, back when there were no restrictions many ppl made 1-5mill L$ a month every month, not taht i try to advocate the casinos but today without a improment in the technology this world just isnt ready for biz, except if you just wanna pay your tier + some but not worth mentioning.

My point is, the problem is not the total size, rather the technology it's getting real old.

Made me laugh.

? You are wrong, I believe, see post # 18. Unless I miss your meaning?

I actually meant 25000 once you add in the beta and teen grids, but of course just an estimation.. I've no idea how big either is as never been on em. Seems like beta would be rather large though?

And yeah... rawr

Plus I didn't see that post. But still adding those in it seems like it would add quite a lot.

I do think I should revise it to 20000 max tho

Sausage and onions please. And a Coke.

/me shudders at thinking of the heartburn THAT would cause.

[Edit: But then considers ordering a pizza....]

No, seriously, he was a dink.

The beta grid is tiny. I haven't counted the sims but I'd estimate it's only 2 or 3 dozen.

seriously? wow.. okies then lol

Not yet 1 square kilometer is 1 million square meters, not 1000. This makes SL the size of an island state, like the Netherland's Antilles or Martinique.

Whoops you are right.

I added a zero to the total, my bad...

Still, SL is bigger than 41 nations.

My mother thinks I have a box full of little people. She's worried they'll collide running through the cable and mess up the little people who live in the television.

thankfully due to the writer's strike most of the people who live in the TV are reruns anyway.

Stupid question maybe, but should I see this as a big pile of 10.000 pc's?

I think it is weird to only count paying members of SL as real "users". Don't they adverstise it as a place to MAKE money? So if I didn't pay a cent and even make some money I am not a user?

Besides that how many ppl used their credit card to use youtube? To use facebook, a webforum, an online album, a web hosting service? If they are not using it for business I would guess it is close to nobody. The Web 2.0 is based on free open services where everyone can create content and share it in a social space.

I would guess that on the long term the "premium" status will be abolished completely because the server side code will be open sourced. LL will make their money by charging connection fees to the main grid, like a country charging for visas and permits.

Pretty much but not quite. There are usually in rack mounts. Not like a desktop PC.

Pretty good read on data centers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center

Ooooh, I just can't resist this....

To answer the OP....... SL is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the Ivory Tower of Primitives, but that’s just peanuts to SL, especially when TP is down.

~Snowman~