Main Grid vs. Space Grid: Now vs. Future?

after a short amount of pondering spurred by reading about sims existing in true 3D space coupled with the question of SLs integration as the "new internet", i wondered something to myself.

what if..

where we exist now became the "home planet" of LL?


what if..

a 3D "space grid" became the new internet based upon SL platform technology?


could the main grid as we know it become a "planet" unto itself? allowing other companies to have their own "worlds" with multiple users?

pleasing both the ease of keeping SL in the fairly 2D realm it's in AND presenting the "space sims" as a more "world" application could be a reality with such an evolution.


run with this idea and formulate some wild ideas.. what does everyone think?

/stamp

Each world could occupy a space in a "meta grid" that bore a relation to its real world locatiom, you would have clusters round major cities, much like solar systems, or maybe even galaxies.

it's funny you should "/stamp" this.. it's because of the SLDevelopers site that i stumbled across the topics mentioned.

Makes me thinks of this:

Once we've explored an area of the main grid equal to the surface of the earth, then we'll send out probes to see if there's a Space Grid.

After SL grew past the point of adding its southern continent (remember when just 30 sims could be called a "continent"?) I started wondering if search by geography really made sense anymore.

I'd like to see an arrangement I call "bubbles" where a person can configure a contiguous space of their own at any size from a cottage to a planet's worth of terrain, depending on how much processing power they are willing to spend the money for. With no internal sim borders. You could keep your bubble private or link it to other people's spaces in a variety of ways. The simplest would just be a non-physical object you would click on or walk into, and teleport to their space. More complicated would be a fully physical intersect between the two, like our current sim borders, except that different sizes of sims would be connected, and could be disconnected by the owner. You'd be able to connect to any other space that agreed to it, without reference to an overall geography, so you could simply remove an unruly neighbor from your sight if you wished.

Probably at first you'd be limited to just 3 or 4 physical connections, but this would grow more flexible with increased processing power and bandwidth in the future.

Given this kind of flexibility, you could dream up whatever sort of internal environment you might like, with different horizons or even different physical parameters.

Coming up with a search engine for these virtual spaces could be very intriguing too. That's where you'd be in "outer space". I pictured floating in a non-physical environment and typing in different keywords or criteria about the type and popularity of links to different spaces. The bubbles related to your search would instantly coalesce around you like a gravitational pull, giving you a star cluster of individual spaces to choose from.

this reminds me off the end of "The Lawnmower Man". insomuchas, a personal space that connects to external personal spaces easily accessed from your "home bubble/planet".

this is a great point where SL can learn from Spore!

I sneeked this Town Hall question to Philip in just under the wire before Robin Linden closed the thread:



It's not exactly what you were pondering, Cybin, but it's along the same vein. I hope he addresses it.

I think this topic you brought up is very important and I hope that it is the direction that Second Life evolves in. I'd like to have options available not just for an expanded model of our own physical reality (home planet (SL Main Grid), neighbor planets in our solar system, solar systems, galaxies, etc.) but also for possibilities like Ananda outlined--applications that would be more modular and holodeck/digitally recombinable in nature.

I agree about your Spore comment.. bring it on!

Look forward to the discussion!

The following is mind wandering and doesn't mean I think this should be how it develops.

Having the only form of travel and transfer items between different grids space grids, different grids would be managed by different LL branches, who have different standards. Though I think if that were to happen SL would need to be as big as the internet having thousands of active users per grid. The space grid would be loosely managed except for certain secure zones owned by people who pay extra to have their space protected by liasons when needed. Moving yourself through space yourself is free(because of the time and possible difficulty of doing so), however instantly teleporting (warping) to another grid will cost ya since your existence would need to be transfered and having the ability to do so freely and instantly could put a horrible load on the servers if many people did it often. Price to instantly transfer would be determined by the branch based on its current population/server load ratio.

The transfer of items through space itself will become a new profession, and since many content creators may not trust their transporters to have full permissions supply and demand may become a new factor. Safe passage through space to avoid these problems to sell content may become a profession as well.

In the traditional sense the thing to fear from the space grid is not dying but being griefed. Since portions of space that will need to be passed through will be unmanaged griefers will collect who actually pester and lag you to a point where travel becomes nearly impossible. Its up to experienced transporters to learn how to travel space and develop ways to do so without the hinderence of these griefers. Finding different paths and establishing communication networks to avoid griefers. Transporters will fund their efforts through money gained from item and passenger transportation between the different grids. Griefers will gain money and items through extortion, offering to stop griefing for money or items. Though they may not actually stop.

Certain grids wouldn't be accesible by those trying to enter them, likewise not everyone can leave their home grid. (such as the teens and strict education groups). University grids for example would have their own branch that was run locally at the university through sponsorship from LL HQ, and would determine the grid access ability of its students who enter SL from their universities home grid.

Pirate grids would soon pop up not officially accesible and totally illegal, you would only be able to access them through edits to the client files. Large pirate grid networks will be shut down through offline legal means, but smaller ones will continue to exist underground. Though methods would be found to transfer items and avatars created on pirate grids to the official grid network they will be constantly outdated because of patches. Most of all pirate grids will be impractical because of this, but people will still continue to run them in order to experiment without fear of liason action and have the ability to control their own grid.

Thats all the brain fart I've had for today

I'm hiring Han Solo to transport my goods!

You have something that would need to be smuggled in to another grid. ?

Only if the Republic falls and we have to find ways around the Empire's death grip.

Why would it need to be equal to earth?
Maybe it's a tiny planet.
Just loop the world edges.

I'd Like To Have Options
For those that would want to experience an expanded Second Life experience with the addition of space and other planets, and have to travel to and through them in a traditional way, I would be all for this. This would be like traveling through our current flat world by foot, wing, boat or plane.

I would also want to have the ability to instantly teleport to any other point in 3D space (P2P) anywhere in the Second Life universe. Similar to how we can now on the Main Grid and more along the lines of moving from web page to web page. (Only I'd want the teleport to work like it does in Galaxy Quest.)

Yeah

I was watching the Spore gameplay video and that influenced me: I'd like to have little pets do some of my travelling, and come back to me and tell me about their adventures. Or at least, gather some sort of artifacts from foreign territories I'd like to visit. And I'd like more pets in general. Because on an alien landscape, it seems devoid without life. So to see something with stalks and funny eyes walking towards me, or even wobbling (I think of the "tripod" from the Spore vid).

I'd also like to have actual tunnels so we could dig all the way to sim-China, wherever that is.

I do think that we'll have some "exoticism" (definitely the wrong word) in the future when there's more cultures internationally using SL. I went to Japanese websites and wonder why Times New Roman is used so much. I do not know why. Similarly, in buildstyles and general content creation in SL...

Maybe with the Land Store there'll be more private islands to the far east or up up north, instead of so many in the west.

the biggest point to my original idea, is the decentralization of SL as a platform.

the SL Main Gridverse remaining under LL control, while the rest of 3D space may be simply based on LL/SL tech.

transportation of items/avatar likeness would be a hurdle, but one that should be fairly easy to oversome.


Torley, you're sort of hitting on an old idea i had, which basically combines Spore and SL into one harmonious wavelength of virtual existance.

This was part of what I wanted to ask Philip with my Town Hall Question... the ability to have our own separate expandable grids and still be able to connect to the Main Grid (Second Life).