Browsing Options Clear Filters
Top 5 Tags: slurl[10] musing[9] site features[7] aradia[4] patch comments[4]
Summarized 2 of 6 Categories:
· thearidians.org (11) newest: We\'re Back apollo 18th Feb @ 15:32 EST
· quicklinks (3) newest: Snowball Combat apollo 1st Jan @ 18:34 EST
February 2007
Wormhole Solution
apollo [blog] Thu 22nd @ 11:45 EST
musing, sl, technology
I have avoided commenting on the quality of the SL experience of late and I feel that doing so now would only serve to firmly beat an extremely, terminally deceased horse. What I would like to say is that this is an acceptable short term solution and that this will eventually evolve into a more permanent long term solution. However, given the monumental technological barriers to overcome with distributed datacenters and multiple asset server mirrors and the like, the fact that this employment position is merely being advertised now leads me to believe that it is going to be a very long term solution.
This forward planning is heartening though, given that it would seem to suggest that Linden Lab have their financial ducks in order and are planning for the long haul of Second Life. What concerns me is the period between the short term and long term solutions. Basically I can imagine that the situation is going to functionally remain the same for some months assuming that the "big picture" variables do.
One "big picture" variable that will change soon is the "official" SL client. I have been advocating the First Look client for some time now, and a few hiccups during the beta phase aside, it has in general terms performed consistently better than the current "real" SL client. First Look makes the subjective experience of being in SL much better because it uses local system resources much more efficiently. It also seems - although I haven't taken steps to verify it - to handle network traffic more efficiently too which should serve to mitigate some of the horrendous packet loss we have all been experiencing of late. It was mentioned some time ago that the major code changes in First Look will be rolled into the "real" viewer in a future release, so this should ease things somewhat too.
Will the contingency plans and the new viewer code be enough to reset the SL user experience back to the more manageable times of 6 - 8 months ago, before the truly massive growth spurt? More importantly, if Linden Lab can manage this feat, will it be all too short-lived, or will it persist until their much longer-term plans come into effect?
The fact that I'm even able to pose these questions should inspire some degree of hope for the future. Admittedly none of this will help when I go home and log in tonight, but perhaps in the coming weeks and months it will have a positive impact. At least I can honestly say that I feel like Linden Lab is trying to fix things, and that they have everyone's best interests at heart. That doesn't mean that I'm not frustrated with the current state of affairs, but then again I can't imagine anyone being happy with how things are right now, so it seems needless to [over]state it.
Note: The title of this post came from a first draft where I had a joke about an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, but I edited it out because it felt forced.
January 2007
Points of Interest
apollo [blog] Tue 30th @ 07:50 EST
first look, musing, torley
Following an old rule of thumb, I neglected to update for a few days because I had nothing really significant to say. Today I have a few random points to make, so here's a handy list:
- I haven't tried recent updates of the First Look viewer recently as some people are reporting issues with it and while I don't mind helping with beta testing I've come to think of the First Look client as the "in development" real client and the really real client as, well, unusable from my perspective.
- Torley has a most fantastic list of cool places to visit.
A short list, yes, but perfectly formed.
Comment Recycling
apollo [blog] Thu 25th @ 11:35 EST
musing, torley, virtual reality
I was reading Torley's blog earlier, in particular The Majesty of Science and Alternate Virtual Reality and somehow these posts collided with the fact that I've been re-reading A Brief History of Time recently to produce the following:
Sometimes I think it's fun to think of the scientific viewpoint of the universe in philosophical terms, for example the classic "Bugs Bunny" cartoon where he can stand on thin air because, as he says, "I never studied law."
Perhaps then "we" - as humans - only experience the world/universe the way we do because we "know" things on a fundamental level, as in we are born with certain fundamentals "hard wired" into our being that simultaneously prevent us from perceiving outside our physical realm while enabling us to be - in the way that we perceive "being" - in the first place. That line of thinking of course implies that if "we" - again, as humans - could somehow break away from those fundamentals then by definition we [humans] would cease to be human, because those fundamentals are what define us as a human entity even as they limit us. Yet if we could transcend those limits we would still be sentient and alive, but perhaps not in ways that we would describe those qualities in our base human state.
Returning to the "Bugs Bunny" quote, I find it fun to think about because essentially gravity is a limitation of our physical presence; we're made of matter and matter responds to gravity. This is built in on a fundamental level and to "unlearn" this would, in the context of what I just described, mean freeing ourselves from our physical being. Given that SL is completely dependent on the physical realm I'm not sure that it, or other virtual systems like it, will usher in a revolution or ascension of humanity, but that if we reach a point where, for example, someone writes a true AI that passes the Turing test and then that AI reproduces independently; that might teach us some things about the nature of existence.
I know the last paragraph kind of jumps from Point B to Point J with nothing in between, but all I'm really trying to say is that watching a sentient organism evolve in a world that is much different from ours could be enlightening. SL is much different from the real world in the sense that, while the real is based on matter and energy, SL is based on information so constraints that apply to our physical world simply do not apply there, such as the rule that matter cannot be created or destroyed.
Yet at the same time it is still bound to our world because, for example, even information in SL cannot travel faster than the speed of light because the underlying subsystems that convey the information are [currently] limited by that speed.
LSL: Too Much Kissing
apollo [LSL] Sun 21st @ 12:02 EST
lsl, mono, musing, scripting
Whatever your position on Microsoft might be, I happen to think that some of their ideas are well-founded and some of the design decisions they enable others to make are useful too; it would not have been fun to wait 20-odd years for a mouse with more than one button, for example. One of the products that I believe they consistently get right is Visual Studio and the technology that supports it.
I use the .NET platform extensively at work because our organization is primarily Microsoft-centric. I use decidedly non-Microsoft technology for this website though and I like both approaches in their respective environments. The point of all this? Well according to the OLB we're much closer to a mono infection now.
My hideous geek-style sense of humour aside, this announcement can only mean good things for SL. It's no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of LSL as a programming language and I'm also not particularly fond of how sluggish it is or how detrimental it is to simulator performance. I'm glad LL focused their energy into fixing some of the more pressing problems first, but I see the move to mono as pretty significant too.
With the First Look client and the recent network protocol changes they are already well on the way to fixing at least 60% of the sluggish feel of SL, subjectively speaking anyway. Making LSL vastly more efficient would, obviously, significantly reduce simulator lag associated with running scripts but given that a good percentage of simulator lag is caused by scripts in many cases, these changes are going to have a significant impact.
After the FL client becomes the real SL viewer and after the mono engine comes online, the only significant causes of [performance degradation] will be bandwidth and the monolithic asset server cluster. Changes to the SL protocol that are underway and restructuring of agreements with providers could and are making inroads into the former, which leaves us with only the latter as a major threat to the future scalability and current operation of the system. Well that and the login servers, which can be said to be under some strain at peek times if the occasional long login queue is any indication.
My point in all of this is really to say that 2, 3 and 4 months ago one could have easily been forgiven for predicting the imminent implosion of SL under the crushing weight of a million or so free accounts, but it honestly seems like the system - SL as a whole - is beginning to stabilize. The single biggest "win" for SL as a whole will be making the asset system fully scalable and capable of handling the current and future load, but this push into mono for LSL is still going to be a pretty big win on performance criteria alone.
All that and I didn't even discuss how eventually this change will gift LSL developers with a more robust, industry-standard language capable of realistically applying current programming techniques such as classes and objects and perhaps even genuinely real arrays, that is if I understand correctly that the intent is to move away from the LSL syntax completely one day. I can only dream.
December 2006
Exploring Virtual Worlds
apollo [blog] Fri 29th @ 16:15 EST
aradia, human condition, musing, philosophy, real-virtual
One attribute of Second Life that enthrals me on an intellectual level is the notion that, although the world itself is virtual, the experiences garnered whilst there are ostensibly real; if two beings can recall scudding across the night sky from sunset into night chasing the falling star over the rim of the world then what separates that experience from a walk in the park or a kiss in the rain? In my mind what defines our realities is the filters we choose to apply to our sensory inputs and the ripples that fan out into the collective consciousness from the results of our actions.
SL facilitates communication in ways that are largely familiar and comfortable, but it also goes beyond that. It allows us to establish a presence in a world in which we can optionally and selectively partake. Unlike the corporeal realm, we need only log into Second Life when we desire to. We have freedom to chose our path, make our mark; define our reality and our perceptions of it in many imaginative and unique ways.
The truly fascinating aspect of this freedom is in how some residents choose to surrender it. They start businesses or seek employment in world, they join organizations and find themselves logging in at disadvantageous times in order to gather merit, they embark on all-consuming projects that leave time for little else; they keep themselves as busy as with their first life, if not more so. I do not say this disparagingly mind, I merely write it as an observational truth in order to give background to this musing post.
In some cases it seems that if you give a person freedom and choice they will choose the familiar, whether out of fear or laziness or lack of speculative vision I do not know. As the technology of communication becomes more advanced and commonplace though, the obsolescing distinctions between "real" and "virtual" will need to be revised and the nature of the human condition explored still further.
Although I appreciate activities in SL "in the moment" as they occur, I am often also thinking of these higher-level subjects as I run around. SL is interesting to me on many levels and that multifaceted nature is a part of why I continue to log in. In a related vein, being able to enjoy SL with my wife and see her and our relationship through these different filters is the other part of why I continue to log in. We are able to share experiences in SL that we could never share in the real world - such as making cute scripted objects in collaboration with one another - and through that we are able to enjoy aspects of each other that would not be the same in any other medium. That, to me, is the true power of Second Life.
Exercise Can Be Negative
apollo [LSL] Mon 18th @ 15:33 EST
musing, scripting
My real life job involves writing a lot of code in a variety of different languages, some of which include php, the .net managed plaform in VB and C# for Windows and Web, as well as Microsoft SQL Server 2000's scripting language for Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions and Structured Query Languge itself for MySQL and SQL2000, so as you might expect I have been known to tinker with the odd LSL script. I can honestly say that of all these languages, coding in LSL is the one that most often feels like an exercise in futility.
My principal complaint is that there is little uniformity to LSL and that the small amount of uniformity that is present seems to exist only to drive home the point that LSL dislikes the most commonly accepted programming conventions. On top of that, things that should be simple are encumbered by the need to perform arcane coding rituals, things that would not be complicated in any other language are made so by LSL itself and things that are genuinely complex to achieve feel as though they are composed of sticky tape and cardboard and could fly apart at any moment.
That said, I do still attempt to create scripted objects in SL, not because I am a masochist but because I want to make things that are fun and interesting, that are interactive and useful, and as annoying and idiosyncratic as LSL is, it is also all that we have. To be fair to LSL it does actually work once you prod and coerce and ultimately bend to its whims. I only wish that it wasn't such a debilitating process.
Street Theatre
apollo [blog] Tue 5th @ 18:39 EST
musing, sl social
I find it odd walking through the streets and shops of SL. Odd because, despite the virtual surroundings, our ability to fly and to build structures that defy gravity, the vast majority of SL is still inherently recognisable. But more than that, the people still very much act in the manner that people do. Inept guys still try to hit on distracted girls, insipid conversations riddled with poor grammar still take place and people still camp out in the street trying to get you to sign their petition or to hock their wares.
I suppose it shouldn't really seem odd, though. People cling to what is familiar to them and I suppose it takes a while for the collective consciousness of any given group of people to become comfortable enough in its surroundings to really take full advantage of the particular attributes of those surroundings. It's just funny to me to think of the energy being invested in reproducing real life within SL when there is so much potential to create a true second life within SL.
I do not say this unkindly though because that would be rather hypocritical of me. After all I do my fair share of real life assimilation in the things I build. I guess I am really wondering if SL will reach a point where certain styles and trends begin to emerge that are unique to it and if those will eventually bleed back into real life.
November 2006
1.13.0.8 Patch
apollo [slupdate] Wed 29th @ 19:18 EST
musing, patch comments, sl patch
Well wow, the marginally delayed 1.13.0 patch is here with a long feature list and a hope to address some of the crippling database load problems that have been occurring in the last few weeks. I am looking forward to the added Friends List functionality, but I wish they would add collapsible grouping to the list too so I could enforce some kind of structure. Sure I can do that in my inventory with the Calling Cards, but I would love it if that could be mirrored on the actual list itself. Still, this is a step in the right direction.
The Urge to Build
apollo [blog] Tue 28th @ 20:30 EST
aradia, building, lag, musing, slurl
I have a love-hate relationship with building. I believe it can be one of the most fun things to do in SL, but I believe it can also be one of the most frustrating. Sometimes the frustration happens on an artistic level when the expressiveness and creativity simply refuse to flow, but more often the consternation is a by-product of one of the primary factors that makes building in SL fun in the first place; the shared nature of creation there.
In order for SL to support a truly shared building environment where the results of one person's editing actions are reflected in the world in real time, it is necessary to send data back and forth every time a prim is moved or resized or has any of its properties changed. This makes building in SL highly dependent on the overall responsiveness of your Internet connection, the general latency of your route through the Internet to Linden Lab, the amount of congestion on "The Grid" and the lag of the simulator server you happen to be building on.
That's a lot of potential for lagged building but I think in the end it is worth dealing with because it can be so much fun to build something with friends, or in my case to build something with my wife and share our time together in that way. For example we built a Rose Garden together, which is layered with the type of spontaneous creative touches that can only spring forth from the collaboration that is made possible by SL.
The power of being able to say "What if we did this over here..." while throwing down rough prim shapes is staggering, especially when your building partner can take those shapes and modify them to suggest another idea or different slant on the proceedings and then they can be cleared away in order to demonstrate a new idea with the minimum of fuss. The dirt mound with the shovel and the rabbit is one example of how the garden build grew organically in this way.
That said, trying to build under heavy lag does make me throw my hands up in the air and scream. Especially when I'm experimenting with the build tools trying to discover new shapes or looking for a particular prim form to express an idea I have, and I can't get the tools to respond to me. In those moments, it would be nice to be able to build offline.