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Wormhole Solution
apollo [blog] 2007/02/22 @ 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.