On January 25th, 2008 at the Geekend Event on Orange Island, my favorite MDC Metaversatility and more specifically Dr. John Plevak unveiled (announced? proclaimed?) their project named AfterLife, a service using functionality from libSL to enable thousands of users to share the same space at the same time.
Sadly, I was traveling at the time, so all I really know about it was reported on MV’s site and out at SLOG (be sure to check the comments as MV CEO Peter Haik replied to comments there). It would be nice if someone could parse and post a chat log and/or slides from the presentation… hint hint.
Why is this important? Such an ability would allow for large social gatherings (concerts, performances, presentations) to happen without the expectable server lag and simulator crash. It’s the next step from passively watching a streaming video to being ‘there’ virtually, allowing interaction.
Getting a large volume of folks in a common space at the same time is not an easy nut to crack. In my MMO experience, places like Star Wars Galaxies’s Corellia Cantina, EverQuest II’s Harbor in Quenos, Dungeon and Dragon’s Stormreach Harbor and Lord of The Rings Online’s Bree usually have too many avatars, resulting in loss of fps and more than likely the client crash.
Historically the solution has been to use a world-mirroring technique and virtual instances to split a population into compy-chewable chunks. For gaming, this is reasonable; for a social event, it is highly limiting.
In SecondLife, other MDCs have used bots to clone performers into identical parcels and let the users self-balance the load. The most common way to host a large group without a lot of programming is the “junction-of-four-parcels” thing, putting the performers in the intersection and syncing all the parcel’s music URLS like at the Heron Island Performance Space.
Final thoughts: While I am eternally hopeful AfterLife is a hit, I remain skeptical of a solution without dramatic changes to the client and server sides. If I can’t move and look around in the event, I’d just as soon watch it streaming from the comfort of my lodge without lag.
Tags: AfterLife, lag, Metaversatility, MMO, music concert, second life, thousands of avatars
January 29, 2008 at 10:16 pm
You can view transcripts of Geekend events at: http://www.orange-island.com/?p=199
Glad you enjoyed it!