Decadent

Wow, lag at peak times. News at 11.

I'd like to meet the person who says that WOW never crashes, lags or otherwise has issues. Weekly maintenance takes six hours -- and another hour later that day, sometimes -- for a reason.

Having said that, since I've been logging back into SL, my patience with and tolerance for lag has plummeted. I got bored and -- gasp! played WOW instead, where I knew I wouldn't have to wait 10 minutes for something to rez.

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Aodhan McDunnough

We have Terabyte hard disks now. Well in 2030 I'm sure we'll have Exabyte (10^18 byte) hard disks. So today's grid will probably fit on a hard drive.

But strange consuming animals we are we will always find ways of filling up new capacity. So by 2030 the entire grid might have a total of 4000 Yottabytes (10^24 bytes)

Thing is if you have to update the entire grid on your system that's still a tremendous amount of downloading. I'd say you'd have to wait 2 days (or two weeks) everytime you log in before you can explore the world. BTW this would be at 2030's internet speeds.

Really, the streaming approach is more practical. We would benefit from a gigantic cache however, but certainly not an update-whole-grid.

Tussilago

Okay, so maybe it was a crap idea. Might be intuitively hard to tell how big is big when you are not a computer engineer...

But you did get the point, right? Thing is, you should not be supposed to re-download the entire grid (that's already on your computer), only alterations made since your last visit.
That is, if you signed off 5 minutes ago, the only new things needed downloading would be installations/geography (houses, mountain ranges, roads, coastlines, trees, buildings), at most maybe also position of material objects (like chairs) that someone had changed in the interim.

I don't really see how a grid the size of SL would actually change that much over a period of say, 2 days (or 3 weeks), but granted, my sense of scale and proportion might be entirely off.


P.S: Wait, you are now going to say that is impossible, to which I will reply computers are stupid.

Melodie Baxton

Well, considering that we're talking about a user-content type world, wouldn't there need to be some sort of massive registry to track all those changes, catalog them, and then download to your computer? The thing about WoW is that the land doesn't really change (AFAI can tell), so it's hard to compare having to do such a constant update everytime you log in. Not to mention the fact that it'd need to be dynamic and real-time to accomodate any changes made while in-world... nothing's impossible, I suppose, but then what's possible isn't always efficient.

The catalog system that would have to run and make up for all those changes to the world already stored on your system plus actually downloading the content to me seems like a lateral shift instead of an improvement, taking up as much time (with given perceived IT) as it does now to simply rez the environment when you visit it. Just my thoughts.

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Tussilago

More or less, yes. Alterations need to be stored somewhere in order for your log in process not having to download the entire world again, only stuff that's been changed since your last visit, but the details of that registry/catalog would naturally be hidden from view as you log in.

If you log in daily, this would probably be quite a short process (seconds - depending on the size of the world and number of residents, of course). I reckon you'd have to wait several minutes only if you haven't logged in for a week or month or so, or at least, that's the ballpark if a system like this would be practical at all. In no way should it take longer than 20 minutes for a several week/month absence. If we climbed up to several hours on a regular basis, then naturally this whole concept is a dead duck.

Relevant question here: How long does it take to install the entire world of Azaroth on your hard drive? I'd like to remember it took me something like 40 minutes.


Correct.

That's why any changes you make to the world (building, design etc) should not take place while 'in world'. Building etc would take place in game, but not online. It could for example take place on a copy of the Sim or piece of land you own as stored on your hard disk, or in some general environment "sandbox", called the design screen or whatever. You ever played The Sims? Remember when you rebuilt your house, the game froze up? Same thing!
Only when a project is finished would you export it to the real online world. That means the catalog would not need keeping track on every little plywood box copy you happened to produce by mistake.

The online downloading needs for world alterations would actually be fairly limited since:
A) It would only refer to changes being made during your actual gaming session.
B) You would have to move to a place where rebuilding actually took place to experience it (provided the world was divided up someway into several areas) and when you did, the new stuff would rez as completed and once only (being exported from the creator's design screen).





EDIT: Repeat quote and reply:
You did get the general idea here, right? The only reason rezzing in SL takes so long is because you transmit over your bandwidth every last item ever created that is still in existence every time you re-enter (or even move around inside) an area. In other words, it happens again, and again and again. With an update catalog system transferred to your hard drive, the information would have to pass through the bandwidth bottleneck only once and be limited to new stuff. The rest is accessed directly from your computer (like in Wow) and would consequently appear as instantly as in Wow.