Now, I’m not an IT guy, and barely know what WWW stands for let along be able to make my prims rotate using LSL, or be able to really explain what PHP does compared to say HTML, but there’s something about the phrase “cloud computing” that gives me a nice little shiver, and when people like Bezos or groups like Microsoft talk about it, I suppose it either means they’re looking for new ways to hook hopeless amateurs like myself into high cost visions of the future or they’re on to something.
So I scan Wikipedia, and it’s baffling as well, I guess. But it says about cloud computing:
The applications of cloud/utility computing models are expanding rapidly as connectivity costs fall, and as evolving processor architectures favor the development of multi-core systems with intrinsically parallel computing hardware. This hardware greatly exceeds the parallelization potential of most applications. The economic incentives to share hardware among multiple users are increasing; the drawbacks in performance and interactive response that used to discourage remote and distributed computing solutions are being greatly reduced.
And there’s something in the words “greatly exceeds the parallelization potential” that grabs my attention, because as some have hypothesized, Second Life may have reached its concurrency peak for a variety of reasons, one of them being that the grid just can’t handle any more users than 65,000 or so (although New World Notes is chalking it up to Windlight).
The Wikipedia entry notes the following advantages to cloud computing:
- Location of infrastructure in areas with lower costs of real estate and electricity.
- Sharing of peak-load capacity among a large pool of users, improving overall utilization.
- Separation of infrastructure maintenance duties from domain-specific application development.
- Separation of application code from physical resources.
- Ability to use external assets to handle peak loads (not have to engineer for highest possible load levels).
- Not have to purchase assets for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks.
Now again, being no expert, these sound like benefits for virtual world platforms, with the automation of managing peak loads being a far better approach than a bunch of engineers in California shutting off log-ins or waiting for the asset server to die, again.
And I have no idea – maybe we need a Second Life version 2.0? And maybe it will need to be based on cloud computing or some other technology with a fancy name?
In the meantime, Trion is using $30 million it raised from NBC and Time Warner to build its MMO infrastructureMMOs. According to Trion CEO Lars Buttler:
Trion’s World Network server cloud, Buttler said, will allow high volumes of players to participate in a fully persistent online world that can be evolved at any point by the game operators – or affected by the users. And the company has big cross-platform visions, promising mobile access to the worlds as well as console or PC.
Buttler points out that the advantage of cloud computing is the ability to allow users to generate content, although he cautions against turning a game into something like *gasp* Second Life:
“It’s a fine balance. If people influence everything, it might look like a Second Life at the end and destroy the fun. If they influence nothing, it’s boring. So we have now the technical capability to improve the game constantly, to introduce new things constantly and allow users to talk about the changes they want to make.”
For all the talk of grid stability, eyes have also turned elsewhere as a way of assessing the health of the grid. Whether wondering about Sony Home, the idea of ubiquitous games over at Metaplace, or the high visual fidelity of the coming Blue Mars (all of which are behind their stated schedules, so it makes you wonder whether this stuff is as easy as people wish it were), predictions of a virtual world winter should be tempered by uptake of newer approaches to technology – stuff that I can’t really understand, but then I always have my head in the clouds anyways.
Sims capable of carrying more than 40 av’s at a time would certainly be a blessing to SL – it would make clubs and gigs actually work – but is the concurrency plateaux really only due to these (or other) technical reasons?
My guess is still (yup, i’ve ranted on about this before!) that the current levels represent the number of people who want to be a part of BUILDING Second Life at the moment and not the total number that might ultimately want to use it. Philip Linden said t’other day we are “a community now of a quarter of a million people or so a day using Second Life” – a quarter of a million people a day (mostly) trying to make this thing work, we should also remember to give ourselves some credit for that!
My question would always be – who are we trying to make it work FOR? Where is the audience for our show? The visitors to our virtual places? It’s not enough to do this stuff just for ourselves – all of us wandering around admiring each other’s work in some virtual closed-circuit? We need to open the doors and make VISITORS welcome and stop assuming everyone will come wanting to be a builder.
Relating this to the new-user experience, one thing that occurred to me a few days ago – why not ’stream’ new users through an induction process that’s much more themed to their type of interest in SL? For example, a new user could be asked what area of SL interests them most, do they want to be a virtual architect, a fashion designer, a party-girl or whatever.
Choose builder/architect and your first default avatar gets automatically dressed in coveralls with a tool-belt and steel-toe-caps – or looks like Leonard da Vinci, paintbrush behind your ear, a set of callipers in your hands – whatever, there should still be choices. Then you’re led thru a beginners course in building SL-style. You could be offered to attend one of the building classes, given a freebie box of builders goodies and a brace of landmarks to relevant helpful sites in SL.
A social user could get a ‘club-kid’ avatar, be shown how IM’s work, how to befriend other users (and then mute them!), how to use the Events calendar, how to find groups you might like to join, a set of noob-friendly party landmarks..
A fashion designer would get a ‘fashionista’ or supermodel avatar and could be shown how the whole Appearance system works, how flat textures map onto your avatar to form garments, how clothing layers work, be given the fashion template files etc… You get the idea i’m sure.
Of course nothing would be denied to any user – it would just mean the induction process would teach you things you actually want to know with the intention of getting people to their kind of Second Life sooner rather than later. Flatten the learning curve a little? Make any sense?
Actually my comment would make more sense in the entry where you’re actually discussing avatar creation, huh?
Comment first, think later…noob mistake, sorry!
Cloud computing? How about setting your sights above the clouds and considerfollowing the sun or the moon for computing?
This was too hard to pass up this punfest, but seriously, lemme point you over to Kevin Kelly to explain: http://kk.org/ct2/2008/06/follow-the-moon.php
I have seen patterns of popular sims that rotate between EU and US visitors based on the diurnal patterns – so it could make sense that a given sim could be hosted at an area where most users are active during a given time of the 24 hour day.
Ohhhh – very nice Eris. I think the user experience group at the Lab is working on a similar approach – sort of a tour HUD idea for newbies, based on themes – build, shop, dance, etc. What I love about your idea is how you actually connect it to the type of avatar or “character” you’re given. I probably would have liked that myself – a “role” to have – of course, get rid of it once you really understand what’s going on, but it’s a way to enter a comfort zone quickly.
I’m not actually knocking SL, but I am wondering if it’s useful to think on a much bigger scale. I agree on new users, the interface, the tools – all stuff I’ve written about, but I suppose this is my attempt to broaden the horizon, or widen the world…something like that. Take the issue of servers in Australia – it’s something they want, Linden said it was coming, and it hasn’t happened. But what would happen if we truly thought of the SL technology as needing to be massive, massively parallel, and support massive numbers of users? Maybe the applications and users would follow if Linden really started demonstrating that it was committed to the idea of linking all humanity.
And yeah, haha Pais – I was thinking of that same post by Kelly but decided to stay away from it for now.