Comments on: Why The Virtual Worlds Bubble Is a Lie http://neoacademic.com/2010/04/27/why-the-virtual-worlds-bubble-is-a-lie/ technology, education and training research from an industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologist in the ivory tower Sat, 04 May 2013 15:02:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Richard N. Landers http://neoacademic.com/2010/04/27/why-the-virtual-worlds-bubble-is-a-lie/#comment-1270 Richard N. Landers Tue, 18 May 2010 05:17:40 +0000 http://neoacademic.com/?p=740#comment-1270 Given the current constraints of web browsers, I agree completely. But in this approaching era of HTML 5 (and beyond), integration of nearly lag-free 3D graphics in the browser will be easier to achieve. It’s definitely coming – it’s just a matter of when. Immersion is definitely an issue though.

The architecture of SL frustrates me for exactly the reasons you describe. If I’m deploying SL within an organization to support a training intervention, I don’t really care how big the initial downloads are because I can have the IT function install it when the core users aren’t around. This is what SL’s behind-the-firewall option should provide, but I suspect it doesn’t. Although I wonder if scalability is as much of a concern when the server is behind the corporate firewall?

I am intrigued by your description of Prototerra – creation of parallel dimensions sounds an awful lot like the description of what the Internet evolves into in David Louis Edelman’s Jump 225 trilogy. If that’s the same idea, you can trigger one person to be present in all dimensions (for example, the speaker) while everyone in attendance fits into their own dimensions? That would be a technical accomplishment indeed!

]]> By: Bob Flesch http://neoacademic.com/2010/04/27/why-the-virtual-worlds-bubble-is-a-lie/#comment-1269 Bob Flesch Tue, 18 May 2010 04:48:30 +0000 http://neoacademic.com/?p=740#comment-1269 Some very good points Richard. There are points I do wish to differ with you.
1 ) Until you can run Second Life with zero lag and fully scripted/customizable experiences within a browser window, Second Life will never gain mainstream acceptance.
This is a old debate in the VW community. VW in browser, or browser in VW. I like to use the analogy of putting a 600 hp engine in a Volkswagon, you can do it, but its not a good idea. I think the same is true for trying to make a virtual world run inside a browser. Its possible, but the experience is going to be less. I prefer the browser in the virtual world. It makes for a more immersive experience.
Zero lag is impossible, but making lag not noticeable is the goal. SL did a good job of this in the past, but then the content got larger and larger, and lag got worse and worse. There are a number of key architecture choices that are the root of this, that I dont think SL will overcome in their current architecture.
In theory SL does a good job of minimizing download, many of the games that are downloadable require gigabytes of content download. SL install is around 20 meg, trivial by todays standards. but then you run into the lag. That and a very difficult user interface kept SL out of the mainstream. One of the other key issues that most people never even consider is scalability. With SL you can only fit 50 people in a region, if you want more people, you need to buy more regions. Bad for business IMHO. My companies platform uses dimensions, so if a region fills up, an identical dimension(s) is created in parallel. So you can reuse the same content for 10,000s of users. If you are interested in a different kind of world, come check out Prototerra world. We are talking to a number of universities about hosting online education and simulations.

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