Linden Lab had better watch out

Posted on May 14, 2008 by Morris Vig

Competitive pressures are mounting in the virtual world market…and it’s coming from within. Get this:

Linden had better watch itself.  The genie is out of the bottle - it came out when they took the initiative to open source their viewer.  Reverse engineering should have been presumed, and it’s only a matter of time before the open source community makes an OpenSim foundation that will exceed the performance of Second Life.  The IBM prim count post shows that such developments aren’t that far away.  (Perhaps the reason is that IBM is using better servers…wouldn’t surprise me.  Point is, the technology is getting away from Linden Lab.)

Then, the megaprim patch is out there.  OpenSim will surely take advantage…they’d be stupid not to.  So when given the opportunity to get a “Second Life” (generically speaking) experience at the same or less cost, with the same or more prims at your disposal, and with the capacity to make megaprims - I know what I’d do.  How about you?

Sigh.  And I vowed to do less of this type of commentary…

Filed under: Second Life, opinion

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5 Responses to “Linden Lab had better watch out”

  1. Dusan Writer, on May 14th, 2008 at 4:21 pm Said:

    Forget 45,000. On RealXtend a sim has been run with 100,000…same base platform, I realize (OpenSim) but prim limits are a bit of a fiction. Of course, there’s always that call to make about how you want to balance objects, scripts, particles…whatever….but other platforms allowing “estate level configuration” show that the one size fits all idea of Second Life will need to, well, at least fit many, because for everyone else the range of options is expanding.

    Look down the pipe a little at something like Blue Mars, and they may sacrifice prim count for graphics, but what graphics! It might not be enough to be middle of the road, and it’s certainly not enough if you’re in the middle and your stability, orientation experience, billing and customer relations are…well, mediocre.

    Having said that, SL still offers a range of expression and community that’s lacking on the other platforms - sure, some offer better user experiences but zero user creation. Or some are better for specific education experiences but offer less immersive environments. All is not lost for SL, but I don’t envy M.

    As for mega prims. I won’t even go there. The original patch was from a LINDEN after all, or at least a patch was circulated by a Linden.

    Ah well. Not like it ever makes much sense, which is a source of extreme frustration at times and also the well spring of awe.

  2. peavyibanez, on May 14th, 2008 at 4:40 pm Said:

    45,000 prims is the current standard on the opengrid
    http://opengrid.org

  3. Morris Vig, on May 14th, 2008 at 5:41 pm Said:

    Thx for the info, peavyibanez. I’m not an opensim guy, so I had no idea.

  4. slconceptual, on May 15th, 2008 at 1:36 am Said:

    Well at least we’re in a better megaprim position than we were a week ago. I’ve got a 20m sphere in my inventory, which is something I’ve been wanting for ages. I’m just disappointed that I only got to make 1 original megaprim of my own - I was going to have a play this weekend and make some (hiopefully interesting things).

  5. Talon Lardner, on May 16th, 2008 at 9:03 am Said:

    A shame I can never find anyone online on the Opensim grid…

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