[sldev] Re: [svc] Back end features

Lawson English lenglish5 at cox.net
Sat Sep 1 11:05:34 PDT 2007


Argent Stonecutter wrote:
>> The whole "grid" thing is a rather un-necessary forcing of real world
>> limitations onto a virtual world. Simulators should be able to "shape"
>> themselves any way they like, and link to each other through a web of
>> portals, negotiated between the simulators themselves with no
>> centralized control required or desired.
>
> First, the decision to make the grid geographical was a deliberate and 
> cultural choice. It's unusual... most virtual worlds have been linked 
> the way you describe... but it's unlikely to be changed. Creating 
> non-euclidean connectivity within the grid is hard, and tools to make 
> it easier (like llTeleportAgent) have been repeatedly deferred.
>
> Second, there's a lot of other ways SL forces real-world limitations 
> onto a virtual world. Making avatars significantly larger or smaller 
> than the normal human range is difficult, and non-humanoid avatars 
> require all kinds of tricks.
>
> These all seem to have come out of the influence of the book _Snow 
> Crash_ on the principle designers of SL.

Not to mention constraints having to do with the interaction of Havok 
physics and the underlying data-structures of SL, which may or may not 
go back to your point about design  philosophy.




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