[sldev] http-texture project - how far until complete? (this will totally Rawk SL!)

[Philippe Bossut (Merov Linden)]

Hi Malachi,

On Apr 30, 2009, at 12:21 PM, malachi at tamzap.com wrote:
> with the new map abilities when do you foresee if ever a map like  
> google earth? is this possible

If what you have in mind is a "browsable map with smooth user  
interface and lots of geocoded content", yes it is possible but the  
point is rather: is it what we need?

When I first demoed the new map to my daughter (9 years old), she  
immediately said: "why don't you zoom and zoom and zoom and then...  
bang! you're there!...". It's fitting: SL is a virtual world so the  
map *is* the territory. What Google Earth is trying to create is a  
representation of the real world that you could browse "as if" you  
were there but, with SL, you *are* there. So, what is the objective of  
a map?

If we had infinite bandwidth and CPU, we wouldn't need a map at all:  
just fly high and look down, go where you want. From a realistic  
technical standpoint though, we can't really do this so the map is our  
way to reduce lots of content into a set of prerendered images that we  
can display and pin data on (land for sale, place of events, etc...).  
It's also a cool way to get a window on the SL world from outside the  
viewer as well (see he SLURL).

Beyond that (adding 3D buildings to it for instance as in Google  
Earth) I'll start to feel like in a Jorge Borges novel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science 
). So my idea is that we should work making the SL IW experience  
better rather than stretching the map beyond the problems it's  
supposed to solve, namely, quick discoverability of content.

Cheers,
- Merov