Let's say that the better world is possible. I'm not talking utopias or idealistic daydreams. I am talking better world as no lagging, no missing textures, teleports working, no crashing, no freezing.
Price? Well, money. All of it. One of the known solutions of current technical problems of our world requires that all the money vanish from the metaverse. Are you ready for that? We should for the moment pay some attention on structure of our world, on how it works and how it is organized on machine level. Let's imagine ten avatars in the club. Some are dancing, some are sitting around, couple of them chatting in public channel, some are IMing. Now imagine what is happening with just one shirt. One of the avies is wearing a shirt, shirt has texture. Each of ten avatars (including the one that wears shirt) needs to get that texture from a distant server somewhere in Linden Labs' farms to be able to show the shirt in the viewer.
And it is not just one shirt. It is ten shirts, and ten pairs of pants, and shoes, and gloves, and skirts. Oh yes! there are textures for hairs too! All the clothing, all the attachments, all the gestures and animations. Yes, each of those files is downloaded from server for each resident that see the item. Not one per avatar that wears the item, but one per avatar that sees it! You should show some respect for Lindens that organize and maintain all that stuff.
But, on the other hand, it is a crazy way to do things. Virtual world is a great place for peer-2-peer implementation. In short and simple, I get the texture of my shirt from the big distant server, all the other avatars in the club are getting it from me or from each other. Just one file is transferred via the line that suffers heavy traffic, the rest is done by filesharing.
Is it that simple? Yes it is, if anything with computer networks is simple. What's the catch? I told you at the beginning of the post.
- There will be some problems with intellectual property and copyrights in that case.
- It would introduce substantial changes to our economy, and nobody knows if that's going to be for better or worse.
- It would make some serious questions about governing metaverse and virtual worlds.
… and probably many more issues. We'll cover them one by one if the following days.
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