Second Life™ Limits
Core issues:
- There are concurrency issues - these manifest with problems with logging in, teleporting, buying things and the like. These mostly occur on a Sunday evening UK time but parts of them can occur at any time.
- (Currently) HOAP can't follow links on webpages - this functionality is in the pipeline but no release data
- Multi-directional cuts and hollows - although you can work around this with more prims
- Really accurate physics simulation - the physics engine in Second Life is good, but not really good enough for physics experiment demonstrations
- Subtractive prims - you can't nibble a section OUT of a cube
- 1:1 scale buildings - this isn't strictly true, but they don't work well because of the camera position. 2:1 works better
Limits on scripts and scripting:
- Fast scripting - the sim does a lot of work already!
- More than 16 returns on a sensor
- One-click multi-location tp
- Significant amounts of data storage - although you can bounce data in and out of world to databases efficiently - there is currently a 16kB limit (see scripting page for more information)
- Really good AI directly - this sort of ties to fast computing and data storage issues but can be a problem for educators
Decorating your world:
- Fine control of land textures - you can have four land textures, you can tweak their heights of display, but it's worked from an algorithm you can't control
- Multi-height water - the linden water in a sim is uniform in height. Rivers, ponds etc. must be made from prims unless at that height.
- No gravity - although you can script for neutral buoyancy if you want
- Painting the sky (multiple moons etc.) - although you could probably box the sim in if necessary.
Avatar control/animation issues:
- All animations must be prepared outside of Second Life and uploaded - although ragdoll animation in world is mentioned on and off as being in development.
- Facial expressions - there are a limited number of emotes available and no direct control of the face
- Hand and finger anims - there are a limited number of hand poses available that must be chosen during uploading an animation
The development cycle at Linden Lab is very hard to predict. For example:
- Upgrading from Havok 1 to Havok 2 was big news when I first joined Second Life, over four years ago. Then it went away, and finally, almost four years later Havok 4 was rolled out onto the grid.
- The switch from the current scripting environment to Mono was first mentioned in the period between November 2004 and February 2005. It will shortly be out as a release candidate for the main viewer sequence (1.21).
- Ripple water was not even mentioned until one day it was a new option.
- Windlight (for sky effects) was mentioned because Linden Lab bought the company, and it was released as a trial version within a few days and as part of the main viewer sequence within about 6 weeks of first being mentioned.
- HTML on a prim was first mentioned about two years before it was released - there are still some steps to go, but these are close to being integrated into the viewer.
- Watches of the public JIRA (Linden Lab's bug reporting tool) notice an average of two months for QA - the time between a bug being marked as fixed and the code being rolled out in the main viewer.
- When exploits are detected, turn around is usually measured in hours
- When unintended consequences occur (animated textures on torii causing a massive slow down of the client - which made fountains unusable for example) acknowledgement is usually fast, a fix is usually found within hours or days.
There is an intelligent blog post discussing the history and reasons for many of the current limits in Second Life that is well worth a read. How much of this will change over the next year or so is not clear.
I am not in any way affiliated with Linden Lab. This site advertises my work within their virtual environment.
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