Zero Linden's Plans For Second Life

Basically, for those interested in the scaling of Second Life, you really ought to read this - a chat log with Zero Linden captured by the blog: Dizzy Banjo - Soundtracking Virtual Worlds. This builds out upon the planned opening up of the server code, with the whole kit and caboodle going open source.

Quick headlines:

• Linden are not just talking about the sim limits we have now - they are talking truly epic scale: "to evolve the SL architecture into something that is internet wide."
• Transition to "SL2.0" (gah!) is being designed to be as seamless as possible.
• Now for the numbers: 60Million regions; 2Billion avatar accounts; maybe 50M to 100M on-line... though admittedly hypothetical
  
• And "on-line might mean something more lightweight in the future"

There is also some discussion of the richness or "thickness" of the functionality and capability on offer. If I read it right, provided your server follows and implements all the protocols correclyt, you could boost it to super-performance (demanding equally suped-up PCs), but Linden don't plan to follow this route themselves.

This is the first time I've seen the numbers they are toying with. I knew they were ambitious, but this is quite breath-taking!

Sadly, the discussion does not deal with issues of identity management and storage. But I daresay that is to come.