Are the Lindens Planning a Cloud-Based Second Life?

When the Lindens introduced their behind-the-firewall, Second Life Enterprise solution, many scratched their heads at the high $50,000 starting price, which will surely limit its market. But taking a hint from Linden CPO Tom Hale, architect Jeanricard Broek thinks the Lindens have a longer term strategy in mind here: Introducing the next version of Second Life, which will be cloud-based, like the upcoming technology recently announced by nNvidia. "Just think," says Broek:

No viewer required, full IP protection, Natal ready. Remember Lotus & Mitch Kapor failed to lead with a GUI for 123 and Microsoft ate them alive. I don't think the lesson went unlearned.

I'd note that a cloud-based metaverse was recently suggested to me by OnLive's CEO. As Steve Perlman put it to me, "You could design the next Second Life on this!" So even if the Lindens aren't working on it, as Monsieur Ricard put it, "someone else will."

Comments

[AnnOtooleInSL]

Long long ways away. By then since all the other grids will have overtaken the LL grid it won't really matter what LL does since nobody will really care anymore. And as far as IP rights go well by then that won't really matter either since content will be sold on artists' web sites and paid via paypal directly to the artist with no LL in between and no tier to LL and the product will be delivered via an xml file the customer imports wherever they choose and the artist won't really care what happens to it once it is delivered much like how the renderosity and other art sales models work right now. Just need the texture binary data in the export/import and good to go.

But cloud rendering is a nice techie type dream to do a little forward thinking on. We already had this discussion on SLU weeks ago.

[HBA]

I have no idea what this post is about - translation for non-tech heads please Hamlet.

[radar]

Ann, maybe the other worlds will have caught up, maybe they won't, but we've been waiting forever. They're ahead in some areas, and years behind in some other, very basic ways.

My bet would be on a surprise candidate rather than any of the OpenSim worlds.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

HBA: "cloud-based" means "with all the hard work done on servers in the Internet", so that all you need at your end is essentially something that can play streaming video and audio. No rendering is done at your end; all you get is what your avatar sees and hears at its POV, and hence no textures or other things are sent to or cached on your system. That's why people claim that it protects IP.

Now, the questions: can one assemble enough servers that all the work currently done on SL residents' systems can be done, and done fast enough, without using SL residents' systems? (Or rather, all the work that would be done if SL concurrent usage were as high as people wish it were...) Isn't sending the streaming video and audio, rather than the information needed to generate them, a lot of bandwidth, especially when ISPs are starting to set bandwidth caps? More knowledgeable people than I will have to answer.

[Tateru Nino]

Hmmm. No, doesn't really make sense given the specifications.

[Tristin M]

100% not just epic fail...
But laugh your ass off till you puke fail LOL
webex
instantpresenter
ect
ect will kick LL ass in every dept there will be
The lab has its head up its ... well you know lol

[Ehrman Digfoot]

Ever since Onlive was introduced, and Mr. Perlman made that comment, I have been crossing my fingers that SL would go cloud.

And I know Blue Mars has specifically mentioned that it was "aggressively exploring" the tech. I really hope for the sake of SL, that we see major investments in infrastructure alongside the new marketing push.

Is there a general consensus that LL has been withholding the release of many long sought after features (mesh support, etc) to increase publicity when 2.0 is finally released or is the financial viability of such investments simply not promising yet?

[Maria Korolov]

I believe there are already at least two companies offering cloud-based OpenSim hosting, using the Amazon EC2 cloud application server.

There should not be too much technical difficulty with running Second Life Enterprise in such a matter either. Regions can be activated on an as-needed basis.

For regions that need to be up 24/7, the Amazon EC2 hosting is a big pricy, but it's a great deal if someone only needs a region for a few hours.

-- Maria Korolov
Editor, Hypergrid Business

[Troy McConaghy]

It would be more meaningful to call this technology "server-side rendering" rather than "cloud" because "cloud" can mean a many different things. Being vague can lead to confusion, as exemplified by Maria's comment. (You wouldn't use EC2 to do server-side rendering. Rendering requires GPUs and EC2 is CPUs.)

OnLive - which does server-side rendering for games like Crysis - is already in beta testing with gamers (since September of 2009). It will become available for the general public, for a variety of games, sometime next year. It's not a techie dream. It's a reality.

It's worth noting that Crysis uses the same rendering engine (software) as Blue Mars: Crytek's CRYENGINE.

[Opensource Obscure]

I simply don't think that server-side rendering can be applied to current uses of Second Life.

As far as I know, latency is an issue big enough to make this technology not the right choice for SL.

@Troy
thanks for explanations & making clearer the topic, I agree with your notes.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The control latency in server-side rendering may be a deal-breaker for twitch gaming, but not for a social virtual world. I would expect latency to decrease significantly for everybody who doesn't have fat pipe and the latest high-end card, possibly to the point that we could bump parcel avatar limits by a factor of ten or more and/or permit some really sweet primmy goodness for builders.

It's all speculation. But it's nice speculation.

[Hamlet Au]

Good cloud 'splaining, Melissa!

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

*blush* Aw shucks, 'tweren't nothin'... *grinds toe in virtual dirt*

"It's worth noting that Crysis uses the same rendering engine (software) as Blue Mars: Crytek's CRYENGINE."

...which is Windows-only, so to hell with it.

[Shockwave Plasma]

The current problem with "The Cloud" is that it's not very good with database read/writes.

It's good for storage, and it's good for "on demand" applications, but not for speed, not yet.

So if you think the asset server is slow now, wait until it's in "The Cloud".

[Persig Phaeton]

Funny, Desmond Shang and I were discussing server-side rendering as a means of IP protection a little over a year ago in this thread on Prok's blog:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/10/gwyn-mugged-by/comments/page/2/#comments
I half jokingly suggested it at the end of my 7:05PM post but never really expected that such a thing would be practical in the near future. It may not be, after all, but it's great to see some companies taking it seriously. It sure lowers the barrier for the consumer:
Anyone with a web browser and a reasonably fast internet connection could use SL. The only graphics horsepower required is a video chipset capable of displaying streaming video. Even cheap, integrated Intel chipsets on laptops can do that with ease these days. Come to think of it, you could even get stunning graphical SL access on a smart phone. :)