Presentation: "Second Life: how it works (and how it doesn't)"
Time: Friday 09:30 - 10:30
Location: Metropolitan I
Second Life offers users a rich, 3D virtual world where they can look how they want, build what they want, and even write their own software, all in a single space shared with thousands of other people. These days that means we have 100 million objects, 30 million scripts, and 50,000 people in-world at a time; user empowerment on this scale has never been attempted before.
This talk will explain how Second Life blends technology from video games, high-performance computing, web infrastructure, virtualization, and VOIP to keep all these virtual engines ticking over, as well as some of the more spectacular failures of the platform. We'll also discuss future technology directions.