A Question about Croquet's Philosophy on Multi-user 3D Environments...

[Alan Kay]

Hi Darius --

This email list is for parents, teachers and children who are 
concerned with the "etoys" part of Squeak. Croquet stuff can and 
should be discussed both on its own list and on the squeak.org list.

To answer your question: remember what has happened to the 
"Victoria's Secret" website on the occasion of special promotions 
they've done, especially connected with TV. At some point capacity 
gets exceeded. So there is nothing new here. The first practical 
limit in Croquet is in the number of polygons that can be displayed 
by one's own 3D accellerator. This limits both the scene complexity 
and the number of people who can be in view. This is why Everquest, 
even with its farms of servers, trys to spread visitors out over the 
world so there are never more than a few in view at any given time.

Cheers,

Alan

At 1:28 PM -0800 2/6/03, Darius Clarke wrote:
>Hello Everyone,
>
>Just curious...
>Have Croquet developers and Croquet users considered what effect 
>"flash crowds"
>might have in Croquet in terms of avatar space and multiple users
>simultaniously moving the same 3D object?
>
>Definition of "flash crowd":
>
>"Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story "Flash Crowd" predicted that one 
>consequence
>of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds materializing almost instantly at
>the sites of interesting news stories. Twenty years later the term passed into
>common use on the Internet to describe exponential spikes in website or server
>usage when one passes a certain threshold of popular interest (this 
>may also be
>called slashdot effect). "
>
>http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/f/flash_crowd.html
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Kim Rose [mailto:Kim.Rose at viewpointsresearch.org]
>Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 09:41 AM
>To: Andreas Raab; 'Alan Kay'; 'Dave Smith'; 'David Reed'
>Cc: darius at inglang.com
>Subject: RE: A Question about Croquet's Philosophy...
>
>>  This has been a very interesting discussion and certainly reminds one
>>  of the many layers (computer architecture, social, economic etc.,
>>  etc.)invovled in building a shareable, open space like Croquet.
>>  thanks,
>>    Kim


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