Now one could make the argument I am not being fair as Second Life steams it's content using a lightweight client whereas Battlefield 3 and Metro 2033 require 20GB of hard drive space. However, that does not excuse the lack of proper optimization for even low quality textures. Nevertheless, I think I may have forgotten what Second Life is really about, other people. Thinking back Second life is really a overblown IM client born out of the times when texting and AOL Instant Messaging was the hip thing. It also helped lay the groundwork for what we now know as Free-to-Play gaming. I could go on for ages about how horrible things like the interface are but that is for another time. I guess I am left conflicted with the nostalgia for one of my first big online experiences only to see how bad it was and how it's not any better now.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Second Life First Impressions
Second Life is an example of something that could have been much more if the developers had pushed the limit a bit more. I had a short stint with the game back in 2004 and 8 years later things have not changed much including all it's problems. One of the glaring problems I had back in the day was Second Life's lack of proper optimization . Sadly 8 years down the line this has arguably gotten worse. Back in 2004 it ran fine on a midrange laptop on medium settings while today it can't go any further then high on my MacBookPro that blows my older laptop out of the water by miles. This problem is made even worse when I fired up my desktop, a computer that can max out Battlefield 3 and Metro 2033 without any effort yet Second Life has massive amounts of slowdown reloading areas of the map that I have already been to.
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There are a lot of things wrong with SL. Nevertheless, the good things continue to outweigh the bad. As an open-ended 3D platform a lot of things have changed. The SL client typically fires out to several servers at a time, so network issues are often a bottleneck. I use different graphics settings for different tasks. Low, when I'm navigating around, mid-high, when I've found a place I want to visit in some detail, and ultra, for taking great snapshots. This helps mitigate the information-rich space and its myriad choices.
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