Talk:Project Motivation

Scaling for events

I would like to add more scary numbers to the main namespace here.

• If N people are interested in an event today, and the population grows tomorrow by a factor of M, then tomorrow N*M people will be interested in that event, assuming unchanging population demographics.

• Every live music event by the top few SL musicians maxes out their event sim: let's assume that this means 100 people, although the demand is undoubtedly higher already but not satisfied. SL currently has just under 10m registered residents. If the scary number for total population size is 2 billion, then the scary number for event interest is 100*2000/10 = 20,000 to an event region, given unchanging demographics.

• Of course, worldwide we do not have an unchanging demographic, but no matter by how much you want to reduce this figure as a result of this, the answer is still collosal. And bear in mind that there is much uniformity in eastern populations, just as there is in the west, so event interest within each cultural domain will be huge. And of course many events are cross-cultural.

• Which brings me to the issue that nobody seems to want to tackle: the new architecture needs scalability for events.

• While I recognize fully that there are monumental hurdles in the way of achieving this, it is just an engineering problem with a number of known partial solutions and amenable to tradeoffs. Worse, not addressing it will leave us exactly where we are today, with zero scalability for events. And, very unhappily, SL will become the virtual world where almost everybody is barred from their favorite event. 19,900 people out of every 20,000 have to stay at home. That's not the future system we want to build, in my view.

• Please add at least 10,000 per region to the scary numbers, to focus the mind. --Morgaine Dinova 21:07, 24 September 2007 (PDT)

• I mentioned this at Zero's Office Hours today, but no traffic yet, so added it myself. --Morgaine Dinova 17:42, 25 September 2007 (PDT)