Ebbe Linden & Education In Second Life

Ok, so this is a bit off the topic of content creation, but certainly fits in with the general Some Of My Best Friends Are Pixels thang I got goin', well the pixels part anyway.

So as a frequent reader & long time fan of Strawberry Singh's blog I sometimes almost do one of her infamous and usually super clever Blogger Meme Challenges, but then I don't. This time, I am bustin' out, and taking Flat Ebbe on a tour since it's just too good an opportunity to miss.

That's Flat Ebbe & me at Builders Brewery, a school, help group, sandbox and all round educational nexus in Second Life. I knew that Ebbe would like it here since as I understand it from his public statements so far he is pretty keen to reestablish Second Life as a viable forum and platform for education. 
Me too! 

So in keeping with the meme theme, here are the three things I would like to tell Ebbe:

1. I was genuinely thrilled to hear that education in SL was on someone's agenda again. I hope that the agenda is broad enough to include support for in world educators and learners as well as attracting brick and mortar institutions and students from the outside world. 

Now two of my current pet peeves - both related to content creation and specifically to streaming costs and how Land Impact is calculated. Although I realize this is probably way below Ebbe's pay grade, I bet he knows someone who knows how to fix this kind of thing.  

2. First, the Land Impact algorithm for mesh objects could be improved. It doesn't really give a fair calculation of streaming cost based on volume, because as soon as an object pokes outside of a hypothetical cube, the LI goes up as though the object in question is now occupying a proportionally greater chunk of screen real estate. But in the case of a long skinny object for instance, this is a misreading. Specifically, there is no way that a 500 tri tree trunk should cost more in Land Impact than a 5000 tri tree stump, no matter how tall the trunk in question is.

2b. Second, I guess it probably saved time to make all materials and Alpha Modes invoke a streaming cost calculation, but Alpha Masking, which is super fast and potentially a great lag reducer should NOT raise the LI no matter what surface it is used on. Specifically, as it stands now, changing the Alpha Blend on any sculptie plant (the vast majority of plants in SL are sculpties) would significantly reduce lag and render times in those areas, yet due to streaming costs calculation, would have the effect of doubling the prim allowance required. 

3. Love that you're engaged and engaging, maybe restart the blog as a semi regular what's new. Lot's of tiny stuff changes and often for the better, but goes unnoticed.