Saturday, September 19, 2009

OpenSim in the Classroom: Wireless Issues

Anyone who knows how virtual worlds work could have told me that I would have trouble logging 14 students in to a sim over a wireless connection to our school's LAN. Now I know from experience that each user's client has to download too much data during the login process for it to go smoothly. I had several failed logins on the first attempt. Next class I had the students do rolling logins--only one at a time--and it went much better, only taking 8 minutes to get everyone in, configuring their avatars. Lesson learned.
UPDATE: After some experimentation I've found that any more than about 8 users logging in over the wireless causes too much latency for it to be more than a frustrating experience for the students. So they double up. For more than 8 students I'll have to hook up a switch and provide network cables--only for very special projects, like the drama project coming up.