Linden Lab Gives Mono to Second Life
Linden Lab announced last night that it would be adding Mono, an open-source technology used by Linden to improve the speed and stability of scripts. In internal tests, Linden said scripts on Mono ran up to 220 times faster than otherwise. VP of Platform and Technology Development Joe Miller began talking about Mono earlier this year as part of Linden's renewed commitment to improving the behind-the-scenes experience for users. The update, which will be implemented over the coming days, is heralded by Linden as "the first step in the evolution of Second Life into a true software development platform" and full of future potential.
"As well as providing immediate benefits, the integration of the Mono virtual machine makes many future improvements possible," blogged Babbage Linden, "the use of mainstream languages to script Second Life alongside the existing LSL language; the removal of arbitrary per-script limits on script resource usage and the use of mainstream libraries and tools for scripting to name a few."
One thing that I noticed is that LSL script on the internal testing "preview grid" is actually twice as slow. When mono comes to the main grid, it may actually only be 110 times then "todays" LSL if it will result in slowing down LSL on the main grid as well.
Posted by: Dedric Mauriac | August 21, 2008 at 01:45 PM