I was thinking to myself today about the planetary VU updates now that there are three planets. Each time we see a VU update, it takes however many minutes (or hours, for some of us) to update. Now that there are multiple planets (two was okay since rocktropia is rarely updated in terms of geography, but now we have three and it seems that NextIsland is going to be very active) are all VU updates still going to occur at startup? or will planet-specific updates occur on arrival to that planet? Because, once there 8 planets or so, I don't want to sit through a 2 hr VU update every day :P especially for planets i've never (and may not plan on) visited/visiting. just a thought so someone correct me if my thinking is way off base!
Exactly because of this the dynamic content download was implemented. It will work in the background and only the planets you want to see will be updated. It is not yet fully implemented, but the base for it is there. The next Planet on the schedule will be Arkadia IIRC, coming in the first half of 2011... ;)
I am curious how this is going to work technically as well. Are the planet specific downloads going to be triggered by where your avatar already is, or by where you choose to teleport to, or by a choice in the client loader for example. A little confusing really, as say for example you are on planet x but decide to teleport to planet y, and don't have the content loaded for it already, do you then have to wait at the tp for a couple hours while it downloads? There are apparently one to two more major updates to come to get this dynamic download system fully operational (oh the headaches on update day). Unfortunately, this is the MA platform, not the planets, so unlikely they will ever tell us much about how it going to work, we will just have to see it in action.
I was afraid of that :P lol I hope we get some information on it... i dont want to be surprised one day after i go to next island... then come back to calypso for something on emergency only to find out that i have to wait for a download. But now heres another fun thing to roll over in your mind hasnt MA stated that the teleporters will be abolished and you will fly in the hangar ships through space to reach your destination with fully-open space to fly in? if thats really going to happen, then i really, reallly have no idea how this is going to work :P edit: also, how about new content? that won't work if planets are updated individually. if one planet gets new content in an update specific to the planet and then someone gets it and brings it back to your planet, when you didnt have said update on that planet... then what?
