A new, improved stability Second Life simulator is on the way to your region!
Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 12:30 PM by: Sidewinder LindenWhat Is Happening?
As part of our continued effort to increase the stability and reliability of Second Life, we are happy to announce a new simulator that significantly reduces region crashes. This release is the result of the Havok™4 project, a project that updated the physics engine used to determine all movement of objects in Second Life.
When Will It Happen?
- Monday March 31: Evaluate how the Early Adopter deploy of RC3 went over the weekend
If all goes well over the weekend with RC3 on the Second Life Early Adopter regions, then:
- Monday March 31: Deploy the new simulator to 1500-2000 regions
- Tuesday April 1: Deploy the new simulator to the rest of the regions on Second Life
We will be watching the deploy process closely, as this is a major update, and may opt to delay the larger deploys if we see critical issues in the first phases. Status updates will be provided on the blog.
What Will Change?
We expect that many residents will not notice any changes (other than fewer simulator crashes!), and that the changes that you will see are relatively minor. As with any major update, there may be some issues - in particular some scripts that took advantage of problems in the older Havok1-based simulator may not work exactly the way they used to work. We have worked to resolve such issues and will continue to handle these special cases wherever it is technically possible.
How Was This Tested?
We have worked hard to make sure that this update is done in an open, transparent way, and tested thoroughly to ensure stability and to reduce problems as we roll the update out to Second Life.
Here are a few interesting facts about the public beta process:
- Started in September 2007 and has lasted six months
- Active daily use on over 635 regions of Second Life
- Over 1 million simulator run hours since the start of public beta
- 173 bugs fixed during the public beta
- Over 50 public in-world meetings to discuss issues and make joint decisions with beta testers
- 27 blog posts, with over 1735 comments
What Is A Physics Engine?
The physics engine in Second Life is a key component, responsible for managing all movement of avatars and objects, detecting collisions, calculating gravity, momentum and rebounds, and creating the appearance of friction or damping that slows down movement over time. The Havok4 physics engine update reduces simulator crash rates significantly, to the point that many of our Early Adopters are surprised to see a crash - they now happen infrequently on most regions.
This project increases the reliability of the Second Life simulators, which run in our data centers (as opposed to the Second Life viewer, which runs on your desktop).
What Happens Next?
The Linden Lab Havok4 team will continue to review open issues and work on critical bugs after the release. We know that you will find things that still need attention, and we fully expect that we will continue to do fixes and updates in the period following the release.
Thanks for all of your involvement, support and input. Your help has made it possible to reach the goal of deploying this important Second Life stability update.
Best regards,
Sidewinder Linden
Program Manager
March 29th, 2008 at 12:33 PM
Please remember - we are here and will be here - we know that you will find some things that behave differently with this version. We will be fixing critical issues as they are raised, and issuing updates as necessary in the short term. Thanks for all of your support! /Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 12:36 PM
Woohoo Havok 4 is near!
March 29th, 2008 at 12:40 PM
Congratulations Sidewinder, on running such a successful beta test. You and Pastrami are examples.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:46 PM
Great news guys. Congratulations.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:46 PM
picking April 1st for a major technology deploy? Gutsy!
March 29th, 2008 at 12:49 PM
1 Word:
Wow
March 29th, 2008 at 12:50 PM
Congratulations Sidewinder and the rest of the Havoc4 team on really showing how new to work on new features with the community participation. Lets just hope more projects inside Linden Labs are done in this superb way.
And once the new simulator code is stable and running the whole grid, addition of new features such as bigger prims (32m) open source simulator… well one can hope
March 29th, 2008 at 12:52 PM
FINALLY!!!! Havok 4 to the Mainland! Thank You!! I’m gonna get the champagne, if there are no major problems I’ll celebrate, if it gets delayed, then i’ll just drink! lol
March 29th, 2008 at 12:53 PM
Thank you LL!!!
Just in time for the launch of my physics-based produft line, too.
Keep up the good work!
March 29th, 2008 at 12:53 PM
@5 Ann Otoole
__
Gutsy think of the day. tricks and pranks. why i feel it wont be the first to just prank us? lol they laugh and put it out the 2nd. lol
March 29th, 2008 at 12:54 PM
wow april 1 for a upgrade,this will be fun no one will crash on that day….lol…… april fool!
March 29th, 2008 at 12:54 PM
@5: thougt the same!
Congrats to the Linden-team!
March 29th, 2008 at 12:57 PM
I hope Linden Labs makes the havok4 project a model for all future projects, especially in terms of communication and feedback from project managers.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:01 PM
@5 Ann: Hehe yeah April 1st… Well at least it’s not the start of the rollout (although if we have a couple fixes to do and need to slip a day it might be!). I thought about blogging that in honor of April first the roll-out will be with gravity reversed, or something bizarre like that… but then thought better of it because many folks might take it seriously
/Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 1:04 PM
As a H4 Early Adopter myself I’m glad to finely see it ready to be released
March 29th, 2008 at 1:05 PM
Well done, anything that improves crashes is most welcome!
Any chance of knowing ahead of time what may act differently if, as you say< “We know that you will find things that still need attention”?
March 29th, 2008 at 1:05 PM
I have a feeling this might be an April fools joke. Why do i think that? Well in SL i believe it’s possible.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:08 PM
Fix the damn Train tracks!
March 29th, 2008 at 1:11 PM
CONGRATULATIONS! Sidewinder, you deserve a statue on the old Governor’s Mansion — bringing the unthinkable to SL and making it real.
The four-year-long wait for Havok™ 4 is finally over!
March 29th, 2008 at 1:12 PM
It will be nice to see this implemented grid wide. My sim has been an early adopter for quite some time, and as of late the bgs have been noticeable minor, especially compared to the toture of being in a Havok 1 sim. Best part - no crashes. Sim downtime is pretty much unheard of, which is good.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:14 PM
Typical Linden behavior, teasing us with false promises of reversed gravity.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:15 PM
WOW!! I am Happy to see this. I like to thank all that worked to test this. Congratulations.
Have a good week and a 100% good working Havok™4 release. 
Steve Steed
March 29th, 2008 at 1:25 PM
Hmmm….
Well, ok then… w00t
Finally, and aiming on better stability, thanks Sidewinder and the team!
The home sim currently crashes at least every other day, sometimes twice daily, so it will be highly welcome with this update even if there are some issues around it.
@ Sidewinder…
You forget some ®’s up there *laughs*
Read up on the new trademark policy
Thumbs up anyway for the H***c 4 (lack of the TM sign with the iso8859 character set, so that word wan’t be written unless it’s made another extra sentence long like “Havoc, intellectual trademark of Linden Lab® Inc., 4″ hihi! Does that make LL version 4 or what???)
March 29th, 2008 at 1:27 PM
Did anyone read that posting fully. They NEVER said NO crashes. They said “We expect that many residents will not notice any changes (other than fewer simulator crashes!)” I repeat “…fewer simulator crashes!”
Have a Good Day
March 29th, 2008 at 1:28 PM
great i cant wait for this feature!
March 29th, 2008 at 1:31 PM
Don’t get your hopes too high…….
March 29th, 2008 at 1:38 PM
As someone who has 4 regions that are part of the early adopter program, havok4 kicks ass. The new linking rules alone will be candy to builders.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:38 PM
I hope this fixes the issues. The asset server has been acting up worse than a troubled child on crack. I hope whomever is in charge actually gets it now and will focus on stability. It would be a welcome change. At least you are talking about it now that is a positive step.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:39 PM
Well if whole LL did the job as well as you did then SL would be a really nice place
Thx again
March 29th, 2008 at 1:39 PM
If there are any major issues will they be ironed out by next weekend? I have a big event coming up on Saturday and it has been in the planning for almost 12 months :/
1st April is no problem for me, it’d bother me if it was Fri 13th….
if you fancy turning the physics engine upside down for a laugh go for it… but PLEASE have it fixed again by the weekend!
Well done for the hard work you and your team have put into this Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 1:40 PM
WOOT! Been waiting for Havok 4. You guys rock! All the complaining aside…I think deep down we all know how difficult it is to please millions of users of SL…right everyone?
Can’t wait for the release!
Hey, just for fun how about reversing gravity on the beta sims for April fools day? Would be a blast!
March 29th, 2008 at 1:44 PM
btw there’s a missing end tag or something at the end of the short version of this post… is messing up the rest of the blog
March 29th, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Ah is that why search, transactions, and inter sim TPs go stale again, after Elle claims to have “fixed” it last night, with log ins barred for 2 hours ?
really “GREAT” work, wtg !
March 29th, 2008 at 1:47 PM
Hooo! Hooo! Hooo!
Nice work!
March 29th, 2008 at 1:48 PM
I still have RC boats that float under water level, Birds that don’t rotate to face the direction they fly and bird followers that do constant circles.
The first 2 examples can be seen in FairChang Village.
How can this be ready for release?
March 29th, 2008 at 1:52 PM
What’s going on now? Pls update us on log ins cos it’s been hell for the past 18 hours now
March 29th, 2008 at 1:53 PM
Brilliant work Sidewinder, a tribute to communication, process and relations with the community. Good luck with the roll-out and please pass along your best practices to Catherine Linden.
Yeah, few glitches, but the sims we’ve run it on have been nearly flawless, and truly less crashes (in spite some fine minds trying their hardest to blow the thing up).
March 29th, 2008 at 1:54 PM
I hope it fixes the assest server to because as of 03/29/08 1:53 pm PST the assest server is still messed up pretty much has been going down all day
March 29th, 2008 at 1:54 PM
Way to go! Havok4 is nothing but great news. No doubt there will be people who will slag it off and complain, but they’ll be in the minority. I’ve been really impressed with it so bring it on…
March 29th, 2008 at 1:57 PM
@38 Tristin: This project is not directly related to the asset server - that’s a whole separate part of the system. There is a team working on that to resolve the issues. /Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 1:59 PM
You people in SF at SL are morons!!!!! I just tried to tip a wonderful live musician twice and it failed. God forgive you for your incompetence!
March 29th, 2008 at 2:00 PM
So Sidewinder do u get it now?
March 29th, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Fine I’ll say it the way you want it.. I’m looking forward for this. Don’t let us down. Pleaseeee. I’m serious.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:00 PM
it keeps on asking me to log in every 4 mins without fail
March 29th, 2008 at 2:01 PM
Does this mean another month of rolling restarts, and slow deployment for the next month or so while this new and improved simulator update gets deployed. Haven’t you guys been doing this for the past 4 months already?
Maybe the asset servers need some havoc4 voodoo.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:02 PM
Please let the folks working on the asset server issue that it is most definitely still going on, gratz on the upgrades coming in though Sidewinder!
March 29th, 2008 at 2:02 PM
”
[RESOLVED] Asset Server Issues
[RESOLVED 5:12pm PDT] Logins are restored .. we took advantage of that reboot to do a small amount of maintenance that had been waiting for such an opportunity… which will hopefully prevent this from taking place in the future. ”
@38 Tristin is right, things still broken today :(. Linden transfers are stalled. Nothing on the blog though.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:05 PM
Being an Early Adopter for this new technology has been a very positive experience. I’ll certainly be happy to participate in future simulator EA programs. Congratulations to all on the Havok 4 team for a great job!
March 29th, 2008 at 2:06 PM
@ 46 please stop the gratuitous comments
March 29th, 2008 at 2:08 PM
@42 Wakeup: I have “gotten it” for a long time… However the database issues (which are not asset server issues at the moment, for what it’s worth) are not in an area that I have anything to do with personally. I have checked and there is a team actively working on the problem. That team is about to post a blog entry. /Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 2:11 PM
Arrgggghhhhh still missed. RC viewer’s 1, 2, 3 & 4 all freeze on log out, I always have to force quit, I made a JIRA for it when RC2 was released.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:11 PM
This seems like another headline feature. Most of us aren’t relly bothered if the physics are better, we would rather a lot of other stuff was fixed before shiny new stuff is introduced.
Sure as a side effect of the havok5 work you can make sims more reliable, but if the resource spent on implementing havok4 was spent in other areas we’d have had the more reliable sims sooner.
Havok 4 does help my lost business due to unrealiable asset servers, lL$ transfer etc.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:12 PM
havoc 4 don’t fix the super older bug in clothes or hairs or accessories in avatars, when i fly and i change to the area and i enter to new server all accessories align in my ass literally and i needed relog and enter again to second life for fix my avatar accessories,
example sometimes i see my shoes in my ass, or i see my hair in my ass, or my belt put in ass and i need relog all time when that occurs
havock 4 dont fix this, this super horrid oldies bug I DONT HAPPY WITH havock 4
March 29th, 2008 at 2:15 PM
I am apprehensive…for the last several days SL has been very unstable in the sims with the new test engine… I fear this may mean the new engine isn’t really more stable at all. I hope the bugs really are worked out… (Stands alertly with a large can of Raid and a large flyswatter held in military parade position…
March 29th, 2008 at 2:19 PM
Does it help to reduce lag?
March 29th, 2008 at 2:19 PM
@54 Bau and others: The physics engine handles one part of the Second Life experience - it is not everything (see description above). This work will make the physics engine stability better (physics engine crashes are responsible for over half of the simulator crashes on the current simulator), and has already made a very noticeable improvement across the community of over 500 early adopters. There are other teams working on the other issues. Best regards, Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 2:21 PM
Does it fix the failed TP issues?
March 29th, 2008 at 2:23 PM
SWEET!! Will this increase the distance of attachements and the size of prims allowed?
I noticed on the test grid that any AO’s I had on would also let me raise the height of an avatar much higher, without the annoying drop-to-the-ground blip whenever you’d stop & start moving.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:24 PM
/me rezzes car collection and starts washing them in the driveway seeing hope that they may become driveable again………
Good work Havok Team!
March 29th, 2008 at 2:30 PM
for the next step, please switch to an open source physics engine, aight?
(btw, for those that don’t know, Havok isn’t owned by the L company, they just purchased the license to use it or somthing)
March 29th, 2008 at 2:33 PM
@35 Garth: Do you have jira’s with these issues? I don’t recall hearing about them. If you would provide some details we can look into them. As I mentioned above (please see my comment #1), we will be chasing issues post-deploy. Please feel free to IM me in-world with a jira number or to discuss the issues that you are seeing. /Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 2:40 PM
@27 “The new linking rules alone will be candy to builders.”
Where can I find ino on thse new rules… and anything else that has changed?
Searching the Knowledge base for ‘Havok’ thows up nothing.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:42 PM
i still got issues with certain items locking up in H4, but since the problem can’t be zeroed in on, im guessing the only way to find out is to roll it out and hopefully its just an isolated incident, then again something which may seem insignificant on 400 or 500 sims, might become more obvious on thousands of sims. Lets hope any minor niggles dont turn into big howling monster probs, GL sidewinder an all
March 29th, 2008 at 2:48 PM
Yeah, right; Havok 4 is rolling out on April 1st.
Who do you think you’re kidding ?
Not falling for it
March 29th, 2008 at 2:51 PM
First off, I’m glad Havok 4 is finally gridwide!
Unfortunately it’s the 3rd time I crashed today. I just used the brand new RC and i have 2 fashion shows i need to feature! I hope a Linden knows about this and is solving the problem.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:51 PM
[...] the rumor is true, Havok 4 is to be deployed grid-wide on Monday and [...]
March 29th, 2008 at 2:57 PM
@50 it is long past time that SL posted highly informative real time information on what is happening. Do you understand that?
March 29th, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Dear Lindens,
A formula for success and greater happiness for your customers:
Under-promise. Then over-deliver.
Also, perhaps you could ask your fellow Lindens to turn your attention to adfarm, landbot, lag and griefing — issues that *really* affect the average user’s experience?
Just sayin’
- Joe
March 29th, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I hope this will help resolve the following ongoing issues.
KNOWN ISSUES
* Serious memory leaks.
* Grid instability and poor performance
* Teleports fail quite regularly, especially under heavy load
* Sim performance varies wildly (NOT due to client content either)
* Low FPS
* Serious texture latency
* World maps are very slow loading
* Crashes and viewer hangs and freezes
* Ongoing friends list issues
* Group chat totally borked
* Group Notices not getting to all members of a group
* Random animations starting out of nowhere (and no, not an attack)
* Sailing off into void space after crossing a sim line
* Did we mention crashes? Why yes, yes we did.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:05 PM
Rascal and don’t forget the HORRID BUG A BAD SYNCHRONIZATION bug in all AVATARS ITEMS, i need relog over 5 times in one day because all my items put in my ass or in the avatar center!!
March 29th, 2008 at 3:06 PM
havock 4 dont fix this horrible problems i dont happy with this mediocre havock 4
March 29th, 2008 at 3:14 PM
Well, I hope it will make a difference. I still have empty folders where goods used to be and my friends report the same. Vendors are loosing our business because we are learning not to waste money in SL. Its meant to be fun. Chasing vendors for goods that do’t arrive is time wasting and NOT fun. Loosing goods is NOT fun either. Crashes daily is NOT fun. No login is NOT fun. Lag is NOT fun. Need we say more?
March 29th, 2008 at 3:23 PM
I have 3 Havok 4 sims in early adopter, sim crashes…none, sim crossings… smooth 99% of time, noticeable reduction in lag, Mega prims can be hollowed and cut!!!!
I love Havok 4
March 29th, 2008 at 3:24 PM
Yes, Wonderful news.
While it may be a little bumpy at first as everyone gets used to the new quirks, I can say I’ve loved Havok 4 since the first day it was put on my sim back in September. It’s a huge step forward for Second Life toward a more stable Grid. Thanks to everyone on the grid and the Lindens who spearheaded the effort for making it such a huge success. 
March 29th, 2008 at 3:32 PM
Only thing I can recommend is taking care of the way avatars slide around as if they’re on ice in the current havok4 implementation before rolling this out widely.
I absolutely loathe the jira, and so now I have no way of bugreporting this… except here.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:48 PM
Yeah !!!. The first days there will be bugs. But thats oke
This is sure a big step forward in the SL development
March 29th, 2008 at 3:51 PM
Good show Sidewinder et al. Thanks for all your hard work. The team at Turing Isle are all grateful for your endeavours :c)
March 29th, 2008 at 3:51 PM
Sidewinder,
Can the H4 team take a some time to strobe through open H4 Jira tickets with their current status in the queue. A short Will Fix/Won’t fix would be fine as not knowing where the issue is currently can be a bit frustrating.
My own pet Jira is http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1092 , but there are many others that haven’t been strobed in quite some time.
Thanks to the entire H4 team for all the uber code-fu work!
Mako
March 29th, 2008 at 4:06 PM
Ahhh, so SL’s version of, “Gilligan’s Island” is finally about to be released upon the unsuspecting Player-masses. And on April Fool’s day, too. How appropriate.
Can we all cry, “DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!” now.
Tiniest of the Tinies.
March 29th, 2008 at 4:11 PM
:~) They’ll get it eventually Sidewinder … maybe … maybe the users will … maybe the Lindens will. Observing you, while we built and now manage an early adopter sim, has given me a little hope. At least there is one development team who gets how to chase the bugs and work with the users. This is such a rare rare thing in the whole world of programing. Nice to see some integrity. Thank you. Praying the days are smooth for you and your team!
March 29th, 2008 at 4:12 PM
will it fix the friendlist ?????????
March 29th, 2008 at 4:15 PM
If we get less Inworld Money Transactions Problems, less squished note cards that we can’t read or get off our screen unless we reboot or delete the note card, and no more messed up/missing friends lists, I think for once none of us would complain. =p
March 29th, 2008 at 4:20 PM
Great work - The team progress, the update and not least the blog comments from sidewinder has made this a wonderful project to follow. I hope your release goes as smothly.
March 29th, 2008 at 4:20 PM
http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm229/pumpo767/horridbug2.jpg
havock 4 dont fix the error memory leak
http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm229/pumpo767/horridbug1.jpg
i have 2giga and i have this error, OUT OF MEMPRY
http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm229/pumpo767/horridbug3.jpg
Loading map problems
rooted avatar problems and gray avatar problems
http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm229/pumpo767/horridbug4.
jpg
havoc 4 don’t fix that
March 29th, 2008 at 4:22 PM
http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm229/pumpo767/horridbug4.jpg
rooted avatar problems and gray avatar problems
March 29th, 2008 at 4:26 PM
>> Tuesday April 1: Deploy the new simulator to the rest of the regions on Second Life
Why do I have the feeling this will be an April Fool’s Day to remember? LOL.
March 29th, 2008 at 4:40 PM
Sidewinder, your blog cuts left out the last closing ‘h3′ tag, which breaks the main blog page in IE7 (i.e. the blog.secondlife.com page) - the font gets bigger and bigger as you go down the page due to each unclosed h3…
March 29th, 2008 at 4:52 PM
O.o ? #86, I have been using IE for a while (and now IE7) and even the landstore map functions properly. Get *all* theJava updates to fix that (page looks fine to me :P)
March 29th, 2008 at 4:53 PM
I just fell in love with you Sidewinder…oh wait…you’re a guy…so scrap that *giggles*.
To all those crying *punt* HAVOC: Go to the regins with the new engine already deployed and you’ll find that indeed the stability and performance has increased considerably. There will be surely some ironing out of small glitches done as the more widespread the deployment gets the more likely it becomes that additional small hickups may show BUT looking at the way Sidewinder (and his crew) has handled things in the past it should be running smoother than most other operations Linden Lab® is ‘trying’ to run.
P.S. Did you you steal all those “resolved stickers” from your colleagues Sidewinder, as they are applied way later as they used to be
March 29th, 2008 at 4:59 PM
Sorry for being negative but I am positive this will work as well as all the other updates that have been released meaning that it will take for ever to get the game back to the level it is now. Oh, and the level it is now is worse than a month ago so bring it on.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:06 PM
Very exciting! Though there will be a speed bump I’m sure, this is another fantastic step in the evolutionary process of SL.
Now to see how many vehicles are going to require complete recoding.
As for everyone whining about the things H4 WON’T fix, how about taking a Valium and recognize that this is just one step of many. There’s no magic silver bullet that will fix your stability problems, though H4 is going to help quite a bit, I’m hoping.
Looking forward to seeing this–nice work, Sidewinder and the H4 team (and especially tireless beta testers).
March 29th, 2008 at 5:15 PM
This release is going to make a major improvement in our quality of life in SL because the new physics engine is unstoppable! In the past I spent hours working on my scripts to avoid situations that would crash the old physics engine. It’s a pleasure to rip out all that “workaround” code because now I can lean on the new engine knowing the dogs won’t crash it again! YAY!
I tip my hat to Sidewinder and the whole H4 team! I was very impressed to see the team so proactive, engaged and dedicated to the success of this important improvement. They listened to my problems, made sure they understood, and worked with me to assure my dogs would make a smooth transition. And I saw them work with many others the same way. All they ask is that you “work within the system”, use the JIRA, attend office hours. If you have a problem with the new physics engine, they’ll be there to solve it.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:19 PM
I don’t know if Linden Labs has any kind of award for best Team, but if it did, and particularly if we get to vote as residents, you and your team would win it hands down.
Great communication,
Improved stability,
Well run project.
SL is a complex world with many components and the non-technical users have, understandably, become intolerant of change for change sake and are not sure of the root causes of the day-to-day problems. But with the correct people running the teams, and communications flow even half as good as you provide, SL will win them all back.
Congratulations Sidewinder and the whole Havoc-4 team. I wish you well on the rollout, and am confident enough in your team’s abilities that I wont even postpone the club launch I have planed for the 31st.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:22 PM
[...] 4 Coming to a sim near you. As expected, Next week Havok 4 will be released grid wide! This is a huge step forward as far a stability [...]
March 29th, 2008 at 5:48 PM
my question is this. with havok 4 yes you reduce sim crashes from the ignorant users that rely on physics to crash sims. there a millions of ways to crash sims without ever “moving” an object. also with havok 4 you bring in horrid lag on top of horrid physical movement of avatars. not to mention the switch has completely destroyed the assest servers. over the last couple months alone you have redone assest servers over and over. each time giving us an all clear. your all clears have been grey goo. stale money tranfers. lost inventory. so to my question. with this supposed “good version” new server software, WILL THIS FIX THE COMPLETE AND UTTER MUCKUP YOU HAVE CREATED IN THE DEVELOPEMENT OF THIS VERSION?
ps. IF IT WERE ME I WOULD JUST CALL IN CORY TO FIX ALL THE MISTAKES MY TEAM HAS MADE. AT LEAST WHEN HE WAS HERE THE SYSTEM RAN DECENT
March 29th, 2008 at 6:25 PM
/me thinks Sidewinder is the best communicator on the whole SL team…. this is not the first time that he has posted .. and replied.. and replied.. and replied.. and told the truth while he was doing it…
It’s very nice to know that the person who made the post is actually listening to the responses.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:28 PM
@94 spitfire: The physics engine is a completely separate part of the system from the asset servers, the systems that handle L$ transfers, the land store, the other databases, the web site, the blog and other parts of the environment. It is incorrect to claim that work on the physics engine caused any problems in these other areas - it hasn’t and it cannot from a technical perspective. There are other project teams that are working to improve those systems. /Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 6:30 PM
gostaria de fazer parte do jogo.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:30 PM
@86 Celiera: Apologies for the H3 tag - I didn’t see a problem after proofing on three different machines and two browsers. Which version of browser and operating system are you using - just out of curiosity? Thanks, Sidewinder (who will no longer trust the blogging tool’s sense of “proper html” without validation)
March 29th, 2008 at 6:33 PM
WTG guys, this update was done very professionally with lots of input from the users of SL. I hope this is the model they continue to use in the future for everything!
On the lag issue everyone complains about. Now that I have my own sim I can see 99% of the lag has nothing to do with LL, it’s the users themselves that lag SL. There are thousands of extremely poorly written scripts that are the root cause of most of the lag. If every avatar that wears a ‘radar hud’ and ‘open chat listen bling’ would take that stuff off, half of the lag would disappear. The “multi-tool” hug kiss freebie people use has 5 open chat listens, 2 un-needed timers and an AO script ( that people don’t even know is in there) wear on top of an AO they actually use! Most of the AO’s I’ve seen have a timer that pings the server every .010 seconds (for no good reason either, just are poorly written)! So then you are wearing 2 of those… Add in all the houses that have open chat listens for the door locks and the ’security scripts’ with constantly pinging llSensor calls, throw in the “temp rezzer” flower beds and it’s amazing you can even move! If people would educate themselves and there was a collective effort by the residents to limit how much lag THEY create, we wouldn’t have this problem. Obviously this isn’t going to happen so until this does, lag will be with us..
Stephe Ehrler
March 29th, 2008 at 6:35 PM
@75 TIberious: Would you please contact me in-world about the avatar sliding issue? We had thought that this was fully resolved with the RC3 deploy, and so far all of the feedback I have gotten from people reporting this problem has been that it is resolved. It would be great to get a landmark for a place where this can be observed, or even better a demo when you’re online.
By the way, on very steep slopes it is possible to slide, in particular if you turn around on the slope. If that happens you’d likely find that if you face straight into the slope or straight away from the slope and take a step that the avatar will “latch” on to its ground position.
Thanks in advance,
Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 6:39 PM
Congratulations and thanks to Sidewinder and the whole Havoc4 team!
March 29th, 2008 at 6:41 PM
Just to clarify this for the clue-impaired, what is being rolled out here is not the Havok 4 physics engine, correct? what is being rolled out is something called a “simulator” which will make our simulators (different terminology) crash less frequently. And this “simulator” does not have a name or a version number. If Havok 4 were being rolled out, the title of the post would have been “Havok 4 is on its way to your region!” Are these statements fairly accurate, or is there somewhere I can go to buy a clue?
March 29th, 2008 at 6:52 PM
Improved? Stable? I came back to SL a few days ago (took about a 5 month vacation), and have had loads of trouble. Mostly in regions with the so called improved engine. It’s all but destroyed my online business (fasion) as I’m unable to remain in build mode for more than 10 minutes without getting crashed. Never had this problem back in 07′. I’ve lost countless items since and it seems like most of us can do nothing more than wander around aimlessly. If this is supposed to be an improvement, why doesn’t Linden Labs back it with a guarentee? Say $100 Linden for every created prim lost….
March 29th, 2008 at 7:03 PM
♥
Thank you, Havok Team.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:16 PM
whoo! Bring it on!
March 29th, 2008 at 7:29 PM
WE MADE IT !!!!!!!!!!!!
/me excited!
Well done SW and all the staff involved. This is a small step for SL but a big one for the avatarumanity…. lol.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:35 PM
@102: This announcement is about rolling out a new version of our simulator that has Havok4. The current simulator uses Havok 1 so this is a big step forward. As far as I know there is only 1 thing that is referred to as a simulator, we are not adding something new that is also called a simulator. The title of this post was not ‘havok4 is on its way’ because the focus for the entire project has been stability and we wanted to continue to emphasize that.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:38 PM
Congratulations! Wow I am happy to have been apart of the early adapters program and glad to see this now coming to the whole grid!
March 29th, 2008 at 7:39 PM
@102 GreenLantern:
The simulator a part of the server software that provides information to the viewer that runs on your desktop. it provides a variety of information, some of which is retrieved by other servers (databases, asset store etc) throughout the system.
One part of the simulator is the physics engine. The physics engine, as mentioned in the post, calculates things like gravity, movement, determining when physical objects have collided and related items.
The physics engine used in the server-side simulators for Second Life is a commercial product called Havok™. The original version of Second Life was developed with v1 of the Havok™ physics engine, and this project upgraded that portion of the system to use v4 of the Havok™ physics engine.
This project was motivated by wanting to reduce the crash rate of simulators, each of which is responsible for the activities on a Second Life region, and this has been made possible by both the improved stability of this version of the Havok™ product, and the work to remove other sources of simulator crashes as we proceeded through the project.
Since physics is such an integral part of Second Life, this update can affect the behavior of many things in-world, including avatar and object movement, scripting, building tools, whether items that are supposed to be linked together stay linked, and more. The potential reach of this upgrade is the reason that we assembled such a large beta program and invested the effort we have into making the upgrade as seamless as possible.
I hope this helps to clarify the role of the Havok™ physics engine and the references to it in the project.
Regards,
Sidewinder
March 29th, 2008 at 7:44 PM
Yeah what (69) Said. LL I think rolling out H4 should probably be a little lower down on your priorities list. Did you purposefully make the grid absolutely screwy just so you can say “Wow look at how fantastic Havok 4 is”!!! I think maybe you did.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:55 PM
Whoa, holy shit. Tomorrow !?!?
Couldn’t we have had a little more warning of an exact date? You’ve just been saying “soon” for a long time, and now you’re springing it on us with a 1 day notice? That’s not nice.
March 29th, 2008 at 8:04 PM
well it’s about time….. here’s hoping that it works as advertised. Next thing to do is to eliminate those pesky bot’s and bot farms. Hmm, perhaps a bladerunner-style group of hunters with a license to kill bot’s on site?
March 29th, 2008 at 8:04 PM
“Thanks for all of your involvement, support and input. Your help has made it possible to reach the goal of deploying this important Second Life stability update.”
You’re welcome, sidewinder!
–one of few beta testers, Vincent
March 29th, 2008 at 8:14 PM
WOW!
I’m sure there’s many who don’t understand what Havok4 represents,
but for those of us who do… whhooohooo. NICE!
March 29th, 2008 at 8:21 PM
This is great news. I’ve been holding off on updates to a couple of products waiting for Havok4, so I just spent the day polishing my networked teleporters and getting them ready for Havok 4… and went ahead and put them on sale. I hope the rollout doesn’t get delayed.
March 29th, 2008 at 8:52 PM
Well done folks, great to see such a clear announcement of an important change to the grid, where the comments section has been mostly positive. I normally cringe when reading these posts, wading through the numerous ‘the sky is falling! SL is broken!’ responses from everyone. Well done Sidewinder & other Lindens, and to the beta testers. Awesome stuff.
March 29th, 2008 at 8:57 PM
well in that case i do apologize sidewinder. just seems to me that since this whole havok 4 thing has started. secondlife has been a downward spiral. lag spikes. failure of basic functionality. im seriously and i hate to be this way but you have better functionality of secondlife running on sleek. no visuals. just chat (sometimes). i love secondlife. and i want so much for it to grow more than it already is. and in doing so i know that it has to include newer technologies. im not concerned about bringing in new things to help make this a better place for everyone. but even now as i speak the second life grid is a complete disaster area. i have relogged and cleared cache a dozen times. all with the same results. ruth + no inventory. forgive me if i am wrong. but we were just given yet another “all clear”