Second Life Simulator v1.21.0.85362 Update is on the Beta Preview with 12 Physics Fixes (2008-04-19)
Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 8:41 AM by: Sidewinder LindenQuick Status
The Beta Preview has been updated with a new version of the Second Life simulator for public testing.
PLEASE NOTE: This is an update of the server-side code that runs at our data centers. This is not a viewer update. Please do not post about viewer problems here, as it distracts from the core discussion about beta testing of the next release of the simulator (server) software.
This version includes fixes for many important issues, including what we hope is a resolution for the llTargetOmega (spinning things stop spontaneously and don’t start again) problem. The Beta Preview is a separate system, and can be entered using the beta viewer, which can be downloaded on our beta software download page. I just noticed that the release notes link on that page is out of date, and will have it removed as soon as possible. The notes below describe the specific changes in this release.
What Has Changed In This Version?
Changes in this build include (SVC items were submitted on the public jira issue tracker / DEV items are internally discovered issues:
DEV-11061: Vehicles no longer deflect severely when crossing prim seam boundaries
This issue has been problematic for vehicles throughout the beta process, and we believe we have a solution that will improve many vehicles substantially. Here are some developer notes from Andrew about this resolution, so that you understand the details and possible implications of this solution:
I’ve just checked in a fix that solves the prim-seams problem for the “#12 Pure Stock Brick (1976)” (a car that has severe prim seam bouncing problems), and I expect it to solve it for all other vehicles.
Note that our solution to the “prim seam problem” involves storing collision locations and normals over time and then filtering incoming new collision normals and sometimes altering them to agree with historical data. This can cause the normals for some collisions to be wrong momentarily until the correct normals win over the old, which can cause some problems, most notably momentary penetration with sudden obstacles or slope changes in the road.
At the end of my most recent changes I could not many really bad effects from these momentary penetrations, but it is something to keep an eye out for when testing.
DEV-13720: Rezzing an object from inventory in edit mode now results in all prims selected (rather than just the root prim as before)
DEV-12952 (and numerous pjira items): llTargetOmega item rotation sync restored.
After lots of research time, given that this was very hard to reproduce on demand, it is believed that the source of this issue is a ’selection leak’, where the simulator’s view of what is selected (and thus should not be spinning) and the viewer’s view of this end up mismatching under certain scenarios. In particular this can happen if a complex item has been in edit mode or has been otherwise selected, it is shift-dragged, and the edit focus moves back and forth to the complex object and terrain or other objects quickly. There are likely various other ways to trigger the problem, however this was the closest we have gotten to creating the issue on demand to attempt to find the source. The resolution implemented here will, we hope, significantly improve the behavior, but has a few edge cases. A full resolution will take more work as a separate mini-project.
A related symptom that several people have noted is an increase in the number of “selected / sat upon” objects, which reduce the available prim count. After a region restart these phantom selected objects are removed from the list.
In order to ensure that the selection list is cleaned up, on a per agent (avatar) basis, the selection list is now scrubbed after the avatar has left the region and stayed away for several minutes. This timing is to avoid various other edge cases. Please note: If you see “stuck rotation” and just move to an adjacent region, the list may not be cleared, as your avatar will likely still be listed as a “child agent” that the simulator needs to track, to allow seeing across the region boundary.
Please see http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2200 if you are a region owner who has encountered this problem, will test for it if we copy your region to the beta preview, and have time to actively test before Monday night. This jira will serve as a region copy request list for regions to be tested with this new code on the Beta Preview, before it is deployed.
DEV-13509: Phantom setting can now be toggled with llVolumeDetect enabled, even if the prims no longer have any scripts in them (a case appeared where a house was phantom - it had parts with llVolumeDetect set, but could not be set unphantom since the parts no longer had scripts in them… the related case of “how did they get llVolumeDetect set” is still unknown)
SVC-1987: Camera no longer hunts severely in boxing ring
SVC-1952 and DEV-12030: llSetLinkPrimitiveParams and llSetLinkPrimitiveParams PRIM_POSITION behavior improved
SVC-2113: Top Colliders list no longer missing entries
SVC-1951: llGroundRepel is now effective over water (parameter limits adjusted to allow negative limits for use with water)
DEV-11326: After some time, in some cases, physics scripts become inactive. This issue, reported by a handful of people, has now been traced to be linked to the llTargetOmega problem, and is believed resolved by that fix.
DEV-13126: Camera now stays on “your side” of a wall when the avatar is backed up to a wall
SVC-1975: Avatar jump height increased to match the earlier Havok1-based simulator’s behavior (adjusted impulse velocity of jump)
Best regards,
Sidewinder Linden
Havok4 Program Manager
P.S. Again please note that these fixes have been deployed to the beta preview grid for testing, and are not yet deployed to Second Life. If this simulator version appears solid on the beta preview with your review, it will be deployed to Second Life with these fixes, and timing of that release will be blogged separately.
P.P.S. The snapshot of the database on the Beta Preview grid is by now several months old. If you find that you are getting invalid password errors logging in there, please try an older password…
April 19th, 2008 at 8:59 AM
Oh my god!
A jump height fix! I love you. <3
April 19th, 2008 at 9:03 AM
Where can one post about viewer problems? I think that it should be at the very top of this page, and that Linden Labs should make fixing the viewer a priority, especially its memory leak.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:03 AM
I got 2nd. yay.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:04 AM
ah nice, lots of necessary stuff. lets hope testing goes smoothly.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:05 AM
@2 toybodacho: For viewer issues please put in pjira entries for the issues, the viewer team has office hours that have been posted, there is a “First Look” group in Second Life, and weekly bug triage meetings inworld (info here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Bug_triage) where specific bugs reported in public jira are discussed. I hope this helps. /Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 9:08 AM
Awesome great to hear about this
April 19th, 2008 at 9:09 AM
Thanks, Sidewinder, now I know where I can vent my frustrations.
(Nimi, I got second; you got third.)
April 19th, 2008 at 9:09 AM
I could not many really bad effects from these momentary penetrations,
Engrish?
Why is it that the best coders on the planet have no language skills?
For the same reason I have no coding skills?
Thanks for the fixes
April 19th, 2008 at 9:14 AM
@8 Vissy: Maybe they do have skills - in their own language (i.e. you can’t expect everybody in the world to speak English).
April 19th, 2008 at 9:22 AM
good fixes there if they go live without problems
April 19th, 2008 at 9:22 AM
So that’s why my flying seagulls had just stopped dead !
I reset script and nothing changed!
The only fix was to delete them and re-rez.
And all these folks on the chat complaining about nothing rotating any more - should there be an announcement for them?
April 19th, 2008 at 9:26 AM
>SVC-1975: Avatar jump height increased to match the earlier >Havok1-based simulator’s behavior (adjusted impulse velocity of >jump)
Excellent!, now I can jump about the rooftops and spook the newbies again!
April 19th, 2008 at 9:28 AM
@8 Vissy: “no language skills” ??? you must be kidding… just in case you’re not…
I just pulled the text from our internal jira entry, so that you would see the specifics - the point was the technical content… That paragraph was written in the midst of getting the work done, as documentation of the work, not for public release, and I did not take the time to edit that grammatical miss.
I suspect that if you reviewed the volume of work and internal commentary that Andrew, Kelly and Simon create, and the small number of grammar misses, you would want to think again about challenging them on English skills. That’s a clear missing word case, eh - likely the same sort of edit or copy/paste mistake we all make.
/Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 9:32 AM
Selected/sat upon 0 !!! thanks Sidewinder, i hope you can updat to 1.21 soon, good job
April 19th, 2008 at 9:33 AM
Yay Sidewinder LOL You go girl.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:34 AM
@ Sidewinder re post 13
LMAO Bravo and well said.
(From someone who, at least partially, proof reads for a living and is very picky - and also not infallable herself
)
April 19th, 2008 at 9:41 AM
[...] just announced today that you can test that fix on the Beta Grid, which is pretty quick turnaround on a PJira issue, and [...]
April 19th, 2008 at 9:46 AM
Unfortunately, I have updated all my scripts to begin working properly with the current Havok4 implementation on the main grid. If the “snapshot” is several months old - how am I supposed to test my products that I have updated since the snapshot. and it is not as easy as simply porting over a script? The changes are very involved and included adding new detection schemes etc. Please, can you update the snapshot also?
BTW, I could not get into the beta grid, even though I have not changed my password in 6 months.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:47 AM
What’s it going to take to get the snapshot updated?
April 19th, 2008 at 9:53 AM
@18 Valradica: I can set specific accounts to refresh inventory on next login on the beta preview. This is manual, so I can’t readily handle hundreds of requests (!), but if you need an inventory refresh on the preview send me an IM inworld and I will get it done as soon as possible.
Regards,
Sidewinder
P.S. Val - I’ll try to get this done for you by later today.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:54 AM
@19 Winter:
“What’s it going to take to get the snapshot updated?”
A block of 48 hours where multiple overlapping projects can afford for the preview to be offline
I’ll bring this up again on Monday to see if we can find a slot that makes sense to do this. I do understand that it’s problematic to have a snapshot on the beta preview that is this old.
/Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 9:56 AM
While these changes are nice, I would really like to see a switch back from the Windlight engine, everything is too pixalted for me.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:02 AM
@toybodacho Ireland
You do if you want to fly an airplane
(Have to speak English)
@LL
I hope the ||Target Omega and other physics scripts are working with this release.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:26 AM
collisions with vehicles which stick in prims then, are caused by the fact that prims are now kinda hollow or phantom inside. you can be inside of a 10×10x10meter box now and even walk around in there. its only its outer walls, not solid or filled. this has the side effect that you now can make huge prims sort of hollow. they are only their outer walls. nice on the huge prim side, not so nice on the vehicle stick in walls side, hehe
April 19th, 2008 at 10:35 AM
Hm. can’t log into the betagrid for some reason. Keep telling me “The system is logging you out right now. Your account will not be available until 2007-04-18 18:30:30 Pacific Time”…
I’ve been trying now and about an hour ago.. and I haven’t been on the betagrid at all today.
I need to test my bikes… come on, lemmi’ in
April 19th, 2008 at 10:42 AM
[...] post by Sidewinder Linden [...]
April 19th, 2008 at 10:43 AM
Sidewinder.. I’m gonna say something that’s “thinking outside the box” here.. and I’m hopeful you’ll see something here.
If you can set it so that “Specific accounts” refresh their inventory the next time they log into the beta grid… Why isn’t the beta grid set up to do that as default for ANYONE that logs in? This seems like something that should be “default behaviour”.. it would allow the porting of the inventory lists “on demand”.. since only a fraction of the users ever ONCE visit the beta grid, it seems like this would be much lower impact than a full snapshot.
Anyways, just an idea, from someone who is NOT a programmer of any kind,
April 19th, 2008 at 11:11 AM
Glad to hear about the upcoming changes Sidewinder… especially the camera wigging out when back against a wall.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:18 AM
HIyas Sidewinder,
My range of products that include llTargetOmega seem to perform properly on the beta grid now. Also all my scripts converted and compiled in MONO with no problems (so far). But this was on an near empty sim (Sandbox Goguen MONO) with only 600 other prims and just a few scripts. Is there a sim that is carrying a mid/heavy load to test my products on? Thanx
April 19th, 2008 at 11:19 AM
I’m sorry if I’m asking in the wrong place but I cannot log into the beta grid. Its been a couple of months since I last managed to log in but since then it always refuses with the same error message:- “Incorrect username or password”
I have the latest viewer and my password hasn’t changed at all.
Any suggestions are welcome.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:20 AM
Cant login to the beta, its keep saying that the system still is logging me off.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:17 PM
So, how does this affect collisions with stationery walls, where your head and shoulders now disappear in pool sides, floors and ceilings etc. I mean, walls don’t move much.
Might it be that really the physics is totally messed up? Might it be it’s screwing with the new server code too that basically has completely borked the grid up for more than four weeks, and which you admit you don’t know if it is the root cause?
Why don’t you put a quarter of the grid back to 1.18 (you’ll have to unmandatory the 1.19 mess of a viewer too of course) and see if that part of the grid is any more stable? I’m sure you’ll have lots of volunteers.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:20 PM
Maybe now you’re beginning to have wisdom that it’s not a good idea to have skipped totally over Havok 2 and 3 now…
April 19th, 2008 at 12:37 PM
i cant even get in everytime i do i walk 3 steps and crash this is really starting to drive me insane .!!
April 19th, 2008 at 12:48 PM
Sidewinder, may I ask about the issue of avatars sinking while hovering in the air… it is a bit annoying unfortunately. Thank you for all the hard work you & your team are putting into this!
April 19th, 2008 at 12:49 PM
Hi Sidewinder & Crew! Great job! Thanks!
@21 An update would be awesome! I would love to run some of my things under mono as well
April 19th, 2008 at 12:50 PM
good job sidewinder.. my stuff work now really safe..
April 19th, 2008 at 12:51 PM
did i mention that you can MAKE HUGE PRIMS HOLLOW now? i guess i did, lol.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:58 PM
“Note that our solution to the “prim seam problem” involves storing collision locations and normals over time and then filtering incoming new collision normals and sometimes altering them to agree with historical data.”
You got to be kidding me…. what’s wrong with damping and how can that be too hard to do? I’ve mention it a few times to Andrew.
@Montana Corleone: You’re way over your head there.
There is are bigger difference between Havok 1 and Havok 2… but not so much between Havok 2 and 4. So there was no reason to stick with 2 when 4 was even more reasonable to switch to when re-coding more than 80% of their source. This update isn’t just some minor tweak changes… O_o; And I have to say, 1.20 is better than 1.18.
The only problem was scaling network when they were able to fix more than 65% of sim crashing problem…. which kept most people online, thus overloading the database server. It’s a strange irony how one thing can actually help a lot, but make it even worst for other problem. 1.18 isn’t more stable than 1.20, It’s just the database, far apart from physic engine code.
In other words… be patient fool.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:06 PM
I have a problem with textures on some objects in my store appearing completely out of place, until I select them. Selecting them makes the textures suddenly line up and repeat properly. Is this also related to the llTargetOmega but and likely to be fixed by this patch?
April 19th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
>> At the end of my most recent changes I could not many really bad effects from these momentary penetrations
At the edge of my seat here in anticipation. What’s the missing word — Perceive? Cause? Detect? Deflect? Avoid?
April 19th, 2008 at 1:10 PM
DEV-11326: After some time, in some cases, physics scripts become inactive. This issue, reported by a handful of people, has now been traced to be linked to the llTargetOmega problem, and is believed resolved by that fix.
*dances with joy*
DEV-12952 (and numerous pjira items): llTargetOmega item rotation sync restored.
*dances with joy again*
April 19th, 2008 at 1:11 PM
I am ALL OVER this jump height fix! Thank you!! *Ninja bunny RETURNS!!!!!* =^O^=
April 19th, 2008 at 1:11 PM
Did Havok4 change the behaviour when you walk up a step? All the steps I come to now I have to jump up….which is silly…….surely not every step in SL has to be lowered ? Easier to change the physics ?
April 19th, 2008 at 1:18 PM
Sorry to post this here, but New Release Candidate Viewer: 1.20 RC2 is the most borked viewer I have used since starting SL over 1 year ago and I really really don’t fancy submitting a JIRA report for everything that crashes me, which no release has ever done before.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:19 PM
Sidewinder, just out of curiosity, is the inability to log in at any height above 768m a server issue, or a viewer issue?
(see http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-6267)
April 19th, 2008 at 1:27 PM
@39
“The only problem was scaling network when they were able to fix more than 65% of sim crashing problem…. which kept most people online, thus overloading the database server. It’s a strange irony how one thing can actually help a lot, but make it even worst for other problem. 1.18 isn’t more stable than 1.20, It’s just the database, far apart from physic engine code.”
see: Law of Untended Consequences : any action will produce some unintended consequences.
A classic example is a bypass – a road built to relieve traffic congestion on a congested road – that attracts new development and with it more traffic, resulting in two congested streets instead of one.
see also: Shark - keep swimming or die.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:29 PM
@44 What part of - “Please do not post about viewer problems here, as it distracts from the core discussion about beta testing of the next release of the simulator (server) software.” eluded you? And if you can’t be bothered to fill a JIRA issue, should anyone be bothered to fix the problem?
April 19th, 2008 at 1:29 PM
ack, correcttion @48 should be to the attention of @45, my bad
April 19th, 2008 at 1:32 PM
Sidewinder is the best Linden ever.. does a great job both in fixing things and in communication. Great. Did you notice there are hardly any whiners or ranters on his blog?
We appreaciate you a lot Sidewinder!
April 19th, 2008 at 1:34 PM
SVC-1951: llGroundRepel is now effective over water (parameter limits adjusted to allow negative limits for use with water) . Sidewinder , myself and all my orca’s thank you for saving their lives . Keep up the good work ! . I’ll name the next orca i rez after you .
April 19th, 2008 at 1:35 PM
@32 Montana: I will address your points individually:
“So, how does this affect collisions with stationery walls, where your head and shoulders now disappear in pool sides, floors and ceilings etc. I mean, walls don’t move much.”
Have you tried the new camera control code, or is this complaint a theoretical one? We have made an improvement to camera control with this build, and will have others in subsequent ones.
“Might it be that really the physics is totally messed up? Might it be it’s screwing with the new server code too that basically has completely borked the grid up for more than four weeks, and which you admit you don’t know if it is the root cause?”
No, Montana, it is not that “really the physics is totally messed up”. The physics subsystem is part of the simulator, which is only one part of the Second Life Grid as a whole. As has been described in other posts, the bulk of the other issues have been related to issues with the central database and asset system, which are not in any way part of the simulators that control region behavior.
“Why don’t you put a quarter of the grid back to 1.18 (you’ll have to unmandatory the 1.19 mess of a viewer too of course) and see if that part of the grid is any more stable? I’m sure you’ll have lots of volunteers.”
There are numerous security fixes and architectural changes that have been made on the path from server 1.18 to now, many of which are to enable a different underlying arcthitecture to support stabilizing the database and asset server problems. Going back to 1.18 would prevent achieving those goals and would be counter-productive.
@33:
“Maybe now you’re beginning to have wisdom that it’s not a good idea to have skipped totally over Havok 2 and 3 now…”
It appears that you have some in-depth experience with the Havok physics engine from this comment. I am interested to hear your specific technical commentary at the feature level, as to the issues that you believe would have been resolved by doing sequential upgrades through Havok 2 and Havok 3, with specific focus on how they would have avoided the physics changes, bug resolutions, and work to provide backward compatibility without compromising future use of the physics engine that we are now expending effort on.
Regards,
Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 1:36 PM
@50 I like this guy too linden or not
April 19th, 2008 at 1:36 PM
@35 Quaintly:
Could you please provide some more specifics as to the hovering in air problem. This could mean several things, and I want to be sure I respond to the right question. Thanks, Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 1:38 PM
@40 Svobada: I am not sure what would cause this. Could you IM me inworld so that we can try to characterize this - I am not sure what would be causing this problem. /Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 1:39 PM
@53 look at that reply he wrote - thanks sidewinder for the explanations
April 19th, 2008 at 1:39 PM
@44 Captain: We did change (raise) the step height that would cause an avatar to “block” on walking up steps, but I’m not sure if that is the change you’re talking about. I recommend you try this build to see if it’s improved, and if not please IM me so that I can see a demo. Thanks, Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 1:55 PM
>@35 Quaintly:
>Could you please provide some more specifics as to the hovering >in air problem. This could mean several things, and I want to be >sure I respond to the right question. Thanks, Sidewinder
I have the same issue and I’ve seen it in others as well. The avatar drifts slowly down when flying. I’m not sure if it happens all the time as it’s a subtle movement and is not noticeable except when hovering.
April 19th, 2008 at 2:01 PM
Well, the ability to walk inside huge prims is nice for some folks, but now, approximately every 3 teleports to my home traps me inside my house’s foundation prims until I make it phantom and can escape.
“One step forward, two steps back, that won’t get ya back to Buffalo …y’know.” - Robert Hunter
April 19th, 2008 at 2:08 PM
@52wrt @33 hehe, nicely done.
Also, thanks for the beta grid update and the snapshot update when you get there. Much appreciated!
April 19th, 2008 at 2:22 PM
@24 “you can be inside of a 10×10×10meter box now and even walk around in there”
Odds on how many reading this will try it?
About the “sinking while hovering” problem, it seems to happen whether I’ve just been flying and stopped horizontal movement, or just ascended straight from the ground. Hope this helps.
April 19th, 2008 at 2:26 PM
I should probably be more specific about the “trapped in prims” problem I experience…
The prim I usually find myself trapped in is a regular 10×10x10 with a ROUND hollow of about 80%. It’s probably too “thin walled” to stop my AV when I TP on top of it.
I haven’t tried un-hollowing it to see if i still get trapped inside, so I’m not sure if the round hollow is the problem or not.
Kick it on down!
April 19th, 2008 at 2:27 PM
fhgsdfjhnhc
April 19th, 2008 at 2:50 PM
Sidewinder (ref 54): Gabriell@58 has it. There is a Jira for it - SVC-2013. Ever since the Havok4 rollout, if I fly into the air and hover, I start to slowly sink. The Jira mentions that sinking starts after the avatar turns to either side, but I sink even if I don’t turn - all I have to do is stay still and I slowly start drifting back to the ground. I was trying to build something and this made it difficult for me. I had to plant my avatar on the ground and cam up instead.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:17 PM
Re ’sinking whilst hovering’. I have the same issue. If I fly up only then I stay still. ANY even slight further movement in any direction will start me sinking. I can sympathize with Quaintly’s difficulties when building.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:38 PM
@64 and 65
Yes, contrary to what the bug states, I too sink at varying times when attached to various hovering poses. For example, on sims that are testing havoc 4, the aberanimations piggy back ride pose slowly sinks me into the ground when i sit on it.
Silly example, but it’s a bug.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:39 PM
SVC-1987: Camera no longer hunts severely in boxing ring
DEV-13126: Camera now stays on “your side” of a wall when the avatar is backed up to a wall
Don’t these 2 contradict each other. Why move the camera at all. In other games there is a good reason for this but in sl its just an annoyance. I for 1 always keep my camera movement adjuster up at all times, as im sure many creative types do. Besides it not like u dont know that the camera went behing the wall and then u deal with it by scrolling or moving. Having the camera move in and out constantly moving in and out in a tight room is crazy. Your basically making the most important thing having its own mind instead of giving the complete control to us. How about a button in the Preferences to hurt it off.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:40 PM
Update on “sinking while hovering”–Just now I’ve tried it and the problem’s not occurring for me (kind of like the brakes stopping squeaking when you take your truck in to the mechanic, LOL).
(Macken @65–Now that I think about it, I think I was wrong in my #61 when I said the problem happened when I’d just flown up with no horizontal movement–I think you’re right.)
Thanks to Sidewinder for the help and thanks to all of you posters for a great, useful thread.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:40 PM
@65 and others… I have been thinking of having Flight Feather throw it’s “anchor mode” when you’re hovering on even when you’re too low for it to have activated it. Anyone want that?
April 19th, 2008 at 3:47 PM
You Linden’s may be able to kill our accounts for protesting but you will never kill the spirit!!
FIX SL !!!
For those unaware all of us _peaceful_ protesters just got our accounts suspended for drawing attention to Linden Labs failure to support “our” assets and giving a dogs poop less about us going broke.
Renee Faulds
P.S.
Phil, not only do you have no poseballs but CNN just watch you kill our accounts becasue you are a liar and a thief !
April 19th, 2008 at 3:49 PM
Pretty sad day for SL
April 19th, 2008 at 3:53 PM
Oh and i would like to point out to LL that there arent many irritate postings in the blog cause we all know that Sidewinder might actually respond. Quite a contrast to other blogs. If the other LL bloggers would respond at all, than u would not see so many pissed off people now this doesnt take away “any” of the problems in sl but atleast we dont feel completely ignored. Personally i dont know what Sidewinders qualifications are but i nominate him as the new CEO. lol. Please LL information is key. People just want answers. How can any1 make a business decision in sl with no info for the top. I wanted to go to the Memorial thing, but by the time the grid was up, i was swamped with answering why this or that does not work. Announce problems in world or change 1 of the useless buttons at the bottom that pops up a Issues Window.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:55 PM
I have to agree with those talkinga bout sinking while hovering. Happens to me all the time, and yes, i’ve noticed it seems to trigger when rotating, or moving laterally. as soon as you stop such a motion, you begin to slowly sink down, or sometimes even to the side.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:57 PM
I, too, experience this exact ’sinking’ while hovering in place problem @35 and others are reporting. It has been happening since Havok4 went live on the experimental regions and then with the grid-wide roll out. You can Hover in place, and your avatar starts to drift downward at about a rate of 1 Meter every 4 or 5 seconds. The avatar doesn’t move or react to this loss of altitude, It blissfully stays in its Hover animation the entire time. It makes no difference if you are wearing any ‘Flight Assistance’ attachments or not. Even the ones that could keep you up for hours has the same problem.
You continue the same ‘fall’ rate till you eventually move or hit the ground and then it of course stops because you are no longer in Flight/Hover mode. I have seen this regardless of any script rules or permissions given on a particular SIM. ALWAYS it is with Havok4 SIMS that are currently rolled out and it never happened with Havok1.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:05 PM
Sorry, @69. But your attempts to ‘anchor’ the Avatar with a MOVE Lock or whatever would be of little use. I wore all manner of HUDs and attachments that features Movelocks to keep the Avatar locked in place, but so far this ‘Sinking’ problem has foiled every one of them, even when used multiple times at once.
This sinking problem has been reported to the makers of those who script Flight Rings, Weapon HUDs what have you, and none of them who saw the problem for themselves on Havok4 are able to prevent it from stopping. They all seem to agree that it is not the fault of their scripting-efforts as there was never a problem on Havok1, and there seems to be little they can do. It would have to be the Havok4 physics solution so they can only hope and wait along with the rest of us.
Tiny Sinking Toon.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:17 PM
@59 Slartibartfast: Could you send me an IM and landmark so that we can check the problem you’ve described with teleports? Thanks, Sidewinder (the IM is to jog my memory on why this landmark appeared!
April 19th, 2008 at 4:19 PM
@67 Medhue: The camera behavior in the earlier simulator moves the camera if the avatar’s head is right in front of a wall, so that you can still “see” rather than being blocked by the wall behind you. There are various reasons technically why duplicating this behavior was not trivial, and this build is one part of cleaning this up. /Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 4:22 PM
@ TO ALL: Re sinking while hovering. I had thought this problem to be resolved, and haven’t personally experienced it lately… Let’s all just say “ok this is now a known open issue” and I will follow up with you (maybe after the weekend?
) to figure out the specifics and what needs to be done to resolve it. Thanks! /Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 4:28 PM
@70/71 Renee: I am sorry to see that you have chosen to take this communications route, and hope that you can find a more constructive way to discuss issues. We have certainly had reasonable discussions in the past, and I find this sort of thing out of character and unsettling, in particular because you know that there were other factors involved. Please feel free to contact me in-world if you wish to discuss this further. /Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 4:32 PM
@Argent I will take my feather with an anchor please =) It would be great to have till this is worked out.
Tiny, I do believe Argent is the “They” to whom You are referring.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:34 PM
sitting on unscriped prims on the “life” grid is broken with 1.20.1.
maybe you can fix that when you rollout this updates to the life grid
April 19th, 2008 at 4:39 PM
This is somewhat of a technical question, but this seems a reasonable place to ask it.
Inelastic collisions at high speeds which were stable under Havok 1 seem to be significantly diminished under Havok 4. That is to say, if I fired a prim at a physical prim at a speed of 70 from my cannon (not sure of the real speed here, this is the value in the script) in havok 1, it would detect the collision fine and both prims would react beleivably. Now, under Havok 4, the actual collision detection is less effective. At the same speed with the same size of prim, the projectile prim will pass through the target prim and impart only a minor nudge, completely failing the concept of physical collision entirely whereby the kinetic energy is divided predictably between two colliding objects. In order to have a more beleivable (but still somewhat diminished) collision effect, the speed of collision must be decreased. In effect, this means that the new engine detects collision more poorly than the prior.
I’m curious, would this impaired collision detection be potentially considered a bug, or is it intentionally sacrificed in the name of reducing sim resource usage?
To editorialize: I hope it’s the former, because otherwise it would feel to me as though moving to Havok 4 to increase stability is analogous to turning down the viewer graphics settings to get higher frame rates (diminishing quality for better performance).
April 19th, 2008 at 4:48 PM
Where can I find more info about the issue Renee Faulds mentions in entry no. 70?
April 19th, 2008 at 4:51 PM
@Sidewinder
my friend - I will contact you inworld as soon as my account becomes unsuspended for peacefully protesting 3 weeks of daily borked servers that has killed not only my business but “many” of my friends. I was suspended for peacefully protesting this - shows the other side of Linden employees that don’t know. Sidewinder, you will always have the greatest of my respects, not only as a professional in your your field and what a communicator but also as a friend. I know if you were where with us in an alt you caring the same sign. Peace - see you when they unsuspend me for protesting borked assest servers
Renee
April 19th, 2008 at 4:57 PM
Looking forward to testing the the new vehicle voodoo!
If I can still pay my cable bill after this month :/
April 19th, 2008 at 5:11 PM
@84 Renee; No kidding huh. That’s fine I will take my peaceful protest to the media now. I hope the bad PR crushes LL.
April 19th, 2008 at 5:27 PM
Nice job prioritizing fixes guys, these all sound like winners. Good luck with your testing.
Speaking of the beta grid, if someone could shoot me the names of a couple of Havok1 regions there that would be great, thanks. Got a couple of things now I’d like to look at.
Thanks!
April 19th, 2008 at 5:37 PM
sorry, to post this here but i can no longer login on the beta grid
It says “Login failed. The system is logging you out right now. Your Account will not be available until 2008-04-18 17:26:30 Pacific Time.”
btw, today is the 19th.
I am using the RC with “–grid aditi”
April 19th, 2008 at 5:39 PM
@86
yeah I kid you not - everyone of us protesting got suspended accounts.
April 19th, 2008 at 5:41 PM
Long live free speech in SL(Damn TM goes here)
April 19th, 2008 at 5:51 PM
@81 Yuriko: I do not understand this “sitting on unscriped prims on the “life” grid is broken with 1.20.1.” What does not work on the current simulator? Thanks, Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 5:54 PM
@82 LailaK: You have actually asked what are a set of questions… It might be easier to discuss this in world or at office hours. There are two issues related - one in the way that we are doing collision detection in order to improve efficiency of Havok4, and the other may be (I’m not sure until we talk in some more detail) some limitations added to make orbiting harder and other “griefer style” actitivities. /Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 5:56 PM
@83 toybodacho: The reasons for suspensions are privileged information that is not disclosed in order to protect the privacy of all involved. My apologies for the vagueness. In this case there are no alternatives - as with any service provider that I have ever encountered, the reasons for and actions taken in cases that result in administrative action are not open for disclosure. Best regards, Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 6:01 PM
@87 Nika: The following regions are Havok1 regions on the beta preview:
* Fame Havok1
* Fortuna Havok1
* Freelon Havok1
* TextureTest Havok1
/Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 6:06 PM
@91 sidewinder on version 1.20.1 you can´t sit on a box.
tryed it in mooz and psu. no one could sit there on any surface.
someone told me though she can sit on cubes in her home sim, with the same code. so i am not sure what the cause is.
we could sit in the scripted cars though. hope that helps
April 19th, 2008 at 6:12 PM
@75 Tiny, I’ll check that out when I get in world. I don’t see any movement when I’m “locked” at altitude but you could be right and it won’t help at ground level. All I can do is try. ^^
April 19th, 2008 at 6:18 PM
@ Renee; you bore us with your incessant posting and taunting in every single blog. Please stop.
@ Sidewinder; I am pouting a little as it still seems we will be unable to swim the wonderful waters of SL. The swimmer gets slightly better with each release but still is far from perfect. (yes, this single jira is now my purpose in SL)
April 19th, 2008 at 6:20 PM
Renee, Cat and others curious about the suspensions commented on by Renee above repeatedly:
I have checked to confirm this before commenting, and I am now convinced that all actions taken were based on explicit violations of the Terms of Service. Suspensions were not issued “for protesting”, and are not issued on that basis. There have been large protests in Second Life without suspensions being issued to participants, and that will not be the metric for deciding on a suspension in the future.
As mentioned before, the specifics of this or any other case will not be disclosed, but it would be important for anyone listening to one side of this issue to understand that there is documentation on hand of the specific actions that are clear and explicit violations of the Terms of Service that triggered the suspensions of a very few people at that event.
I apologize for posting off-topic on my own blog post, but felt that it was important to clarify what I could regarding the claims presented above.
Regards,
Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 6:36 PM
@97 Sean: Swimmer has not been forgotten.. We had to figure out whether we were going to have to do something nasty to a part of LSL related to that before tackling it… We will be working on it, and I do know that you will relentlessly pursue me past the grave until it’s handled
/Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 6:51 PM
@98 Sidewinder;
Alright I will reserve my further comments at this time. There is always his side, her side, and the truth. However it’s nice to know that subscribers will not be suspended from paid or unpaid service for speaking their minds. Unless of course they try and do so in your forums. Unless of course that has also changed.
The one major problem that LL has had for a long time now; is individuals working for LL; speaking for the company. Only to have another employee with an apposing view also speaking as if it is not only fact but policy.
It makes it very difficult to understand what the policy and TOS are.
Cat
April 19th, 2008 at 6:57 PM
I am still Wondering why The physics do not alow the horse shoes to work. I have ask several times now. it is simple physics and no script !
April 19th, 2008 at 7:04 PM
@101 pachuma: I have sent an IM in response to your query - my apologies if it did not get there. The Havok4 physics engine has a 0.1m collision tolerance around an object. Things without that much clearance around them may “hit” even though the visual display suggests that they are not touching. Some physical constructions will need more clearance with the new simulator than they needed with the old one. Other cases that I have seen like this include a swing whose “bearings” were rubbing from a physics engine perspective and needed to be enlarged. The Havok physics engine uses this collision tolerance to improve efficiency by localizing possible collision points while objects are moving. /Sidewinder
April 19th, 2008 at 7:29 PM
The low altitude anchoring in Flight Feather 1.7 seems to work, I’ve got it in the Skyhook Station store only. The “low altitude anchor” isn’t enabled by default, you have to turn it on, but it does stop you from sinking after the first fraction of a second. It’s still open source, you can pass it on to your friends (but you KNOW I prefer you come visit and buy it and blah blah blah … ^^ ) and look at the code to see how it works.
April 19th, 2008 at 7:41 PM
I was there, in I-World Island, during the protest, and it had something to do with blocking the stage. The lag, by which I couldn’t see the signs, was probably Client Side, and inappropriate to this blog.
My browser’s presently not loading the Jira, but Railroads are suffering multiple issues, that don’t seem to’ve been fixed, in this release. I don’t think Linden Labs would dare to ignore Rail-Road issues, and H5 might even be built about them. Selectively Phantom Prims might do well for the rails of the future.
Bato’s working on an alternative fix, on the Seam Bump Problem, that should be shown to the Havok Techies, as helping to analyze the problem. Alternatively, we could simply replace all roads and rails with ad-hoc megaprims.
Meanwhile, I’m going to have to go restudy the Wiki for Physics Functions.
April 19th, 2008 at 7:56 PM
at Sidewinder - yeah I refused to move for the 3rd time. We peacefully protested in the same spot until Joppa Linden got his head up his butt and started hastleing us. I must say if you believe Joppa’s side of the story you better start talking to the others that were there. First two requests to move “out of view” were done - the third time we all considered it harrassment from Joppa Linden. First SL runs us business people out of business - then screws the island owners by cutting their investment by 40% - now SL is just like CHINA - protest you get punished. You know as well as I we did nothing ! Except show our discontent of loosing hundreds of RL dollars.
Renee Faulds
April 19th, 2008 at 8:03 PM
Thanks for the SIM crossing seam fix!
I am seeing a new behavior now in which the minimap now shows water in place of land (same viewer, different server). It’s bad enough that WL and other changes destroyed telling the difference bertween water and land in the main screen, but now I can’t navigate using the minimap for clues.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:07 PM
@ Renee. Why don’t you just shush up while you have the chance before you dig a deeper hole for yourself? Joppa Linden is one of the most respected Lindens I know, he’s never breach policy or be purposly nasty to anyone. He’s a really nice guy, so you must have breach ToS and CS for him to deal with you.
You can’t say one bad word against Joppa.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:08 PM
I am seeing the “sinking AV while hovering” in Egril Also there I have seen an issue where AVs just step backwards with no input from the user’s keyboard.
I hope this helps so you have a place to maybe see this occurring.
BTW, a large portion of this sim is “females only”. Just FYI.
Thanks,
Enysy
April 19th, 2008 at 8:30 PM