Phantom child prims is not a "hack"

[Darleen Emerald]

I Think we need to stop refering to phantom child prims as a "Hack".

This method of hiding the large invisible cube surounding sculpt objects has been used widely in SL   since we started uising  sculptys.  Vehicles  sold in the Market place and stores and vendors   are NO MODIFY.

So   when the phantom child prims rervert  to non-phantom because of being rezzed  on the main grid./pathfinding server version ...There is no way to return them back to Phantom  as they are no Modify.

How do  the Lindens propose we fix this?    This will effect a large portion of Paying residents....and they are all going to be screaming mad.

[Drew Bhalti]

if the lab can not help you with this the only logical course of action is to rebuild your vehicles/aircraft and then send it out to everybody who bought one. 

[Lydia Craig]

Or as happened with boats when Havok was introduced, make new ones that work and force people to pay to replace them.  Personally, I hope builder take the honable path and create a mechanism to correct this problem, but given LL's history on these type matters don't expect much help from them or even an acknowlegment that there is a problem.

[Lear Cale]

Fortunately, most vehicles are copiable, so this won't be a problem: the original won't be modified.

[Singular Binder]

Darleen is absolutely correct this is not a "bug" and  I resent Falcons Lindens recent commentary on this subject suggesting that of volume detect being a "HACK" or "BUG" for the following reason - volume detect does have residual functionality with respect to the removal of any script containing volume detect e.g llVolumeDetect will remain in effect as long as there is a script in the object, it will be automatically removed when the script is deleted, however the phantom state will persist. The last part is the residual functionality. The function is a legitimate llfunction, it appears that once again lindens are trying to pass the buck here from themselves to creators for using a legitimate function to create legitimate content only to have the carpet pulled out from under them by LL. The reason I say this is because it seems that lindens are either oblivious or don't care about the huge 'and I mean HUGE!!' back catalogue of content that is affected by not just this but many other either broken / partially broken or changed functionality of the recent myriad of cumulative errors on their recent deployments with regard physics mesh and sculpties. And as for the apparent simplicity of simply creating updates and sending them out - this can only be the comment of someone who doesn’t have any volume of sales - I personally have now to spend goodness knows how many hours of time I do not have to satisfy updates on the hundreds of vehicles I have sold  to more residence than I have listed as customers added to which the convex hull and prim type non does not work as a fix in many instances also added to which now that the sculpt land impact has changed, trying to utilise this on existing builds creates vehicles that are no longer capable of physics due to the over impactive prim count ! so we have been shafted both ways it seems and to add insult to injury - whilst I have to create new updated vehicles to replace existing ones I have to close my vendors and pay for the land on which my stores sit with rl cash until such time as I have replaced all my builds - add to this fact there are so many people who have paid a not insignificant amount of lindens to purchase products created utilising this function which linden labs have directly benefited from over many years (and we aren’t talking small change here), this should not be played down or dismissed - and for what ?..  this in my view is inexcusable. OK so u want to change server functionality and u don’t want to use this function any more or are unable to incorporate it, fine we will take it on the chin like every other *alls up ll have made, but at the very least take responsibility, be honest about your priority’s and don’t suggest that somehow this is the fault of creators for utilizing a "bug" when it quite patently is not, and further more - even if you want to suggest this is a bug - then its been with us forever this was not a single deployment 'error' if it was considered illegitimate then it should have been nipped in the bud before its widespread use was implemented, so Falcon .. please don’t give us that "LL are attempting to ensure that the impact of the closure in terms of content breakage will be minimal " because it isn’t, this is a huge problem its immensely costly in both terms of creator time and residence expenditure because many of these creations will not be updated and so many residence have spent countless rl dollars pounds and Euros all to the benefit of linden labs. Most vehicles are not mod most vehicles that use this function do so because it is a requirement of the build, most vehicles are not upgradeable and residence and creators grid wide are the losers here. It leaves me cold how little respect the lab shows to its creators and residence - those who regularly generate a huge income for linden, how very disrespectful how very inconsiderate. And for the record, I don’t profit from my creations I create to generate income to support land and facility’s that other residence can use freely and to create pleasurable content for those same residence and so I resent hugely the fact that I am now expected to spend an even greater amount of my valuable time and money tidying up once again after linden labs untidy deployment of second grade hammed up servers already riddled with bugs and problems now simply throwing to the wind any consideration of the real impact of this pantomime of errors .. I do have a conscience so my customers will get satisfaction, its just unfortunate linden labs have no such conscience - will they pay my rent whilst I put right their error ? will they pay me for the time I spend doing this remedial work ?  and oh yes - as for the just like havoc comment .. the commentator obviously had no content out there then either and no realisation of the profound affect that had on the residence of sl not least the creators. My suggestion, dump pathfinder and full-fill your empty promises and solve all the bugs and issues still outstanding for many years now rather than nonsing around trying to please a residency that does not exist but that you think you can attract by adding nonsense over functionality. Thank you Darleen for your level headed comment.

[Darleen Emerald]

Lear,

I dont follow  your reasoning?    Copies  are also no Modify.

Am i missing something?

[Darleen Emerald]

Singular.

Thank you so much for your detailed comentary on the disasterous impact to Content creators..that this buggy Pathfinding rollout has caused. All  these existing content breakage issues were reported during RC channel testing of pathfinding.

BUT .... the Lindens  went right ahead and rolled out pathfinding to the main grid with no consideration to breaking of existing content.

[Qie Niangao]

---

Darleen Emerald wrote:

Lear,

I dont follow  your reasoning?    Copies  are also no Modify.

Am i missing something?

---

I'm not understanding this either.

Anyway, although I recognize it's no help to those who already own no-mod vehicles, I have to say: I've simply stopped buying vehicles now that the standard practice seems to be to make them no-mod.

However much of a pain this is, again, for the hundredth time, it's another reinforcement of the universal truth: 

If it's no-mod, it's no sale.

[Lear Cale]

Never mind -- I think I missed an important bit of context here.  My point was that the original is unmodified, so rezzing it doesn't cause unrecoverable harm.  But if you need to modify after rezzing to use, then the fact that the original is still good is of little help (unless they change the behavior later).

In any case, LL has gall calling anything a "hack" regarding LSL, because THEY NEVER DOCUMENTED any LSL functions.  They left it to users to guess the intent of the functions, and document the observed behavior.  So, they're stuck with the results.

If LL had treated LSL the way any responsible middleware vendor would treat their product, they would have documented the intended effects.  Then they'd be somewhat covered when they changed the undocumented behaviors, as long as the documented ones remained the same.  But since they took the easy way out, they have no high horse to sit on, because ALL scripts are "hacks".  They work because they work because they work.  There is no other specification or standard by which to judge them.

But (if I understand this issue correctly -- and no doubt am missing a lot because I no longer script and haven't followed the latest developments in ground mesh or whatever) phantom bounding prims to handle collisions with scuplties is NOT a hack: it's a way to turn unpredictable behavior (collisions with scuplts) into predictable behavior (collisions with phantom prims).

Can anyone fill me in or point me to LL's explanation of why they need to make this change regarding phantom prims?

[Singular Binder]

I don't think they needed to make this change Lear, I believe it was just an unfortunate result of pathfinder and this function was simply un-salvageable - but rather than do some homework and sort it out .. as is often the case its just simpler to ignore it and choose not to consider it an issue - in other words I don’t think it was intentional. Anyhow you have to smile don’t you, we are all sl addicts and constantly find ourselves forgiving and living with lower and lower performance more and more bugs and lag. It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that if linden staff worked for Sony they would all be looking for a new job tomorrow - either that or Sony shares would fall through the floor. Imagine how many play stations they would sell if they released software with this many (or any) bugs.