arabellajones

I don't know just when the Grid Poking Bot is expected to start up. It may just have started at 8 ack emma, SLT, and I saw a couple of stopped regions on the map, but other regions haven't restarted since Oct 1. So far there is no sign of anything I could attribute to the Grid Poking Bot.

That commit is dated 11th June 2021, so it may not be sinister. But I am not a computer, so I may have misunderstood that link.

I am relieved to know that it was not just Firestorm.

A problem hit Firestorm users late on Monday, affecting logins, pretty rapidly fixed, but it worries me, because I have no idea what makes Firestorm different from every other viewer. Status reports on Firestorm login problem At least I can rule out the Firestorm team doing something through Facebook, the timing is wrong for that, but this still feels strange.

Wouldn't argue with that, but some of those third-party mesh sites explicitly ban use in Second Life. Even without that, there can be LI problems. So be careful.

I did a quick check, and while there is now an SLRR Rez zone in Randelsham Forest, which is good I didn't, see any other recent changes between there and Bridal Path. In some ways the lines east of Hawkesblood still seem a long way short of the Chalet line.

I haven't been following events with the Chalet Line but there are now rez zones at every station modelled.

You announced the permanent change of the roll-out/restart window back in August. Announcement of Permanent Change The ability of Linden Lab to run a drunken party in an alcohol production facility is being repeatedly called into doubt.

The Status messages claim the roll-out started an hour ago. There's no in-world sign of anything happening, nothing showing on the map.

The status message for this rollout gives a time of 03:00 PDT I am sure I saw something, somewhere, about the default time being changed to 06:00 PDT Whatever the timing, it feels careless that it doesn't get mentioned here. Are you short of CO₂

I was able to see the effects on log-ins of the roll-out, using the data at https://api.secondlife.com/datafeeds/homepage.txt (the last four lines are what matter). I use a shell script. I may work out one that gives me a graph, but running my desk-top 24/7 to get the data doesn't look worth it. Since I don't use Mac or Windows, I could set up a Raspberry Pi to collect the data, but I have bigger things to worry about. The page currently shows three types of data, "signups" (not updated for a year now), "exchange_rate" (updated every 15 minutes),. and "inworld" apparently a live figure). Timestanps are provided in SL time and standard Unix (count of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970). I don't know if the problem with the old 10-day-uptime trigger for restarts has been fixed, but I frequent a region that has had problems in the past, and there's nothing yet apparent, despite the last restart being in August. Try not to surprise us, some of us are already snug in our beds when the news is released.

I think you may be right, but what an earth happened to the page to mess it up? Go look at the SL Viewer and you have to wonder at how they cope with the variation in human vision. There are other pieces of software which share the same problem of dark, low-contrast, settings with little or no way of changing it.

I see we have restarts announced for the RC Channels, at 6am on Wednesday. It's on the Grid Status. Meanwhile, the Linden Lab mushroom farm is flourishing. If you got here, you probably saw the horrible new web page. I have words for it, which should not be used in p[olite company.

Huge header section, with a grey background and low-contrast text, I struggle to read what the links presented are, have to scroll down a long way to get to a list of the individual forums, which is hugely extended by blank space and extra info about each forum (maybe useful info). At least when I get into a forum I am seeing the familiar header design, which works and uses readable colours. I am trying not to rant about the layout, but what brain-dead moron of a Linden chose such an awful colour scheme?

I can't give any specific advice, but the GeForce 8400 GS is a very old piece of hardware, maybe still usable in a business/office environment, and I'd wonder if the processor can do the things that an SL Viewer needs. I'd check whether the same happens with an alternative up-to-date viewer. The current Firestorm is pretty close to the SL Viewer. Updating video cards can get messy; power to the card, the type of video output, and a combination of fake hardware and the chip shortages. Check the benchmarks, relatively ordinary current cards have 20 times the speed while using less power.

Not seen even a hint of anything for the coming week, although Monday is apparently some sort of holiday in the USA. Lazy Day? I suppose there might be something for the Wednesday RC rollout slot.

I checked, and no changes in my viewer. I use Firestorm. My cache and log locations hadn't changed when I checked. I have had a rare change of cache settings, it depends, as near as I can tell, on whether the location is already mounted, very much a Linux thing. As for those log files, check the location you were using. It's likely nothing has been deleted.

I goofed here. Many of the passing loops have an S-curve at the switch, so the guide prims at the bogie positions could be parallel. The mean of the positions would work for the position of the centre of the vehicle, but you would need to calculate the vector to get a good direction. The angles might not not be small enough to use the small-angle approximation, but the error may only show briefly. The SLRR gives 8m distance between parallel tracks so I think the approximation should work. I think I am going to go and have a quiet headache, "llSensor does not detect objects or agents across region boundaries"

I know some of the people reading this are rail geeks, but some aren't. So a few pictures of things that could be handled as articulated vehicles This is on the Heterocera line, a Y6 Tram Engine with a passenger coach. The history is a bit complicated. but the tram engine is simpler to make a model, because all the moving parts are hidden so as not to scare the horses. The locomotive and coach are similar enough size that the basic SLRR/VRC method of putting the vehicle centre on the Guide prim works. This is a tender locomotive, and while the proportions are a little different, the tender is not so different from the coach of the first picture. The wheels and coupling rods need animating, but this isn't so complicated because of the inside cylinders. This general type of locomotive was very common across Britain, though this is a WW2 design made to use the minimum of materials. While many earlier designs had more open cabs, the old two-vehicle approach might not work well. This is an Autocoach train, and this would be where things get tricky. It's running right-to-left, not the usual flip we get from the VRC script, and the driver is operation the train from the far end of the coach to the locomotive. But it's the length of the coach which is awkward. It's a 70ft long bogie coach, and that is so much bigger than the tank locomotive. I am not sure it would be practical. This would be a better answer for passenger trains on Bellisseria, the basic idea was being tried in several countries before WW2. This is a diesel streamlined railcar of the GWR, and while the guide-prim details for such a long vehicle could be awkward, it's still a single vehicle. At least initially, the bogies were shrouded. These were fast, rather opulent, trains. Some of the early ones had a buffet/bar. Unlike the autocoach solution it wouldn't much matter if you used the old-style Flip to reverse travel. Anyway, some pretty pictures to inspire you, and some idea of the options. To get the right proportions on standard SLRR, with the broad gauge, these coaches would be around a nominal 30m long. That suggests as much as 45-degree change in direction in the overall length. I don't think a simple guide sensor at the vehicle sensor would work. Some sort of sensor at each bogie position, and applying the mean of the two positions and directions might work.

That complexity is why I suggested a tender locomotive. A GWR Autocoach could soon get too complicated.

The problem with Hawkesblood seems to be the naming of the guide prims at either end of the rez zone. It may be related to the signals on either side of the station. They have scripts. I have found I have a copy of the v2 signal script system, and the set-up looks complicated.

I have now being able to check the increased SENSOR_SEEK_ARC_DEFAULT at the boundary between SSPE1124 and SSPE1125 which has been one of the black spots for me. The northbound crossing actually worked for me with a value of 30.00 and I have not yet seen other problems. But I am not sure because I have seen that Squeaky Mole has added two extra guide prims, the long ones you see in the picture. It looks as if they would reduce any sensor angle problem. The rate of change for the short prims is, as near as I can tell, marginal for a 25-degree sensor arc. The SLRR specification for curves is not all that clear, but I read it as saying more than 15 degrees in 10m needs caution. Trouble is that the region crossing process adds delays to scripts so the critical sensor ping could completely miss.

I have made several test runs with a locomotive of mine on the SLRR-compatible rail lines of the Bellisseria continent. Much is still unfinished, but usable. The main problems are the limited number of rez-zones and a few unreliable region crossings. There's also a difference in the Land Permissions which means multi-unit trains need to be built as a single vehicle. The follower-vehicle method used by many scripts fails. Anyone building a tender locomotive needs scripts which fix this The main section is a loop running through Pugwash in the west, with a very long spur to Bridle Path in the north-east. There are two branches running to the south coast, both with nearby docks, and a junction at Gully Wash for a line to the north coast which is clearly expected to be extended, the same sort of sharp cut-off of scenery you get if the adjacent region is down. There is also a Chalet sub-continent line, mostly following the Big River, from Hydrant to Lavon, again with likely extensions at each end. I have found that Land Impact can be critical in getting reliable operation. Many of the older VRC and Hobo freebies are very old, prim-heavy tech. I have managed to get a mesh version of a prim-based model from LI=27 to LI=8, and it has improved running. Some places have rather suspect track design, features such as sharp curves at region crossings (there's a bad one just south of Gully Wast). I have a suspicion that it needs a change to the locomotive script to fix. I am going to increase the SENSOR_SEEK_ARC_DEFAULT but the paucity of rez zones is going to make testing tedious. Since there are similar failures on dead-straight sections of track, in mid-region I shall also try increasing SENSOR_SEEK_RANGE_DEFAULT I am working, fitfully, on a model of this, to allow high-speed passenger services on the Bellisseria lines. I will note that many of these Bellisseria lines run through regions with an SSPE label, which Linden Lab regard as officially unfinished. But the Chalet section has blatantly unfinished track (look at Lavon with visible guide prims) in named regions.

If you really want to know about this type of locomotive, this is a pretty solid starting point. The Wisbech & Upwell Tramway is described here. That's a multi-page article, which also refers to the Tram Engine making an appearance in the Thomas the tank engine series. Toby is a J70 Tram Engine which looks very similar, though the side skirts hide a lot. I would have to make a few changes to my model.

It's not finished, but the Chalet line has guide prims, mostly invisible, along its whole length. I have made a run from Lavon to Hydrant in the Y6 Tram Engine I have been working on. So here are 3 pics onm the Chalet Line today, and on pic of the real thing, on the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway