animats

The data you get with default settings has what you want. The hit position is where the ray hit the object, in region coordinates. Note that ray casting tests against the physics model, not the visible mesh. So your target needs a physics model that matches what you see.

I tend to scale everything realistically except for making ceilings about 4m high. SL camera control needs work.

It's possible to work entirely within Linux. I no longer have any Windows machines But to use some of the Havok upload features, you have to run Firestorm or the SL viewer under Wine. Also, to see the pathfinding mesh, you have to run an SL viewer or Firestorm under Wine. This is a pain, but possible. (Useful line of development: replace the Havok convex hull decomposer with a better algorithm. Like this new one. That's a much better algorithm. But like much academic code, it's brittle. The model has to be watertight or it gets totally confused. You have to go into Blender and work until you have a completely clean mesh.If you can generate a clean mesh, it generates a really good physics model.)

There's an AO which brings out a smartphone when you're typing. But you can't tell the difference between local chat and IMing inside an AO, so it doesn't distinguish between local chatting (which is talking) and IMs (which are phoning). That would be a cute feature. When you encountered groups of people standing around doing nothing visible, you could tell whether they were communicating or just AFK.

My experimental Sharpview viewer can now display multiple regions. Unlike previous versions, you can now move across regions. This is a limited viewer. Avatars are still blocks, but most other objects render properly. No audio, no editing. Just move and view. It's a completely new implementation, written entirely in Rust, and uses many threads. The goal is to effectively use the full resources of a gamer PC with a good GPU with 6GB or better. This version displays the four regions nearest to the avatar. All four regions are displayed at High level of mesh detail. Modern GPUs have enough power to do this. The eventual goal is to show region-sized impostor meshes for distant regions beyond the nearby four, much like sim surrounds. I recommend Sharpview only to people doing development work on SL or the Other Simulator. Downloading requires a password, which you can request by sending me a message. See the release notes. I'd like to have a few more people testing it, but it's nowhere near being a daily driver. Sharpview should be used only with a low-value alt. It doesn't do anything hostile, but it hasn't been tested enough for general use. Runs on Linux and Windows. Some tests indicate it can be built for MacOS, but as yet that's not supported.

At one time, there were plans to have more grids. IBM briefly had their own grid cross-connected to Second Life. The architecture supports this, and the Other Simulator has many loosely-associated grids. Some share objects, some don't. Some use different money systems. The original idea was to grow this to Internet scale. Then came Facebook.

I've noticed that the login server for the beta grid is much slower than the one for the main grid. In my own viewer I often get login timeouts on the beta grid in Sharpview, which currently only has a 5 second timer. If I get a login timeout, the next attempt to log in may succeed but will usually not connect to a region, probably because there's a partially complete login that has to time out. So some beta grid problems may be beta grid login server overload.

Well, that clearly makes it spam. Not something like a group joiner. CashCove on the SL map is an isolated skill gaming island. There's no way to visit it by accident. I got another one of those messages today, too.

There's no category in the ticket system for spam reports. Like this one, which came in overnight, around 5:48 AM SLT. That's from an IM to email. Was not logged in. The object 'Cash Cove Treasure Chest' has sent you a message from Second Life: Congratulations animats! You have been awarded with an extra credit of L$ 200. = Cash Cove Treasure Chest is owned by CENSORED = http://slurl.com/secondlife/CENSORED/243/128/25 Governance, please contact me for the uncensored version.

Right. Only light sources should be emissive. Use for lighted signs, neon, and such. Otherwise, avoid, unless you really want glow-in-the-dark effects.

Sellers can set an asking price. A price is only real if people pay it. Basic economics. This can be seen on eBay for many collectables. High asking prices, but actual sales happen at far lower prices. Beanie Babies are a good example. "US$5000 - no bids" is a seller fantasy. Reality looks more like "Beanie babies lot of 10, $15.00 or Best Offer".

That only works if the seller has a monopoly.

Notes on the above, with Sharpview results: On rare occasions, EnableAgentCommunication doesn't arrive at all, and the neighboring region does not come up properly. Not even after the one minute delay. I waited five minutes once. Lost event? Other than the EAC problem, not much goes wrong with ordinary avatar crossings, even at corners. Single avatar on vehicle mostly works, if I don't try to enter regions stuck waiting for EAC. Multiple avatars on vehicle needs testing. I need another alt or two. CompleteAgentMovement, viewer to sim, is important in region crossing progress. Region crossings stall if that is not sent. The avatar is stuck. Problems with region crossings over long-lag network connections probably involve that message.

Now that I have Sharpview to the point that I can ride a motorcycle around, I can hit more bugs faster. Easier to test region crossings. How a region crossing works at the viewer message level. This is the happy case for a simple single-avatar non-corner region crossing. (More later. Forum editor being difficult.)

Ah, right. That's a way to get a sudden jump in land impact. If you have something made of complex prims and then link it to something with new accounting, or materials, or anything, the LI goes from 1 to roughly the value it would have if made of mesh.

More and more I think that the EstablishAgentCommunications problem causes some region crossing failures. I've been testing with Sharpview. Here's a video: https://video.hardlimit.com/w/ceXf7Xr1b8f29VvyV4zqEF This is a video of driving around Circuit de Corse, which is a pretty drive, using Sharpview. Regions for which EstablishAgentCommunication was sent late show as empty space for one minute, and I waited out the one minute delay whenever that happened before entering the next region. There were no region crossing problems in an hour of driving. If I try this without waiting, using Sharpview, and just go plowing ahead into regions that are not showing yet, I get a region crossing failure, a classic half-unsit, where the vehicle crosses but the avatar gets left behind, in about 10-15 minutes. When you use the C++ viewers, you plow into regions that are not fully up at many region crossings, but you don't see it. The C++ viewers have a workaround to cover up that problem. Mostly, that works. Mostly. So this test adds evidence to the theory that the EstablishAgentCommunication bug is the cause of some region crossing failures. I'll keep driving around to see if I get a failure. If I can accumulate a few more hours of driving time without a fail, that's a strong sign this really is the problem. Monty Linden is working on the EstablishAgentCommunication bug, and that may have a big payoff. There's a full hour of driving video. I'd suggest watching a minute or two. Nothing exciting happens. Which is the point. (Notes on this version of Sharpview: This version isn't out yet. Working through a long list of problems. The previous version had higher frame rates but showed only one region. This one shows multiple regions but has some frame rate problems. Working on optimizations. There's a serious bug with arrow key delay, which is why the driving is so bad. That's a bug in Rust's window interface crate, "winit". The camera is first person view, the avatar is on a motorcycle, and there is no camera motion smoothing at all. So it's a rough ride, especially on the road section with cobblestones, where you feel every bump.)

It's surprisingly difficult to find good mundane animations. A friend was setting up some factory worker animesh, and she visited various animation stores in world. Said they had sex acts she's never thought of, but finding an animation for someone packing items into a box was very difficult. I have trouble finding consistent sets of animations for my NPCs. They have a sort of AO system. Walk and run at various speeds in full bento with good ease-in and ease-out is hard to find. My animesh are variable-speed, and I have to switch between various walk, jog, and run animations to get the legs to match the ground speed. Those anims need to interoperate properly with "turn left' and "turn right", and transition well to stands. Any suggestions?

If you're an outsider, not the parcel owner, and you try to bring something onto the parcel, such as a vehicle, you get a "parcel full" error. That works fine. If the parcel owner rezzes something and there are non-parcel-owner objects present, it seems that non-owner objects are returned to make this possible. Does setting "Locked" matter? Any known bugs in this area? Not sure how this interacts with land groups. It's become a minor problem in New Babbage, which is having a building boom. On four recent occasions reported by two users, some objects have been returned unexpectedly as a side effect of unrelated activity. No parcel was anywhere near close to its normal LI limit.

What's the priority order for returning objects when new objects are rezzed or enter? I know that the parcel owner has priority over non-owners, but what are the rules involving groups and vehicles? Does membership in a land group add priority? (Why? There have been some unexpected returns in a big roleplay sim with complicated group ownership.)

There are many dining tables in SL set up for that. The Brunel Hall Hotel in New Babbage had a really nice restaurant with that feature. But the owner left SL, and it's now a vacant lot.

HiVid seems to have that working well. I think they route the video through their own streaming server, so every user of a TV sees the same thing. Note that the viewer inside the browser will not play DRM content, so you can't watch most pay per view stuff. Does anybody in SL operate a movie theater where everybody sees the same thing, and they regularly run movies on a schedule? That would be fun. There are many theaters, but few actually work.

The WelcomeHub lacks a good explanation of what you can get and do for free. Something like this: Second Life and Money: Your free account in Second Life lets you go most places and do most things. You can get free clothing, vehicles., and weapons The free stuff, of course, is not the best stuff. The good stuff is created by other residents and put on sale by them. There's online shopping, with a web site, and thousands of in-world stores, where you can see, and often try, the thing before you buy. More expensive does not always mean better. Each seller sets their own prices, and some charge more than others.All that is entirely user-run. Linden Lab itself doesn't sell items. They make their money renting out land in Second Life. If you want to buy stuff, you need Linden Dollars, which sell for about US$1 -> L$250. It's possible to earn Linden Dollars working in Second Life. It's usually not worth the trouble, because pay is very low. Work in Second Life is roleplay, not income. There are both free and paid accounts. "Premium" membership gets you an unfurnished house that you can furnish, and some modest perqs. There are some model homes here in the WelcomeHub. Second Life has somewhere around 100,000 such houses in landscaped communities with varied layout. The Premium homes offer a quiet suburban lifestyle. You can also buy bare land and build, rent land, rent apartments, etc., just like real life. You can even live in roleplay areas. Steampunk cities, magical fantasies, cyberpunk streets, high-crime areas, and luxury estates are all available. That gets complicated, so spend a few days in SL, look around, and talk to people. Lindall Kidd used to teach a land class at Caledon which covered all this.

How's that working out? Links? I've seen it done a few times. The trouble is that the LLM usually knows little about Second Life and not much about its environment. So it's just a generic chatbot. An LLM loaded up with knowledge about a roleplay sim would be useful. Load in all the lore and background,, and interesting stuff that happened recently. A lot of work, though. Might be worth it for one of those complicated RP regions where new users need background, such as Dark Future or Crack Den.

I was just logged into Morris/Ahern/Dore/Bonifacio on the beta grid. No problems.

That's how it's done. A few times, I've helped a new user get started. It takes about an hour. Answer their questions. Find out what they're into. Take them two or three places, from scenic mountains to a gun range to a cyberpunk sim, depending on their interests. Talk them through rezzing their first cube in a sandbox and put a texture on it. Rez some good stuff from inventory to show what's possible. Explain that this is a huge shared world, that almost everything was built by the residents, that there is private land ownership and control, and that Linden Lab acts like a municipal government, not a game master. One new user was a gamer. So I took him to a combat sim, and we got visitor tags in the lobby. Once inside, we got out of the way of the machine gun fire and watched for a while. He'd found something he understood, and went off to arm up and read all the roleplay rules for the sim. Another was trying to build in the WelcomeHub sandbox. I took them to Builder's Brewery and built some simple things from prims, and we watched some good builders at work. They looked at the class schedule and planned to come back for a beginning building class. That's what it takes. But it's tough to automate that.