[Raelma in Zindra - physics based collision spam griefer attack...]

Must have been cleaned up. Visited the emergency hospital shown, the place with the parking lot. No sign of trouble.

[Opening up a new Sim]

Yes. There are still many Gor sims. They're not used much. You can roam through empty castles, empty markets, etc.

Caledon has a huge castle, used for nothing.

I've been trying to drum up more interest in New Babbage. We now have Port Babbage looking busy, but it's all NPCs on autopilot.

There are three regions of Japanese city for combat, starting at SSOC. Nobody uses them.

[Reporting spam]

Spam every day now:

The object "**** **** Treasure Chest' has sent you a message from Second Life:
Attention animats, we would like to remind you your replay credits of L$200 ...

How do we stop this before others start doing this?

[Port Babbage improvements]

Port Babbage

Anne Aurelia just completed a rebuild of Port Babbage. It follows the East End of London in the late 1800s. There's the port, of course, with some ships in dock. The docks are cluttered with crates, many from the busy Bryant and May match factory nearby. The market stalls at the port are busy. You'll probably be approached by one of the urchins. Watch your wallet! There's some kind of argument going on at the Customshouse. If you cross the street and the tracks, you'll find the Sailors' Rest, where sailors can stay while waiting for a ship. It's nice inside; look around. The less fortunate can stay at St. Martha's next door, a grim place you can check out. There's a workhouse on the other side of the Sailor's Rest, with beds and a kitchen, and kitchen staff hard at work. Behind it is the Ragged School for the local urchins, with a teacher and a few students. If you look around, you'll also find the small Maritime Bank and an infirmary for sailors.

 

[Question about Raycast]

For an example of a good target system, go to region "SSOC". Find the huge SSOC store, with some of the most realistic guns in SL. Outside the store there are stairs down. They lead to SSOC offices. Go through the offices to the target range. It's a realistic known-distance range. Hits appear on the target and on a display of the target. You can set the range. You can have the target return to zero range and look at your groups.

[Can I create for SL solely on Linux or do I still need Windows?]

5 hours ago, RipleyVonD said:

if the Window's viewer was availiable on Valve's Steam Launcher

Steam takes a 30% revenue cut on in-game sales.

[Question about Raycast]

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.

[RL to SL scale differential for building RL landmarks]

I tend to scale everything realistically except for making ceilings about 4m high.

SL camera control needs work.

[Can I create for SL solely on Linux or do I still need Windows?]

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.)

[Second Life Product / Business Ideas for Generation Alpha]

 

23 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Another idea: all avatars should come with a smartphone by default. Not having one is unrealistic.

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.

[New version of Sharpview viewer available]

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.

[Just discovered this -- Agni?? Huh? lol]

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.

[Second Life Beta not working?]

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.

[Reporting spam]

41 minutes ago, Otoa Kiyori said:

I never agreed to join "CashCove" system or subscribed to it (I am not even allowed to enter that region).

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.

[Reporting spam]

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.

[Solve for "Dark Build" post-PBR - Just add Local Lights?!?]

7 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

Yep! The more common term is emissive. Which is what it's called in the PBR material. Technically it's the same thing though.

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.

[60 LS event "Inflation of stupidity"]

19 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

I don't know, When one of my products is finished for SL, I set a price on it that I think is appropriate and that's it. I don't know or really care what others ask for similar products.
Almost everything is available in SL from free or nearly free up to IMHO ridiculous high price ranges for a "game". So I go my own way in setting the prices.

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".

[60 LS event "Inflation of stupidity"]

15 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Since when do customers decide what the prices are for products?
As a customer one has the choice to take it or leave it. The merchant decides what they have to charge to make it worth their efforts IMHO.

That only works if the seller has a monopoly.

[Obscure question: when does the simulator send EstablishAgentCommunication to the viewer?]

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.

[Obscure question: when does the simulator send EstablishAgentCommunication to the viewer?]

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.)

[Order of deletion when too many prims]

5 hours ago, Aishagain said:

ETA:  To be accurate, I was editing a regular prim by using the edit tools to make a sectional cut which caused the LI to shoot up hugely, so whether that had some effect I don't know.

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.

[Obscure question: when does the simulator send EstablishAgentCommunication to the viewer?]

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.)

[Can you recommend animations?]

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?

[Order of deletion when too many prims]

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.

 

 

[Order of deletion when too many prims]

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.)