Seems to me that 0 is a completely arbitrary number and that a cut-off for any reason other than hardware/mathematical limitations is unwarranted. I could see taking an "oh well" attitude about things that don't work with -z, but declaring the Metaverse to simply end at 0 seems very random.
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Melanie <[email protected]> wrote: > I have never seen a Z < 0 build. I see lots of problems that may be > possible with this, but I think that quite beautiful and interesting > builds could make use of this and would support keeping it. The > change in the viewer is recent and likely trivial to undo. > > - Melanie > > On 25/04/2014 00:32, Justin Clark-Casey wrote: > > Hi folks. Historically, whether by accident or design, OpenSimulator > has allowed negative Z values for terrain, objects > > and avatars (e.g. <130, 50, -45>. I have seen people use this facility > to build fully underwater or partially > > underwater structures (e.g. oil rigs, sunken ships, etc.) which are > conceptually far below the water line without having > > to set that water line at a level that may be way above that of > surrounding regions. > > > > However, at least on Singularity 1.8.5 on Linux, fog effects do not work > properly when z < 0, where all view distances > > have very high fog no matter what the fog settings. This may be a > recent change - I remember fog working properly at > > negative z values in the past, though the fog issue still occurred past > a certain -ve z. There may be other issues of > > which I'm not aware. Arguably, these are not bugs since the Linden Grid > does not allow z < 0 (though one could make the > > same argument for var regions, etc.). > > > > With in-world testing of current development code, BulletSim appears to > have a hard-coded check where I can't move my > > avatar below z == 2 whether terrain is z < 0 or not (this should > probably at least be fixed so z = 0 is possible). ODE > > has allowed and still allows the avatar to descend to negative depths. > > > > One argument is that in the light of such bugs, it would be better to > consistently enforce z >= 0 and require people > > with -z builds to either move them and the water level up using > OpenSimulator commands (e.g. "translate scene") or never > > update their OpenSimulator installation. > > > > However, I think there is a real value in keeping the -ve z ability. It > allows people to extend deep water builds > > without having to adjust any neighbouring sims for consistency (which > they may not have control over). I'm sure it's > > possible to address the viewer-side issues. OpenSimulator could have an > allow-negative-z flag which is false by default > > to make it explicit that using -ve z may have issues at this time. I > accept this is a more complicated solution than > > enforcing z == 0, though enforcing z == 0 will also requires many > changes to the current code where bounds are not checked. > > > > If my experience is unusual and -z builds are very rare then there's > more of a case for enforcing z >= 0. > > > > Thoughts? > > > _______________________________________________ > Opensim-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev > -- No essence. No permanence. No perfection. Only action.
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