OS is now 7 years old and the fundamental feature of crossing from one region
to another while riding on or in a physical vehicle is not working. I, and most
of the community, are aware that there are partial implementations being worked
on, and at least one grid has an implementation similar in functionality to SL
- but that implementation is not yet available to the OpenSim community in
general.
Obviously, if it were easy to implement it would be done - it may well be
impossible to implement...
PVC below stands for physical vehicle crossings between regions with avatar(s)
riding the vehicle(s).
1. Is PVC a desirable feature - does the OpenSim community want to be able to
ride physical vehicles while crossing region borders? With the implementation
of var-regions, crossings are less of a necessary feature - however, a smooth
or bump-less crossing combined with variable sized regions would give grid
designers a lot of flexibility.
2. What features would be expected of a solution?
a. Bump-less region crossings - ie. unlike SL or other implementations,
bump-less region crossings would be a desirable feature. I would prefer that
region crossings be bump-less - this means to me that there is no movement
shuddering visible while crossing, all scripts transfer their running state
smoothly, and sounds would continue to play smoothly. A person observing their
avatar cross from one region to another would not be able to see/detect any
sign that a crossing has just taken place except a script reporting which
region it is running in would suddenly begin reporting that it is in the
destination region.
b. Should PVC be required to work on all physics engines mainly ODE and
BulletSim at this time. My feeling is that I would be happy if PVC only worked
on BulletSim. I understand that many people still use/prefer ODE - but if PVC
only worked on BulletSim (initially) I would feel that would be a good step,
and then if there is a demand from the community and someone available to do
the work, it could possibly be ported to ODE.
c. Would it be necessary to be able to cross between regions running different
physics engines? In other words, would the community expect a physical vehicle
to be able to cross from a region running ODE into a region running BulletSim?
d. Would a “bumpy” crossing between regions running different physics engines
be acceptable with a smooth crossing only being available if both the starting
and destination regions were running BulletSim.
e. Would Scripts need to cross smoothly between starting and ending regions -
or would a script restart/recompile be acceptable? What would be acceptable
behavior if the configuration of the destination region is different than the
starting region concerning scripts. I expect the scripts to stop running and
report an error?
f. Would a physical vehicle size restriction for PVC be acceptable? What would
be the expected result of a “train” (linked set of “train cars” populated with
avatars) crossing? Again, I think this should be smooth and bump-less assuming
the starting region and destination region meet some criteria.
g. What would be acceptable behavior if a PVC is attempted between regions with
differing physical link set limitations - such as number of prims, size of
physical prims, etc. Would the vehicle be denied access to the destination
region if it’s construction exceeded destination region limits?
g. What is the expected behavior for PVCs concerning permissions of the vehicle
entering and/or leaving regions.For example, would the vehicle flying over a
region have the same expectations for access permissions that a avatar flying
over a restricted parcel would have?
h. What would be the expectations around PVCs and HyperGrid? Would the
community want/expect a physical vehicle to be able to be ridden to a different
grid via hyper grid technology. If so, would it be required to work in any
combinations of hosting hardware (linux, windows, osx, etc)?
i. Should vehicles be able to be ridden while teleporting? Should such
teleports be able to teleport within a region as well as between two regions on
the same or different grids?
j. Are there expectations concerning the altitude a PVC can take place?
Submarines? Aircraft? Sub-terrain Tunnels?
k. Obviously we would all like our favorite client to support the PVC, but
would humpless HG enabled PVC be acceptable if was initially supported by a
single popular client? Obviously the implementation would have to be OpenSource
and licensed according to OS requirements, so other clients/viewers would be
able to add support at their desecration.
What other features or capabilities would you like to see? Personally, I would
like to see capabilities beyond what SL supports - what about you? Is Sl
compatibility a requirement for PVC? OS is 7 years old, I believe it is time to
look forward to what the community wants, and not continue to just “keep up
with SL”. Hyper-grid is an excellent example of OS taking the lead - maybe it
is time for PVC to take the lead also.
Let me be clear I have nothing but admiration for the OS developers. I am not
complaining about that they have done. I am amazed at the outstanding work they
have done and the feature set they have provided to us. My discussion here, is
an attempt to determine if there is a desire for PVC, or if the OS community
finds the current state of region crossings to be acceptable.
Let me also be clear also that I understand the features mentioned above may
not even be possible - that is not what I am interested in, I want to know what
would the community want a PVC implementation to look like if their dreams
could come true.
Thank you.
Frank Nichols
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