I'm sure vehicle border crossings are important for some situations.
For me, they got a lot less important now that OpenSim supports
variable-sized regions. There are also alternatives (co-simulation) to
moving vehicles along very large areas that are able to avoid crossing
borders altogether, therefore avoiding the "bumps" on borders and the
extra load that moving vehicles and crossing borders entail. These 2
things (varregions and co-simulation) don't exist in SL, but they're
superior in some respects, because they avoid crossing borders
altogether; it's much smoother, keeps the load down, and avoids running
into security issues.
Here's a video showing a large-scale traffic co-simulation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=291yE_9eefU#t=4m02s
Co-simulation means that one simulator has part of the objects, in this
case the vehicles, and the other simulators have the rest of the scene
objects. The vehicles never cross borders, even though they move along
very large distances (in this case, 3km x 1.5km).
I talked about how to do this at OSCC'13.
This is not to say that I don't support adding proper vehicle border
crossing support to OpenSim, if someone cares to do it. +1!
But I would never trade the borderless way of moving vehicles for the
SL's way of moving vehicles, so vehicle border crossings has been very
low priority for me, personally. One of the perks of reimplementing the
server-side is that we can do things that can't be done in SL!
On 6/16/2014 7:10 AM, Frank Nichols wrote:
I guess no one cares about region border crossings ...
On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Frank Nichols
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Maybe someone can answer this - I am aware of NPVs but have never
used them. I am pretty sure than as of a year ago you could not be
seated and do a region border crossing, however a lot of work has
gone into OS in that area in the past 6 months and it may be
possible now.
Frank
On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 1:22 AM, Mike Higgins <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
All very good questions, but there is a fundamental assumption
that all vehicles are physical.
1. Can non-physical vehicles (NPVs) cross sim borders?
An NPV is a non physical object that uses llSetPos,
llSetPrimParams,
llSetLinkPrimParamsFast(LINK_THIS,[PRIM_POSITION....]) or
llSetKeyframedMotion to move across a SIM boundary.
On some grids, NPVs cross SIM borders just like physical
vehicles.
2. Can NPVs cross SIM borders with an avatar sitting on them?
3. Can NPVs cross SIM borders WITHOUT an avatar sitting on
them? (for example a ferryboat that makes regular runs from
one SIM to another, and keeps making the rounds even when empty).
On 6/13/14 10:58 PM, Frank Nichols wrote:
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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