Things that show through other things - Can someone explain?

Can someone please explain what's going on here.

I have a house and a kitchen. (both low prim items)

Yet, parts of the house can be seen thru parts of the kitch at certain angles.

It's weird. If I make a prim, it is solid and blocks everything behind it, but my kitchen cabinets and some plants I have look find, till a certain part of the house comes into view, and then you can see right thru the item and see the part of the house.

Is this something to do with the way the kitchen and plants are made from VERY low prims. Some rezzing trick? and the bug it creates?

Can someone explain what's going on here?

And at the same time, just how they can make a tree or plant with many faces, yet is only 1 prim. Something fishy going on here!

What you are seeing is the alpha sorting glitch...........very common in any OpenGL rendering platform (of which SL is one). When two or more prims with alpha channels in the textures applied to them are next to or in front of each other the rendering of the textures get mixed up. You see one in front of the other at one angle, then the other in front of the other at another angles. It's the nature of OpenGL and, as far as I can see, there is no cure on the horizone.

The reason you see it in low prim builds is that in order to save prims the builder incorporated textures with transparency (alpha channels) to achieve the allusion or effect of, say, a window. Then next to the window the builder might have put a sliding glass door...........that makes two prims with alpha channels next to each other. You will experience the alpha sorting glitch. Another thing that texture makers sometimes make is that they make textures with alpha channels that don't need that extra channel. You will see that sorting glitch with those too.......even if there is no apparent transparency in the texture.

On the 3d single prim trees..........you need to ask the Lindens how they do that. Every single prim tree or plant that I've seen has been created by a Linden.

That's for that excellent explanation (even thought it was almost above my head in parts) but I understand what you are saying.

Yes, where I notice it (on my house) is that there are windows with bars down them (so they have a transparancy) then I put a plant in front of the window (which also has a transparancy) and as I move I see the bars of the window in front of the plant when it's behind it really.

The linden trees do not do this so I guess they are using some other method.

But I have been to a store where they sell many plants, bushes and even trees that are only 1 prim, yet when you look at them they are made of many flat sections.
Not sure if they using some rezzing trick to do this, but when you selevt them there are yellow lines eveywhere around them.

its not totally fair to blame this on open GL, directx has it too

its more of SL being a slop of spaghetti written in a den on the weekends issues

all 3d programs suffer from this in some way, most have an engine that can compensate for it, even if there is a direct conflict within the world

i like SL, its impressive in its scale and its behind the scenes mechanics, but there is some things to keep in mind

the original people came from real, the most horrible crappy media format ever, when i was playing back 480p video full screen on a 386 as a joke these yahoos were dropping state of the art pentium 2's to their knees with postage stamp size "color blob" video, and music that would make a deaf man cry

the SL engine is fundamentally a 1999 engine, and honestly a poor one at that, with alot of crap added into it, it needed an overhaul 3 years ago

and finally right now there is no direct competition to SL, theres similar systems, but none offer everything SL does, mainly becuase of the totally dynamic user content, this gives LL their "tao" in which they will do what they want when they want, and since theres nothing to beat, theres no real reason for improvement

Does anyone thing then that (at some stage) there may be a (from the ground up) re-write of the SL client to bring in all the latest techs, ideas, and enhancements from ground zero. Or is it like one of those things that just can't be considered and it's going to be tweak after tweak of what we have already?

From only being with SL for a few weeks I am very impressed in the whole.

Apart from a (can youm make it run faster/smoother/load textures faster) issue, it looks about 90% fine "on screen" as it is.

The only REAL thing that seems to be lacking that really shows is the inability (it seems) to be able to program items (scripts) in the SL world to do very much.

Perhaps it's the script writers (which I don't think it is) so I assume it's SL limitations on things? But take the ability to create an animal for example.

It seems using objects and sculpties you can create something that's not a bad looking Dolphine, Tiger, Dog, Cat, Horse etc etc.

When it comes to animating these this is where it seems to show the limitations.
We seem to be confined to say showing leg in one positon then another any flipping between the two to simulate walking (for example) but then the ability to create some free raoming within an area seems very hard to do for programmers.

A dolphine may just keep jumping out of the water in a continious loop, or swim in a circle all the time. And it's all looks ok (when laid out carefully) but it's a shame you can't embody a creation with some more free thinking ability, set an area and it will randomly swim around, jump out the water (in the case of a dolphin) and generally act as if it was real(ish)

I'm assuming SL was never even designed to accomodate such creatures and it's only down to some clever trickey on the part of designers and script writers that we have what we do now, and they have made a very good job of it.

But it would be so nice if more was availiable for them to do, so in world odjects could have a more programmable ability.

SL is a work in progress. Nothing is entirely complete........and never will be either. The problem (as I see it) it that once LL laid down the platform when developing the platform they locked themselves in a relatiively specific direction and any changes or additions to the program is dictated by that initial direction (.........geeze, what a complicated sentence. LOL).

About the only way to incorporate the features you mentioned is to start over from the beginning.........or, at least, from some early point in the development. I don't see that happening. Two reasons: 1. Doing so would basically require LL to trash all that they've done to date......making it economically unfeasible (or even impossible). 2. Three weeks into a complete revamping of SL it will be the same thing again...........some technilogical breakthrough will instantly make the platform "obsolete" once again.

However, there are some real geniuses in SL...........they will find a way to do most anything imaginable.

anything is possible with the scripting system, if you battle axe it enough

what kills major projects like a simple AI is the execution speed of the scripts, its flat out slow, so if your doing monstrous calculations its going to take a while ...

but its slow because its not just your script running on the computer, its THOUSANDS of scripts doing BILLIONS of things all at the same time on the computer

the trick to complex LSL magic is to make it as simple as possible before its running on the system

ie if i have to i would make a massive math table for the script to pick and choose out of vs doing 1,000 calculations per script event cycle

as far as the SL viewer, we have been teased for almost 3 years now about a version 2.0 which is a total overwrite ... and vaporware

also peggy is right, by the time LL implements anything its instantly outdated ... thats because it takes them years to do anything