What's the deal with trees?

I've always meant to ask about this. In edit they say they're 1 prim but they look like X's like some plants, and they move in the 'wind' but have no script.

Why are they differnt from all the other objects?

I imagine they are different because they built in support into the client for trees directly, to optimize them. Although they appear to be made the same way that the flowers and other things are in game, I think that there is native support for trees in the game engine, which allows them to affect things differently than normal objects.

Were there ever more things that interacted with the world like that? Like back in beta?

Hm, well, no!

Trees look like they're fractals or something.. they're very intricate.

There's a setting somewhere that lets you change settings for trees, like fractal designs and whatnot, but it doesn't seem to do anyhting. Might be in the debug menu.

LF

Trees in SL are done just like in most games... each branch is two crossed prims with an alpha texture. The only thing that makes them different from regular prims is that they interact with the wind. I hope they will still only count as 1 prim. I love my landscaping. I also wish we could make our own real wind reacting plants!

it would be nice to be able to build trees that blew with the wind. i'd also be nice to be able to join them and end up with only one prim.

say i wonder if we could manager that in an offline object editor. hmm.

Chip - up your tree detail. heh. If you get close to the trees and have your tree detail (and maybe some other settings) high then they are a lot more than a cross of prims.

What is the deal with trees? The trick that lets you get all that for 1 prim cost? Its a client-side effect! The server stores 1 object (Tree instead of cube) with 1 set of parameters just like any other prim (including an additional setting of what kind of tree) and then the client looks at that and goes 'ok I know how to make that - BAM! a tree!'. Your client knows the wind vector and so it can simulate the trees reacting to the wind. As far as the server is concerned the tree is just a pole like the trunk - or less. Thats all you ever collide with (do you collide with trees? or walk through them?).

When we want to make something similar we have to have it all done for the most part on the server and constantly updated to each and every client. That takes more server resources (script and maybe physics), more bandwith and more prims.

That really makes me think that one thing that would bring SL a LONG way closer to being a game platform (as that other thread is talking about) would be a way for us to define some limited client side scripts. We already have a couple calls that do client side effects, but if we could have scripts that the byte code was downloaded to the client and run rather than on the server it could bridge some of the lag gap. If those scripts could react to player input, handle UI elements and manage data that would just be amazing. I gotta cross post that to the other thread.

I love our trees and plants. I personally would love to see more variety in the trees we have. Matter of fact, moving the rest of this to the feature suggestions....yeah, but anyway, trees rule.

Neil

Good explanation Ama I know they're more complex than I described, but they're still done with "billboarding" for the foliage. The whole tree is a hierarchical linkage that uses forward kinematics to react to the wind. It would be tons-o-fun to be able to make our own things like that. Maybe in SL 3.0. hehe

*tosses Ama a cookie*

Very good explanation, now I don't have to say anything.

yes thank you ama