Laurentia Tower..Final Moments

Sunday 17 Aug 8 pm (SL Time)

Sorry readers but that’s when the Laurentia Tower gets deleted. I say deleted because after some lengthy consideration and quite a bit of experimentation, deletion I believe is the best method. Read on...

For the last couple of days I’ve been copying sections of the tower, unlinking them; then turning them ‘physical’. I hate to tell you this folks but my research has discovered there’s a limit to the number of prims that can be turned physical at once. And it’s only 32. Now bearing in mind the tower consists of some 9700 prims...that means I’d have to select sections of the tower 304 times. Moreover, there’s a limit to the number of prims that will free fall at once (don’t know what the number is but if someone said it was 32...I wouldn’t be amazed..would you...?) beyond that number the prims just freeze in mid air. This means that along with the 304 sections to be highlighted and turned physical there would probably be another few hundred selections of prims frozen in mid air which would have to be ‘reminded’ that they are in fact physical and coaxed upon their way. So the conclusion I have to draw from these experimental demolitions is. The Laurentia Tower won’t come down in a dramatic... spectacular...awesome rush of prims...it would drizzle down 32 prims at a time.

I’d love to invite a bunch of you over to Laurentia to watch the spectacular demolition of the Tower and even film it in its magnificent and spectacular final moments. But at a rough estimate those magnificent moments would last quite a few hours and would probably be a lot less than spectacular.

In the mean time the Tower’s open..climb..fly..throw yourself off..parachute..whatever..everyone welcome…enjoy!!

Perre Anatine..

It’s not gone for good..I’ve copied the upper platform, sections of tower, observation balconies and lower entrance..just in case I make it big in Second Life and some day have an Island to spare..then the Tower will live again (for now au revoir)

how about via script? would still take some time to chew thru 9700 pieces, but you would be free to watch it with everyone else. How many individual linksets are there?

Maybe OpenLife might be interested in hosting the WorldGrids tallest virtual building if SL isn't interested?

Crashing it might look spectacular, and be fun, but I guess to consider is what if it bjorked content on the other 3 sims on your server besides just crashing them?

Maybe you should consult a Linden on how bulletproof Havok4 is in this extreme case, they may want to copy it to the beta grid to try.

While the largest linkset that can be turned physical is 32, you can have far more physical prims tumbling through the air at once. I don't know how many... probably some function of how busy the sim is at the time, how complicated the physical objects are and what class server you are on. I've dropped 100 physical prims at a time over my tiny parcel. The thousands of prims in your tower might be another matter... the server running your sim might just cross it's eyes and fall over at the idea of calculating physics for so many objects.

Of course, before you do that you would need to rebuild the tower in 32 prim (or smaller) linksets by unlinking and re-linking it in sections.... or unlink the whole thing in one go and turn it all physical before you unselect any of it. You should be able to do this if you can get a big enough draw distance to manipulate the whole thing in one go.


<edit> with a bit of effort, a lot of lag and shift-select I managed to select 5552 prims-worth of the tower in one go. A faster machine and greater perseverance should manage the whole thing.

It shouldn't be too hard to write a script that turns a prim physical when unlinked... and another script that unlinks the prims in sequence.

Well this is probably my main reason for opting for a simple deletion, it's quick and simple and avoids any awkward moments when Linden Labs send round the heavies to 'discuss' the matter with me.

Also following that test demolition I did a couple of days ago and despite a thorough clean up afterwards, I've been finding bits all over the place. What's more clearing up scattered objects is remarkably hazardous, those who have been to Laurentia recently might notice the Fuschia temple has been re-located to another corner 50 m above the ground..that's where I'm re-building it..

So; yes scripts may do the job, but I'd sooner keep in with the folks at Linden Lab and avoid a trip to the fabled corn field, even if it does house a talented troup of Zorba dancers.

Perre...

Dan linden can attest to that I have dropped 13k prims on there havok4 "crash me" sim killing it Got to love beach balls

I completely forgot to add..if anyone's ever seen the film 'Cube Zero', that should give you a clue to my next project.

So if anyone knows where I can get some flesh eating bacteria in Second Life get in touch..

Perre..

47 minutes to go, I'm on my way over to climb the tower and collect the very last T, maybe I should time it just right and leave it till 15 mins to go.

Astrid