Do We Have a Climate in SL?

Well, do we? I mean a barometric pressure and a temperture and wind. I know we have fake rain and that off-putting white wimpy snow. I mean the real article - a climate that helps us survive as avatars?
I was given a number of scientific instruments ages ago that do seem to measure a changing temperature and a shiftng wind and barometric pressure and was told that they are essential to keep sl actually running correctly.
Seriously.
Or was I in Merryland again?
Jig.

there is definitely a wind, I have seen some nice art pieces that play sounds in response to the wind changes.


It's the gravitational pull of the sun and moon that keeps SL running, plus the hamsters.

Yes...greed, avarice , fear, suspiscion, duplicity, chaos, anarchy, oppression.......

sorry your opinion doesn't count

As others have said, I hope you recover fully soon.

Pep (It's the influence of the phases of the sl moon . . .)

I like the wind, it makes my flags flap. (That sounds naughtier than it is.)

Some people like to tinker with the appearance of their land to simulate seasons, which I suppose I can understand. As for myself, though, I am a little unhappy that the owner of the sim where I rent has covered the place in snow. It was a beautiful lush verdant environment went I rented it, and just a week or two later they covered it in snow and bared all the trees. I had no warning, and more importantly, no autumn, which is my favorite season.

I have plenty of snow in my RL, and am really hating having it on my rented home. I was enjoying sitting by the river. The lush green really calmed me. Now I find the place cold and uninviting, and I can't wait until the sim owners change it back. But, it's given me a chance to work on the interior of my house. I'll wait until "spring" for the landscaping.

Although there is wind, there is nothing here that remotely deals with survival. The thinness or thickness of the "air" can be adjusted in Windlight, to change the haze at varying altitudes. To that end I suppose there is a certain amount of barometric pressure but it has nothing to do with the physics system.

My pet JIRA for sim-wide weather systems:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2808

Wind speed can be gotten from a simple scripting call, functions like temperature and barometric pressure are calculated using formulas with the sun position and the cloud cover. They have nothing to do with the function of SL or survival of avatars, however.

Strictly speaking, there is no air in SL. And more easily-explained, there is no water. I'm reminded of the line from Matrix when Neo and Morpheus are in the dojo and Morpheus asks, "You think that's air, you're breathing?"

By no water, this is what I mean:

Water in SL is a fixed altitude set region-wide. It defaults to 20 meters. It is entirely rendered clientside. The 20m value is used only to tell the browser where to paint the imaginary water, and it is a reference for physical vehicles and other scripted objects. "Boats" in SL do not float on water because there is no water. They merely float at a prescribed altitude, and it's up to the scripter to make them act as if the water were real.

The lack of water, and the lack of air, are easily demonstrated through physics. There is no air resistance or friction, nor water resistance, to falling or moving objects. A prim feather will fall at the same rate through 'air' and 'water' as a prim hammer. The only exception is if the feather is scripted to act like a feather, in which case there is still no air / wind resistance, merely the illusion thereof.

On the other hand, visual and audio cues do allow us to perceive what we take to be a climate. And SL is IMHO really a playground for the mind anyways, so it is what we make of it, what we want it to be.

-Atashi

Yup. We have no air.
In the absence of an atmosphere all objects fall at the same rate, as astronaut David Scott demonstrated by dropping a hammer and a feather on the surface of the Moon.

no air...

but our avatars do breathe invisible jello!!!!

honest!

In all seriousness, I have seen weather machines that will tell you the temp on your sim, the air pressure, etc.

I think I had one...once. I'll run a light search and see later on tonight.

Do you think that's air you're breathing?

To be precise: "Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place? Do you think that's air you're breathing?"

They make it up.

The weather is a lie.

This just occured to me. There is wind - you can measure it, there's a script call to get the wind vector. You can see it affecting flexi prims.

How is there wind, without air?

-Atashi

How is there cake, without a spoon?

Um. Is it a lie or is it virtual?

And the next release of the weather machine I own will make is so you can put in your zip code and the weather will become YOUR weather.

Can't wait!

Honestly that does sound interesting. If it tracked time and actual weather people could visit and know whats its like in your area. People IMing me from my store at 3AM would know to expect a delayed response if it looked like it was actually 3AM in my store.

Probably easier ways to convey that info, but i still like the idea.

My nixie tube clocks can be set to a time zone of your choice. They can also track SL solar time.

No, we don't. There is a rudimentary weather system, but no climate like you're suggesting.

Hmm, good point. By definition, "wind" is the movement of the air. There must be air in SL...

In Karl Schroeder's novel "Ventus", a wind is an AI tasked with the maintenance of an artificial biosphere.

S*d off.

Andrew Linden on SL weather in 2005:

"As to future plans for weather... a long time ago (alpha? beta?) we had a rain effect, however it was too expensive at the time to do collision checking for the raindrops so the rain would move right through a house's roof. Most people found it annoyingly unrealistic so we got rid of it. In order to do more correct rain and fog effects we would have to embed some physics collision algorithms on the client. The good news is that such effects are definitely something that we want to do. The bad news is that the timeline for such a project is at least one year away."

the wind is not air, but an algorithm... cellular automata...

we once built a space sim with damage enabled (beware, killer robots) and if it'd ever been finished, the intention was to have any area outside of the enclosed domes be lethal to avatars (no breathable atmosphere, doncha know...)

but, like SL weather on the whole, funding and interest for that project were diverted to more pressing matters.

and hooo boy- I can't even imagine the complaints it would generate if a grid-wide weather system was implemented.

I want it! IM/PM me the name of the creator?