Z coordinate bug ?

Take a look at this picture.


The blue z coord at the top middle of the screen is correct. The z coord in the edit window is mad. When I select other prims in the same area the edit window reports z coords of 0.0, 201, 300, 503, they should all be 700+ !

Weird.

relogging solves the problem temporarilly but then it happens again. I've no apparent packet loss.

To prevent quirks in editing, do not build or edit objects above a height of 256m.

ROFL

Seriously, if it can handle x and y coordinates up to 512, why shouldn't it be able to handle z to at least that?

Good grief !!

Please say that was a joke !

most absurd !

We don't really test things above 256m, and if things go wrong up there, there's not much we can do. We KNOW things don't work well above 512, and that zone is very much at your own risk.

There are cool things planned for Second Life that make it less and less likely that we will support ultra-high building any more than we do, at least for the near future.

This is an interesting statement to those of us who prefer to build in skybox studio space, where the client FPSes are high and the interruptions are few. Is the crux of the problem floating point precision, or is there more going on?

As far as I can see, this "problem" has been introduced with the latest update. There is no real problem and this is a bug. I've never had any problem with instability at high altitude until today. It's not like the prims are actually not being placed where I want them, it's just a display or network protocol bug.

And LL should understand we need to see them fixing these annoying building bugs BEFORE they go adding any more so called "cool" features to SL. There are so many bugs now that building in SL is becoming irritating and annoying rather than fun.
( even at low altitude ! )



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I see your point Lee and perhaps I agree with it. But come on. "Ultra-high building"? 256m?

In most of the sims I've worked in, 250m just barely gets you above the clouds. It's already annoying that you can't set home much higher than this.

And what the others say about FPS is exactly right. It's soooooooooo much better in the air. Back in the day, it was the only place I could get some of my particle effects to even function for me.

But I'm not saying it should be a priority, I just think it's amusing.

Well, one of the features of the next major graphics engine for SL is dramatically improved visibility and draw distances.

We've done test runs on this with copies of current content, and it becomes VERY noticeable that the current SL sky is extremely cluttered. I'm curious as to whether this will change when such an engine is released for SL.

My question would be, would you still be building ever-so-high in the sky if people can see your build, from the ground, several sims away? (Assume reasonable framerates for this kind of draw distance.)

[joke]If so, we'll just turn Havok2 on for ALL objects and send stuff crashing to the ground anyway.[/joke]

LOL Yep, we probably would. In fact, it would require us to build higher and higher. When this happens, we really will need support for ultra-high building.

Building on the ground presents its own set of limitations, like having to worry that your prims do not go through someone's walls...I had to ask my neighbor to move a lot of trees so that my living room was the way it was supposed to be...another major reason for me is that with sky objects, you have no limitataion on z-coordinates (going down). I'm planning on building something very interesting, and there's no way I could do that on the ground...

and to echo Shack, a major reason for building in the sky is to get as far away from other distractions.

I'm still too gobsmacked to say anything sensible !




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LOL I'm having fun with this one.

But seriously, it's amazing how little privacy a platform at 500m will get you. I did all of my building in the sky while I was on my first 512m lot and I was annoyed and confused by people who would just drop by and start a conversation with me. People just flying around looking for green dots to talk to LOL.

Hello (knock, knock) I'm above the normal flying height for a reason. If I wanted guests, I would probably be on the ground.

i really really like building up high.. from a year ago in cordova to get away from the ground based clutter to when i bought land and needed somewhere level and higher client fps to build. even now my workshop is at 400M, when working with particles i prefer the height, they look better, i can see when they go through the ground, and no one is bothered when i enter a wrong number and sent masses of particles off in a random direction. building at a specific altitude also makes aligning things much simpler if the floor is at a known height. and once people can see forever the only change i would make is to make the outside of my workshop slightly more attractive, not that its an eyesore as it is, most see it from the inside if at all.

building in a skybox is often for convenience more than privacy, at least for me. its a subtle im busy, and somewhere to leave incomplete stuff without cluttering up my plot.




jester


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Lets have a look at some Sci Fi examples ...

- The amazing city scenes in the recent Starwars

- BladeRunner

- Matrix

- 5th Element

- etc etc etc.

Exactly what makes LL think people wont build in the sky if they can fly ? !!



And... I honestly think increasing the view distance will only be any good if we have the option to turn it DOWN again ! It's great to be getting a faster renderer but I really do not want to be forced to look at the view stretching 3 sims away from wherever I am. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but personally I dont want to see that far in SL.

The new distant viewing feature is going to hilight the real problems of the current grid system, where we are all forced to build on each others doorsteps! I foresee war !!

This is a good point. And also, I'm trying to fathom what these restrictions on height really mean for other dimensions.

Does this mean that the current SL software wouldn't even support a sim as large as 512m x 512m in x and y? I mean, I can't see anything special about z. So it would seem to be a general limitation on coordinates in general.

I've seen some of the snapshots of the new render engine, and did notice a lot of the skyboxes stood out like sore thumbs. When v2.0 goes live, this is going to pose some interesting questions for people who want their studio space. Perhaps it will be possible to camoflage the bottom of the skyboxes such that they are effectively invisible from the ground? Perhaps it would be an opportunity to redesign them such that they look like they belong way up there in the air (aircraft, antigrav platforms, or whatever).

In a world without a true sense of inside or outside, one without meaningful separation between public and private space, skyboxes have done a nice job of filling an important niche; where do you go when you need to work alone? It's not that I want to be reclusive. It's more that I'm easily distracted and am slow regain focus after disruption. In a realm as hyperstimulating as SL can be, some isolation is occasionally welcome. I hope I am not alone in feeling this way.

Perhaps the wisest idea is to pursue better privacy/isolation tools, so the sky can be reserved for use of the commons and things (including builds) that should actually be airborne?

You are not alone by any means. Many of us do this for all the same reasons.





Lee better privacy/isolation tools would be great, but you seem to be suggesting that air builds are going to be phased out ? surely not ? if so this would be a mad thing to do. I would like to suggest that you start a thread to discuss this in some official manner.






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That's good, but as jester mentioned. There are some things that sky will always be better for. If you want interesting land with mountains and such, but also need a large flat work area, then the sky is your only solution. Also, there is always a need to have a workshop area that is separate from your normal finished build on the ground.

I need a place to work, but I also want the ground area to be nice for visitors.

Another thought. Maybe an offline building and scripting environment?

I'm not saying we're "phasing out" a type of build; we don't really exercise that kind of editorial control in Second Life. But, the new engine does happen to remove a key feature of current sky builds (that others don't know they're there).

It may be that this in turn lets us add other features to balance things out. For example, a key barrier to raising estate ban heights is that residents need to see the ground before them as they fly over a ban line. (Hence, we can't raise ban heights to 60m if most residents have a draw distance of 64m.) Being able to see the terrain for miles may let us re-think options like that.

My key point is that future engine changes may dramatically alter the view of Second Life; I'm open to discussing the best ways for everyone to get the most out of Second Life given those changes. The thing about >256 heights is that they are not tested; like so many parts of Second Life, we don't stop you from exceeding the limit but we can't promise everything will work like it should.