What's going on with the new engine?

Seriously, where is it? When I first joined up over a year ago I read that SL was supposed to be moving to a newer version of the Havok engine. I gather they're up to v4.5 now yet SL still runs on v1?

I recently bought a new Alienware PC. It's the lowest spec they did but still by far the most powerful PC I've ever used. I ramped up all the sliders for detail etc and used the nVidia control panel to force high anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering and still the machine runs by with SL at 1600x1200 as if calculator is the only app running on the desktop.

Wouldn't it be nice if we as builders had support for shader models etc? Things like realistic grass etc that are easily possible by all but the oldest of PCs in SL could be enabled in the same way that we can enable or disable local lighting. So why can't we do it? If we've paid good money for the latest hardware SL should allow us to do it.

Look at benchmarking tools like 3DMark, especially the 05 and 06 versions and look at the beautiful scenes utilizing SM2 and SM3. Now I appreciate SM3 isn't supported by any cards bar the very latest, but does SL even have support for SM1 yet? I'm actually amazed that there's even LoD support. For a world built around 3D rendered graphics, you'd think more attention would go into the engine. Alpha-enabled textures are another example of the pathetic state of things with criss-crossing textures and all sorts of graphical confusion. That was the same on my old Radeon 9800 and the new GeForce 7900, so I know it's not just my PC doing that.

I appreciate that SL will never be as beautiful as a purpose built world like WoW but seriously, it looks so crude at the moment, and much of it is the rendering and physics engine, which is how old now? It's about time LL bring us into the 21st century (7yrs too late already) and give us something nice to look at!


Thank you!

Havok is the sim-side physics engine. Not the client-side rendering engine.

Really? I know Havok do a number of things, such as Havok FX and Havok Physics, and since they're designed for GAMES, maybe foolishly I assumed that they would be in use client side (what with the average game being completely installed on your local machine and servers only being required for multiplayer). And since every thing we build is built on the SERVER and not the client, maybe the Havok version would be impotant afterall. What d'ya know?


What I do know is that there's no mention of LL or SL on Havok's website. They must be real proud of what LL have done with their engine!

SL uses Havok Physics. I believe it is stated quiet plainly somewhere.
2) SL is not a game.
3) Physics client side would be stupid. You'd be making every single client do the physics calculation on different position and velocity data (depends on when they got the last update, right?) and then somehow try and miraculously display the result in tandem with every other client.
4) the client is a viewer and contains no actual "game data" such as prim location, textures, avatars, or even location data of where YOU are.

Actually they do this. Sorta. It's REALLY limited "physics". They assume that every avatar moves in a straight line and every other object is in freefall unless supported on an object or the ground, which is why you get rubberbanding, walk forever, fall into the ground when riding a vehicle across sim boundaries, and so on.

Putting some better physics client side would be a big improvement. Just passing vehicle parameters and object force settings to the client and having them do more accurate rubberbanding of vehicles would be a major win.

I'm sure Second Life is in the list of products

http://www.havok.com/content/blogcategory/29/73/

It's not physics though. I forget the name, it was discussed in my Elements of Games class. It's less physics and more keeping view screens for multipul player simulations correct. There are 3 different classes of this:
Linear (What SL has) where each object moves at last known speed and direction
Non-linear Relative (making up terms) where objects move in the last known speed, direction, and acceleration based on the 3 or 4 most recent points of data. Lowers the rubberband effect by moving objects in arcs rather than lines.
Delayed non-linear where each machine doing the location position of each player calculates the current data, tosses it in a bucket for X ms where X is the time it takes to send the data from one end to the other, and then sends it, while at the same time making the next calculation. This method keeps both clients looking the same due to the nature of the delayed display, as both displays are updated with the same data at the same time. This reduces rubberbanding almost entirely as both clients are on the same page.

SL would not be able to work on meathod 3 because of the client-server-client nature of the protocol (the server doing calculations for both clients and each client having a different ping), however, meathod 2 would be more effective, as if flying a plane you weree banking, the client would continue that bank (almost) correctly until an update from the server is recieved, rather than floating sideways linearly.

If the client did any kind of actual physics, we wouldn't fall through the land when losing ping (the client knows where the land is as well as where the agent is after all). What the client does is entirely geometry.

No, it contains all of these.

Interpolation?

Yeah, that sounds right.
(It astounds me the number of things I learn in college. That class was a mere 9 months ago.)

client side prediction to be exact.

Same difference.

Uh....I still think it's closer to geometry as no physics such as gravity, acceleration, and collision is not calculated.
A physics engine is program code that is used to simulate Newtonian physics within the environment.
While, yes, motion is a portion of physics, linear interpolation between two points over time is purely geometric. Of 18 different units used in physics, we're using two--position and speed. And we aren't even calculating them, we're merely smoothing out the transition between two already calculated points.



No, the 30 MB download does not. It knows what a sphere looks like so it can render it, but it does not contain any actual details of the location of that sphere or if the sphere has been tortured. It's just a LOD mesh database. It's not "CAR_1_RED_FOUR_DOOR," etc.

Wuh? I really don't see how that response came from what I said.

Also, your disagreement with Yumi is all semantics.

Avatars don't fall (or walk) through the land, or through prims, when losing ping, except on sim crossings. Only vehicles and physical prims do.

Which means that the client at least knows when an avatar's supported by an object or the ground... even when it's in motion. That's more than simple linear interpolation, and that's what I mean by "minimal physics". The flipside of the same effect is where your avatar runs the falling animation locally when you teleport in to a location and are supported by a prim the client doesn't know about yet.

When was that implemented? 'Cause, although it hasn't happened for a while, it certainly used to for me.

Seems to me that the OP was saying that the game just looks like crap for the most part compared to modern graphics engines. There is a lot of talk about physics and not so much about the terrible graphical state of this game. Why is that? I'm trying to understand and this is all I can come up with, please let me know if this is the case, or if not, what is.

It seems that the biggest holdup to having smooth and beautiful graphics in SL (aside from proper alphas, LOD, an PS) is the polygons. We are stuck with basic meshes, and prim limits because the servers simply can't handle more on their end (can't seem to handle the current amount either), yes? So moving this client side would open this up, but presents a whole new slew of problems, particularly the way SL works now, yes? I don't really know, I just can't get me head around the major hurdle here.

Um, as is we have more polygons than WHOLE levels of comercialy released games.

As for moving things client side, it introduces a whole new slew of problems are are even harder to solve: Keeping everyone seeing the same thing.

Scary, that just might be true. So what methods do modern mmorpgs use to keep clients in sync?

Static environments.

What about avatars, not just environments?

All I know is that it's freaking fugly...but not at the bottom of the barrel due to it's ability to reach within the boundaries of realism if you twist it enough.

Still, I came to SL many many times, and once I looked at the screencaps, left immediately. I'm only here now because I could wait no longer to build...point being, many people have ousted from here right away due to the super ugly default states of the avatars, and the 'geeky skills' required to make them look good.

Oh well, I just wish the avatars were prettier....fully replaceable even with new meshes...

I think part of the whole problem is, people forget the "workings" behind SL.

The only thing you have installed on your local PC is the Client, which allows one to view/interact with the world.

The World does NOT exist on your home PC. It is on a server somewhere in California.

The Client has to download every single detail in range, minus a few Avatar maps, to your PC at home.

The Servers try to keep everything in synch. At least I think so?

This makes it a rather "resource intensive" application as you can only shove so much stuff thru "the tubes" of the Internet.

So with Physics being a rather intensive process, how bad would lag be if we had better physics?

Heh- it really gets more mind boggling when you know all the processes involved in downloading that data thru the lines, network card, putting all those packets together into their proper form, etc.

With a game like WoW, the enviroment doesnt change, or at least not constantly. Castle A is still Castle A the next day, not Gorean Furry Wonderland. Most of the game itself is stored on your LOCAL hard drive. Which is also why these games seem to be able to handle all the "bells N whistles" of modern games like SM2 & SM3, HDR Lighting, etc.

Did I get that all correctly? At least this is how I understand the whole thing.

There's more bandwidth and processing power spare because you're not having to do anything much with regards to the environment.

Extrapolation?