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Sim borders
Kettu Keiko
Registered User
Join date: 18 Dec 2005
Posts: 25
08-01-2006 08:38
Just wondering.

Crossing Regions currently has issues.. actually, it always has in my experience; such as when an agent crosses a region the avatar has a tendancy to walk and sink through the land or fly aimlessly out of control for a few moments while one region changes to another, and the fact that objects rooted in one Region are phantom in the other.

Now, I don't know how SL is programmed, but..

Would it make sense to extend the Sims' borders by like 10m all around.. i mean Sims and not Regions. the 10m extention would be a mirror of the next region. While objects are rooted anywhere in this extended border, it would both seen and physical in both Regions, and while an avatar is within this border, it would be technically in both sims as the one they are about to enter synchronises with the agent in the other. The corners would be more difficult i would presume as the corners would have to mirror 3 regions rather than 1.

Visually

__________________________________________________
=====:=SIM 1======= | =======SIM 2=:=====
 Region 1 : ( Region 1 ) | ( Region 2 ) : Region 2
 : (and a 10m ) | ( and a 10m) :
: (mirror of ) | ( mirror of) :
: ( Region 2 ) | ( Region 1 ) :
[left]With this combined 20m of mirrored Region border areas, would this elimnate the phantoming of cross-region objects since they actually exist in both sims at the same time, just identified in a particular region?.. would it alleviate the crossing problems as the agents within the border would also exist in both sims simultaneously as they go from one region to the next.. giving the next sim a chance to synch with the agent as they enter rather than after?

[/left]
Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
08-02-2006 11:57
Asking about this...
_____________________
Andrew Linden
Linden staff
Join date: 18 Nov 2002
Posts: 692
08-02-2006 15:20
Yes Kettu, overall that is an ideal border crossing implementation and some aspects of that system are part of our plan. In fact, they have been for years, but we've been punting the hard parts for later.

I think the system you envision is possible eventually, but some of its parts are very hard. Our code would have to experience a major overhaul in several places before we could even attempt it. In my mind some of the pre-requisites would be:

(1) improved physics engine - Havok-2 or better

(2) journaled region backups -- think 'journaled file system' but where the contents of the 'file system' are the objects in the region

(3) improved network protocol between our backend peer servers

(4) more robust script engine (since this would be one of the things we would have to 'journal' to the mirror simulators running the neighborhood regions


All of those would have to be working (and probably a few more that I can't think of right now) before we could tackle the final solution to the region crossing problem. It is all very 'blue sky' but yes... I expect it to happen in a few years.


Finally, I should mention that the recent sim border problem was caused by some changes to the transmission format of attached objects when crossing a border. I think a fix has already been identified that should reduce the transition blip close to former levels, and it should be release soon, although I don't know if it was able to get into today's release.