Yes, I had been fixing another bug and I thought joints were a manifestation of that same problem. Unfortunately I did not test my theory, and I was wrong. The instability problem with joints showed up when we moved to gcc-3.3 versions of the Havok-1 libs and I now suspect the problem lies in the constraint solver in the new libs.
In any case, I have bad news for joints: I'm in the middle of a big cleanup of our interface with the physics engine and joints are a casualty in the battle. The cleanup is necessary before we can move forward on the "Havok-2" front. Our joint implementation under Havok-1 was so messy and fragile that it would have been a major headache to keep it working under the reorganization, so I have decided to rip it out entirely (it is already gone in my version of our code) so we can re-implement them properly after we finally get a new physics engine.
I'm hoping to get my cleanup deployed in January 2007. Any work on new joints will not begin until we have Havok-2 or higher. The plan is to do new joints right, with more types, easier user interface, multi-joints per object, and proper serialization on the server side.
In any case, I have bad news for joints: I'm in the middle of a big cleanup of our interface with the physics engine and joints are a casualty in the battle. The cleanup is necessary before we can move forward on the "Havok-2" front. Our joint implementation under Havok-1 was so messy and fragile that it would have been a major headache to keep it working under the reorganization, so I have decided to rip it out entirely (it is already gone in my version of our code) so we can re-implement them properly after we finally get a new physics engine.
I'm hoping to get my cleanup deployed in January 2007. Any work on new joints will not begin until we have Havok-2 or higher. The plan is to do new joints right, with more types, easier user interface, multi-joints per object, and proper serialization on the server side.
I know you all are hard at work on a lot of different things, and I applaud you for that. We're all looking forward to the improvements that are in store for the Second Life experience. But in the future, I would really appreciate it if more communication is given regarding upcoming changes that LL knows will affect existing content. When changes like this are preceded only by nebulous warnings without any sort of timetable, it upsets resident creators and consumers alike and reduces our faith in LL's ability to manage things in an organized fashion.
Again, Andrew, thank you for the reply. I'm eager to see the new joint system once it arrives. Best of luck to you and the other developers at LL.
