Havok2, Windlight & a few extra features

Warning: lots to read

What exactly is Havok2, i know its physics n stuff but will it fix the absolutly awful collision/sithack problems? and will there be a cloth effect (when avatar walks into it, it reacts)

As for Windlight i never had the chance to test it, but will it (finally) provide us with some kind of shading or some way to make objects produce shadows (also when you make an enclosed room it is still affected by the sunlight), Shadowing could happen Clientside, so no strain on the grid, maybe an option to turn them on/off for us poor folk

And a few extra features i think could be added without any performance issues are...

*This is something ALOT of people would love to see and SL REALLY needs is astronamy, or a better night sky, with star systems etc. also i know its random, but i went on a "trip to space" and it just seems to go on & on, and the further i go the more messed up my avatar becomes. maybe they should put a more realistic atmosphere right up there, maybe even a moon :>

* In the building tab under object Taper and Scew there is only an X and Z (or is it X & Y?) why no Z option, it can get annoying when building complex structures.

* When hollowing a cube (or other shape) you should be able to move the position of where it hollows from, and when cutting change the cut angle.

*Some form of better texture alignment would be really kool, like if you multi select say 3 serfices the texture stretches over the 3 serfices (would fix all those funny out of alignment textures)

*a carving or object subtraction option would be a dream come true for alot of builders,lol

*and finally there is a list of script functions, but not many of us can program, and if we can, not in SL script and never will, there should be another list of options in the script that do basic functions, such as rotate, vendor scripts, etc

*for us rich folk we need more graphics options, such as the option to have trees render at there full detail when we move away from them, same with the terrain.

*Would love to see computer generated animals/birds and real weather (rain, storm etc)

Most of those things wouldnt put any or little strain on the grid. well the physics would i guess.

Also i have seen modern games use some form of (it must be black) magic so if one person is on a rediculasly slow internet connection it dosnt kill the whole sim

Things for the future i'd love to see is a global prim limit upgrade, say double the amount of prims for everyone, to add more detail to the game (maybe in a few years when everyone has 50/100MB internet connection)

What other features (prefurably that wouldnt put much if any strain on the grid) would you like to see in SL?

if all those things were implemented into SL now (except the double prims) second life would skyrocket above myspace & maybe even google.



Does anyone know when abouts the next First Viewer is due to be released?

Not sure how to answer the rest of your questions, but for an example of Havok 4, just go to Google & type in "Havok 4 demo". Watch the videos.

None of that is done with "particles" or tricks. You're seeing actual geometry manipulated.

Play any modern game: UnReal Tournament 2004, Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, Elderscrollsblivion, etc..... Thats the Havok 4 physics.

Adding Havok 2 would still leave SL quite behind the times. And yes- updating to H2 or H4 would greatly improve the collsion physics.

Now, how many users have a computer & connection that can handle it is another story!

Heh, what a way to try to address everything at once.

No, at the least this won't be coming in immediately. The idea has sure been played with before, but for whatever reason there was trouble implementing that effectively and it got set aside. We'll have other things like realistic reflections added in before we get to realistic shadows. (Considering the way a good shadow blurs up varying amounts at the edges depending on the distance from and size of the light source, I'm not surprised it's quite a trick to pull off.)
It'd be cool indeed to have a tool to calculate and assign such things automatically. I keep thinking, perhaps a JIRA issue of the VWR category could be created, for the creation of a tools menu to open up from the building window, with this as a subtask of that issue, next to other things like prim-alignment tools.... Though, the Lindens are so busy with bigger issues about the stability of SL as a whole that in order to get non-essential features like these, you'd likely have to turn to SL's open-source community to find some interested programmer to make it a possibility.
Yeah, there's an X and Y Taper, and I honestly am not exactly sure what you would want Z Taper to do (though I have ideas). Within the logic of what the current X and Y taper mean, there is no such thing as Z taper (there's just rotating your prim so that the taper points in a different direction).

Obviously the second of these overrides the first, but anyways...
It's been said that it would take a total rework of the current building system's programming to get things like subtractive geometry (your second suggestion) to function. My experience is that you should just get used to how SL's 7 regular prims work, or get used to sculpted prims. By the way, those sculpties are pretty great if you learn to work with their quirks. They could even become that dream come true you're looking for... except with a L$10(=about 3 cents) upload fee for each new shape you create.
Look for simple freebie scripts, or online script tutorials, or maybe even find a scripter friend to help you or something, but scripting really isn't always complicated, and the Lindens did try to keep LSL (the Linden Scripting Language) simple. Although, I suppose there are a few basic facts to comprehend about the system, like how after you script something to smoothly animate or spew particles, it won't stop it just because you remove the script.

Hit Ctrl-Alt-D and look under the Client menu for some Debug Settings. You can indeed set the trees and terrain to draw really well even from far away if you find the right options hidden in there.... I guess they keep it hidden there because they don't normally recommend using it.
I don't see what's stopping you from making decent prim or particle critters of your own, but anyways, I think they gave up on the weather for now when they found it too difficult to simulate having rain fall outdoors without having it fall indoors.
Well good observation about waiting until people can handle it. Now obviously everyone would love more prims... but as SL's servers would have a lot more to handle, such a thing would likely never be "global" as you said, but would only happen to people who own a sim off of the mainland and paid for a special upgrade that causes their sim to be run with twice the normal server power.

Torley Linden usually knows that answer the best, and even he's not sure. Just keep an eye on http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Torley_Linden#Project_updates and you'll see about all there is to know. If you want pictures to go with those words, thankfully Torley's a great SL photographer, so he captures Windlight Wonders for us - http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/sets/72157600883123211/ .


From your perspective I would guess that you are one of the relatively new builders here. I do hope you keep your enthusiasm for coming up with suggestions, but I also hope you take the time to really give SL's building system a chance. Yeah it's quite awkward coming from other 3D modeling environments into this one, but on the other hand, SL prims are likely the most manageable, data-efficient 3D modeling system yet to have been crafted, which in SL, is kinda critical.

So, happy building!

cheerz, well go to the main map, and type in "Felonhall" and u see a city i have started constructing, as i design computer games (in the Torque Engine) im kind of used to SL's building engine.

Yeh im pretty new to building in SL, but been hired by a few people to build stuff allready

Havok is the 3d "engine" that SL runs on.



The singular thing in your post that I agree on, acurate rendering of the night sky, and motion of the sun, moon, planets and stars would be great, but dont hold your breath on it


I dont seem to have a problem building anything I want to build in SL, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so if a paticular function you 'wish' was there isn't, find another way, it can be done. Might take a few more prims, but oh well.


again.. find another way to achieve the effect u want.


There are scripts to do that, although I have no problem adjusting textures using the tools provided... the numbers you're looking for are generally in the prim size x,y,z.. or some factor of that number.


ok, 2 things I agree on.. but again, dont hold your breath on it.


Ok, you allude to not knowing scripting, but are asking for functions that already exist. You dont have to know scripting to vend, as every object has vending built in already.


We all pretty much have the same resolution regardless of the bells and whistles 'rich folk' can afford, and there's just physical limits to rendering based on resolution.


You can buy all that, why would LL take money out of the pockets of the builder/scripters who already make that stuff


Huh? I've never had any such thing happen to me ever.


Well, number one, prim limits have absolutely nothing to do with bandwidth, it has more to do with the power of the computers on both ends, server and client. If you want double the prims, double the size of your lot and voila, you have double the prims


That's a silly statement.

The Havok engine is the Physics simulation system that sits on the back end that handles 100% of ALL physics simulations in SL. These simulations run the FULL 100% gambit from how your avatar interacts with objects and the world, to how vehicles using physics are controlled. Every time an avatar moves, physics is being calculated for it. When you are walking around a club, driving a car, physics is being calculated for it. All of this goes on SERVER SIDE, hence is one of the main causes of lag. Unless an object is set to phantom, then physics is being calculated for it, even an object at rest will have physics data stored for it. It is also worth noting that the "Physical" box for an object does not have to be checked for physics to be calculated, just the sheer action of walking within bounding box distance of the object causes physics to be calculated. The only way to disable physics calculations for an object is to check the "Phantom" box, this turns off the collision checking and bounding for the object.

#1 problem with current havok engine:

100% of the prims in a linkset have physics being calculated for it. This IS the primary reason why physics vehicles cannot be more than 31 prims. At a minimum, Havok 2 would offer Level Of Detail or LOD on a linkset which would remove a lot of unecessary physics calculations, we could have afull linkset physics then (255 prims currently).

Currently, if you have a small 1x1x1 prim INSIDE of a 5x5x5 prim and they are linked, the bigger prim is root in this example. Check the physics box, and the poor physics engine will try to calculate physics for BOTH of the prims, even the one inside that has no affect other than MASS on the whole. The LOD would take into consideration only the MASS aspect by summing it to the main, adjust for center of gravity but it would not try to calculate the internal prim's bounding box and collision plane which is what the current havok engine is doing now.

The current havok engine is horrible, and LL knows this. LL had to put procedures in place in the SIM code to prevent a "Deep Think" condition. This "Deep Think" would be a heavy physics event that would cause the system to concentrate the CPU resources to it, lagging the sim and eventually forcing the sim to "crash". In my day, a non-linked set of tori overlapped in a chain-link fashion , set all to physics and watch the carnage begin. This is how we got SIM restarts without having to ask for one, we would crash the SIM ourself, prompting the necessary restart.


The OP's mention of Windlight-
Cute, but no cigar. A useless "Bling" feature, to sedate the paying masses into thinking they are actually getting product improvements. This is a simple CLIENT side rendering item, easier on LL to implement as it just affects the clients. Give us a reliable experience first then give us the bling. Back in the day when there was less than 100,000 residents and LL had to beg for 5,000 residents to even log in at once (they had a freebie item that was handed out to those that logged in during this event for more than 30 mins, I still have mine if you want to see it. The event was called a "Log-A-Thon". Things actually worked and LL did seem to focus on the core. As soon as the numbers rose and L$'s were flying around and the profit potential sank in, the window-dressing became more important. The last update that was actually worth anything from LL was the re-work of the group tools, so far all the other updates have been a worthless waste of our time.

I can name many of the useless bling features that amounted to nothing more than extra load on the end user's machine but less intensive work for LL as they have not had to touch the core system that SL is run on:

1. Flexi prims - I like them but not an upgrade
2. HUDs - Nice, should have been in a long time ago, Wolfenstein 3D had a HUD.
3. Sculpties - I do love these, all client side though. A bling item but not an upgrade. We should have had these a long time ago.
4. Cute interface changes to use keyboard commands - Not an upgrade, Windows 3.1 had keyboard commands to perform functions.

Features are NOT upgrades. Features are there to add more appeal to a product, like sun visor mirrors in a car. The mirrors do not improve the car's performance but it makes the car a bit cuter. The items listed above are nothing more than visor mirrors. Windlight is a visor mirror. Many features just add weight to an item. Visor mirrors may be light, but they still add to the total mass of the vehicle. Add enough visor mirrors and the vehicle gets too heavy, uses too much fuel and become inefficient.

An Upgrade fixes a problem or provides performance increases or a new performance component. Using a car example an upgrade would be much akin to adding a cold air intake to improve horsepower, throttle response and fuel mileage.

True upgrades would be:

Havok 2 to 4 etc.
MONO
The client side rendering engine (I do not know what the current engine is, but it looks to be in part from NVidia)
A better messaging system to handle IM's, Group Chat and inventory/L$ transactions
An improved asset storage system and pipeline for ALL assets. (textures, sounds, objects, animations etc)

But, not like anyone will actually read this post. Many of us who have been around SL for a while have been pounding our heads against a wall every time LL gives us features as opposed to upgrades. We have heard the same lines over and over again, the promises, the vaporware etc. Do yourself a favor, do some research on things and you will see this is the same crap over again.

Go to the forum archives and search for terms like:
Havok
MONO
Object 2 Object (or O2O)
Rendering Engine
Expressive Pupettering

You will note that 100% of these posts have Lindens confirming the information or are the ones starting the thread! For an example, do an archive search for joints. This is where LL asked us if it was ok to remove joints in SL so they can get Havok 2 in faster ( this was over a year ago, we are STILL waiting for havok 2 and joints to come back)

Oh well, another useless post from me.

Wow! I remember Joints. Never got around to using them. Now they're gone.

Heh,

Here is the sad thing...

It is rather sad that a free open source physics engine seems to offer more than the current Havok system does...

Even offers joint style motors.....

http://www.tokamakphysics.com/intro.htm

The 'real' difference between SL and all the various games you quoted and more, is that for the most part, all the interaction is predictable, whereas SL is dynamic. The very ability to interact directly through the serverside code, such as drop and use an object that you made, consisting of lots of shaped prims, with a bespoke texture, that comes with user created scripts.. is so unpredictable until the actual event.

In most 'games', man fires gun, bullets will hit tree, if tree hit at point x, then tree falls at y point and in z direction, are all predictabilities.

Add, gun and bullets are bespoke created with user choice of size and textures etc, and bullets can use variations (based on user defined and created scripts) is shot into 'A' bespoke tree prim, check physics/scripts of 'A' bespoke tree prim and action the physics. Then multicast resulting interaction to all within range (including neighbouring sims) in real time. The computations are probably within the realm of 3+ times greater that the predictable other environments you refer to.

Havoc 2-200+ may make certain elements of the platform easier to deal with, but the unpredictablity/non-linear nature of the SL platform, will always have more computational work to do.

I miss joints.

And yet hanging around on Havok 1 means it's doing even more work than it has to do, and doing it less accurately

Anyone that believes we'd get physics as advanced as current generation games is fooling themselves, maybe in 10 years from now, but not at the moment. As you say, SL is so much more dynamic that the tricks that games rely on (being able to 'compile' a map) are unavailable, meaning SL will always be several generations behind. But that doesn't mean the latest technology shouldn't/can't be used to vastly improve the situation.
I'm talking about playability here, not the latest and greatest things.

I still think they should license the cry2engine, and dont say this isnt possible because the cry2engine is alrady being used in two other MMOs.

Still, to actually use the engine they would have to completly rewrite the entire game and convert the DX aspects to openGL, unless crytek does this.

Video: http://www.crytek.com/technology/cryengine-2/videos.html?initplay=/fileadmin/user_upload/videos/siggraphET_cut6_1280xvid.flv






it would take an incredible amount of work but it would be worth is.

I'm more than ready for the following, which the Lindens have been promising since late 2004:

1)Mono [C#/Python]: There's would be a lot more that could be created in SL from the scripting side if we could use actual Object Oriented Programming as opposed to the very limited scripting capabilities that are available with LSL. Also, it would make maintenance and upgrades a lot easier and cleaner.

2) Persistent Storage: (write to notecards, database, etc.) They actually said a new database that can be written and read from by scripts.

3) Object to Object IM: would open a lot of doors and cause less overall lag and be more functional then e-mail.

4) Real Array data structures.

5) More memory per script.

6) Cross Sim Teleports from script.

7) Better Flow Control: Add a Switch-Case option (string based argument test) and remove the limit on the if-elseif-else branches.

Programmatic error handling.

9) Animation upgrades and longer animation lengths.

10) Real Sculpted Prims: Being able to do advanced cuts, shape cutouts, etc.

11) Multi-Layer textures.


These are the items I most want to see and which have been promised long ago by the lindens.

Ooh, I forgot about cross sim teleports , I would love to see llTeleportAgent(key agent, string region, vector position);

Brings up a permission dialog box asking for permission to teleport, similar to the animate avatar. I would also love to see this used with llRequestPermissions(key agent, integer permissions); with perhaps the value of PERMISSION_TELEPORT, then this can be used in a multi-function HUD that can read a landmark from inventory interfacing via llDialog() etc.

I also forgot about the write to notecard functions they talked about, this alone could help out in items that use a notecard to back up data such as some of the advanced vendor units etc. Heck, I would even pay for an LL provided service to host mini-data bases in world, to use for items like vendors etc. Mini SQL databases etc, I hope my idea came through on this one....

O2O would be awesome, llRegionSay(); is a cop out IMHO, still relies upon listens which can get quite heavy.

Forgot another thing....

Bring back the ability to shuffle object inventory to another object's inventory while in-world without having to transfer to main inventory first. I miss the old way of doing things, rez out an object, select it's contents and then drag to another object in world, that used to make my life much easier in developing items.

I agree with what you say, but using a selective portion of my post, doesn't do justice to the whole statement.
My post was to give clarity to the vision that SL is like so many other 'games', when in reality it is not linear as many of the 'games' quoted. None of which allow you to make a descision about what texture or bespoke script action the 'bullet' may have. To those other platforms, the bullet is always using a linear and predictable set of conditions which can be programmed for in advance. The variables associated with SL's plaform make it almost unique.

I wasn't saying that utilising a greater and more efficient engine would be of no use, my point was that you cannot draw conclusions of performance etc from other platforms, as SL is a unique set of conditions and variables to cope with. I actually welcome advancement in any platform, but I don't think it is the 100% resolution for SL.

You've run this argument at least dozens of times yet it becomes no more valid.

Yes, SL has dynamic content, but most content isn't changed very often. And just because sims were originally designed to be relatively dumb doesn't mean that they have to remain that way.

I conjecture that most sims are mostly empty some of the time. What is the sim doing then? Absolutely nothing. What could it be doing? It could be computing the collision and visibility domains in the way that static content games pre-compile. A fundamental axiom of software is things pre-computed require less effort later. Smarter sims could have walls occlude particles, for example; they could also keep you from flying into the interior of buildings because they don't have to figure out collision domains on the fly (so to speak).

Sure, changes to the builds in a sim would require recalculation. But I also know builds that have been in game longer than me and it is simply stupid engineering that requires the whole system to treat 4 year old buildings like they were just made a minute ago.

Any improvement they can make over the version of Havok currently being run on the SL servers is going to be a huge win - it will mean the end of the sim crashing attacks, since the griefers are using exploits that overload the physics engine to produce the crashes. The ability to exert level-of-detail summary calculations will probably eliminate the prime cause of sim crashes in Second Life, and spoil the fun of the kids running around loose causing mayhem.

It's one group in particular doing about 80% of the damage according to Lindens I've spoken to, by the way - led by a nineteen-year-old calling himself N3X15, this group uses "ShoopedLife", an anonymizing client, to evade bans and return again and again. N3X15 is the author of the "ShoopedLife" client. If Linden Lab were to, say, put a few lawyers on this and press charges under the Computer Fraud Act of 1984, they could probably shut down N3X15 and ShoopedLife, and a huge chunk of the griefing in Second Life would disappear almost overnight.

I have no idea why they're not taking this action, but I believe that since N3X15 is the creator of ShoopedLife he's arguably responsible for the damage resulting from its use - since there is no possible legitimate use of an anonymizing client for Second Life. We're anonymous already by definition as users of Second Life, so the only reason to use it would be to bypass grid security measures.