The Incredible Disappearing Physical Object

Apologies if this isn't the right forum, but it seemed the most appropriate.

I've been working on an automated ferry boat that travels back and forth between two destinations in two different sims. The ferry is run with two scripts; one handles the physics and the other is the brains. The physics are turned off when the boat is docked, then turn on when the boat is en route. The brain is just following a predetermined course, it goes to a waypoint then it goes to a destination point where it docks / goes nonphys.

This works about 90% of the time, but roughly once every few days, the boat simply vanishes. It doesn't get returned to me, it isn't in my lost&found, there is no message or warning or alert. It isn't stuck somewhere out of view (it IMs me when it gets stuck or lost). It simply ceases to exist.

The boat is running in a private estate surrounded by void, and I do now and then get one returned when it goes off-world. But it's the ones that just vanish without a trace that concern me.

Is there something I should be looking for, or does anyone know of what might cause a vehicle to just up and stop existing?

-Atashi

p.s. none of the regions in this estate are on the havoc4 trial, they're all havoc1, class5 sims.

Just a hunch but I'd say it'd be something to do with the sim crossing (and servers losing the ship. Prim-heavy ferry? Lot of passengers attached (seated/wearing tons of big hair and crap)? Crossing quickly perhaps?

I haven't messed with vehicles really since just after the vehicle routines went into SL, so pretty out of date on issues with 'um.

Perhaps build a dock at the sim crossing (dock extends to both sims). Use two ships, one per sim. Maybe a little shop or bar or something & some Jimmy Buffet to add some atmosphere while folks (walk to) swap boats.

If it gets stuck or lost on a noscript parcel you will not get the script message that it is stuck or lost!

Maybe got catapulted skywards (and is still hanging somewhere).
Maybe it stranded on someone elses land and the owner deleted it.
Maybe it has gone off the "edge of world" where there is no region.
Maybe a server restarted and forgot the vehicle.

maybe you want to find out where your boats disappear.

add a timer to your boat that regionsays its position every second on an obscure channel and put a listener somewhere in both sims, that remembers the last position and records it if it doesnt get an update for several seconds. That should give you an idea, where your boats disappear.

Not something you want to run all the time, as it unnecessarily increases server load. But as a debug tool running for a limited amount ot time that should be ok.

Thanks for the suggestions!

I don't believe there are any no-script parcels in the whole estate but I will check that. If someone 'deleted' it, it'd still get returned so I don't think that's the case. It could have gotten stuck at some crazy altitude and I'd never find it.. in the regular passage it is always on parcels that are owned by me or my group, so when I look at the land / objects it's only my objects in there, so that wouldn't help me find it..

The boats are 23 prims, and strangely nobody has ever seen one disappear -- it's like one of those mystery things where if you are watching it never happens. The closest I came to witnessing it was seeing the ferry, then t urning around, then turning back and the ferry was gone. I don't really count that event as part of the rest of the mystery however -- it was during a rolling restart and when I looked back both the ferry and the region it was heading for were gone. I don't think sim crashes are the culprit in the other cases though because I have crash monitors on all of them, and there aren't any corresponding crash or reboot events.

Thanks for the tracking idea Sho, I'll set that up and monitor it for a while. At least if another one vanishes, I'll know where it was the moment before it was lost.

-Atashi