Stopping a sim dying...

For reasons I'm not able to go into at the moment I'm going to be simulating an earthquake hitting a building sometime soon. That means, to me, a load of physical objects, and some pushes etc.

This is obviously going to hammer the poor sim, and I'm going to talk to all the land owners *before* I actually do this and invite them to witness the carnage (maybe from the next sim to make it as easy on the sim as possible).

The pushes will be small (random numbers in the 0-1 range along each of the 3 axes, then let gravity and bounces take over).

I'm also proposing to have physics turn off after a minute (to give everything time to actually settle. Anything that leaves the parcel will die after 5 minutes or so. Anything that leaves the sim will die straight as soon as I catch the fact it's gone.

Are there any other precautions I should be taking?

Wear head gear.

and invite me to watch

I'd love to watch if you do it when I am online

Yes! And me!

Depending on how realistic a simulation you want, simply turning on physics and unlinking something will cause the individual prims to shake and come apart.

I'll try and sort out a time and date and let everyone know.

Bring your own hardhat!

Not the best idea though.. Check with the Lindens and find out when the server monkeys are on duty so they can get the SIM back up. If you have neighbors I'd ask them to remove any no copy valuables they have on that SIM.

I know of at least one SIM crash, caused by this kind of event, that ate quite a few objects that couldn't be recovered.

I will check for a grid monkey...

I've added a couple of tweaks I'd not initially thought of. One, the objects will not all turn physical at exactly the same time - which should help lower the impact a bit (I know a lot of physical objects is still hard work, but at least they're not all doing at the same moment), and since earthquakes are lots of movements, there's a number of small "shocks" built in again with some randomness, so not everything is changing its behaviour at the same time.

Anything that leaves the parcel is also made phantom to reduce the chances of it damaging anyone else's property.

I still have to talk to a couple of land owners, but we're tenatively scheduling for 12 noon on Sunday 5th Feb.

Anyone taking bets on the likelihood of a sim crash?

Which sim would this be?

Is this 12 noon SL time? I'm assuming it is, but I just want to be sure. I hope I can make it to watch.

It's 12 noon SL time yes.

I'm still waiting to hear from one of the other landowners though, so don't hold your breath!

Hmm. I doubt this will be at all realistic without simulation of flex/tension, unless you code this in to the members of your structure, perhaps as displacement proportional to Force/K (spring constant) and then define a certain displacement threshold as breaking point.

This is best done in stepwise simulation and for even that level of simplicity you probably want to do it non-physics, only turning members physical when they break.

In any case, it's too much of a hassle for me. Whichever way you do it, it'll probably look good. Good luck ;)

i dont think turning on physics at different times would help much, with my experiance its not how many objects that dent the sim, its when those objects start bouncing and moving.

Thanks to a lack of reply to no less than 3 IMs, including 2 sent whilst one of the relevant people was in world I'm afraid to say that the hoped for extravaganza is cancelled.

Whether or not it would work, we'll never know. I know it worked very nicely for walls, and will tidy the script up a little and post it here for anyone that's interested.

I do hope you don't give up on this, I would love to see it happen. The lack of response was from your neighbours in the sim? If so, then I would go ahead in the knowledge that you have warned them.

If it was a lack of response from a potential audience, well, I didn't get an IM.

Do this at Sandbox Island or Sandbox Cordova, and you won't upset any neighbors.

If you can manage to do it right after the sandbox cleanup (3pm?) the sim is essentially empty and CPU load nearly zero.


And anyone with nocopy prims in a sandbox is being very foolish indeed, since experiments others do in there can cause the Sandboxen to crash at any time anyway.

We might know after all. I just IM'ed Eloise and volunteered Sanchon sim for this, if the experiement can happen in the next few days. I haven't had time to do any builds for the Sanchon Sailing Center yet, and I think my first rental can hold off for a couple days for a good cause like this. So, at the moment, besides when we are running sailboat races on tuesdays and saturdays, Sanchon could work. If this goes forward, I want some pictures... there is some appeal to a headline like "EARTHQUAKE STRIKES SANCHON!!!" at least until I have some renters and some builds in place.

hmmm....
"Earthquake strikes Sanchon, Vagabonds Yacht Club unaffected, film at 11:00"

fun!

I'd advise letting the Lindens know before hand, incase one hasn't caught drift of this thread..

And invite me