Only in our case it is not "havoc" but "
Havok" and most people don't wander
Second Life's islands in in squirrel avatars. Apparently this weekend's
RC3 update went well and Havok will be hitting the grid today -- albeit a bit late in the day. From the
official blog we have the report that the server previously known as the Havok 4 Beta Server (now Second Life Simulator v1.20.0.83683), after some bug fixes this morning,
has started rolling out to the live grid. Tonight it will only be implemented for
early adopters, welcome areas, orientation islands, and 1200 randomly selected
Second Life regions -- but by tomorrow Havok will hit the rest of the grid.
Though no one around the Massively office actually remembers how long it has been since
Second Life's residents were promised an upgrade from the Havok 1 engine the simulator has been using since pre-beta, but we're fairly certain it was at least 2003. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we're breaking out the champaign and party hats: Havok 4 has arrived!
Mar 31st 2008 at 8:55PM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Loki said on 5:11AM 4-01-2008
i still dont really know what exactly this will mean for us residents? will it mean i can sail my boat from one sim to the next without the world going all twighlight zone trippy. Will it mean less lag? will it mean my viewer wont hang for 2 minutes every 15 minutes. If all it means is the sims wont crash as much anymore.... i havent witnessed a sim crash since 2008. Will there be any noticable difference in the second life experience?
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Zak Escher said on 6:46AM 4-01-2008
I think we were promised Havok 2 in Second Life version 1.1 which was in mid to late 2003.
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FlipperPA Peregrine said on 9:17AM 4-01-2008
Moving to Havok 2 was mentioned in 2003, however, it wasn't mentioned with a firm deadline. The first "date" given that I can recall was Philip saying "a few weeks after the 1.4 release." v1.4 was the release that introduced custom animations and streaming audio on parcels.
AFAIK, this won't really help with border crossings - the issue there is passing data (like attachments) from one server to another - but it should improve simulator stability in general quite a bit. I've heard quotes that between 1/3 to 1/2 of simulator crashes are caused by physics problems. Havok 4 offers some major improvements over Havok 1.
Regards,
-Flip
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Ari Blackthorne said on 10:23AM 4-01-2008
Ah - but also the way prims are linked. For example - if you decide to go out and build a massive castle - you'll have fewer separated "linked chunks".
The problem has to do with the size and distance of a prim to the one it will be linked to. The center of a cube, for instance, remained, even if you hollowed and cut it to a flat panel - the center remained right weher it alwys has been. The new system is now supposed to take the smaller size into account and adjust accordingly.
That's just one example of the new features. Others such as how you and objects move around will be improved and especially anything that is physical.
I've been waiting to get onto the early adopter program, but I guess the concierge people are swamped - it's moot now as it rolls out.
I am personally quite excited about it and can't wait to start experimenting and playing around with the new features on my own land, where I have ull control and permissions, rather than some sandbox. :)
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