SecondLife "Flying" "Off into the Void" "The Dreaded Corner Sim Crossing"

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Motor sports in SL have all-way's been somewhat a challenge. You purchase a shiny new Car, Boat, or Airplane and are just dying to tool around with your wonderful toy. Well for the most part that's fine as long as you remain in the same Sim. Until Recently !

    Quite a bit of progress has been made the past several month's in regards to crossing Simulator Borders ( Sim ) in SecondLife. This is not a Viewer issue, it has to do with the handshake process that goes on behind the scenes as your Avatar leaves one region and enter's another. Enlarge these picture to see what I mean. First thing is first, call up your world map.

Here are some better view's,

notice that you can zoom in or out.



This enable's you to plan out your route.


    The SecondLife Grid is composed of multiple smaller Grid's, ( Squares - like a Checker Board ) each residing withing their own CPU, Physical or Virtual Core Processor. As long as you enter one Sim to another directly across adjoining  borders, there are generally no problems encountered. We can thank the dedicated Server Team at LL for the tremendous amount of progress made recently in this regard.

    Where the problem does show up, is when you reach the corner location of a Simulator. At this point your Avatar and Vehicle reside in a somewhat state of Limbo ( so to speak ) in other words. 4 sims are all competing with one in other to hand off the necessary information they each require.

    The result's can range from extremely irritating or down right funny, as can be seen here in the following picture's. A friend of mine and I recently went out for a test flight of his new airplane a few days ago. Upon reaching a corner Sim border crossing. Well, see for yourself. Everything starts out just fine. Weeee ! there we go off into the wild blue yonder. LOL :_)

 







  

    Now right about here is where the trouble starts. As we approach a Sim corner, all 4 CPU's are attempting to communicate with one in other. ( Handshaking )
Sometimes the handshake will be successful, usually though it is not. So what happens ? Generally you wind up being trapped in a Void. Somewhere, that as far as the Lab's server's are concerned, does not exist.

 Oh well ! So much for that flight.






     At this point you generally  have 2 options. Teleport Home or Re-log. If you are diligent, and plan your intended travel route in SL. I am sure it will be a very pleasurable experience. There are a lot of incredible, and fascinating user created builds out the for your exploring pleasure. 

Have Fun

JayR Cela :_)





xxx