The OpenSim Power Boat Association is Still Alive and Kicking

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Hi there everyone that happens to be following this endeavor. The OSPBA is still alive, with  several behind the scene long time OS developers willing to chip into the cause.

    The sad reality is that we all have Real Lives to deal with, and that's just reality, plain and simple.

    Kazuko Yoshida of TheKaz Grid has generously donated 4 standard 256x256 sims to the project, unfortunately we were presented with several setbacks during the month of July.

#1 a server failure, that issue has been solved.
#2 we tried the ubODE Physics Engine, witch rendered quite a bit of imported Free-Bee content to be PHANTOM Prims. This is a common problem due to the fact that a lot of people that upload Mesh content into OpenSim are unable to understand the incomprehensible instructions located within the OpenSim Doc's, thereby inadvertently uploading their MESH Content as Visual as opposed to the Collision physics model. It is a very common mistake, and if you have ever tried to read the instructions on the OpenSim site, it is easy to see why. They seriously need a rewrite.

    Sounds confusing, doesn't it ? Yes it is confusing, and it should not be that way. ubODE looks as if it will be the future Physics Engine for OpenSim. Unfortunately ubODE render's a TON of current Mesh content unusable. that is unless you idea of a good time is running around and placing Invisi-Prims all over your Grid. And believe me that is not going to change. The advantages of ubODE are really something else, I have seen them in action on The OpenSim Life grid run by Bill Blight, and the results are spectacular to say the least. But that is because he knows what he is doing and does not need to read instructions.

     So where does that leave us with all this broken Mesh content that works perfectly well with the Bullet Physics Engine, and suddenly turns to Phantom when we implement ubODE ?

    Currently you are screwed, I ran around all over our Grid setting up invisi-prims in order to place a BAND-AID on the problem, until we finally decided to revert to the Bullet Physics Engine.

     Haaa-haaa, then I spent a great deal of time finding and removing all of them once we decided to revert the Grid back to Bullet Physics. And to Top that off if you do not import your ubODE content exactly as it should be, you end up with double triangulation, thereby adding extra stress on the server. It is a complete mess.

    However there is a project currently underway to rewrite the underlying Bullet Physics Engine.

Stay Tuned. This is not over yet.

JayR Cela :_)