Comments on: OpenSim Megaregions

By: nbp07mvu

nbp07mvu — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:04:21 +0000

Thanks Adam for bringing this concept into reality! I am working on scalability issue and need some other shapes like:

RR
-R

and

RRR
-RR
__R

Could you please suggest me possible changes to the existing code or the patterns which might handle these?

By: Zonja Capalini

Zonja Capalini — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:04:28 +0000

It’s “fix-phantoms” — see http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=28

By: Adam Frisby

Adam Frisby — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:16:06 +0000

No, you can use a command (but it escapes me right now) to import the content in the other three regions into the first megaregion. It’s something like “fix-ghosts”.

By: Cay Trudeau

Cay Trudeau — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:39:45 +0000

Greetings, what is the thing with prims on Mega-Region? The SW one reads (calculates) prims the correct way, but all the other 3 regions show 0 prims on Region, however many I have there.

Do I risk loosing the builds I have on the other three regions?

By: Ethos Erlanger

Ethos Erlanger — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 20:22:31 +0000

To me, the dream is to build truly scale projects that take a lot of space. As mentioned by Omar Abedelrahim, a replication of Central Park (NYC). Or a model of the Gateway Arch (in St Louis) with a working elevator for avatars. The arch would span two standard regions.

Commercially, I can see home builders modeling EVERY house plan they offer on streets exactly like the community they are building. The ability to visualize an entire streetscape allows clients to visualize what they cannot see in blueprints. Yes, even with the ability to see the sunlight accurately coming through the windows.

City planners could tell the story of encroachment on wetlands without field trips in their overshoes. The possibilities grow in my imagination as I stand in my recently built 512×512 mega-region.

By: myron Curtis

myron Curtis — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:46:22 +0000

this is all wonderful information. Thanks.
Now if someone could just tell me how to get a 64 bit physics engine to work with opensim without having to waste RAM using the 32 bit exe, or a 32 bit virtual machine, I would be ecstatic.
We have to get this working if opensim is going to make it through the transition to 64 bit Operating systems. Right now about 75% of new computers are 64 bit.

By: Ron Overdrive

Ron Overdrive — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:39:14 +0000

@Nebadon PhysX and Havok are free for personal use. There’s a PhysX wrapper that comes with OpenSIM, but its dated and is incompatible with the current version. The only way using these commercial engines pose a problem is if you are intending to run a commercial grid. For personal and non-profit grids (ie, those used by Education) would qualify for the inexpensive/free licenses. Utilizing the suggested wrapper (PAL) would not violate any licenses, but would open up options for the grids that wish to use said commercial engines. ODE would still be available for grids who don’t have the capitol for commercial licensing fees.

By: Nebadon Izumi

Nebadon Izumi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:41:52 +0000

@Zauber, The biggest problem with Phsyx and Havok support is cost, your looking at bills in the 6 figure range to license either per project. OpenSimulator does not qualify to be used for free. Not to mention server side physics, I highly doubt there are any examples or implementations in any kind of game or VW that uses server side hardware accelerated physics of any kind.. Its not just a simple drop in a physics package and it works. Out of all the engines ODE is the most open and compatible license for this project. There have been attempts to make Bullet work but none have gone well or gotten very far.

By: hypatiaa

hypatiaa — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:38:13 +0000

I realise it has to be flat *now* but … infinity grid would be nice

By: Zauber

Zauber — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:04:40 +0000

ODE is over 10 years old, and was written only for single-core machines. Personally, I would replace all of the physics subsystems with PAL, or Physics Abstraction Layer. It is an open source wrapper for several physics engines, allowing for seamless integration. It supports Bullet, JigLib, Newton, ODE, nVidia PhysX, Tokamak, and TrueAxis, with experimental support for Box2D, Havok, IBDS, OpenTissue, and Simple Physics Engine.

Now PhysX is one I’d like for OpenSim to support. Why? Three words: Hardware Accelerated Physics. If you have a server with a GeForce 8000 series card or higher, then you could use it. The graphics card GPU would perform all the physics calculations, taking the load off of the CPU and greatly reducing lag.

In all honesty, if you want a sim with racing and boating, you would DEFINATELY want hardware-accelerated physics, or at least something better than what ODE can handle. I don’t know why the opensim devs focus so much on ODE when there are better physics engines available. The use of the Physics Abstraction Layer would definately open up new possibilities and streamline the physics code.