[Opensim-dev] Idea for 100% smooth region crossing

[Mircea Filipescu]

I brought this up on IRC less then an hour ago but felt this is more of a discussion for the mailing list. For a few months I have been curious about a certain question: What if 100% smooth border crossing between regions could be simulated by allowing the region you come from still manage your avatar until the region you go to has grabbed you?

Currently, when an avatar crosses borders from a region to another, it is left flying to infinity for 1-10 seconds as the region the avatar was in lets go of it until the region the avatar is crossing to grabs it and runs it again. My curiosity is if that time could be completely cut away by having the region the avatar comes from still manage the movement of that avatar once it crosses borders, until the target simulator has grabbed the avatar and only let go of it once that avatar is connected in its neighbor. The avatar would be basically projected out of simulator bounds (into the neighbor's bounds) by the sim it crosses from until the sim it crosses to has it connected there. If such would be doable the avatar would not be 'let go of' for any moment during border crossing, and that way one could cross from a sim to another without experiencing any kind of delay.

Shortly said, what I'm suggesting is that when you cross to a new sim the sim you are in does not disconnect you the moment you crossed out of its bounds, but instead disconnect you the moment the sim you are crossing to has gotten you and is running the avatar in its instance. This would be especially useful when vehicles will be implemented, as border crossing delay has bigger impact with them. Also it would highly reduce disconnects between failed border crossing, since the sim you come from would not let go of you until the new sim has you in it, so unless the sim thinks you were passed through when you weren't there's no way to crash. What are your thoughts on this? Would such a thing be possible and doable?

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