[Opensim-dev] Regions larger then 256x256

[Mircea Kitsune]

I did have another idea about simulator links which I wanted to post about as well. I don't think region groups are that bad to create larger regions, but the problem is the way they are individually managed. The thing I personally have against making larger regions from 256x256 square groups is that you can't make a larger island be treated as a whole.

Lets say you have a 3x3 square of 9 regions which you form a single island with. First of all you need to have an .xml file under the Regions folder for each simulator and manage every one individually which is harder then if you had a single setting and .xml for all of them instead. Second, if you need to move the entire island somewhere else that is very difficult because you need to choose new coordinates for each region / part individually and make sure they're in the same position from one another.

After that comes the problem of console region settings and importing / exporting .oar and .xml archives. For changing any region you need to go in the console and write "region MySimsName" to switch the tools to that simulator. I'm not sure how that selection handles itself it two or more regions have the same name (since if one had an entire area formed of many simulators they'd put the same sim_name for each sim) but that tool needs to know to act on the group as a whole, and a single terrain command should adjust the terrain on the entire island while a save-oar and load-oar should save or load the entire group.

So what I was thinking is if Opensim could be thought about region groups, and know to treat many simulators which are touching each other as a whole if asked to even if each sim technically remains a separate one. The first thing it should know here is to be able to automatically position other simulators to a certain offset from another one. For instance, I have a 2x2 group. From it I choose a master simulator and the other 3 are slave simulators. Then each of the slaves could be set X units in a given direction from that master sim rather then given individual grid coordinates, so in case someone moves the main simulator of the group in another spot on the grid the entire group moves which makes it easy to relocate the entire island by choosing new coordinates for a single sim only. Second, it needs to know to take region and terrain commands for the entire group. Maybe this already works if many regions have the same name set from the .xml-s though I don't know if that's safe yet. I'm not sure if all regions in the group should have the same region UUID as well in this case (this is generally not recommended but if a group is meant to be treated as a whole that group could have the same region UUID then). What do you think?

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