[Opensim-users] Sim size limits

[James Stallings II]

This actually turned out to be a much more interesting thread than I had
initially thought it would be, so I feel compelled to add a bit of detail,
as I'm a long-time user and booster of mega-regions; in fact, if I'm not
THE person Teravus made mega-regions for, I'm certainly ONE of them ;) I
was the first user to test them, afaik.

Mega-regions did start out as a nasty hack or kludge, and in the sense that
they are something of an awkward extension of existing capabilities, they
probably always will be, at least architecturally.

That said, opensim devs have more or less infinite control over
architecture on the server side, and most viewer limitations at the
extremes can be obviated with simple tweaks to the viewer, i.e., shortening
draw distance.

I think that Justin is right, 'flaky' is a bit extreme at this point in
describing problems with mega-regions. Where they are troublesome (more on
that in a minute), they are at least very consistent in how they are
troublesome. In the final analysis, I think it all comes down to use-case,
as it generally does with the appropriateness of a given configuration
profile, and whether you can work alongside of ongoing development efforts
or even wait on them.

I've identified a couple of solid use-cases for mega-regions, as follows:

- you're a 'resident' or full-time virtual worker who needs a lot of elbow
room
- you want to work with simulated transportation
- you are replicating a significantly large real-world geographic feature

Of course, these are simplified examples but that's deliberate to admit of
similar  possibilities.

Where mega-regions can be said to be deficient is in certain places where
either the viewer, the script engine, or the physics frame have been
hard-coded to 256m limits; for instance most (all?) of
llMoveToTarget,llTarget and osNpcMoveToTarget do not function in X/Y>256;
nor does llGround. This necessarily limits some functionality with NPCs,
certain AOs, etc. Parceling, and all things dependent on parceling are also
no-go, except in the 'root' or southwest-most region.

Interestingly, physical vehicles do not seem to be troubled in that fashion.

In short, I think if I were to answer whether mega-regions are useful, I'd
have to give it a hearty and enthusiastic if somewhat qualified 'Yes!' :)


While I'm on the topic, I'd like to thank Teravus for making mega-regions,
and JustinCC for his work on them since, and the other devs who have
patiently listened as I explained why they shouldn't be backed out of the
code base.

Thanks! :D

Cheers
James/Hiro



On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 8:38 PM, Justin Clark-Casey <
jjustincc at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I think I'm mistakenly giving the impression that they're much more flaky
> than they actually are (which might not be particularly flaky, more
> requiring some workarounds).  I do suggest trying them out.
>
> It certainly is possible to improve things in this area, it's just
> difficult to estimate since it requires adaptation/improvements on both
> client and server side.  If I was to hazard a guess I would say a solid
> month on the server side and the same on the viewer side.
>
>
> On 19/03/12 09:54, David Burden wrote:
>
>>    Thanks for all the feedback.
>>
>>    Sarge - Looked at Aurora ages ago, might be time for another look (if
>> I can get it to work).
>>
>>    James/Justin- got the impression from this list that Megaregions were
>> still very flaky, and also a bit of kludge
>>    rather than true large regions
>>
>>    Toni - I'll have a play with region size. Using Mesh terrain might be
>> fine. And we've done the @scale piece before,
>>    worked really well when we put an Apache HUD on and started flying
>> over it like a flightsim
>>    (http://www.daden.co.uk/blog/**2012/03/opensim-as-apache-**
>> flightsim.html<http://www.daden.co.uk/blog/2012/03/opensim-as-apache-flightsim.html>),
>> but these use cases needs real avatars.
>>
>>    Diva - is yours just a Vanilla opensim build with 64+ sims? Any
>> problems with building across the boundaries - is it
>>    urban or rural? Any special tools to generate/manage it? 64 OAR files?
>>
>>    It's interesting how much of this depends on the viewer, which tends
>> to echo some of the other discussion about the
>>    need for an "opensim" viewer.
>>
>>    Only reason for mentioning money was that the stock (commercial)
>> developer response is that of course it's possible,
>>    it just depends about how much money you've got, so just wanted to get
>> passed that. And I'm with InuYasha about
>>    spending my lottery win (along with buying the GDW Traveller licence).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
> http://justincc.org/blog
> http://twitter.com/justincc
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