This weekend, Linden Lab announced plans to roll out the long-awaited Havok 4 physics engine across the grid. As soon as Monday, up to 2000 regions will have their simulator code updated to include Havok 4. If all goes well, the rest of the grid should see the new physics engine by Tuesday.
The implementation of Havok 4 in Second Life is expected to vastly reduce the number of region crashes and incidents of “deep think” — a state where the simulator is simply overloaded by physics calculations and slows to a dead crawl. It also means that most items that rely on physics, including vehicles and skydiving equipment, may or may not work correctly starting this week.
To ensure that all of my products will survive the transition, I am spending extra hours in the beta grid testing each and every product for H4 compatibility. If there’s a problem, I’ll update the script to adapt to the new physics engine. At Abbotts Aerodrome, you’ll start to see the “H4 Tested” icon appearing next to products that I’ve tested and updated for use with Havok 4. If it has the icon, you can be certain that it’s OK for Havok 4.
Already, I’m in the process of testing products.
[UPDATE: All products but the Abbotts Float Plane have been tested and are fine for Havok 4. Thanks to the Linden devs who ensured that the transition would be so easy.]
Skydiving
- Skydiving Pod – OK
- TerraSport parachutes – OK
- SkySurf skyboard – OK (updated to version 3.4)
- Terra E-Chute – OK
- Terra Skydiving Target – OK
- BubbleTargets skydiving game – OK
Hovering aircraft
All hovering aircraft are presently broken due to a buoyancy bug in Havok 4 (see bug SVC-1947). These include: CLAWW, Futura, SkyBike, Terra Taxi, and all helicopters. As soon as the Lindens fix that bug, they should work fine again.
- CLAWW – OK
- CTH-100, CTH-100M, CTH-200 – OK
- DS3 Drop Ship – OK
- Futura – OK
- SkyBike – OK
- Terra Taxi – OK
- Magic Carpet 5 – OK
Airplanes
- Abbotts Float Plane – Floats low in the water due to H4 buoyancy bug
- Airco DH.2 – OK
- Cormorant plane-sub – OK
- Cricket tiny plane – OK
- Dogfighters – OK
- Kingfisher – OK
- Manta – OK
- Nieuport 17 – OK
- Orca plane-sub – OK
- Ornithopter – OK
- Sparrow – OK
- Stearman – OK
- Starling ultralight – OK
- Tachyon – OK
- Tachyon M – OK
- Talon – OK
- Tigershark – OK
Lighter-than-air craft
- Wind Rider hot air balloon – OK
- Terra Airship – OK
Speed boost
- Terra Z scooter – OK
- Terra Speed – OK
- Rocketeer pack – OK
- Infinity pack – OK
Bookmark this post: I’ll keep this list up-to-date as I go.
For the last little while, I’ve spent some time playing with shapes in Wings3D, a mesh sculpting tool. It’s easier to learn than Blender, whose UI looks like it was vomited by a team of drunk chimps, but it’s still a little tricky. Despite a few setback, the results are encouraging.
My first mostly-sculpted vehicle is this hover bike — an early prototype now, but in time it should eventually evolve into something that I’ll sell. And why would a hover bike need shock absorbers? To absorb all those hovershocks, of course.