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Avatar Physics
http://sldev.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=499		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Henri Beauchamp [ 2011-05-12 18:11:17 ]
Post subject:  Avatar Physics
I know that I said I was not interested in implementing Avatar Physics in the Cool VL Viewer and that I won't do the backport from v2 myself, but since:
  • Shyotl Kuhr (from Singularity) did the backport.
  • RestrainedLove v2.07 adds support for the Physics wearables (making it pretty much a must have for full RestrainedLove v2.07 compliance/compatibility).
  • Avatar Physics can be (partially) disabled and while disabled does not seem to cause any noticeable slow down.
  • A hack exists to keep a viewer with Avatar Physics implemented (but unused) backward compatible with older LL viewers (v1.23, Snowglobe, v2.2 and older...) and older TPVs (Cool VL Viewer v1.25.0.32 or older, all but latest Phoenix and Imprudence versions, etc...).
I decided to give it a try...

After some fiddling (there were crash bugs and a memory leak in the original backport) and improvements (the compatibility hack was not working and had to be modified), I got a version that I could test for a few days. It's good enough for me to release it as part of v1.26.0.1 (it will not be part of v1.25.0: see the roadmap for why).

There are however caveats:
  • Avatar Physics does use quite some processing power (expect a 10% frame rate slow down when it's on in crowded sims, more in the future when lots of avatars will be using Physics). If you are not convinced, you can check by yourself with the Fast Timers console (I added a "Physics" timer under "Objects Updates" / "Avatars").
  • If you have Avatar Physics enabled in your viewer and your avatar is wearing a Physics wearable, then your avatar cannot render properly in older viewers, and because of what is apparently a bug in the sim servers (*), switching back Avatar Physics off (or removing the Physics wearable from your avatar) won't allow them to see your avatar properly rezzed (you'd have to relog with the Physics wearable removed or Avatar Physics turned off).

You can enable and disable (defaults to disabled) Avatar Physics from the Miscellaneous sub-tab in the Cool features tab of the Preferences floater.

Let me know what you think or if you notice any quirk.


(*) Obviously, the sim server caches avatar appearance parameters and sends the cached parameters when they are not transmitted at the following agent appearance update. It means that if your viewer sent 200 parameters once in a sim, others' viewer always receive 200 for your avatar even if your viewer sends only 150 the next times.
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