Second Life, a virtual world owned by Linden Labs which readers of this blog will hear me mention often, recently introduced the Havok 4 engine. Havok is a physics engine software that is responsible for calculating supposedly realistic interactions within the 3-D world. Second Life at first used Havok 1, and it took them a long time to finally introduce 4.
Now.. Havok 4 is actually really wonderful in a lot of ways. It makes the whole scope of Second Life feel and look more realistic. There are some really good points for the new engine such as the fact that object shapes are now detected more accurately. What this means for a builder is less of the “invisible” block effect when using larger prims. (Note – prims are the basic shapes used to build, think oddly shaped Lego’s.) Nothing is more annoying than walking on air when you should be on an object.
Unfortunately so far I have not seen a huge improvement here. In fact now I seem to sink into objects more. Scripters are also put off by the fact that many of their scripts now work differently than they used to work. Linden Labs does not seem to realise the importance of explaining why certain aspects were changed to the scripters. When you work for hours to create a perfectly tweaked effect and each update slightly changes how it works, then it becomes very frustrating. Some residents just do not have the patience or time to figure out what happened and go re-fix 50 scripts.
However I am not going to scream and rail about it like so many might. Second Life is still a newer and amazing concept. I expect that it will take several more years before they have things work just right. In the meanwhile I suppose people need to band together and demand more information where there is a lack, as well as carefully record and report issues.
I do not think there is a perfect company, but I will always be grateful to Linden Labs for bringing us Second Life.
Cathereine Night – AlleyCat Studios in Second Life since April 2005
