Configurable Wind

[Sarge Misfit]

How do I do that?

[Sierra Jakob]

Do you mean how do you turn on that option? --It's under the advanced menu for world management --get there from the Kitely main page, my worlds, choose a world and manage, go to advanced.

[Sierra Jakob]

"OpenSim supports two types of wind:

Random Wind - the wind blows in a random direction. This is the default, and it makes flags flap randomly, as expected. Clear the checkbox to use random wind.

Configurable Wind - the wind direction and strength can be set in a script, using osSetWindParam(). This is useful in some cases, e.g. for sailing simulations." is what it says under the little help questionmark there.

[Dot Matrix]

The OpenSim wiki explains some of the ways of using OsSetWindParam: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OsSetWindParam

[Sarge Misfit]

I have the option turned on but I've done nothing to actually configure it. Now I've got a couple of flags setup, I should do so

[Sarge Misfit]

The OpenSim wiki explains some of the ways of using OsSetWindParam: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OsSetWindParam

Thanks! I got the perfect place for that script to go, too

[Kayaker Magic]

I started writing a "Configurable Wind Setter Buoy", a scripted object (looks like a buoy bobbing in the water with a windsock hanging off it) that will allow anyone to control the wind.
(I have a similar thing called a "Wind Setter Buoy" that uses a negative channel to communicate wind settings to sailboats that are scripted to listen to it).
This new version is working OK with the configurable wind, so it sets what llWind based flags and smokers do. But there are a couple of strange things:
1) No matter how many times or how often you change the wind direction, speed, etc, with osSetWindParam, there is a 12 second delay before the SIM wind changes to your new setting. Is this a viewer or server limitation? This information is only sent every once in a long while?
2) What are the units of varStrength and rateChange? The default value of varStrength is 50!!! if that was meters per second per second the wind would be all over the place in no time, but I only see the wind changing by millimeters per second per second or less. And does the same rateChange work with varDirection? In degrees per second per second? I think not.
3) The default values here on Kitely are very different than the default values mentioned in the OpenSim Wiki. Why is that? For example, the Wiki says rateChange is 1.0, but here it is 0.01.

[Kayaker Magic]

And, as I am coming to expect, in mega regions the configurable wind does not work right.
Calling osSetWindParam from anyplace in a mega region only sets the wind in the SW region.
There is no way to set the wind in the other regions no matter where you place your prim that calls osSetWindParam

I sort of expected osSetWindParam to set the wind for all the sub-regions in a mega region, but it does not.
(I expected this because llRegionSay broadcasts to all the sub-rregions in a mega region).
It might be nice if when osSetWindParam is fixed, if it only broadcasts in the sub-region that it is in. Then you could have different wind in each sub-region.

[Bri Hasp]

Is this still an issue?
With the Kitely mega a smooth crossing is a huge advantage to SL for sailboat racing. But if the configurable (Flotsam) wind is only in the SW 256 then that forces the boats to carry the wind. That's a existing method from SL..
Sailboats are a vehicle in LSL so the Bullet physics will be needed.

[Kayaker Magic]

Is this still an issue?
With the Kitely mega a smooth crossing is a huge advantage to SL for sailboat racing. But if the configurable (Flotsam) wind is only in the SW 256 then that forces the boats to carry the wind. That's a existing method from SL..
Sailboats are a vehicle in LSL so the Bullet physics will be needed.

This is still an issue. It is a BIG issue, I'd go so far as to say this is a MEGA issue!
The smooth crossings in mega regions drew me to Kitely and now I am discouraged by the things I find which do not work in megas.

One thing that does work in mega regions is llRegionSay, which broadcasts to all the sub-regions in a mega. This is good news because you can use it to implement scripted wind setters that work with sailboats that are scripted to listen to them. I have this working, sailboats working, settable wind working, demo wind and sailboats in SIM Panthalassa for you to try out.

Bullet Physics is NOT necessary because I have written the sailing physics into the script and use llSetKeyframedMotion to move the sailboats smoothly. Try it out! I think you will be pleased.

HOWEVER, because of other things that don't work in megas, things are not perfect. I put a big island in my SIM Panthalassa only to discover that my sailboats sail through the terrain as if it was phantom. (This is caused by the bug in llGround that it cannot report terrain from any sub-region except the SW sub-region in a mega). So we can have sailboat races now, but you have to promise not to cheat and take shortcuts underneath the land.

I just came from the Tuesday Open Sim Developers Meeting where I brought up mega regions. The consensus is that LSL routines like lLGround will NEVER work right in mega regions. The only way to use a mega is to have most of your space as water or flat land. Then functions like llGround and llGroundNormal, etc. will all get the same answer in all locations but that will accidentally be the right answer. People have written patches for these mega-broken functions, but the OpenSim developers reject them as not being "sane". I have a faint glimmer of hope that the Kitely developers may find a way to fix this, or they may accept the existing patches as being reasonable for the Kitely environment. But in the mean time I am not bothering to bring more of my scripts over to Kitely because most of them fail to work in mega regions.

I said that most of your mega region has to be either water or land: The exception to the rule is the SW region. Most of the mega will report the ground height to be whatever the edges of your SW sub-region are. So you can put one mountain or island in the SW region, but it has to have flat edges and then all the rest of the regions have to be flat and match up with the edge of your SW region.

I asked at the meeting if mega regions have been deprecated and the answer keeps coming back no. But if they are never going to work well, and nobody is going to fix them, so what is the difference? What is the difference between deprecated and abandoned half-formed? Worse yet, there are people actively working on VarRegions now. So anyone thinking about fixing mega regions is discouraged from doing so because something new is coming up to replace them. Something new and partially finished, like mega regions. Something that may get abandoned when half formed as well, leaving us with nothing again.