Water height in OAR

[Alexina Proctor]

I uploaded an OAR from Discovery. On DG the water height is 100m so that people can build underwater worlds. After uploading the OAR, I found that there was no water and I had to change the water height to 100m. I imagine this will be an issue for anyone bringing their OAR to Kitely because DG is closing.

Q: how do I lower the world instead to match the standard 20m height of water?

Thanks,
Alexina

[Alexina Proctor]

Hi Alexina,

If you have a locally run OpenSim instance then you can use the server terrain commands to modify your region before creating an OAR file: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Server_Commands

If already uploaded into Kitely you can try to remove the selection range limit in your viewer, select the entire land area and use the teraforming tools to lower land.

In either case you'll need to decide how you wish to handle the land you lower below 0 because the viewer won't display it properly.

[Snoots Dwagon]

I hadn't even thought about the land and water height. That is indeed a major issue / problem in moving from Discovery to... anywhere. I understand why Discovery set ocean heights to 100... but it makes exporting OARs tricky.

Question: What would they need to do on Discovery's end to lower everything on the region to conform to Kitely's specs prior to creating the OAR? (Maybe that is what Ilan is suggesting). If that could be done, then Balpien could drop all creations and land to standard levels, create a new OAR, and everything would be ready to just drop in to Kitely when it's brought over. It would require Balpien issuing those commands server-side to lower the land and all creations down to standard levels... but seems that would be the easiest way to do so if it is possible to do.

For the land that would drop below the zero threshhold, I could go underwater after the OAR is imported and manually flatten it at 0m. Or will that automatically happen when the OAR is brought over?

[Snoots Dwagon]

Also, a little after-thought question. Is there any reason the water level can't be just raised to 100m on Kitely to match Sendalonde's parameters? Doesn't really matter since the worlds on Kitely are stand-alone "pods" and not connected to other regions. Or are there existing creations on the land that would be buried under 100m and can't be easily raised?

[Snoots Dwagon]

Hi Snoots,

It's best to have OAR files that are compatible with the standard water height that is used in most grids. I'd therefore recommend that changes to water height settings and teraforming be done grid wide on Discovery grid before creating the OAR files for the Discovery grid users.

Nothing prevents Kitely world owners from setting water height on their own world but we're not going to do that grid wide as that would sink every existing Kitely world to be below the water level. We would then need to deform worlds to overcome those changes. This is a type of thing that should be done by region owners who need to be involved in deciding about changes to their regions. In any case, if this is a problem for all Discovery grid region owners then the fix should be done on Discovery grid before people get their OAR files.

[Mike Chase]

If you load the oar with an offset of <0,0,-80> and then adjust the water height in the region/estate settings and rebake terrain you should be fine. You certainly can ask but It's very unlikely to get an oar with this already adjusted.

I've handled a number of oars this way on Utopia Skye with no issue.

Mike

[Ilan Tochner]

Thank you Mike.

[Snoots Dwagon]

If you load the oar with an offset of <0,0,-80> and then adjust the water height in the region/estate settings and rebake terrain you should be fine.

I understand about loading the OAR with an offset, but what number should we plug into the water height in the region/estate settings? (Scuse my ignorance on this topic. Been a LONG time since I set up an Opensim server.)

[Snoots Dwagon]

Hi Snoots,

Keep it at 20m then the -80m offset from your original 100m water height will result in the water level you want.

[Alexina Proctor]

It appears to me from what Mike said that it is doable to lower everything to the standard heights. I would prefer that. However, does leasing an advanced world include options for me to use displacement values? In Mike’s case, he loads OARs for everyone. In Kilely’s case we load and can save our own, which I really like. If an advanced world doesn’t give me options for entering a displacement, does Kitely offer a reasonably priced service to upload the OAR for us with the displacement values? I couldn’t find that on the website.

I am assuming entering the displacement value also move down both the terrain and all the objects on it. I know I can change water levels in my region panel afterward and bake it, but getting the objects and land at the right level is my issue. I ran a test on some Premium land to check for all the issues and found I could raise the water level as long as we didn’t mind an 80m drop off at the edges, which we do.

Hoping.