sidewinder-linden
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Havok in Second Life. Is it upon us?
According to Sidewinder Linden, program manager for the Havok 4 project at Linden Lab, Havok 4 will be rolled out across the whole Second Life grid starting Monday, 31 March (depending on the overall performance of the RC3 update over the weekend). Looks like we win the betting pool, and that means candy! More than half of simulator crashes and restarts are tied back to physics problems. That being the case, it seems that this new code will be the most stable Second Life simulator ever. According to the timetable, assuming the current release candidate is not found wanting on Monday morning, it will be rolled out to an initial group of up to 2,000 simulators, followed by a deployment to all the rest on Tuesday, 1 April. We believe you'll also see Windlight (1.19.1) roll out as the official viewer on Monday, or perhaps Tuesday. It's going to be a hell of a start to the new quarter.
Havok 4 early adopters updated
Sidewinder Linden reports that Havok 4 early adopter simulators (all 435 of them) have been updated with a fresh code drop, fixing a tidy bundle of issues. When it comes to bug-fixes per week, this has to be some kind of record for Linden Lab at the moment. We've never seen them put out so many fixes in such a short period of time as they have in the last couple of months.
Havok 4 early-adopter program
Owners of private estates in Second Life can opt to run preview versions of the Havok 4 physics engine on any of their simulators. Bear in mind that this is a beta and things won't work right - at least not right away. Exactly what things won't work right? Well the whole point of this is to find out - or in other words, if there was a good answer to that question then there wouldn't be any need for the early-adopter program.
Havok refresh on Second Life beta grid (1.18.6.77074)
Sidewinder Linden reports that the Second Life beta grid (Aditi) has been updated with a new version of the Havok 4.6 adapter code, ready for a weekend beta test. There are a quite a number of good fixes in this refresh. Havok4 is starting to feel more like a physics system should, despite the engine not being ideally suited for tasks like it is being asked to perform.
Havok refresh on Second Life beta grid
Sidewinder Linden reports that the Second Life beta grid (Aditi) has been updated with a new version of the Havok 4.6 adapter code, ready for a weekend beta test. We're also told that Linden Lab have been using this code on their company-use simulators (which probably means that it's running on a selected few main grid sims that we normally can't see or access). We wonder if Linden Lab works simulator physics as hard as the day-to-day usage that it gets from users.
