Talk:Parcel Basements

Reasons why this isn't likely to happen

Not to be a downer, but:

This feature likely won't be implemented because it would require rewriting a significant part of how the current sim code works:

1. Arbitrary injection of region crossing packets
   • This isn't so much of a problem, as it can be done on OpenSim
     • "The owner might flag a prim as a "portal", and an agent passing through that prim would be transferred to the zone."
2. Arbitrary region size
   • "The "basement" zone would be in the boundaries of the parcel, but isolated from anything else in the sim."
   • This implies that the ground around the parcel either does not exist, or is empty. The former would require that the viewer be capable of rendering regions with arbitrary dimensions.
3. Arbitary spawning of child processes for Havok: "Objects in this zone would not interact with anything outside the zone: the zone border would be a solid wall (like the edge of the void)"
   • For objects not to interact with anything outside of the basement, they would likely either require extensive modification to Havok, or have each piece of sim hardware (not sim software) capable of spawning and running 16384 additional processes for Havok.
   • For similar reason as with Havok, the sim hardware would either be able to support the basements natively, or be able to spawn 16384 additional processes for the general sim software
   • Server hardware runs 4 regions. Assuming 1 instance of Havok per region the hardware currently runs 4 processes;
     1. If Havok were not modified to support local sandboxing of object interactivity, an additional Havok process would need to be spawned and launched for each basement containing a physical object.
     2. Each region supports up to 4096 distinct parcels
     3. 4096 distinct parcels over 4 sims = 16384 parcel basements

These problems would need to be solved before LL would consider implementing this feature.

- SignpostMarv Martin 11:18, 31 December 2007 (PST)

Response to 'Reasons...'

I believe you are exaggerating the difficulties: this is a proposal, not a list of requirements. It's intended to be lightweight to implement (did you read the history section?), and whatever additional restrictions are necessary to make it work are perfectly reasonable.

• The proposed implementation does not require injecting RegionCrossing packets. The parcel basement would be in the same region, running under the same instance of Havok.
• How ground outside the parcel is rendered is not critical. If it's easier to render the entire sim or not render any ground at all that's entirely acceptable.
• The server already implements "hard borders" for parcels for agents, physical objects, and non-physical objects. This mechanism would be used in the basement. If this meant that (for example) objects hitting the wall were returned instead of bouncing that's entirely acceptable.
• The number of basements permitted in a sim could easily be limited: the original design (see the history) envisioned as few as three or four basements per sim. There could be a minimum size to a parcel that could have a basement, a fixed number of basements, and so on.
• The alternate implementation would bypass all the above issues, albeit at greater cost.

- Argent Stonecutter 12:04, 31 December 2007 (PST)

This feature is also superceded by inter-grid teleportation support.

Why have a parcel basement when you could teleport people into an entire, privately hosted estate ?

SignpostMarv Martin 09:38, 1 January 2008 (PST)