[#VWR-3006] Make physics calculations both-ways to reduce lag inconvinience

1. Second Life Viewer - VWR

Make physics calculations both-ways to reduce lag inconvinience

Created: 09/Nov/07 09:52 AM Updated: 12/Aug/08 10:13 AM

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Know those "digging" people and physical objects when you're in deep, sticky lag? Well, after some time playing World of Warcraft, I saw how they minimize lag inconvenience, and it's awesome.

The idea is, the client calculates physics as well as the server, so people will move smoothly on your side, with the minimal of side-effects caused by lag. There are no drastic object physics calculations like in Second Life, so the performance is swell. If you're worrying about trouble in physics overload areas, an option for a max of objects to be calculated or CPU percent usage could be set. Or you could disable it for objects entirely, as avatar physics are very simple.

This proposal supports VWR-3007, which allows avatars to move normally even during lag, by local physics calculation.

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WarKirby Magojiro added a comment - 10/Nov/07 06:07 AM

I can think of lots of reasons why I don't like this, personally. Syncronicity is the first. Physics is centrally controlled, which allows everyone to see the same thing. Otherwise, the world would seem to be moving faster for people with faster PCs.

then there's server side security checks, preventing you from entering banned parcels, and ending up inside walls.

Thirdly, this would increase SL's system requirements, as client PCs would have to calculate physics too. This would also enable griefer physics atacks to more easily lag or crash clients, rather than simply slowing down the server.

World of Warcraft is a closed system, with much more in the way of limitations than SL. I'm not sure if this would be a good idea.

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Lex Neva added a comment - 10/Nov/07 10:11 AM

I think your third point can't be emphasized enough, WK. SL already strains client systems to the max. Physics computation is NOT cheap, despite what games like half-life 2 might make you think. It's not possible to do physics for "just avatars", since they need to be able to collide with every other object in the sim.

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Smiley Barry added a comment - 10/Nov/07 11:22 AM

Physics /are/ cheap. Take OpenSim with AGEIA X Physics for instance. The system is a very powerful physics calculator, and works very easily and uses not too much power. In addition, with the introduction of Havok 4, griefers would need PLENTY of objects to make your client crash, and I mean plenty.

Plus, about synchronization, this is already occurring for people with bad connections. Me, for example, every other person not in a "capped distance limit", and several others.

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Argent Stonecutter added a comment - 11/Mar/08 09:35 PM

The client could do at least simple physics calculations... like acceleration due to gravity and collisions with the ground and maybe large prims (walls, floors). If this is just handled client side - optionally - for the user's own avatar... not replacing the sim's physics... then it doesn't matter if they get out of sync, because any time they would be out of sync they would be even MORE out of sync without it.