This is sure to be one of the most talked-about topics amongst Second Life developers in the next few days: It seems a secret Linden Lab project has come to fruition with testing of Havok 4 on the Beta Grid.
From the Official Second Life blog:
It is time to announce the beta testing of “the project you thought would never ever get finished” - one that has been far more complex than we expected. Of course, I’m talking about the long-awaited upgrade of the Second Life physics engine to Havok2… which is now Havok4! The Havok physics engine provides the core algorithms for collisions and rigid body dynamics - anything that pushes, collides or tumbles in-world.
WHAT WILL HAVOK4 DO FOR SECOND LIFE?
This project is all about improving sim stability and reliability, reducing lag in the physics engine, and fixing some bugs that could not be fixed under Havok1. In other words, there are no new features in the Havok4 project, despite the fact that there has been significant work done “under the hood”. Once Havok4 is stable (out of beta testing and on the main grid) we will be able to start adding new features, but the current goal is to get all the current features working with this new version of Havok.
The Havok4 public preview is now open, and you can help us finish testing by downloading the beta installers, logging into the beta, testing the objects in your inventory, and reporting any problems you encounter.
What Should Change With Havok4?
- Reduced simulator crashes
- Less lag in the physics engine
- More reliable prim linkage
- Stacked dynamic objects react when supporting objects are removed
- Improved collision management - uniform spheres collide as spheres, rather than as faceted shapes
- Penetrating dynamic objects will be automatically pushed apart by Havok4’s collision solver
- Vertical simulation extent has been increased to 1024 meters
- Some slight dynamic changes - avatar movements have changed slightly
I’m not ready yet to fall all over myself with excitement, we’ve seen other things in preview and on the Beta Grid that still haven’t "gone main" yet, but it’s very interesting news nevertheless.
I can’t wait (till I can get back in-world) to see what this does to swords and other weapons… I hope it’s all of the good and none of the bad.
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I checked it out earlier today. To be honest, it is still too buggy to tell if there are actual improvements. Most of the features are still broken, so trying to test it out is relatively pointless at this time.
To illustrate, stone balls behave exactly the same as plastic or rubber balls. Physical objects are still a bit wonky in their movement, with occasional warping and very jittery. In other words, it all feels about the same as it did before.