Pathfinding is advancing. Tuesday Lorca Linden visited the Server/Sim/Scripting User Group and updated us on Pathfinding.

New Pathfinding Viewer Tools

Lorca told us the Pathfinding Viewer Tools need testing. The tools are built into the viewer and interact with the SL Servers. The system is ready for Open Beta testing. Of course one needs a viewer with the tools. You can now get that at: Second Life Alternate Viewers.

Next one needs a place where the tools work. The place is ADITI in the Path Test regions. Use the World map once in ADITI to find them.

ABCD Material

With the tools one can add a Nav-Mesh and control the Pathfinding Critter’s speed by using ABCD Materials.

ABCD basically allows you to set up to 4 different speeds for characters. When one creates a character using llCreateCharacter() one can set a speed. With a Nav-mesh one can modify the speed. The idea being a vehicle could go faster on pavement than on grass or sand. Pavement could be a Material A and grass type B and sand may be type C. I think it is obvious this will save a load of scripting to detect surface types.

Also, a Pathfinding object will favor one Material Type over another. So, the vehicle would try to find a path on pavement and avoid grass and sand.

Using the same Nav-mesh and Materials, a goat would go faster and prefer grass over pavement.

Physics Change

An important note is the Havok Physics Engine had to be updated to enable more of the Pathfinding AI. This means if you make things which are dependent on physics behavior, you need to be testing them in the ADITI Pathfinding regions.

Sandboxes

The current sandboxes for Pathfinding have a fast return. New sandboxes are supposed to appear this week. They will have more ‘interesting’ terrain and longer or no return time. These sandboxes will be adjacent to the existing sandboxes.

Wiki

The Second Life Wiki has more information the Pathfinding Viewer Tools.

Bugs

Report bugs in Pathfinding and physics issues in the Pathfinding regions using the PATHBUG tag in the JIRA.

Office Hours/User Group

Lorca says they will be starting an Office Hour/User Group for Pathfinding. We should see it appear next week.