Thank you everyone for contacting the opensim developers and community.

Recently, there have been a few incidents of IRC bot spam.    In each of these instances, we've had to set the channel +R, which means that only users who are registered on freenode can join the channel.   All most all of these bots are not programmed to create a registered freenode account first.   This keeps them off the channel.   If you do find that the channels are set +R, you will get a message when you try to join saying that you must be registered.      Please either register your nickname with freenode or wait a few hours and come back.   Usually the channel will be opened up to everyone again in 10-12 hours.     

One more thing!    If you see a bot spamming the channel, don't click the link!   Even if the spam message seems like it's coming from someone or somewhere official.   It's a social engineering trick to get you to click the link.   The link usually contains a web page with a zero day browser exploit that will take over your computer and turn your computer into an IRC bot that does the same spamming to a different IRC channel.

I was watching the news and blogosphere lately and it seems that some people have the opinion that OpenSimulator /could/ have done something interesting but didn't move fast enough to capitalize on the first mover advantage...       Additionally, I've had people tell me personally that there hasn't been much news lately on OpenSimulator..   so it must be loosing steam.

The problem with these statements..   is they're entirely false.   There's been a TON of new press about OpenSimulator during 2008, 2009 and several important press items in 2010 already.   So, why the disconnect between perception and reality?   

One potential candidate for the disconnect..    is the OpenSimulator site itself.        Many people probably looked at the site, clicked the News link and seen that it hadn't been updated since September of 2008!   I have a google alert set up for news and blog items about OpenSimulator and I literally get 3 to 10 new blog posts or articles a day.   People are writing about OpenSimulator.   People are using OpenSimulator..     maybe it's time to update the news page.

So, I've updated the news page with a quick selection of news and press items.     A few items from 2009 that stuck out in my head as most important

The problem, of course, is we're all developers, engineers, scientists.   We're not PR people.  

This means that our effort is split like this:

• 97% - Code
• 3% - PR and Community Management

It also means that we probably let many opportunities to promote OpenSimulator pass us by.   In the past, I don't remember there being this disconnect of perception vs reality.   Then again, sdague was consistently updating the various news, public relations pages, and the community.   He used various techniques to communicate with the community.

• IRC
• Mailing Lists
• News and Information pages on OpenSimulator.org
• The Planet.us blog entry RSS feed aggregator 

I guess, if I looked at the News page alone, I might make the same conclusion as the people who are telling me that nothing new is coming out of OpenSimulator.

Another way that we can improve this perception is engaging the community.   The more they're engaged, the more they tend to be interested and promote OpenSimulator through word of mouth.

Yay, It turns out that there were two bugs with regards to terse updates.    The first one was in SceneObjectPart.SendScheduledUpdates().    In some cases, it didn't clear the UpdateSchedule using ClearUpdateSchedule().   This means that objects that failed the duplicate test were never getting the m_updateFlag set back to zero.       In this state, the call to ScheduleTerseUpdate would fail because of the m_updateFlag < 1 test.  It would skip entirely over the code that schedules terse updates.

The second update was adding:

Velocity.ApproxEquals(Vector3.Zero, VELOCITY_TOLERANCE) ||

to the duplicate check in SendScheduledUpdates().   This ensures that Updates with the velocity <0,0,0> get sent.    Without that, the Zero velocity vector isn't guarenteed to get out.    Thirdly, I added a check in the ODEPrim.Velocity Getter.  If _ZeroFlag, then return <0,0,0> for the velocity.   If _zeroFlag is set, it has come to a rest regardless of what the tiny amount of velocity it might have.   Here, I think the averaging of the previous velocities was working against us.     "returnVelocity.X = (m_lastVelocity.X + _velocity.X)/2;"   will return a higher velocity when the object is stopped then it should for the last update with a zero velocity.   This causes the object to keep moving.    The averaging was put in place to make object motion appear more smooth.

After debugging positions and velocities between the various layers of OpenSimulator today, it appears that things are slightly better then I previously thought right now.

It looks like there's an error with ZeroFlag in one spot in UpdatePositionAndVelocity in ODEPrim that, when a prim is rezzed and made physical, causes it to drop through the terrain.

It also looks like there's an issue..   where if you drag the hand cursor over a prim the 'right' way, the SOG/SOP and ODEPrim no longer synchronize again.   If you bump the prim with your avatar where you would expect it to be, physics knows where the object is..   but the SOG/SOP doesn't.    So, that's our break.    Some kind of reference loss.    Isolating the specific state where this occurs should be an interesting task tomorrow, however, I think I've discovered enough for one day.

06:27:40 - !ZeroFlag <116.5574, 106.5194, 21.29421>

06:27:40 - !ZeroFlag <116.7664, 106.5418, 21.3075>

06:27:40 - !ZeroFlag <117.0615, 106.5566, 21.3036>

06:27:40 - !ZeroFlag <117.3505, 106.5721, 21.30312>

06:27:40 - !ZeroFlag <117.6379, 106.5873, 21.30292>

06:27:40 - !ZeroFlag <117.9243, 106.604, 21.30146>

06:27:40 - !ZeroFlag <117.9579, 106.6056, 21.30099>

06:27:41 - !ZeroFlag <117.9578, 106.6032, 21.30212>

06:27:41 - !ZeroFlag <118.1797, 106.6338, 21.31411>

06:27:41 - !ZeroFlag <118.4731, 106.6529, 21.30904>

06:27:42 - !ZeroFlag <118.7649, 106.6682, 21.30845>

06:27:42 - !ZeroFlag <119.0538, 106.6863, 21.30784>

06:27:42 - !ZeroFlag <119.3399, 106.699, 21.30552>

06:27:42 - !ZeroFlag <119.3714, 106.6974, 21.30613>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <119.3718, 106.6955, 21.30722>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <119.6014, 106.6931, 21.31141>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <119.8856, 106.7092, 21.31145>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <120.1725, 106.7264, 21.31157>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <120.2315, 106.7134, 21.33288>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <120.2231, 106.6987, 21.32208>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <120.2056, 106.7055, 21.30926>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <120.1871, 106.7195, 21.29576>

06:27:43 - !ZeroFlag <120.1709, 106.7317, 21.282>

06:27:45 - !ZeroFlag <120.1709, 106.7309, 21.28252>

06:27:45 - !ZeroFlag <120.3771, 106.7588, 21.27705>

06:27:45 - !ZeroFlag <120.6764, 106.7718, 21.27605>

06:27:45 - !ZeroFlag <120.9664, 106.7914, 21.27538>

06:27:45 - !ZeroFlag <121.2548, 106.8121, 21.27536>

06:27:45 - !ZeroFlag <121.3039, 106.814, 21.29639>

06:27:45 - !ZeroFlag <121.2975, 106.8158, 21.28955>

I had a look at the most recent trunk of OpenSimulator and I'm really surprised at how massively broken it is compared with previous versions.   Particularly the object and update pipeline is broken. 

It's broken enough that it will take a lot of work to unbreak preliminarily and then several weeks after that to test the system fully.   When it gets in this state, I get torn between frustration at how it got that way and tenacity to see the project succeed.     On the one hand, I'm extremely frustrated because it was working fine and I wasn't tracking the changes close enough to be able to figure out how it broke easily.  I wonder if someone else can resolve it easier because they were tracking the changes.   Then I remember that few people know that part of OpenSimulator like I do so, ultimately, the task will fall on me to resolve it.   

I think I'll debug it more this weekend.  Work comes first.     One of the reasons that I have not been tracking OpenSimulator changes closely is work has required significantly more of my time to complete then usual.   Normally, I have a full day's work that I get done. After that, I work on OpenSimulator. For weeks, however, it's been a full day's worth of work and then more work.   My work schedule is frustrating all by itself lately.  I'm not complaining really.  I'm arguing with myself.   About how long a task takes in estimated time, how long it takes in actual time.   Keeping projects on time, on budget and clients happy.   Maybe where I'm failing is managing expectations and i'm compensating by using time allocated for personal time.   I do have a vested interest in seeing my clients succeed in business beyond just 'finishing a project'.