USS Race Wind(s)?

[Cynthia Centaur]

There seem to be two issues around:

1. Changing wind during races. That's easy. A boat that crossed the start line should lock into the current wind. If not, it's a bug that needs to be fixed. Period. If the bug is in the start line, bother me.
If the bug is in the boat kick the boat builder.

2. Changing wind during cruising.
Well, not so easy. Two issues with that:
a) making wind setters that only cover a short range (say, whisper) is technically feasable and not a big issue. Their acceptance however ..... I doubt that wind setters that you need to be near to fetch the wind will find wide acceptance. It simple requires too much thoughtfulness from the average sailor and RDs.
b) Boats with skipper wind that overrides race wind. We all know what that might be used for.

What we might think about is a way that a boat communicates to some device (wind setter, start line, ...) that it runs on skipper wind and will not lock into race wind. That way we could easily use skipper wind systems for convenience and still have races with fair conditions. The easiest idea to achieve that is that boat that receives a lock command from a start line shouts out that it will not use the race wind, more elaborated systems can be discussed.

Cynthia

[Jane Fossett]

I agree with most of Cynthia's comments.
However, I'd support an even more simple system that incorporates two relatively minor changes:
1: I think boatwrights should let 'skipper wind' override 'race wind' and allow skippers to type in all five wind parameters (not just 'dir and spd').
Cynthia is correct, some skippers could use this option to cheat. However, there are many ways to cheat, and Race Directors are not the police. SL sailors are, by and large, an intelligent and committed group, and the race fleet evinces considerable integrity. I trust the race fleet to follow the rules, as long as those rules are clearly articulated.
2: I think the windsetters should have a "time out" feature, and shut off after four or five minutes.
It makes no sense to have them 'whisper' or 'chat.' The windsetter's message is important for the race fleet of the moment, so it needs to shout. However, the Windsetter's message loses any/ all value as soon as the last boat crosses the start line. The Windsetter should be smart enough to know when to shut up.

I think those two changes are pretty minor, but could solve the problem I complained about at the start of this thread.

[Bittersweet Lime]

All of this requires, that you do new windsetters, and if you use new windsetters, than the solution is to use dynamic channeling like, where each racer gets the wind information back on it's own channel. There are various ways to determine a dynamic channel, just an example to get a dynamic channel from a key:

Code: Select all

integer getDynaChannel(key id) { return (integer) ("0x"+llGetSubString((string) id,0,5)); }


This for example is using the first 6 hex digits of a key as channel number and provides over 16.7 million separate channels. The script in the boat would just open a listener on this channel for the duration of the wind setting, request the wind and remove this listener after it received the settings or timed out. So there is no reasonable chance left to overwrite someone's others wind this way.

Now where you have a dynamic channel, get rid of the ranges by using llRegionSay instead of llShout and you are done. This saves the internal distance calculations on the server as well and is less error and lag prone.

And if you do a new raceline, make the boat script so that it will overwrite any other windsetting the user might use the moment other windparams are set. Let the raceline hand a secret handle encrypted to the boat script at start of the race, which is kept until the boat has done its lap(s). When the boat is passing the line, the line requests this handle from the boat and the boat answers with the decrypted handle. If this is invalid or the boat does not answer, the script was removed or a fake script tries to act like the boat script.

This is pretty save but not even near to 100% save, but it should be sufficiently enough for the given purpose and the average skipper. As I pointed out before, if someone wants to cheat, there are lots of easier ways to do it and no good way to control it.

[Hans Zinnemann]

What's the solution?
I think probably the best solution is to work with the boat builders and come up a fix that gives a sailor control over wind options.
What options?
1: The ability to chose Race Wind, SL wind, or Boat Wind and LOCK IT until the skipper stands and sits again.
2. The ability to set all five parameters for Boatwind: dir, spd, dir/spd variance, and rate.

Great stuff Jane.

I started down this route by adding SL wind to the Zinnemann 40 in version 1.5.0 (an addition that was met with shouts of "yuck, SL wind why would anyone want that?!").

I have been holding off allowing Skipper Wind to be set because of concerns over cheating but will add Skipper Wind (with the 5 usual variables) to future versions.

I will also give skippers the ability to lock their wind.

The cheating issue is not a problem because recent additions mean that I can see in an online control panel which wind is set for which boat

[Cynthia Centaur]

Jane: agreed. Your idea seems a good idea.
I could couple it with the start line so the wind setter activates during prestart automatically.

Bittersweet: the most complex problem here is not a mere technical one. The most complex problem is improving things while keeping them backward compatible. So new approaches can of course be added. But that will not solve any problems with existing boats.

Now where you have a dynamic channel, get rid of the ranges by using llRegionSay instead of llShout and you are done. This saves the internal distance calculations on the server as well and is less error and lag prone.

Ok. You are the first one to check that installation on the sunday races at the SYC start line.

When the boat is passing the line, the line requests this handle from the boat and the boat answers with the decrypted handle.

May I congratulate you? Obviously you are the only sailor in SL who never lost a boat and needed to rezz a new one. Can you tell me your secret?

best regards
Cynthia

[Bittersweet Lime]

Well, I suggested a solution, you dont like the solution, fine, find your own ones then. I just wanted to help.

[Bittersweet Lime]

Bittersweet: the most complex problem here is not a mere technical one. The most complex problem is improving things while keeping them backward compatible. So new approaches can of course be added. But that will not solve any problems with existing boats.

So what did I suggest here?- it is fully compatible with existing boats - a script added to the boats and a new windsetter script. This is backwards compatible. And this is nothing that would not exist already, I do that in a boat already, using my own wind system, which is overwriting any set wind all the time and can even be used in racemode, regardless of windsetters trying to set another wind - it is stable.

[Jane Fossett]

Cynthia Centaur's modified the Greenacre Windsetter again, including the changes we've discussed here and more.
Give us a day or two to try to break it,
then - as usual -
the windsetter will be available FREE.
For that matter, Cynthia's upgrades for the Raceline are also FREE.
I'll run around and help get it distributed.
WOOOOOT CYNTHIA.