Building in the sky, a guide....

It seems a safe prediction that the lack of privacy options in p2p will drive many people into the sky so here is a basic guide to living in the clouds:

First, you need to be able to get up there to build. There are a number of products that will allow you to defy SL gravity but the one I found the easiest to use was the Cubey Terra SpeedSpork, available at Abbott’s Aerodome. Just wear, fly and tell it how high you want to go.

When building in the air, it is sometimes difficult to judge where your property lines are. Use your music stream to place cubes as markers at your property lines. You know when you’ve left your land when the music stream stops or changes. Delete the markers when you’re done building.

You need to be able to get to your sky build, which requires a teleporter from the ground. There is a free one by Cubey Terra and there are several other products for purchase. The only product I’ve found with a privacy feature is a teleporter by Zonax Delorean and available at his Primworx shop in Orwood. I used this product because you program it with names of "allowed avatars" and it is only visible and usable by those on the list. It will teleport up to 300m. You need one on the ground to get to your build and one at your build to get back to the ground (or maybe not once p2p is implemented). They are 3 prims each.

Visitor counters are available from a number of SL vendors, if you are concerned about prim counts there is a 1 prim model available at Nyterave Island.

The SL cloud layer can be turned off using the Debug Menu rendering options; however, building at about 260 – 300 m usually gets you above the cloud layer.

Falling from the height of 300 m really messes an avatar up…

I have my house at a bit below 300m, and my private gardens at a bit below 600m (teleport from the house to the gardens). I don't have any way to get back down except to fall, but I've never noticed any problems with falling, it doesn't mess my avatar up at all.

It's nice to have privacy but it makes me sad that I can't log in and find myself in my home... it makes it feel less like a home to me.

Oh, and my method of building in the sky was simply to build on the ground first, and then attach a chair to my build, sit on it, and using the edit feature, move the whole build and me with it up into the sky.

I'd love you to expand upon you reasons for saying this, as I don't quite see how privacy is any further eroded by the implentation of P2P.

Get your ban lines, electric fences and shooters at the ready.

"You ain't from around here, are ya boy."

Move your house to 250 meters altitude and you will be able to login and be in your home.

250m is the max teleport range for the teleport script.

Briana Dawson

Privacy hasn't been eroded by P2P-TP because its techinal Point-to-Landing-Point. If you don't disable P2P-TP all together or set a landing point then it can become an issue. Take a look at the new 1.8.0 preview.

I thought it was 300m? Anyway I can teleport to my house from the ground easily enough, I'm just saying that if you log out while in your house, when you log back in you immediately fall to the ground....

I'd put the landing point inside a cage. And then release them as they come in.... but that's just me.

I believe it is 300m too. But anyways in the new 1.8 we shouldn't have the problem of falling out of our skybox homes since some of the new changes allows for it wich is great because my home is a good 700m up.

Why not just build a giant brick the same size as the diameters of of your land and make it about 55,000 meters high? Set your land to ban everyone and you will have it made.

You can TP to a z value of 768 metres with the new p2p.

There's going to be a lot of sky builds this way, that's for sure.

.... you just rendered anything considered 'private skybox' obsolete with that sentence.
Oh course, you can drop-rez a skybox above the built limit, but it won't be too procisely placed.

But if you want privacy, get an island, and don't use SL for chat.

Because:

1) 55,000 meters is too high for any object to be relocated with llSetPos so you'll have a hell of a time getting up there using 1 cubey mark III teleporter and hundreds of sit teleporters to get up there. Only other way around is using the Power Ring system and manually place the rings above the 768m mark.

2) you can't make 1 block that big. you're looking at more blocks then your land can handle unless you own an entire sim.

3) The current ban system only goes as high as 30m above ground level from my observations. Hope you have lots of cash to dish out for a networked security system because thats what it'll take.

4) where there's a will there's a way, someone will find a way up to your tent (that and a simple poseball set is all you'd be able to fit up there).

5) I just love screwing around with people's sarcasm.

Anyways privacy in SL is like security in the computer industry, its an oxymoron. What I recomend is that you keep your home's location (or your dungeon or whatever you're so afraid of people seeing) to yourself and your close nit friends. If you got a skybox home, hide the teleporter and make it like 700m up (most people fly either above or below this height by a few hundred meters). Make a rezzer and modify a cuby terra mark III teleporter to llDie() once you reach your destination so there's little to no evidence of the teleporter. Make the rezzer a potted plant or something that only works if you're in a specific group. If no one knows where your little place is then they won't know where to look. Since you can't phase through walls anymore they won't be able to eliminate the possibility of a dungeon and usually give up by the 500m point. Also a good idea is to install a security system with a good 50 - 96m radius that'll eject or send anyone home not in an authorized list. This may be a bit overboard but like I said, majority fly either above this mark (1000m) or below this mark (500m and lower) so the chances of people just flying by and accidentally triggering your security system is slim.

I also have to point out that unattached prims will go OFF-WORLD above around 4,096m up.

Only if you didn't turn off p2p on your land or didn't set a tp point on your parcel. People seem to ignore this fact for the drama.

The new height is actually benificial for skybox owners because they won't fall out of their homes when rezing up there.

Thank god for THAT. I love having high-up builds.

My understanding from this:


Is that the only way you can not have anyone be able to teleport directly to any parcel is to not set a landing point and even that merely drops them off at the closest landing point on a neighboring parcel.

Physics-launched building tools and skyboxes at 4000 meters, here we come!

Then we should hold off P2P until this is implemented.

Is the problem "reroutes incomming teleports" or "teleports to the nearest telehub"? If it's the latter, then "teleports to the nearest landing point on another parcel" could be an option.

Actually not setting a point to teleport to allows anyone to teleport anywhere on the map. And thanks for pointing that out because it seemed like while I was in the 1.8preview they had figured out a way to do it. Simple work around would be to ban everyone but a list of friends or a group and set a teleport point just on the edge of your land. Doing so would anyone else to the edge of the sim. Another idea that just recently came up is to put a cover charge on your land instead and charge them like L$500 to get in. If they really wanna get inside to see what you're up to they'll pay and you'll have earned a week's extra stipend per person.

I made that same arguement but it was ignored, I felt that p2p should be tied to the Find Menu and Landmarks, not click-on-the-map-and-go until a "no teleports to this parcel" option existed. While larger landowners like myself will be little affected (and those that already live in the clouds), those on 512m parcels surrounded by other smaller parcels will have people dropping in on them all the time even if they don't set a landing point because the parcels next to them maybe will have a landing point. For "residential only" communities, it will take coordination with all the landowners to make sure nobody has a landing point set.

This whole thing really is unfair to residential parcel owners in SL who have gone to great lengths to avoid high traffic sims.

Where does one get a sky home? i have looked for many months

I have an amazing one by Valadeza Anubis, available on her island of Veranderde.....

I built my first flying vehicle recently and my new hobby is now spotting skybuilds. It's fascinating. You zoom up to 500m or so, turn all your detail settings to maximum, and loads of them pop up. Then you have to turn the detail down so you can actually move around and find them, which is a slight challenge, but it's not too hard.

It does occur to me that a big flying platform with buoyancy 1.0 would be a useful tool for the skybuilder; you can go to the desired height, rez your objects on the platform, then position them as appropriate. You'd need a teleporter or two to get there afterwards and it's inconvenient for going *very* high.

May I suggest Blanc Noir's "SkyLife" prefabs, available in Abbotts?

I am quite happy on the ground, thank you all! Sky builds would only obscure my happy little home on the map.