Junk in the Sky

Wow! cornflakes with vinegar for breakfast anyone?

*looks at the date on that thread's starting* Ummm... either that or it was one heck of an April Fools prank. If there had been a demo, a real demo, might we not have seen at least half of it's stuff by now? *blinks* Oh, wait.. this is Linden Labs we're talking about.

The junk floating around? I tend to sometimes randomly orbit stuff while editing. I do /try/ to fly up there, but I have to remember to put on the objects that allow me to do so.

If you look closely at the objects in the shots, some distant things seem very blocky and without detail. I suspect that it was an early use of (the recently introduced feature) occlusion culling. Considering the number of textures in each shot, it would take forever for everything to render and have their textures load. Even one of those 10 grand machines would have to fight to include everything without culling.

I don't know where you are flying around... but I have no issues whatsoever.

If you are so unhappy with SL... why are you still here?

I paid them for a year up front! I am currently selling everthing sellable!

Oh, I should open a vending stall featuring Kentucky Fried Tarn and Sweet and Sour Gorean!

Random objects in the sky are quite easy to explain, at least I think it could be.

People edit an item, they go to change it's position manually for some reason, and forget to enter a decimal point, or enter in something that results in a number greater than 768.
*poof!* object dissapears. They have no clue where it went, so they just rez another one.

I wonder how much junk is below ground?

That would be me :\

Those screenshots are awesome, though.

Below ground, in the sky, I've sent things both orbiting and digging. One of these days, those little cubes I accidentally buried will return with gold, I tell you!

Really hard to get the underground ones cleared out, when you've got the house mostly built and don't want to use the return feature. Orbital ones, I try to clean up, even if it means launching myself out there.

how about naming it "The Bitter Side of Life"?

Is there any way the Lindens could clean up?

Pick up any loose objects in one fell swoop that were just lodged in the ground (Wait til the Mole people get ticked off and come up to conquer us all thanks to your errant t-shirts or whatever invading their territory and ticking them off!) or just stupidly floating in mid air with no purpose?

Wonder if all those little things "add up" enough to cause lag?

Really is silly for me to be flying by and run into a prim or two at 400 feet that at one time was a piece of a building that was removed or something ... or a loose untextured prim that wandered off.


I think I actually ran into vendors once that were 100 feet or so below a floating store .. guess the merchant "lost" them and rez'd new ones and forgot about it.



I don't own land .. so I have no idea how complicated clearing it yourself is or anything.

Is there a way to bring up a list of all the prims you have on your land? ... like an "inventory" for your land? Then you could see what looked like it belonged, and TP to things that might NOT belong .. and if its somewhere weird or something forgotten, clean it up.



~The Moore Foundation, Ideas for a brighter tomorrow~

To find ones underground I've lost, I go to Debug, Rendering, and turn off surface.

The problem with asking the Lindens to clean up airborn prims... not enough Lindens. That would be a full time, tedious, boring job.

Now that I am thinking about it, it really wouldn't be all that keen for the Lindens to start going around and plucking prims off people's property. Some of those prims might be there for a reason. One never knows.

I haven't really had many issues with flying into midair prims, either in free flight or in a vehicle, and I do a lot of flying around. As for the "appearance", well, who am I to pass negative judgement on someone for cluttering up their own airspace?

I do the same. My work spaces are in the skyboxes above my land. I go so far as to put them at 500m up so that the map screen shot does not show them (it only show up to ~450m?) and to be out of range of any normal "flying vehicle" travel. I have to have an invisible 1-prim platform at about 300m as a teleport-relay, but it's small and is not likely to be run into.

I do agree with the OP, it is quite ugly up there. If people cleaned up half the junk they have up there, their prim counts would rebound.

Well I was thinking more along the lines of game code or a script that they could run server-side to put all that lost crapola back in people's "Lost and Found" folders. Do it once a year or quarter or whatever ... just return all the misc stuff. Don't break down clusters of prims like or houses and actual content would be effected ... but if you have 2 or 3 small prims in missing-man formation above your land that you probably "forgot" or "lost" then why not have it appear back in your L&F?

If you REALLY want a single untextured trapazoid at 452 on the Z-Axis orbiting your land then feel free to put it back up afterwards .. but I bet theres alot of prims out there that people were looking for, or just didn't know were around .. and are taking up both their prim-usage on their lot and bandwidth.


As for "flying into midair prims" I usually collide with entire buildings that haven't even begun to rez ... I've never "crashed into" a floating untextured orb or anything ... but I do think its kinda' ugly and looks trashy to have .. well .. trash .. floating in mid air that obviously serves no purpose.

Didn't think about that. Now, I shall try to retrieve that one stray prim... Too bad it won't have gold!

Actually, this is a problem. You see, my home is in the sky. I have a wide variety of items within it, including single prim or very low prim objects. It would be a royal pain in the butt to have to replace items I put there intentionally, simply because someone else has an issue figuring out how to clean their "yard". Not to mention, when I am building/scripting, I usually have an odd assortment of prims sitting in my workshop, in various stages of completion. To have these autoreturned would also be an issue.



I would be willing to bet that there are a rediculous number of miscellaneos prims dotting the sky all over the grid. But I, for one, look for prims that are not accounted for, and I keep my autoreturn feature on to send foreign prims back to their avatar of origin. Should I be penalized because someone else doesn't like the wood textured cube floating somewhere 20 sims away?



It might be trashy, it might have no purpose, but to blanket the grid with some sort of timed autoreturn of low prim items seems much worse than the most horridly dotted sim-sky in the grid.

Sure, I'll clarify.

Do I think it is fair? No .. life is not fair. Games are never always "fair". Sometimes it sucks and you have to "take one for the team" for the good of society. Especially in MMO's where "balancing" issues, bandwidth issues and the like mean that if YOU personally do something (purposefully or accidentally) it can have an adverse effect on others.

.. but that isn't what I was suggesting, that people's "skyhomes/boxes" be wiped from the planet and have them have to replace them.

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Now .. to the point I tried to make earlier (and I guess failed to make clearly - my fault really) .. is that the script/program/whatever that "returned lost prims" would only work on low-numbers of prims at certain locations.

In my mind it would work like this:

Step 1.) Scan the land. Anything underground or unreachable? - return it to the owner.

Step 2.) Anything between ground level and say .. 200 feet (or pick a number .. something that would exclude at least 85-90% of people's hard-built homes/businesses) would be ignored.

Step 3.) Anything above the Z-axis variable defined in "Step 2" .. check for "clusters of prims". If there is a clump of a certain number of prims (pick a number .. 10? whats normal for a basic structure? 15?) clumped together in an area in the sky (which would denote a dwelling, or a purposefully placed structure/pattern) ... leave it alone and do not return it.

Edit: Step 3.5.) Maybe have it recognise common structural shapes? If it finds a big square/rectangle containing other prims it figures it is a house and leaves it alone. If it finds a big flat square with prims on it .. it figures it is "land" placed there on purpose and leaves it.

Step 4.) Anything not excused from the program by "Step 3" ... return to owner.


Scoops up and returns all the UFP's (Unidentified Floating Prims?) and gives them back. No one loses anything but time (if they actually want them placed back where they were). Some people might like the "OMG!" factor of having an item returned they thought "vanished" on them before.

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The program would basically be like "mom" coming into the room and saying "Anything that doesn't look like you're playing with it right now I'm putting back in the toychest". Stuff you use often ... and WANT to save, you can exclude from the "mom" program ... but random toys that rolled under the sofa or under the fridge get put back.

Trust me, Burn, I'm not trying to "wreck anyone's time" .. just was trying to come up with something on the fly to clean up ... if I owned property I wouldn't want stuff I placed on purpose to get rattled ... but I'd be happy if stuff that I didn't place on purpose got fixed/returned for me.

Edit: The apartment I used to live in used to do this to a degree. You rented the apartment and a "lawn area". If your lawn property was a total disaster area they had a "team" that would clean up the garbage, and stack everything up for you next to your door. It was to beautify the neighborhood ... no one wanted to look at your junk. If you couldn't do it .. or wouldn't .. they did it for you. We paid rent, and this was part of it ... just like people pay rent to the Lindens to rent a piece of THEIR world ... I don't see a problem with them saying "Hey, you dropped this" and stacking some stuff by your door.

Ah, so rather than allowing people to simply police themselves, you would rather have some autoreturn system do it for them?

No offense, but I don't think your plan is practical or necessary. There are far too many variations on object design to be able to run a routine that could identify common objects and selectively return "unwanted" prims.

While your idea would leave the structure intact, the many items comprised of 1, 2 , 3 prims would get autoreturned. That's silly.

Sorry, but no thanks.

Clean up after yourself, and let other people worry about their own land.

Holy crap, who stole your food bowl?

You come off rather hostile in textual form, FYI. I love your "not looking for an arguement" exit statement of your other post ... followed by a rush to argue with me. Fun stuff


Thankfully it isn't my problem to solve (if you even want to call it a problem) ... I'd probably blow a blood vessel. I was just tossing out an idea as to how to possibly fix an eyesore and bandwidth drain and come up with a way to give people back things they "lost".

I'm sure there are alot of people that "police themselves" (I wasn't looking for a way to inact some oppresive force weighing them down .. nor do I think I did that) but those same people could quite easily lose/misplace things and not know where it went.

You come off as seeing it as a crushing force rolling over people's freedoms somehow ... destroying their hard-earned & hard-worked land.

I saw it as a way to help people clean up their land ... return missing items/prims ... and make everyone's world a little less cluttered with junk.

Maybe if someone could make a script to do it that you could purchase and run on your own as a landowner, instead of the 'eeevil government gestapo coming to force prims down my throat' it'd be less frightening?



Explain to me what this? "While your idea would leave the structure intact, the many items comprised of 1, 2 , 3 prims would get autoreturned. That's silly."

What 1, 2, 3 prim items could you see purposefully placed places that'd get autoreturned that people want around (that would fall through the cracks)? .. and how hard would it be to put them back once a year if you reaaaaaally wanted them there?

I just threw out a rough guideline behind the "mom/cleanup program" ... I'm not programmer ... I don't know how easy or hard any of it is ... but ... from my random 5 minutes of thought it looks like:

*Anything on the ground is excluded from cleanup. (Since stuff on the ground would be where the owner could/would be able to "police it"

*Any structures floating above the land and ALL ITEMS IN THEM would be excluded from cleanup. (Negating the whole "my skybox/house got demolished!!!!" arguement, as well as the "my skybox/house is there but everything inside vanished!!!" one as well.)

*Any floating items that were comprised of enough prims would be excluded. (If you lose a plane .. or whatever on your land ... you should find it yourself. This would save all "obviously placed architexture not of common shape".)

*Any floating LOW PRIM items that are clumped together would be excluded. (If you create/place a bunch of prims in the air as artwork, or whatever, and they're in a grouping together to satisfy the "clump" in my example before it is left alone.)

What is left? .. what stuff floating at 300Z or whatever .. composed of 1, 2, or 3 prims (or whatever random number chosen) would be so horribly & unjustly moved to your inventory to have to be placed again?

"ZOMG my giant rotating 1prim globe of the earth got returned to me ... I'll have to expend the 30 seconds to put it back up! Teh horror, teh hrror!!!111"

The worse effected people I see would be those that go around placing signs everywhere .. dropping single prims advertising their "easy money" scam of the month or whatever. Shucks if they have to go spam the landscape again.



You know what? .. screw it .. F' me for trying to think up a clever way to possibly make the place a little nicer (to look at by cleaning it up) and a little more user friendly (to people who "lose" prims). I'm sorry I expended the few minutes it took to think of it, and all this time spent argue'n with someone I don't know who seems to take it like an assault on the US Constitution's applied freedoms if someone picks up his Lincoln Logs for him.

I only see the problem getting worse though ... enough people "don't care" enough to not litter ... or will step over it ... or won't cut their grass because "why bother" or let their dog crap on the lawn and not pick it up and the smell wafts into your home and bothers you ... and those people play SL just like those that "police themselves" and never make mistakes and lose track of a prim or two.

*Grumbles*

I wasn't looking for an argument, but the post I was replying to sounded like you were getting "grumpy" so I got defensive. I am normally much more laid back, but some RL issues have been taking their toll on my forum manners of late. For that, I apologize.




In theory, it would be great to have something that can return lost prims, but I don't see a way in which it can be done without griefing people like me, who have legitimately placed items within a skyhome... and lots of them. I probably have 50 items under 5 prims in my home, not including my builds/scripted gadgets which are in development.



It's not frightening, it just sounds like a major pain in the buns.



As I mentioned earlier, I have at least 50 or so very low prim items throughout my skybox which I put there because I wanted them there. To have to place them quarterly/semi-annually/annually would be a pain in the buns.



While I can understand why you are suggesting this, the actual application of such a system would probably crash a sim trying to detect and sort each prim, what it's near, it's altitude, etc. Unfortunately, I don't believe such a system would work.



Now you are exaggerating. It's not an assault on the US Constitution. It's a pain in the buns. Forgive my tone here, but really!



My neighbor's land is his/her business. Not up to me to dictate what it looks like, what's on it, etc. That's life. As you said, life isn't fair.

The irony is... we are actually having an issue with our neighbor's god crapping in our yard. Know what we did? We are installing a fence to keep the dog out, and have notified the dog's owner that if the dog craps on our lawn again, the crap will be returned to him at a high rate of speed.

I don't see an easy resolution to this issue, nor do I feel much like arguing about it. I am sorry you were offended by my posts. Truly was not my intent. Been a bit defensive lately for a few different reasons. Again, I apologize.



I had a cookie, and I feel better, I recommend chocolate chip