Teleport This

Ya know here's the thing though Marvin, we don't move around the world; we're already there. When we "teleport," we simply alter our download stream from one source to another. Stop accepting data from a veiwpoint of simA(<x,y,z> and start recieving data from simB(<x,y,z>. We're still using the same colo, route, network, desktop and client program. Our end is just suddenly drawing a scene using a different data stream.

I work with users that back out of websites all the way to their original home page before closing their browser because they believe they're traversing physical space rather than...come to think of it...people at LL and TN and such probably think that's a good thing.

For the record, there is no reason I can think of to eliminate telehubs. I'm sure that a percentage of the population are perfectly happy porting to hubs and flying around the grid. More power to them, it's their world and they should have that ability to view it and travel through it in a way that makes them comfortable and happy.

It seems obvious though that there's also a percentage of us that prefer to "travel" directly. Why can we not be afforded the ability to port in way that makes us comfortable and happy? Why should we have to pay for it? Why are we branded telehub destroying monsters?

PS I know your name is Martin, I was just trying to get your attention because I like you /waves

If the world is huge and nobody realises it, then doesn't that suggest that your argument against p2p teleporting is moot? I mean, we don't have it now, and in your belief nobody realises the world is huge now. So that's kind of a lost cause, no?

Speaking personally, if I found an interesting place through find, or somebody gave me a landmark to go and check something out, I'd be more likely to go and visit it if I didn't have to go via. telehubs and could get there instantly with p2p. At the moment I put it off for a later date when it's more convenient, simply because most of the time I can't be bothered to teleport to a telehub then fly for 1000m to get to it. Call me lazy, but I wonder how many other people think like this?

This is not true LF. We can just flip pages. We can flip to mainland telehub locations, our home setting, anywhere anyone invites us to or any estate sim. We flip easily and without ruining our immersion. We're just forced to do it in a limited fashion rather than as we see fit. But then it's not like it's supposed to be our world or anything.

This doesn't wash. People travel all over The Grid All Hail The Central Grid under severe traveling limitations. They would only travel more if they could pop in and out of areas on a whim. Look also to the estates. They can be detached, and many are, building their world. But many are also forming small continents. Communities form and interact because people want to mingle, not because people are forced to commute through narrow, crowded routes.

No one is branding you a telehub destroying monster. I just disagree with your position on this, as you disagree with mine.

A monster you are not.

I go fewer places overall because travel is slow, tedious and unreliable. I'm not very enthusiastic about exploring because it takes so long for things to rez. I've started to wonder about SL's commitment to streaming content. I realize more and more that what I'd really like is a way to browse places without having to download them in their entirety, and to be able to visit/download a cool place in one gulp without bothering to download the texture library for sale next door. Maybe P2P teleporting is just part of what I'd like.

LOL love you too nut!

Khamono I agree with you it definatly should be what ever makes ppl happy and comfortable. Thanks for the info on data streams I found that very interesting. (learned something new today

I also think if you give the ppl what they want your more apt to have customer retention. I know its a radical thought that these types of services should be free. Kinda like doors to the entrance of a JC Penny's if JC Penny's decided to charge me a buck to got threw the door I think Macy's would find me at their door next lol.

I will never understand anyone pushing the idea that we should be charged for anything that will enable us to view their product more easily.


/waves back to Khamon

Mar

Eggzactly. And like I've been saying, LL does not understand the difference between Topology and Topography. Topology is the logical structure of something, Topography is the lay of the land.
We're the only ones who know what interests us and what would interest our users.
Yes, *our* users! If SL is to be a platform then it's up to us to worry about users, whether they be gamers, socialites, or scientists.
We should have the freedom to define our own topologies, our own logical maps, much like we customize the look of our desktop.
This can be achieved on an abstract, space-independent level through the use of landmarks, and on an experiential level through llSitTarget "teleporting".
Telehubs get in the way of the former, the 300m limit gets in the way of the latter.
We need P2P teleporting and scripted teleportation of arbitrary avatars to arbitrary places.
I want to make a game consisting of various levels, so upon completion of a given level, my users should be able to walk into a door and be seamlessly transported to wherever I'm storing it. Since in SL you are forcibly equating Topology with Topography, in order to make a truly seamless large-scale gaming experience I would need to either buy a HEAP of land, use the rather crude and limited llSitTarget hack that you've been wanting to nerf, or come up with an insanely slow and complicated system to dynamically store and load level definitions off an external database.

Someday, hopefully - the 2.0 renders will be out. Granted, the way things have gone recently, it may be the year 2036 before they're completed. But they are on the roadmap.

Once that happens, I'm envisioning our collective blinders being taken off. Imagine if smooth 512m draw distances really became a reality? I'd bet complaints over skyboxes cluttering the sky will be one of the first things we'll hear about.

But what of Telehubs then? If things rez quickly, and you can see far off into the distance - the fact that things take so long to rez today will seem like ancient history.

My concern is - if we remove what little zoning we have, and commit ourselves to a random landscape based upon the lacking technology as it exists today, we will really be hating it when 2.0 comes out.

Even more so, because that ugly black-box casino that may be outside of your draw distance today, may be fully visable in the future.

Makes now difference to me. The thing I hate is the boring-ass, totally pointless 1000m flight I have to do from that telehub to actually get where I wanted to go - it's an absolutely false limitation. The new render won't make a jot of difference to that.

But it's like that at the moment anyway so, like LF's argument, your point is apparently moot. 99.9% of sims have ugly-ass builds, clubs, casinos or just archictectual abomonations within your draw view, or very close to it.

Simply stamping our feet? That's rather dismissive. It is possible to consider the issue maturely and come to a different opinion than you.

So all those private islands, each with their very own telehub of course, aren't really part of the world and should run offline?

I'm always nervous when I make this kind of post, because I never know what someone knows and what they don't. Working in IT has kind of dulled my sense of politeness when explaining things, because I tend to just assume the person on the other end of the phone thinks their browser is called "Windows 98." That said, I apologize in advance if I say anything you're already aware of, Lordfly.

You actually can "flip pages" in Second Life, three ways immediately come to mind. If you need to get across the main continent really quicky, if you bring up your map, there's a Teleport option. That won't take you exactly where you need to go, but it'll get you to the nearest Telehub. The second way to "flip" is to have a friend teleport you to where ever they are, whether they're on the main grid or an estate sim. They have to call you, but the sudden ability to pop in next to a friend is very discontinuitous. The third way is that you can teleport home by default. Each avatar is able to set one home location, and no matter where they are in-world, they can teleport to that home location.

So, not to wholly disagree with you, but in some instances you can "flip pages" in Second Life. These ways are methods setup by the Lindens themselves, which goes to say that even they don't always take spatial continuity into account.

Another way is to be "sent to your room" for trespassing as discussed earlier. It is rather absurd that we can both do for and unto others, but are not allowed to turn the page for ourselves.

*waves hands in the air* Me, me, ME!! I HATE telehubs. I want point-to-point teleporting. Having to use telehubs is a BIG WASTE OF MY TIME. I believe it won't be the end of civilization as we know it in SL, and that hy-oooge black box bling-club-casino-mall-whatevers won't spring up in vast, random quantities next to pretty little (virtual) houses with white picket fences, flowers and kittens. (And all the land I own in SL is within 95m or less of telehubs, so I probably should be biased in favor of them.)

Right on, Khamon, for starting this thread.

Don't forget the push scripts that overlap on to other people's land, so they can't go to the edge of their parcel without being pushed around.

I too would like to see P2P teleporting become available.

However, I do have a concern with it. It kind of spooks me to think that somebody could teleport directly into my living room at will. Right now my home is a few clicks from the nearest teleporter. So if I am changing my clothing or having a private conversation I can at least keep an eye on the mini map and look for green dots approaching. The thought that somebody could just appear in front of me instantly at any moment doesn't seem to have any analog in real life either.

The problem isn't just at home or someplace where access restrictions or teleporting restrictions could help. For example, if I am out in the middle of an empty field owned by Governor Linden having a conversation with a friend, any person could simply and instantly appear and intrude without notice. It might even be a fun game for a griefer to play ... find any two green dots and instantly pop in on them.

I realize that perfect privacy is not possible in SL, but wouldn't P2P teleporting create a host of new privacy issues? Or maybe I am not understanding how it would be implemented.

You're welcome but I really was just ranting to begin with.

Not if it were implemented with enough forethought. They would have to add a checkbox to the About Land window that let us activate and deactivate a parcel's status as a teleport destination. Whether the devs would bother to think it through or not is anybody's guess.

llTeleportAgentHome and llEjectFromLand need to both have a 15 second pre-execution delay, like the parcel tools do. With the parcel tools, you get a popup that says "You are no longer allowed here and have 15 seconds to leave." Why not make those two functions behave the same? If the person subsequently returns to the parcel within 24 hours, they don't get the warning, just like you can't enter a parcel with restricted access after your 15 seconds are up (or once you have left.)

This could go some way toward solving the problem, but I don't think it goes far enough. In real life, if I am at a mall or at a friend's house, I do not have to be concerned that somebody (friend, foe, or otherwise) is going to suddenly materialize directly in front of me, or just behind me. I could take this even beyond the discussion of P2P teleporting. In real life, I am not wearing a LoJack transmitter that tells my friends exactly where I am at all times. For some reason, in Second Life I am.

Anybody that knows me knows that I don't have a whole lot to hide. Still, that doesn't mean that I am comfortable broadcasting my every move to my friends, or giving anybody the ablity to instantly intrude on me.

On the original topic:

Is it not appropriate to abuse report an over aggressive security system?

On P2P teleporting:

By and large the issue is money. The people who paid 10s (if not 100s) of US$ for their telehub will get pissed if P2P were made free.

Other issues with free P2P that folks may come up with may be valid, but could certainly be worked around in other ways. This is the issue that few (if any) people want to admit to.

HP

Edit: I meant US$ not L$ (doh!)

Too bad. The market gives, the market takes away. To everything there is season, a time for profit and a time for loss.

If the Lindens want a higher retention rate they need to make going from one content provider's product to another's instant.

People who make good stuff that one wants to see deserve to have their customers get there instantly.

People who invested in something that has value only because of artificial restrictions on the programs capabilities made a mistake. They made a lousy investment. They can cut their losses and invest in something else.

This is a very good point. It got me thinking, again in the context of the privacy concerns I described above. What if, instead of giving people the ablity to instantly appear anywhere they wanted on the grid, we gave parcel owners the right to establish that the landing zone on their parcel is a telehub? This would prevent griefers from appearing in my living room, but give parcel owers the abilty to offer instant access to thier location? It would also give parcel owners some control over where people appear (such as at the front door of a club rather than directly onto the DJ's head).

That's a great idea.

What's a great idea? Making teleporting to a parcel optional for the land owner? The answer to that is "This could go some way toward solving the problem, but I don't think it goes far enough."

She just restated what I said in the first place and you're all ooo aaa yes we love her remarkably fresh and innovative idea. Did Martin put you up to this?

I see your point about common privacy Persehpone. It still feels wrong to map someone and just show up where they are. I only do that with people that I know well enough to be sure they're comfortable with it. Otherwise they get a quick IM asking them if it's okay to visit. But being forced to use a telehub to reach people doesn't prevent me from 'sneaking up' on them. That's a societal condition that a government imposed limitation just can't fix.

First I'm you're alt. Then people have the brilliant insight that SL is a neat CAD program. Now I'm being put up to do stuff.

Fuck all of you!