To ROAM or not to ROAM?

Sorry Francis, twice it did that when I was in Io, which as you probably know is mainland, in fact I never attempted to use it to/from islands. Otherwise it did it after dropping me due to that sim border I mentioned, which also wasn't an island either.




I'll try that, thanks. Though with the PC showing less than 50% cpu usage and being on a 2Mb WAN and a 100Mb LAN I wouldn't have thought that was an issue



Yes, well I'd much rather just pay a flat fee for a working device than get into selling them for you.

All this 'recruit x users and we'll pay you a percentage' stuff smacks too much of the contents of much of my spam eMail for my liking...
Not that I'm suggesting there is any nefarious purpose behind this system (though once the market becomes saturated you will be doing quite well, won't you?).

I just happen to be the sort of person who avoids 'drip, drip' payment schemes, credit and finance and believes in paying in full, up front, for a working product.

And paying to be a beta tester is still not on in my opinion.

i dont know if i should charge for my traveller, i pay my server anyway, travel script or not :/

This error message should be impossible to generate from Io -> Tompson. I've just made a successful tour from Mocha->Io->Thomson and back again. If you see this error message again, please please contact me, because it indicates the impossible has happened and I probably need to look into it in more detail. Exact times that you tried the query would be very helpful to me, because then I can look through server logs to try and find the problem.



Some people love having the latest shiniest gizmos and giving them a go. Lord knows I was hassled enough times for a pre-release copy of the ROAM But being a beta tester is definately not for everyone.

Hopefully by the time we get out of beta, we'll be at a point where you'll be satisfied with the results :]

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention. (Geesh, even I'm getting tired of hearing me talk)
The ROAM is not purely meant as a product. Part of the motivation is a demonstration of tech. It's kind of my hope that we can license some of this stuff to other people to use in whatever manner befits them. Multi-level referrals is there mostly because we want to show people that we can actually do this, we have the infrastructure to do this, so people can choose to use any combination of our system that they want.

Francis,

An idea I had is to add support to it for parsing secondlife:// URLs - so that you could type /roam and then paste a URL, and it could extract the sim name and coordinates. People actually use the teleport functionality on Snapzilla several hundred times a day, so it would add another reason to use the ROAM to get there if you could just paste the URL.

*grins* We already do this. Thanks Torley for the feature request

Damn that meddling Torley Thanks Francis

(Gosh, I know I'm really sticking my hand into a hive of wasps here with this one, but...)



In regards to the licensing part...are you making a claim of patent on this tech? Or are you meaning you're licensing your implementation of this tech? Sooner or later, someone else is going to try to make their own competitive version to this.

Personally I have no use for ROAM, as I am a bit of a purist ("Fix the problem in-world rather than jury-rig a kludgy fix via out-world", but I can see the costs already are likely going to turn people off and/or convince others to make a cheaper/free version. What's your opinion/expectation on this happening?


- Newfie

Roam is much more than an alternative teleport. While it does have the added benefit of working when teleports fail it goes far beyond what a teleport does.

Teleports take you to the nearest telehub and you are left to wade through possibly dozens of sims to your final destination. Flying can take a long time and be very cumbersome. It's difficult to teleport and then fly to your exact final destition.

Roam makes it much more convenient to move from point to point. It's the difference between riding the bus or driving your own car. The bus takes you to the bus stop and you're left finding your way to your final destination.

Roam takes you to your final destination. It can be used sololy or in combination with a teleport. For long distances you may prefer to teleport to the nearest hub, then when you land grab the coordinates from the red marker and Roam to your final destination. Or you may simply sit back and enjoy the entire ride from point to point using Roam.

It packages all of this up into an intelligent interface designed for humans (avatars). Bookmarking allows anyone using Roam to save a location to a simple and memorable name. These bookmarks are shared between all users of Roam enabling users to use simple names to move between their favorite locations. No need for opening up the map, trying to pinpoint your destination on a tiny grid or having to wade through the Ctrl-F find results. You can even set up personal bookmarks for your own private locations. Telehubs were built to improve social networking, Roam aids in social networking by making it a community experience, sharing bookmarks of common destinations.

Roam also moves in 3D. Teleports by nature are 2D and leave you at the z-axis of the nearest telehub. With Roam you can pinpoint your landing to an exact height enabling you to reach new destinations previously unreachable through teleport. This 3D autotransport can stop on a dime. It's been tested landing on the pinpoints of steeples. This is a great way for navigating to skyboxes, air hangers, and more.

For added kicks Roam comes with a local tracker for person to person transporting, a flight accelerator, double jump, hover, and some wicked animations.

See you in the sky!

Okay, clearly, I'm talking too much at this point. One more and I'm taking a break!



The implementation, as well as access into to our servers/system. It's not "just" a pathfinder. It's also new way to do business here.

One idea:
Suppose you sell airplanes (or TVs or furniture or whatever), and maybe you're new to SL so noone's ever heard of you, and you don't have a shop. But you make the best damn airplanes around. This way, you give away your airplanes, and people can give them to their friends and so on. But you pay to activate it.

No need for a store, a reputation, anything. Just a great product, and you can succeed.

I think that principle works, as evidenced by this huge "roam roam roam roam" phenomenon. We've done exactly nothing to promote it, but it spreads like wildfire. Hopefully this demonstration is good enough to convince you the tech works, and the system is secure enough that we'd trust it with our stuff



I don't see it as a kludge at all! It's not so much meant to be a solution to a problem so much as it is a better way to travel. (The fact that it sidesteps banwalls, overzealous security scripts, and blocked teleports is just a convenient side-effect)

Maybe as we see licensees emerge, we'll have differentiated services to suit anyone's need. (Imagine that, you want to go somewhere, just shout "TAXI!" But hopefully we can stay on top by trying to innovate and just being better. If nothing else, SL's shown us that it rewards innovation and hard work.

Oh, uhm. While I'm here. We really do want to license our stuff. But for all the people asking, please wait until we get this darn thing out of "beta" mode, we've got our hands full at the moment!

EDIT: Oh. Uhm, I see Rathe is here to answer all your questions. Cheers /wave /wave

actually, Francis, I think it's wonderful that you and Rathe have taken the time to explain things -- just don't become a slave to comments and criticisms posted here lol ... you'll never get anything else done!

The cat is out of the bag, and even though I've now seen a few friends using this (not surprisingly), I've been scratching my head as to whether it was production or beta, and what the pricing structure was, etc.

so thanks for the clarifications


looking forward to learning more, especially about its overall functionality and your licensing scheme... I love making things, but can't script worth a damn... curious what build ideas this might bring me... as long as it doesn't require me to code

Rathe,

Your bus/car analogy was great, except that the difference between teleporting normally and using the ROAM is like the difference between taking the bus somewhere and then having to walk to your desitination, or being picked up and taken there by limo. The thing I love most about it is that you can even walk away from screen while it is travelling, since it is automatic, and that you can IM. This makes the "commute" in SL so much more bearable, and doesn't make me so adamant about point to point teleporting. Anyone who calls this some type of kludge or Nexcom like doesn't understand the device at all, or the concepts behind it. Great job on it, seriously!

(Definition from dictionary.com )
kludge or kluge Pronunciation Key (klooj)
n. Slang

1. A system, especially a computer system, that is constituted of poorly matched elements or of elements originally intended for other applications.
2. A clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem.


Wether it's a solution to a problem or a 'better way to travel', it's still a design that has to resort to using out-of-world components in order to accomplish its task. Toss in the fact that it sidesteps the above-mentioned travelling issues instead of trying to deal with it directly, and the system is clearly a kludge. That's not to say it's not a good system, or will be hugely popular; it's just had to resort to inelegant out-of-world processes to do so. That makes it a kludge.

I honestly think the concept behind the system is a good one - it's an imaginative way to deal with the long-standing travelling issues in SL. In the meantime, I'll wait patiently for an actual in-world solution that doesn't depend on outside resources for its operation.


- Newfie

this is a bit late, i apparently failed to send it this morning before going to work.

i tried roam from newcomb to ahern; after ten minutes it dawned on me that the script would work better when not in a no-script area; scripts are funny that way

upon moving to goguen and starting it up i tried to adjust my camera angle and viewing distance in hopes of being able to see something, but it got me there so fast i was at the destination before i had a good chance to try on the distance and angle. this was a very good result

then i gave it a harder test, from ahern to waterhead; it gave a sim border error message and got stuck. i gave it the command again once and it finished the path to waterhead. total time and energy spent getting to waterhead was much less than flying. i gave up on trying to see anything, you are just too high up. however you can follow your progress on the map to pass the time.

while writing this post i rode the ROAM from ahern to cecropia, in the south of the new continent, with no problem and so fast and easily i didn't notice it happened as i wrote this on the second monitor

this seems like exceedingly clever scripting to me. if i remember correctly the price is 3000 bucks a year. i take it that includes all the ROAMing one wants. if so, that sounds like a reaonable price to pay to me. i have seen many a less useful thing priced that high or higher, i have some of them sitting unused in my inventory.

Does /roam work on the new continent? I've tried book marking my place and a famly members place. When trying to /roam back to my place it aborts.

The one time it almost worked it sent me about 4 sims straight north, then aborted. I tried again and it sent me straight up into the stratosphere, lol. Now I can't get it to work at all, it just aborts.

Since this is beta I can see there will be bugs. I can still manually fly though ...that's very fast at least. Although once it did leave my prim shoes behind for a bit.

As far as I know, there's at least two other offworld pathfinders that are currently running (and up to date); I've had one privately for over a year now^; the big reason no-one's released a product like this before is the amount of work involved in maintaining it; that, and only recently have border crossings become reliable enough to consider releasing something commercially.

The ROAM is definetely a cool product and Fran & Rathe have applied a good deal of polish to this. But I suspect you may be right in that a cheaper version may sneak it's way onto the market if someone can take on the job of updating the sims db regularly; and maintaining the server and scripts needed.

-Adam

^ - Me & Nikolai Weber had one running before 1.3 arrived; we had 210 notecards each loaded with all possible paths 'pre-rendered', and thrown into an attachment. You have no idea how much we wished for bulk notecard upload then. (And before then, there were some pure-LSL pathfinders around, but they were fairly slow)

The map has been updated. Thanks for the heads up on the new sims!

Are people really complaining about the price? That is a serious complaint? $399L a month? That like a $1.50 USD. The day I can't spend a buck fifty on myself, just kill me. $3999L a year, Whopping $12. OMG! That's my popcorn and soda money at the movies, if I get a small Gawd. Whiners.

Rathe and Francis this Roam scripting intrigues me and it cud work perfectly for something i have created, if i cud to talk either of you in-game about it, i'd prefer to discuss it there

well since this post is about automatic travelling i add my little plug, about building simmilar stuffs, i have now finished the first part of my script, i can say its very fast and this speed isnt only in straight line , (in fact my travelling system is going faster when turning.

raw perfs: move to its work height in 2.8 seconds
average time to cross a sim in straight line : 2.7 seconds

I managed to make some good improvements related to the 'next sim linkage' so i can now affirm its impossible to get crashed on a sim line ^^

I am waiting for my webhost to set my mail parsing script to install the pathfinder on it

I am wondering how i am gonna release this system, some kind of boxed API with ability to receive link messages? , i dunno, and i dunno how bad it will stress the backend server, many tests on the way...)

So yes there will be some competition ^^

and i have still no name for it :/

Well dont see my message as an attack or something like this, this kind of techs have tickled me since a long time now and it seems to be the best moment to put myself to work

I'm in the UK and found ROAM to be a sort of so-so option until I saw the price, which I'm afraid made it a no. If you want a beta tester from over here I'm willing to spend some time trying it out for you though, starting from next week.

I tried half a dozen trips and found that half of them failed despite being all mainland-mainland trips.

One, to Kafiri got me close then failed and left me needing to relog, hovering about 2m above the land at the centre of Kafiri. It generated a 'cannot complete journey' message.

From Kafiri to wherever I tried next just seemed to silently fail. Between 10 and 15 minutes after telling it to go I was still there, so I aborted it, tped and flew, total time 45 seconds to fully arrive and rez (the target was 89m from the telehub though).

Re the Portage Sim issue - there's a hotline post from me about it, and I've bug reported it.

I routinely have about 10 attachments on, hair and a pair of shoes with A certain Mr. Chung's Animation Override built in to one heel. Whether I fly or walk across the Lemon-Portage sim crossing I crash about 70% of the time (I didn't start keeping an accurate count from incident 1, but 17 of 25 that I have counted sounds like 68% to me). Crossing other sims I crash <1% of the time, probably much less, it's always a surprise when it happens. I tend to fly to the edge of the sim by which I want to leave and then wait for packet loss to reach zero then cross again - slower than some options, but it works for me. I use the same tactic for that border, and now if I must fly that route I tend to fly into Lemon and relog, that way my start point is at least within the sim rather than the 900m flight from the telehub...

I have to say though, that using your high speed option didn't seem to crash me on sim crossings, which was certainly nice.

BTW Kyrah, since work is drying up for the summer for me, if you want a beta tester I'll happily do some for your gloves too.

Setting the record straight!

Regarding my earlier comments about ROAM dropping out on certain sim borders - I took Francis' advice on setting the max bandwidth to 50 and had a horrible evening of lag and poor response. I then took the other approach and set it to 1000, everything speeded up and I have now extensively tested and got excellent results with only one dropout (at a new location) out of 20 or so 'jumps', but no other problems except general unresponsiveness to input in a fairly laggy sim, which is not unexpected.

This device IS able to get me from anywhere I have tried to my land in Tompson, which is more than normal TP plus flight can do!

In fact I recieved an eMail from LL telling me that all my problems are due to 'network issues outside SL' this morning and then spent half an hour or so trying to get to Tompson the 'SL' way while carefully monitoring network performance, which was excellent, while I was being mislocated by both map and menubar location and Honawan and Tompson remained unreachable and invisible! Finally I was stuck, unable to do anything, even TP out of wherever I actually was (indications were that I never got past Badger, because that was where I was when I logged back in...) and had to relog.

Of course ROAM got me in on numerous occasions while travelling very fast with absolutely no problems caused by those 'network issues outside SL'... Odd that, you'd think something like ROAM would be MORE prone to failure if the 'network issues outside SL' (I.E. my ISP or my LAN) were the culprit, wouldn't you? Bearing in mind the greater flight speed of ROAM, faster sim transitions, etc. Still, LL says it can't be anything to do with them, so they must be right...

While I dislike the 'pyramid sales/MLM' approach of ROAM intensely, and would still be happy to pay a flat up front fee for it, I may have no option but to use it, given LL's continued denial that there is a problem crossing sims in the Tompson area, despite several individuals also reporting it and my having sent in detailed step by step bug reports on the subject.

It's a sad situation when one is forced to stump up L$399 a month on top of tier to use one's own land, but there it is - until someone decides to get to the bottom of this problem I have little choice in the matter.

Meantime I believe Francis and Rathe have come up with something useful - it needs a bit of fiddling with to get the best results, but once you have things set up to suit ROAM and have got the hang of using it, it is a reasonable solution to my ongoing problems with Tompson at the very least.

Their willingness to discuss problems, user provoked or otherwise, and rapid response does them considerably more credit than LL's approach to support too!

The problem with ROAM may be that it's real usefullness is limited to people like myself who have the misfortune to be involved with sims that have 'issues', and those who feel, correctly in my opinion, that it is an excellent way of completing long hops from TP hubs to distant landmarks without dodging high builds, floating builds and Rotweiler security systems enroute.

Is it worth the cost? Only you can decide.

Guess I'm converted!

One query Francis and Rathe..

I have a landmark on the ground floor of a three story structure, when I ROAM to it I arrive on the second floor (I.E. in the middle of the building!) rather the ground floor where I set the landmark. Seems odd. The ground floor would have been nice, the top floor I could have understood. But the middle floor?

Luckily it drops me on the bed, it could easily have been the hot tub!