Ghost Blimps in our sims

Recently, in the last week or so, these blimps started appearing in our sim, Tilitr. They just hover in the air, most times it starts out with one, then two and then next thing we know we have 5 of them high up in the air all intersecting each other at weird angles.

These blimps appear to be ownerless, and creatorless and usually appear over Linden land. The Lindens have been kind enough to remove them for us but as soon as they get removed more seem to appear.

Now I have seen pilotless blimps roaming the sims in the last few weeks. These ghosts could be some sort of a remainder of these blimps's brief existence in our sim as it passes on by. I don't know.

I have heard that other people are experiencing the same phenomenon.

If you're the creator of these pilotless blimps, please either fix your code or stop releasing these faulty blimps onto our SL land. It is the right thing to do and your neighbors would highly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance

ES

If you're speaking out to Cubey Terra and Apotheus Silverman, you must know already that they are highly competent, technically distinguished engineers and designers of fine aircraft, who would not knowingly unleash buggy, harmful scripted aerovehicular particulars onto the public. I have enjoyed their blimp -- uh, dirigible -- uh, zeppelin -- uh, airship rides several times.

Also, sim crossings -- which the Abbotts folk have no control over -- are known to bug up vehicles and have them rematerialize or completely dematerialize. Ghosting may be a side effect of this, and I wish the Lindens well in a superfix.

Sorry to hear of your troubles, Troy -- it definitely sounds like an annoyance. Hope this gets resolved efficiently.

I just want to clarify. I would never not mention a person's name and imply who they are in writing instead. These objects have NO creator and No owner data so I REALLY do not know who made them. If I knew believe me, I would not make a public scene and go to the person directly.



Troy

Yeah, Troy, also to clarify: I didn't mean to say that you were calling anyone out, since you said the blimps were clearly ownerless. I should have stated that the only blimps I know fitting your description would be their work. I just wanted to give some context into what actually might be happening -- because as for automated airship expertise in SL, if anyone would know -- including fixing of bugs -- it'd likely be the Abbotts crew. So even if they didn't make the blimps, they might be able to fix them!

Hey, speaking of -- do you have any screenshots?

Troy, I am sorry, and apologize for not stating this earlier.

Ghosted objects usually show no creator info. You will usually only see something like "Retrieving..." and that's it.

Troy, I've seen these same blimps.. they fly south from Tilitir over my land in Stillman and seem to make a right turn in Natoma near 'The Man' statue. The blimp continues west and crosses into the sim west of Natoma (I forget which one it is). I quit following the blimp at that point.

I'm assuming it does a giant, multi-sim circle. They're pretty cool and are neat to watch them fly by, I just disklike the ghosting issue.

Ghosts of the blimp can usually be found above the telehub in Stillman.

Well, at least they're not crashing. Oh, the humanity!

For some reason, I was under the impression that the ghosting was happening on the server side instead of the client side. I guess the frequency of the visits made it seem like the blimps were getting ghosted on the server side. This however was a mistaken assumption. The blimps are only getting ghosted in my client. Because my client is on all day long, at the end of the day I have 5-7 blimps all in each other in a cluster in the sky.

However, quitting out of SL (heaven forbid) and re-signing on solves the problem -- true to form of a ghosted object.

THanks to all that helped me solve this mystery. The problem still remains but as you said, at least they're not crashing and they go away when I quit out.

Troy

The blimps in question were created by Cubey and myself. They start in Abbotts and fly an hour-plus-long tour through a good chunk of the world.

The behavior you are witnessing is a client-side phenomenon called ghosting that happens when your client fails to receive or understand the server's command that tells it to stop rendering that object.

As far as the impact and performance of the blimps, there is another thread regarding that here. The blimps use the same technology as the 737's.

I have been taking in all the praise and complaints I've received (I get both every day) and I still think the benefit of keeping them running outweighs the detrimental problems of ghosting.

Comments, suggestions, flames welcome.

Long live the blimps!

I love the blimps.. I just wish the ghosting would vaporize.. I know it's not you guys. *cough cough LL*

Second this. STRONGLY. *waves to the aircraft-designing mannequin*

In fact, we need more. It's a great group activity to go sightseeing, and this needs to be publicized so that more newcomers get an easy-access view to the glory of Second Life without having to worry about getting lost -- provided the airship doesn't disappear at a sim crossing.

I will be adding a new 737 route perhaps this weekend which visit all the Amazon Nation airports.

At this time I will probably also update their scripts so they have announcements before and during flights. For blimps this will be used as a sort of automated tour guide, and for jetliners it will be used for destination announcements.

Fan of the Blimp myself!

I posted these pictures on another thread a bit ago, but seems to be a good time to share them again. My home in Mimas is on the blimp's usual route, and it passes quite closely to my abode on a regular basis. However, there are occasional blimp pile-ups, which was very startling the first time I saw it! I don't notice any ill effects from the blimp or their infrequent collisions ... and it's become a very welcome and regular part of my SL day / evening. Like others have pointed out, I have not been able to identify the owner / creator, or I would be gladly giving positive ratings galore!!

discordia

Kick acid! w00haa i'm gonna check this out when the new AI-737s are up.

Also, are you going to make a big sign at Abbotts, likely situated near the runway, which advertises such flights? It'll get more people to wait (where did the chairs go, BTW?) and anticipate the next adventure. Wheeeeee!

I think it would be a good idea to build a separate platform for the blimps and have them take off only when someone sat in one.

Apotheus, just an fyi...

I followed the blimp again, paying a bit more attention and I noticed it 'crashes' into the castle in Natoma when making a right turn. I watched a couple of them and they did the same thing.

Hmm. I didn't notice that during the test run, but I can check again and give a new route to Apoth. One of the risks of plotting a route near or over private land is that someone may place a castle in the way.

hehehe.. this is true. I promise not to move mine. It actually bumps into that tiny, old castle thats been in Natoma for ages.

It could be fun to let it continue to run into the castle but have some sounds (sreams of horror/warning alerts) play as it gets closer and closer to the castle.

Oh, Delerium Digeridoo's castle? Hmm... it wasn't clipping that before. Very strange.

Cubey, I don't suppose you have creator controls over these things? There's one in the clouds in Magenta, and my neighbors are one of those giant megaconglomerate groups that don't bother to build with their group tags on, so they never auto-return or even return anything. Stupid thing is going to be there for MONTHS unless you can remove it.

Are you sure it's actually one of the AI blimps? Who's the owner?

You know, these sound a lot like early (1890 AD-1905AD) UFO reports, mysterious airships seen buzzing about......

I wonder...........

Oh, this is just the beginning

Can't wait until we have some ghost trains in SL.

I have scanned Magenta and am unable to find any blimps.