Parcel Privacy In SL

I know this has been discussed to death, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents.

I think one of the biggest things missing in SL is private space. While you can own land, it's still part of a larger space.

There are parcel tools, but they are limited. People can still play with the camera POV and see what's going on event in restricted spaces and drop listeners and what not. There really isn't any real privacy. People make scripts to eject other users from thier land, seek out scripted objects, put up FUGLY walls, make skyboxes, and mch more all in the search for privacy.

I think parcel tools need to be updated... Some ideas of mine I'd like to see:

Parcel boundry occlusion- You you know all those things in the debug rendering menu? Make it so we can check off what types of features we want to see beyond our parcel boundries. I think it would be awesome If I could let only land, trees, and sky show through in/out.

Block Cameras from peeking in places that avatars can't go.

It would also be great if we could limit text being said in one parcel from being received in another.

Ideally, to me, a private sim should be able to rent out a grid of rooms without any users being able to contact with others in the same sim.

Or better yet figure out a way to break a sim down to mini-sims.

I know SL is big on contituity, but I wouldn't mind a Harry Potter inside-is-bigger-than outside effect when entering an establishment via llteleportagent.

I'd agree with chat being restricted in the same way that spatialised sound can be, i.e. a tickbox being available, but I wouldn't agree with the rest.

A posted a similar thread here though the implementation is more ambitious.

But yeah, I do agree that something is needed to makes homes feel more like homes. Limiting speech definitely high on the list, as well as camera blocking.

I absolutely do not want camera blocking. I have enough trouble moving the camera around as it is near to boundaries without it suddenly being bounced out because somebody wants to protect the view of their poseball.

when you need privacy you can log out ^^

They really need to allow camera motion underground and limited underground building to provide the kind of privacy that skyboxes tease you with.

What I was thinking was that you could use llTeleportAgent() as the gateway, when it comes in. Specify an underground zone out of view of any surface camera in which parcel boundaries are absolute barriers to rendering and transmission, or in which each parcel's zone is positioned at a virtual offset large enough that it's out of render range for basement of any other parcel in sim. A scripted object owned by the landowner (or perhaps group officer, for group-owned land) would be able to call llTeleportAgent(av, llGetPos() - <0,0,768>, llGetRegionName()); and land in a space that can't be reached any other way...

Hmm, that's a good idea as well, hell, underground stuff alone would be great never mind if it added privacy

But I don't see why it would be impossible to add more privacy above ground though. My main reason for my boundary box idea was that it would let you do these kinds of things without blocking camera/chat access to the entire parcel. ie a house with a garden shouldn't block your view of the garden, but only inside the house. In that way if you are in the boundary box (ie you were let in by the house's door) then you would be unrestricted, but outside of it you'd only be able to see the house, not inside it.

It would maybe require some adjustments to the camera though to make it more seamless, e.g if it's a low area of camera block then the camera moves up a bit to look down on your av, or if it's a tall blocked area it would zoom etc. Simply being unable to turn your camera in a given direction would certainly be a pain.

An alternative I suppose (still assuming boundary boxes) would be to have the contents of the box made invisible (ie they wouldn't render) unless you are inside that area, so cameras can still move in there, but you can't see anything that's going on.

You don't bounce the camera, it'll just not move as if you had reached the max distance allowed from your avatar.



Dur, why didn't we think of that?
Oh! I know! Because maybe we want to talk to people we know inWorld? Or maybe have a visual interface and not just the text of IMs? Maybe we want to work on a project without being interupted.

Well, the main reason is that given the way SL seems to be held together by dried spittle and thumbtacks, if it were done at all it best be done simply.

Mapping an offset space into llGetPos()-<0,0,768> avoids a lot of complexities, because so long as there's not too many basements in a sim they can all be moved out of max-draw-distance from each other, so the only thing that would need to be done is a user interface for buying basement space (say, for 10% extra tier or something) and some special case code in llTeleportAgent() so that when the source or destination has a negative "Z" offset it does a table lookup to see where that parcel's "basement" actually is.

I think during the last Town Hall a feature was mentioned where if an object was completely blocked from view by another object it wouldn't get rendered... if there was a way to turn that on for transparent prims it would be easy to create a wall that blocks out your neighbors.

Digging underground is nice, but other people can always just teleport down to where you are.

I keep thinking of text-based chat... or rather multiple-user chat kingdoms (MUCKs) that a lot of furries are used to. There are public spaces and private spaces with user-created content. Lots of interesting things you can do with locks and such...

And lots of things like WiXXX, WiTF, and species tags.... But I digress. I really think Lindens should look at the functionalities (is that a word?) of long established user-created multi-user environments to understand the "plumbing" needed for this type of social interaction.

Back to privacy... Using the MUCK analogy, SL needs "Rooms." A room would pretty much be like a tiny private sim that could only be accessed by having your av be at a specific spot (an "exit" in SL. No teleporting into rooms, they can't be listed in find, etcetera. Rooms should have the option of having the people inside it appear offline, away, or busy. If they don't appear offline, a search for a person inside a room would show their location as being at the room's entrance in SL.

I tried to describe what I think would be the easiest way to go about it... which is convert parcels into private rooms and have island owners sell them off. But that kinda destroys continuity.

Oh well, discuss amongst yourselves. ;D

If they can teleport down to where you are then you're not underground. Have a look at the proposal... the idea was that the basement would be 768 meters down (out of range of camera or sit teleports) and that llTeleportAgent() wouldn't allow you to teleport to a negative "z" unless it was running in a prim owned by the owner of the target land. This would be cheaper to implement than creating separate sims, it wouldn't change the economic relationship between land and prims, and it would provide the same capability as separate mini-sims.

As for tags, see my comment in the other thread about llGetProp().

Huh, that is a good idea... but if your neighbors build a basement next to you, then what's the point? That is a better solution though.

We really need to consolidate our votes in order to archive the 500 votes needed for LL to acknowledge it.

I propose someone goes threw the entire voting system and makes a list of all the proposals that ask the same thing.

Then a new vote could be created with a "I want a private space" and here are some options with links to all the proposed methods.

Categories.
1. Proposals for limiting chat.
2. Proposals for object occlusion.
Not really possible without manually setting them using "Zones".
This includes proposals for removing non visible prims from the LOD list to increase frame rate.
3. Proposals to disable Alt Key mouse look. Not really needed if the objects arn't on the LOD.
4. Proposals for underground land or turning off land.
I now know that negative numbers will work in SL, It's hard to get there, but you can.
5. Proposals for higher ban limits to protect sky boxes.

Anyone want to give me a price to go threw the list and make summaries for the proposal?

In my view the manually set "void zone" combined with regular underground building would be ideal since it would allow you to build at the water line for unique underground builds and you could still see your other pieces of land unless you add a "void zone". You would also be able to make tunnels to other peoples land, if they allow it, and even cross Sims underground. At the same time it removes mouse look issues since even if you mouse look into the zone, you won't see anything.

As for others teleporting in, that is not a problem since they would be immediately Teleported Home using a security script or auto ejected if they are on the "Ban" list.

Edit:
Here is my earler proposal
/13/91/92793/1.html

That's what "Mapping an offset space into llGetPos()-<0,0,768> avoids a lot of complexities, because so long as there's not too many basements in a sim they can all be moved out of max-draw-distance from each other," refers to.

Let's say it's a new sim, nobody's created any basement's yet, my parcel's center is at <16,16,21> and I "buy a basement". When a scripted object on my land called llTeleportAgent(av,<16,16,-768>,llGetRegionName()) the agent would end up at <16,16,-768> on the "floor" of my basement. I'd have (say) <0,0,-768> to <32,32,-704> to play with.

Now you, next door, with a parcel centered on <16,48,24>, buy one. You call llTeleportAgent(av,<16,48,-768>,llGetRegionName()) but you find yourself at <16,-528,-768>. Your basement got offset <0,-512,0> to keep it out of draw-distance of mine.

Now let's say a while later I decide I want a second basement for REALLY kinky stuff, so I peel off a 256m chunk centered on <4,22> into a new parcel and buy a basement for it, and find myself at <4,2,-1280> because the next available basement slot was offset <0,0,-512>...

Anything that depends on "ban lists" or security scripts isn't going to solve the problem, because they're a large part of the problem by themselves.

Okay, I'm sold. ^_^