Walls must be reduce voice range!

Case 1:

someone want build an Hotel. An Hotel is a series of adjacents rooms, yes? Well, each room is used from differents customers, wich talk or make ... something like sex.

In a realistic world, except for people who shout when have sex or talk, normally, neighbors dont hear anything, because walls lows all sounds.

Well, that dont happens in SL

Case 2 (similar):

I've a land with an house. Near me, someone have another house, near the mine house. Why I should hear all words of this person? I'm not a spy, I'm not interested about moanings of my neighbors whe they have sex and I dont woant other hear my talks when I'm in my house.


In both cases, I dont think IM must be a good idea, because is limited for two peoples. I dont want too to set a group... I want to talk normally, in my house, become shure I'm not listen from other external peoples.

Why? Is simple. Walls must reduce voice range, depending its thickness and/or material. Is so hard to do that?

I will set a vote about that.

Sorry for my english.

Thank you

Agree with you completely on this one!
I think the problem with a solution as you describe it is that it would require some quite complicated processing of an environment in order to determine if a message can make it through the wall or not, so it is likely extremely impractical to do it that way due to the dynamic nature of SL.

However, there are a few ideas which are intended to combat this, I've posted a suggestion for blocking chat and other things in defined areas, which you can read about here:
/8/e1/73895/1.html

Argent Stonecutter also had a suggestion to allow 'basement' areas, basically opening up land below-ground that would allow you to essentially the same thing that a skybox does (ie moves you so far away you can't be heard), but doing so BELOW ground thus avoiding sky clutter. Though I don't know if that one was put on the SL voting area?

The addition of the ability to have scripted teleports may improve this as well, as it would let you enter your house at ground but would teleport you to a skybox high up where you can't be heard. The difference is that this would be seamless compared to current methods if done correctly.

Yes, it would be extremely hard to do that as you describe. That's the kind of problem that people find easy to solve, but computers can't do with any efficiency at all.

Which is exactly why it would be a seprate 'tool,' like what was implied by the thread Haravikk Mistral linked to. I honestly think that sl is relying on too many things being automatic. Cullings automatic, and it works at a mediocre level, but if they added a separate 'culling plane' tool, then a builder could aid the system /alot/. Now with chat, how hard would it be to check if a listners in the same 'zone' as the person speaking? Not very, if we had a tool to define the zones ourselves. I'm sure builders would absolutley love extra tools to help them optimize and improve their buildings beyond just visual appeal.

Yes.

There's a few ways to get around this, however!

Firstly, of course, you can just build to keep chat ranges in mind - keep a 20-meter buffer zone between rooms.

Secondly, you can IM many people in a "conference". If you look in your inventory, in the "calling cards" folder, you will have calling card objects for all people in your friends list. You can also give someone your card without making them a friend. Simply copy the cards of the people you want to IM into a folder, and you can then right click that folder to IM all people in it.

I admit, it's not the most obvious thing to do, but it's there!

Yes... is normal to have an hotel with 20 meter betweens rooms...
And of course, is very useful a conference using calling cards... organize different folders each time I want talk with different peoples... yes, yes... great idea! lol

Is obvious for me, that, is not obvious for all, but, most important, is very, very, very unuseful!

But anyway, thank you

It would be good if the land owner could force ppl there to use "Show chat bubbles".

Hey, I didn't say you were WRONG, just that there are ways. And no, it's not normal in RL for a hotel to have 20 meters between rooms.

Guess what, you can't fly or create plywood cubes WITH YOUR MIND in RL, either.


A third option would be to have chat repeaters, each set to their own channel. That is, someone speaks something on channel 3, and everybody has an attachment that repeats anything on that channel in llOwnerSay.

Or even better, the object could just IM the wearer.

Or LL could just impliment something people have wanted for quite some time now. Oh wait.

No, llOwnerSay is better. llInstantMessage sleeps the script for 2 seconds, llOwerSay() does not have that problem.

I proposed a simular system based on "Zones" that are set under land settings.

Making a super Prim setting would make it easier to set, but the concept is the same in that land owners want the same tools that the games have had for years to increase framerate, and isolate areas.

Just don't affect llShout since that is needed for security scripts.

As for relays. Just rember to parse and add some sort of ID number to the message so that you know you processed it and you don't get stuck in a loop.

integer ID = (integer)llGetDiscription
listen(...
parse(... "|" I used Pipe since that is not used anywhere else
if ID not found
Add ID
llShout
}

I am not a C++ guru or anything, but they set up the Say/Shout buttons somehow.
There is also a Whisper in LSL. Using anything besides Say in normal chat is a pain.

Maybe there could be something added to the land tools, so a land owner can make everything said on their land be a whisper-- similar to the no fly zone option.

Then the apartment/hotel owner could parcel that off and select a Whisper zone.

I know it is problematic in coding, but there are sound/distance tools in place that are interwoven with the agent location already.


Idea just popped in my head.. .not at all sure it is a good one.

(maybe this is what grumble just said.. i am not sure)

Sorry... a little misunderstood...

Well, here, in Italy, we call that a "Columbus egg"!!! ...erm... from Christopher Columbus... well is not important! lol

So, I think is a good idea. I think Lindens can activate a button, like for shout, to whisper intead talk or shout.


Thank you!

I was just replying to the original poster, not Haravikk. Of course Haravikk's would be much easier, but just having walls occlude speech like the original poster suggested would be very difficult.

Rather than introduce a possibly confusing "special prim" idea, how about just an option like we have for sound, "restrict speech to this parcel"? It would make normal says stop at the parcel boundary, but shouts would still reach over the line (or maybe not, I'm just spouting off here). That actually sounds pretty interesting.

It'd probably be the easiest way to handle it, and I've often kind of wonder why this hasn't been done... granted, it would be confusing to have someone appear to talk and you don't see anything, but no more confusing than many other commonplace things in SL...

There's also the fact that objects chat to each other too, now that I think about it. Should they be unable to chat over a land border that has this option on? That could break objects in all sorts of subtle and hard-to-diagnose ways. The easy answer is that this just applies to avatars, but that seems somehow inconsistent to me.

Have to restrict only avatar speech on channel 0, don't want scripts and llDialog to break. "Oh, sorry, I can't control my follow-pet once it goes across the edge of the parcel"

In the dark ages of SL, there was a Talk To feature where uses could talk to each other and the chat distance was set to the distance between them. It was a weird and very poorly implemented feature. It would just be easier if LL gave users the ability to set chat distance for users on their own land. So instead of being 20 meters it was 5.

What about Skype? It's an internet phone which you use microphone and speakers - They used it in the last Town Hall meeting. Can that do conferences?
Is this mainly about chat bubbles or sound effects?

- Jolan

I guess the original poster wanted to behave like RL. If the room owner set the sound insulating walls in the room, ppl don't have to do anything actively not to be listened to their conversations. It is the point how to force their voices not to be listened to, rather than how to do it.

The technical problem is how to differntiate between a prim that represents a concrete wall, and a prim the same size that is your shower curtain. What would be needed would be a special property for sound dampening effect. And even then, the dynamics of calculating how much the sound is dampened between any two points would get crazy real fast.

For example, I am building some hotel rooms right now. A door on the back side, a hallway with a bathroom (spa tub), and a room with the bed, then a pair of curtains, a pair of sliding glass doors, and a patio or deck on the far side.

You couldn't use parcel-based restrictions for a two story or more building, because a parcel can't be split by altitude.

You can't base it just on prim thickness. The pleated curtains are as thick as the walls, but if the sliding doors are open, they shouldn't present much of a sound barrier, even though they close off the opening completely, and are far thicker than the glass doors..

What about gaps between the prims...? How big is enough to let sound through?

If we could define an invisible, phantomed prim as a 'bounding box' for chat transmission, that would be ideal. Wrap the room or house in such a box, and it's private, in both directions. The concept has been requested as a feature before...

Until then, I guess we have to use chat conference groups, if you want privacy...