Pockets of Reality - Bounding Boxes on Builds

Try saying that ten times fast!

Anyway, my suggestion is a selectable bounding box per plot, say... 160 - 320m^3 per 16m^2, where clients cannot render data or collision maps, rez objects, or hear internal chatter unless the permission is given. The software is clearly there in some form - it would only be a matter of passing data about.

I suggest it in this manner because it's a feature that could easily be abused if it were not at the plot level. But I'll get more into that in a moment.

Picture, if you will, a utility similar to how the ground tool works, only instead of moving ground you create a three-dimensional cube where this behavior takes place - possibly with a new permission. One useful implication of this is all the data can be kept at the server level and beamed to the client fairly quickly - just add a new set of values for each 16m^2 that could be stored as a series of bits or integers.

The antithesis of this would be that avatar indicators should always be visible in the minimap, and with luck, an added option to display what avatar names are currently on a plot at a given time. This would, in my opinion, present a full-featured "spy killer" suite for residents.

That said, how would people feel about this as to the cohesiveness of Second Life? Should residents be provided the option to "Rez their own bubble of reality (in some form)" to further the Privacy Wars, or is that hit to the whole of Second Life too detrimental?

Thoughts?

Um... among other things, this would be the "cone of silence" effect, right? (Only workable, not just generating a lot of white noise. )

I think it would be ok. There are times and places for public activity, and similarly, private activity is also sometimes appropriate. It's a big world now. I don't think everyone is going to turn this on, anymore than everyone puts bans around their property.

It could also help with the security problems of griefers standing outside the plot and using obnoxious scripts, right?

Would this be 2-way? I.e., if I set up such a boundary around my house, can I also not hear the inane chatter from the house a few plots over, as they shout at each other?

neko

That's a thought.

Oh my god, this would be similiar to "Turn of render by parcel/owner"


What if you wanted to have several friends come over and visit semi-regularly, except you live in a sim where there's a laggy club, and aside from the slowdown, people are constantly shouting to each other, and the money ball screams out every five minutes who won another ten dollars.

If the cone of silence is two way, not only can you and your friends be free of the flyby visitors from the club, perhaps thinking that your house is an on-site sex room. They won't be able to see you, or your house, your garden, whatever. They'll just see an empty plot of ground and perhaps be curious about why there's a cluster of dots on the map there. Also, if you turn on the two-way toggle, you and your friends won't be requesting texture, or agent data from the entire rest of the sim.

It would be a privacy dream come true.

Lindens, you forced an artificial geographic continuity on us, and this is also forcing us too close together. Yes, in certain ways it does help build community, but in a world where everyone has superpowers like flying and camera zoom (X-Ray vision) and phasing through walls (box edit), you've also not provided us with the tools for privacy that many of us want. In the real world, I can sequester myself reasonably easily within the confines of my house. In SL, I cannot.

I still want "turn off render by plot" though.

So long as something like that turns off avatars and attachments as well, which I believe was the point of prior threads on the topic.

Actually, the main reason for requesting "turn off render by plot" isn't so much to reduce lag or save bandwidth, which it would do as a side benefit. Mostly, it's so that people can nerf or even eliminate (from their field of view) builds that they consider to be offensive, annoying or extortionate. Hopefully, it would also provide a catch-all self-managed solution to such builds in the future. "Don't like it? Turn it off"

So I'd say that it's really a separate issue, and I'm not sure if "turn off render by plot" would really be necessary to also shut "off" the avatars and attachments there. If it could do that, I'd say it'd be a bonus.

The only way I could ever agree to "zones of silence" is if people could not enter/exit such a zone while it existed, nor could they see into or out of one, essentially cutting the entire section off from the rest of the grid. The only way out would be via teleportation. Teleportation in would not be viable, and the zone would only remain in existence while the person who created it (the land owner) was inside. This way, clueless newbies wouldn't accidentally run inside of one and wonder why people outside it couldn't hear them.

Make the things as temporary and obvious as possible, and MAYBE I'd like the idea. It still rubs me the wrong way though. We already have banz0r scripts galore, and they're out of control. Every plot is it's own island of "do whatever you want" anyway, do we really need to split things up even more?

Mole,

As suggested, I think it would function thusly:

Clueless newbie sees bunch of green dots on map. Goes to investigate. Parcel is currently toggled to "on" for "cone of silence", and therefore the newbie doesn't see anything within it. It appears that they are visiting an empty parcel, even though they can see the green dots on the map. They don't collide with objects, they don't collide with avatars, they don't interact with anything within that cone of silence. They can still hear and be heard by others outside the cone. The only way they get to enter the "pocket reality" currently going on in that parcel is if they get added to the access list. If they do get added, then suddenly they can see and interact with everything inside that parcel; walls, doors, avatars. If the toggle is set to "one-way", they can hear and see, but not be heard by or seen by people outside the parcel. If the toggle is set to "two-way", then while they are in the parcel they can neither hear nor see (nor be seen by or heard by) anyone or anything outside the parcel, or avatars not on the access list (even if they are on the parcel).

Green dots on the map... some very good ideas here... which makes me think:

why not other colors for dots as well? For example, yellow dots for someone who is out in the open but likely busy (perhaps building and scripting) or otherwise want a reasonable degree of "privacy in the open", and red dots for those who are in the "cone of silence" (a term which is very fond to me 'cuz I'm a fan of Get Smart)?

Color-coding can make things fun!

Ugh. That's even worse. Not only would that be a coding nightmare, then you've got people occupying the same space at the same time and seeing two different things. What happens when the field disappears and an avatar is stuck inside another one? BAM! there go the two avatars, getting flung sixteen sims away from each other due to the way Havok works. Or the sim crashes.

I agree that eventually we're going to need some form of privacy, but I don't think suddenly cutting off portions of the sim, or altering the perceptions of people is the way to go.

Plus everything in this "bubble" could be treated as an organization unit in the order-of-render procedures - could only render / download if really needed.

Yeah Mol, some people can have their perceptions altered just fine without external input, thankyouverymuch.

I'm not the coder that some people in SL are, but I don't think that virtual space works quite the same way as regular space. The people who aren't on the permission list would be occupying the same coordinates, but would be as ghosts to the people who are on the access list.....and vice versa. I think it will be a minority of cases where a group of people choose to re-materialize their house to the outside would at the exact moment that an unwanted stranger is within the XYZ space where they are, but this could be taken care of pretty eaily by ejecting them from the parcel first (and returning all objects that aren't within the "cone" or by teleporting them home.

The field wouldn't be replaced by another one. If I came by and wasn't on the access list for a cone of silence, I'd see a field. If the cone was removed while I was there, the field wouldn't be replaced, it would simply be added to, as all of the hidden prims suddenly begin to register on my client. Again, collisions are possible, but could be solved by ejecting me from the space until the area rezzes in.

I think that this is a much better solution than anything that we have currently for privacy;

-Buying an island

-Buying enough land that the person can't use the camera to spy into the middle, banning everyone, and only building in the middle.

-Your-favorite-and-mine, security scripts

-Skyboxes



A solution like this is passive, it possibly might save bandwidth, it allows people to secret themselves from the grid at large while not shattering the continuity of the grid. It doesn't punish the curious by teleporting them home or killing them or ejecting them, nor does it reward them by letting them into areas where they're not wanted. You can't box-edit your way in, you can't camera-zoom your way in, you can't hear what's being said.

I like the this idea of bubbles of reality as a replacement for classic no entry. Back when you could ghost your avatar by using volume detect, i would ride my motorcycle (also volumedetect, with a 5 meter ground hover up) across the world through buildings. Was fun. Pockets of reality would work great, no longer would i have to worry about griefing security systems or being ghosted by sim crossings into restricted space.

How I would like to see this implemented:

Land settings:
    [] Hide Agents (and attachments) in this region
        Start: <0,0,0>
        End: <1,1,1>
        [] Hide Objects as well
        [] Hidden agents & objects can not be heard by unwelcome visitors
        [] Hidden agents can not hear unwelcome visitors or there objects
Object settings:
    [] Hide this object if in hidden region (that I am a member of that group or I am owned by the land owner)

Hidden objects would not be able to detect unwelcome visitors. If you wanted to run a security system then it would have to be visible.

I'm not a strong coder myself - but I'll tell you from my experience as an end-user.... I need something.

Just recently, I had a situation where a regular female customer of mine was being stalked by a persistant male.

The "persistant one" sat at the edge of my property after being banned - hurling shouts way beyond mere annoyance.... but still vaguely within the CS, depending upon your interpretation. When he would foolishly escilate his shouts to direct attacks, a Linden would intervene (finally).... only to be met with a fresh new alt account created the next day, continuing the tirade. Meanwhile, the girl being stalked hid in my basement like Anne Frank. I'm amazed she continued to play the game.

Yes some folks put the guy and his alts on Ignore. Still other folks, just left in disgust.

This went on for a week. Repeated calls for Linden Assistance, and repeated abuse reports didn't seem very effective. My business suffered as a result.

I don't care on the specifics of the implementation.... I just need something....anything.... that can block griefing shouts inside my parcel from the outside. This behavior is way too easy to take advantage of, and way too difficult to plead a case for Linden action, until it goes way way too far.

Travis