Point to Point Teleporting

The Thinkers have met in-world yesterday to discuss a bit this issue. You might find this transcript interesting.

That's an interesting one actually, have one place by default (your home) and pay L$X per direct landmark that you create?

Second Life has developed a truly unique free market environment. Suggesting to limit teleportation abilities because it will hinder commerce to those close to telehubs, is like suggesting that they should never have built airplanes because they detract from train business.

The Lindens should be most concerned about giving the residents of this world as many unique abilities as they can. After all, we are in this world to do things we cannot otherwise do in real life.

Allowing point to point teleportation is likely to make me more willing to visit stores that interest me, rather than efforting to fly away from a telehub as quickly as possible before it rezzes.

The bottom line for me is this... This game is about escaping the confines of my real life... flying and teleporting are two very central skills to that end. I always assumed there was a practical limitation which forced the use of a telehub, but if no such reason exists, do away with it. The SL economy is a capitalistic one, and it will adjust. Lose the old-fashioned way of thinking and continue to make Second Life the coolest, most unique experience out there.

@Dallas: well summarized! and congrats on your first post!

Your perspective was well represented at our Thinkers meeting, Dallas. We had a Linden there who gave an unofficial perspective. Since you were not at the meeting here's the crux of it (extracted from Gwyn's authorized transcript):


Babbage Linden: gwyn, can i give an LL perspective
Babbage Linden: ?
Babbage Linden: ish
Aliasi Stonebender: Correction: flying /should/ change architecture; it doesn't often seem to.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I'd love to hear that, Babbage.
Barbarra Blair: me too
Babbage Linden: ok, the big discussion that drove all this was about making SL easier to use
Babbage Linden: at the moment loads of people are turning up, becoming bewildere
Babbage Linden: d
Babbage Linden: and never coming back
Moon Adamant: ora essa : )
Babbage Linden: making SL easier is a big focus
Babbage Linden: to keep those people here
Moon Adamant: *cough* interface
Babbage Linden: once they've arrived and given up we may never get them back
Babbage Linden: one of the easiest ways to make SL easier was to allow P2P teleporting
Babbage Linden: it is a very simple code change as we already have it as lindens
Babbage Linden: teleporting to an event and then finding yourself somewhere else is very confusing
Babbage Linden: sometimes you don't see the red bar

Mia Hope: I do have one question about p2p when your done Babbage
Moon Adamant: but babbage
Babbage Linden: i used the telehub to get here
Jeannedellalune Prudhomme: sometimes u don't knwo what is
Jeannedellalune Prudhomme: *it is
Babbage Linden: and was lost for a good few minutes
Moon Adamant: you had P2P before... why did LL change her mind in first place?
Jeannedellalune Prudhomme: ididn't know aboutthe red line for some days
Babbage Linden: ultimately the businesses will gain more from people coming and staying in SL
Babbage Linden: than they will lose in telehub land prices falling
Babbage Linden: LL and people running businesses want the same thing, the economy to flourish
Moon Adamant: but why did LL at some time implement hub teleporting, then? surely what you are saying has always applied
Babbage Linden: and that means people coming and staying
Traxx Hathor: There's a difference between the businesses and the land speculators
Aliasi Stonebender: It's true that things liek land in SL has a worth directly proportional to the healthiness of SL. If Philip was to "lose" all of LL's operating capital in a poker game, we're all screwed. ; )
Traxx Hathor: The businesses might see this as positive, while the land speculators are obviously upset
Babbage Linden: moon, yes, but only after we've had telehubs for a while can we find that
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Circular reasoning, hmm...
Babbage Linden: ultimately it was probably a mistake, but the thing to do now is set that right
Babbage Linden: for everyone's benefit

Moon Adamant: hmmm, babbage - what about other things that would surely benefit SL, like havok2, mono, html....?
Babbage Linden: moon, those things are being worked on as well
Babbage Linden: p2p is probably better bang for buck than all those things though
Babbage Linden: and could be in before all of them
Babbage Linden: i've been encouraged by what i've heard here today
Gwyneth Llewelyn *nods*
Babbage Linden: that most people will be happy to have p2p
Babbage Linden: and i think that those who may be hurt short term
Babbage Linden: will benefit long term

I think P2P is great. Maybe it makes land near telehubs a bit less valuable, but we must remember that it also makes land away from telehubs MORE valuable. There will be no such thing as a store out in the Styx anymore.

If you want to make telehubs stay valuable, perhaps one idea is to allow people, particularly those who own no land, to set their home point to any telehub. This would insure that at least some people will still tend to hang out at telehubs.

The only other thing is I want to make sure that, although people can teleport directly to my land, I don't want them to be able to teleport directly into my house, if I don't want. I may have a house, store, or other place where I want to control access by using script-locked doors or some such (I know there are ways for um, determined players to get around this stuff). I assume people who teleport to my land will automatically go to my designated landing point and not some arbitrary point on the land...

My most favorite place in SL is exactly the same distance from the 3 telehubs in the area. Which means it is as far away from a telehub as you can get. Now what I have is privacy and the same for my neigbors. I dont know one of us that would sell their land for any amount of money and that makes the land more vaulable than being near a telehub. Partly, it's private because of the distance to a telehub but more so because unless you are coming directly to my house, you wont ever fly near my land. My land will loose that. I do not want that to go. Why would I want random people on my land or the same thing people popping everywhere around me they can. The current systm works because there are palces that are remote and not easy to access, there are place that are easy to access and places in between. Why do we even need to fly if now we can just tp to the next room or upstairs. We could go around creating lm any where we want to. Think of teh griefing that will be done. Oh what a great idea, griefing by tp. Man what will they think up next. It will make sure that NOWHERE in sl able to be private. Our lands border our neighbour but we can't tell our nieghbour how to set their land, so now where there was no trafic at all we have some traffic or maybe lots of traffic. I for one don't like the thought of any changes to our current means of travel one bit.

Now on the other hand when I am going some where, anywhere, it would be a bit more convenient to just tp direct. Hmmm lets see now, I teleport then fly straight up so I don't hit any buildings or get caught up in the lag and fly in the direction of my red beacon. What if I could, then tp to an allowed spot for landing. That would be an improvement I agree. I can see the value in that. But what about my privacy? I value it more so than anything else in sl. The thought of this is bringing me down.

To top all that, last night I closed my store way out in the middle of nowhere, sold my land and bought 3072 near a telehub. It wasn't cheap either and this aftenoon someone tells me this rumor about no more telehubs. When I started reading these forums, my wife called the ambulance and I wasn't able to post till after my treatment at the hospital. All things considered, there's alot here more than lindens to be lost. And I truly hope that all things that can be taken into consideration when implementing something like this. Fairness to the entire comunity, and remote areas,a $linden market crash?, land bubbles, privacy, there is alot to be considered.Remote dosent Equate bad, I fear more will be lost than gained with this type of change.

I'm fairly new to the secondlife scene but I thought I'd offer some input into this

a lot of folks seem to be concerned over the possible impact for commerce or socialisation, I can't comment much on this since I'm still fairly new here
but I am aware that boundary's do go some way to defining existence within virtual worlds
I'm not saying SL is a game, but Quake wouldn't be much fun if you could just tp anywhere you wanted to

How about an idea of a compromise network type system, where a user can teleport directly into a land parcel, but first you would have to traverse a series of jumps from hub or node to node (limited distance for teleporting but ultimately you could get to any location) connected by lines or paths.
That way the nodes or hubs would still retain some relevance during the journey.
Perhaps as meeting points or perhaps as a release valve at popular events if too many users try to beam into one area at a time. But you'd still be free to tp into a specific area if it was close enough to the hub or node that your located at, although this could mean more smaller hubs or nodes so that any location is available, but this would depend on the distance limitation and dispersal
I kinda like this idea

if this is something that is going to be put in place, then lets at least try to do it with some form of control
here's some ideas for the implementation
1. the addition of a several property's for land parcels, to state
a. if someone can tp in anywhere within the area
b. if no-one can tp in within the area
c. teleporting allowed but only within specified areas perhaps specified via a phantom prim of some form, also with a way of setting default or priority if multiple tp areas are setup within a single parcel
as already mentioned, a colour overlay for the map to see what restrictions are imposed before you beam in

with each permission the ability to set different values for
owner, group, everyone else

with a default setting initially of no-one able to teleport in at all
at least this way
1. things won't immediately change overnight and any changes that do happen may be more gradual as individuals switch the setting on the land parcel from no tp to limited or full tp over a period of time
2. anyone who doesn't want this can switch it off (e.g. a group of folks in an area that dislike the idea)
3. to prevent other users from accidentally teleporting into your house (I don't know about you but if someone suddenly appeared behind me while I'm typing this, it'd scare the bejesus out of me)

a limited form of tp offers up some interesting possibilities
such as limiting where people can tp into, such as several drop off zones or re-spawn points for games
an additional property that requires a script on site to release the user, the script could be linked to the prim that defines the beam in area
e.g. a user teleports in, but is unable to move from the phantom prim area until released by an event triggered script, which would leave two choices for the user, tp somewhere else or wait for the script to accept or reject

one example, this script could try sending a message to a key object that you might be holding for example which could respond with the right encrypted message to trigger the release
or the site script could just trigger a special effect (say a star-trek type particle beam in) before releasing, or perhaps a door bell
another possibility of requiring payment before being released into the area
want a private club? Create a sealed off area, and just give special keys to those you want to let in
imagine your own remote flying spaceship, you ask it for coordinates to beam aboard, it responds, <insert star-trek twinkler effect here>, hey presto

finally if some element of scripting or function calls do become available for teleporting, I'd imagine the Lindens will need to watch out for any possible ways to abuse or harass the system that tends to surface after a while

Well, I guess if we want to stay in the Second Life Stone Age, we might as well take away the handy-dandy camera. And perhaps it would be preferably for us to eliminate IMing too. Maybe instead of being able to IM each other directly, we can go through an operator.

"Hello, could I please speak with my wife?"

As for privacy concerns as they relate to traffic, I really don't see this is the community's issue. I would imagine that 90% of people currently arriving at a telehub are headed somewhere specific. Giving someone the ability to bypass the telehub and tp anywhere is not going to change their destination or goal. And if your "remoteness" comes at the price of the community as a whole's standard of living, I am sorry, but you may have to pay the price. Or perhaps you would prefer we lose the ability to fly as well? That would really slow down the lookey-loo's near your property.

And to suggest that we should "force" someone to experience other realms and "define their existence" by making them jump through hurdles is...well... oppressive.

"I'm sorry, but you cannot fly directly to your home. In fact, while you are here, we would like you to read this message from our sponsors."

I'm just saying, we, as a community, will figure it out. Think outside the box, don't make it smaller.

As it stands at present even if direct tp'ing was very heavily limited in some way, perhaps via distance or other means this would still be more functional than the present system at the very least
(the current system has no direct TP'ing of any kind unless your heading for home or a hub or have some special script)



personally I don't own any shops or live near a Hub of any kind
but if you remove the restrictions or boundarys for travel, on a plus side it's much easier to get from A to B, on the minus the whole concept of land or a landscape can become meaningless as crossing the continent could be as simple as walking through a door
I believe the Effortlessness of such a thing can remove a sense of realism to an extent but that's probably a matter of opinion

I agree in that traffic load isn't the concern of the community
however I would tend to suggest that at least some measure of control would be needed for a realistic approach
(if several thousand users all try to turn up for an event in your back garden all at once in a single spot it might not be your or the community's problem, but it's sure as hell is going to be someone's problem when the Sim grinds to a halt )

the best approach may be to have full free tp access to anywhere
but personally I think it's better to ease people into it (e.g. every once in a while up the distance you can travel in one go until it's limitless) to see what the affects will be and to avoid a sudden shock factor



see? it's more like real life already
you wouldn't be interested in any long distance phone calls by any chance?

Zeb, I am afraid I don't get your idea, particularly in relation to the system we currently have. I see no difference (in perception) between teleporting 500m and 3000m? I may be in the clueless minority here, but I have NO idea where my land is in relation to my favorite in-world places. I could be just over that nearby hill, or on a whole other planet. The "confines of space and reality" are not relevent in a world where one can tp, and I like it that way. If I could teleport in RL to anywhere in the world, I would do it. I can't, so let me do it in SL.

maybe your right, again I think it's a matter of opinion with respect to what defines realism in a virtual world such as this (personally I do believe "confines of space and reality" are relevant to a virtual world, since that's what it is, not just a data store but a simulated world, but that's just me)
I know roughly where my home is on the map and roughly where my favorite places are (very roughly) but I guess its different for different people
perhaps if there were more interesting large stuctures or landmarks knocking around this may make a difference (e.g. suspension bridges, large towers, or something that's just unique that sticks in the mind)

but again it's up to the individual as to how much effort you want to do to get from point A to B
my own opinion is that you need just a little bit of effort in there just to keep it feelin real which is why I thought of the compromise of jumping through a few hoops to get where you want to go, but again that's just me
(I wonder how real RL would feel if you could just TP anywhere )

saying that if we had to sit there in virtual traffic jams for hours on end in a virtual car, with a virtual radio, in the virtual rain, that's probably going to be a little bit too real for me

my biggest concern is how large numbers of users turning up all at once in single places will affect things
but that may not be likely I can't be sure, the Lindens would be more qualified to look into something like that anyway

EDIT
with respect to the difference of travelling 500m compared to 3000m e.g.
it may not make a difference to you, but ultimatley this will affect everyone, and I can see that different people use secondlife in different ways, at the very least it would give the shops near to the hubs time to adjust perhaps to the decline, and perhaps allow to see what sort of influences this would have to system or network load as mentioned above
but again I don't know enough about ether issue to draw a definite conclusion
although I do believe any location should be accessible via tp, even if it did mean some "hoop jumping"

"For me this shows the utter folly of LL allowing their vision to be perverted by pandering to the whims of the popular vote."

What is wrong with a popular vote should a few people have there way in SL ,I think not .

I'm sorry I missed the meeting - thanks for posting the transcript!

A couple of quick notes:

- the telehub land won't go away, just the forced landing there before proceeding to your destination
- the telehub locations will be converted to public spaces. That's what we want to talk about on Tuesday. How will we manage the conversion? I'm imagining that the people in each telehub region will decide what the space will look like.
- the telehub regions/public areas will be designated by icons on the map

The popular vote can be way too easily swayed as well, due to those with one or more alternate accounts. Hopefully the linden's will take that into consideration as well when they do finally make their decision as to P2P teleporting and how to implement it.

A decision has already been made. I bought land near telehubs specifically for the traffic from them. Based on visitor counters at these locations there was a lot of "fly by" traffic.



If I understand this correctly, you will teleport to the telehub then have the ability to teleport to your desired location. This seems like an inadequate implementation of point to point.

I am a little disappointed with this change. Is it obvious? But I understand that several people are against the current telehub setup. I do not own telehub land. So compensation doesn't effect me. Even if it did, I wouldn't want it.

In a way it will help me. Now I can have my shop anywhere in SL. There is no need for me to have several shops near the telehubs. I will not be getting the "fly by" traffic anymore. As a result I can reduce my tier by 32km and only have one shop essentially anywhere.

I use to look for land that had an "ocean view", but ended up getting rid of that land because it was too far from the telehub. Now I can search for that land again and not worry that I'm far from the telehub. Point to Point is on its way

I guess that was a little sarcastic

A couple points...

I don't think I'm the only "content creator" that has multiple locations near telehubs. I suspect several will reduce their locations thus reducing their tier.

We can setup our shop anywhere. If we paid high prices for telehub (near telehub) land would the added price for waterfront/oceanfront be out of reach...doubtful.

In conclusion, point to point seems to be a popular decision. I'm not against it. There are several advantages to having it. It will be one of many changes to come. Time will tell.

Why not just make it so that if you are tp'ing to within xxx m (150,200,250) of a telehub, you go there, otherwise you tp directly to the place you intended to go. Traffic will remain, since large amounts of tp'ing are to businesses, many of them close to hubs, while people heading to other places outside of the large commercial centers wont be stuck in the middle of a rezzing mess. I for one abhor telehubs ever since getting trapped inside a mall built over one. It isnt fair to confine a user to searching for the exit of a place when they never intended to go there in the first place, yet it also isnt fair to eliminate the current system as it is. I imagine the unpopularity of telehubs comes from the constant dealing with negotiating large rezzing buildings and signs (yes I too have the marks to prove it) while trying to make the 400 yard flight to the place you were headed for in the first place, as well as dealing with the lag associated with having 1000 prims trying to present themselves as quickly as possible to catch your attention. I would also prefer to see the malls and shops stay close to the hubs, so that there is less chance of me waking up one morning to find my land surrounded by 3 story malls, strip clubs, and casinos...I paid alot of money to be AWAY from all that nonsense and now my land values are dropping, how about a little compensation for me...yes that is sarcasm btw. Ok all done fire away.

they paid the extra... they got the benifits ,,, time for everyone else to benifit a while. if your stors and attractions are so great you wont need a telahub to get visitors/customers

I'm definatley for it, Can't wait for it to be brought into game, It will definatley solve alot of problems people are having with this teleporting especially for me hahaha
Nat

I'm the owner of 4 shops, 3 of them near a telehub ( BB Sex Shop - go take a look ).
I did not choose that location because of the trafic of people passing through to some remote destination but because it's good for business to be near other shops.
However, with land a lot cheaper in other places, new shops and malls will pop up in "residential" areas, spoiling it for the people living there.

SL needs zoning!

The telehubs are the only zoning mechanism there is now and not very well functioning at that.

The privacy issue is not unimportant either, i don't want anyone who has my calling card to tp right into my home whenever they feel like it.

There is a simple way to keep the advantages of what we have now and introduce PtP teleport too:

1. Keep the telehubs.

2. A setting on each parcel if PtP teleport is allowed.
2a. If it is on and no landing point set, you can tp to any point on the parcel.
2b. If it is on and a landing point has been set, a tp to the parcel will land you at that landing point.
2c. If it is off, you'll be transported to the nearest telehub (with maybe a message that the owner of the land doesn't allow you to teleport there directly).
Default should be off to protect private homes. Linden land (roads), shops and event places will have PtP teleport on.

3. Land within 300 meter of a telehub will be a "commercial zone". Starting a new business outside these zones will be a violation of the zoning rules and neighbors can complain and have the owner forced to remove the offending building.
Existing commercial activities will not be influenced by this rule.

The zoning can be improved later but this rule can be implemented now. No need to compensate for land value this way, the hub-land will keep its value.

Some zoning happens simply de facto because people buy in an area that looks like what they want. I can't imagine somone plunking down a space portal in the middle of a lot of victorian houses (although I know that it happens, but only when some crazy person is trying to grief people into buying their land for twice its value--telehubs don't prevent that).

When I joined SL there were several malls, and they were not sitting right at telehubs. People made some effort to make them attractive spaces. Most of the telehub malls (not all) are poorly designed, unattractive rows of boxes. I can't see that reducing the opportunity to make this sort of thing work is a bad idea.

At any rate, most people do not wander around aimlessly, happening to bump into the ideal hairdo or ray gun at the telehub. They look under find or classifieds for hair and guns.

I like plain old P2P best myself, but if a compromise were needed, you could simply use the teleport hub as a way station--that is, teleport to the hub from anywhere and then teleport from the hub to anywhere. That would be kind of the classic SciFi model.

I should add that the land barons will continue to thrive as long as the Lindens continue to auction new land in US $1000 lots.

Of course we will need to set landing points for people teleporting into our property; otherwise people will land in lakes, bathtubs, and walls.

LL really needs to fix the core problems with moving about and visualization in world. They have for too long been putting the cart before the horse trying to implement all these extra features when the basic functions in SL are left in a shambles. I for one feel I'm not getting my tier fee's worth of value from LL. Particularly with 1.7.X.X.X... this past month.

P2P is being seen by some here as a cure for the lag problem. It is not, it is a bandaid, and a bad one at that. It will only increase the load on the LL hardware. Lets fix the REAL problems first.

its a game, lets not sacrifice fun factor for commercial possibilities. my opinion

I didn't have a chance to read all 17 pages of posts, but I DO NOT want my land to be near a teleport location, it is very far from a telehub for a reason, with P2P tping, somebody can jump right next door.


Also, I agree that land has been 'zoned' informal by telehubs, and I think it works well. Also, I have yet to see a real benefit in P2P tping, if you really can't wait an extra minute or 5 to get to you spot, grab an Xrod or some such device. If that isn't fast enough, you have a problem

So you think that its perfectly fine to be caught in area's so laggy that its like moving in jello? Or causes such a strain on either the compy or the bandwith that it causes SL to crash? Not to mention some sims that get completely filled to where the system will not allow anyone else to tp to that location.