Point to Point Teleporting

From the communitry roundtable list:

Maybe Im wrong but, I dont remember paying to TPing befor. I also remember some discussion befor about people porting into the middle of someone home. Missing the the land altogether and landing in someones skybox.

That sounds reasonable. As an alternative, what I'd personally like to see is:

* Constant telehub access for those coming to a sim off the MAP/REGION function
* Sim owner ability to turn off P2P teleport

It does seem a nice idea to be able to set up an event and allow attendees to port directly to the event, without having to hit a telehub and then fly from there. As far as affecting telehub markets, my experience is that most people beyond 3 days old pretty much ignore the markets anyway if they happen to be heading somewhere. So long as sim owners have the ability to shut off P2P if they so desire, I see no problem with this concept. I'll think on it a couple of days and see if I can find a bug under the carpet.


There is a good purpose to telehubs: they allow a central landing point from the MAP/REGION system (and frankly, I think every sim should have a telehub). They also allow private sim owners to direct incoming traffic (either to a desired area... or away from private residences). So telehubs do have a value. But allowing people to port directly to a friend's home or to an event location would have real value. It might even be considered that events have automatic priority and even if sim P2P is turned off... an event could be ported to directly. That would make sense to me and as many have pointed out-- would really cut down on travel lag.

As the part-owner of a rather elaborate build, I can say that it wouldn't be possible if the commercial enterprises weren't grouped near the telehubs. We've all had the experience where we fly over a tringo parlor, a nightclub with way too many server crunching scripts, or a casino that has decided that 50 sensors and a billion particles are the way to go. Telehubs keep these resource heavy builds in nicely controllable areas so the rest of SL is available for people who are making non-commercial (and sometimes even artistic) builds. For a good example of what can happen when a particularly high-resource build moves in, check out the Chief sim. We had a flourishing community there, and a casino moved in within days of a telehub being placed in a nearby sim. Last time I checked, the sim was almost entirely vacant and the framerate is abysmal.

In addition to Wayfinder's remarks (which I generally agree with):

Since you're going to make the telehub an option on an island anyway, why not do a quick change to the Estate tools that sets the hub point in XYZ like a normal parcel owner sets their landing point?

That would probably fix whatever method you're currently using for telehubs as well (which I heard was a manual process).

I figured something like this would be in the Voting tool, but a couple quick searches does not come back with anything relevant.

Now that is a sensible solution. Eliminate those cumbersome telehub devices totally and just make an estate landing point. Glad you thought of that.

Not at all the same thing...


sure it does. It already has. The antithesis, telehubs, have changed the structure of the grid significantly (hense the dozen forum pages) and continues to influence the spatial structure to come.


The web browser metaphor was a weak one and fails to signify anything. This is mostly my fault for responding to the original post that mentioned the similarity.

~Lefty

I think a lot of the posts here have had to do with a related but different matter: ZONING

People have been crying out for zoning for a long time. I fully agree that this is a sensible solution. Private sims of course, can be zoned according to the whims of the sim owners. But on mainland, it certainly makes sense to have business and residential zoned sims.

I presented this to LL months ago regarding "Red light districts". I had visited too many "mature" sims which were nice, enjoyable areas... with the exception of the one, blatant, XXX-rated store right in the middle. The huge porn posters on the walls seemed somehow incongruent with the amusement park right next door. So I proposed that there be a type of "zoning" added to the system in addition to PG and Mature-- X sims reserved for such establishments regarding which users are actually warned before teleporting to or entering such a sim. (Face it, there is a big difference between a "mature" store that sells skins-- and a store that has large, X-rated posters plastered all over the outer walls).

I'm not sure how valid that suggestion is. Seems to make sense to me; RL cities have their "red light districts". But the basic idea of zoning seems absolutely valid. Declare certain sims residential and certain sims business and encourage Linden-overseen land swapping/moving between them. Many builds are fairly easy to move all in one piece and can be moved in an hour or less. Many residential players would be more than willing to totally rebuild to be able to live in a lag-free sim where they are guaranteed no shopping malls or clubs.

There are probably lots of issues involved in this that I haven't taken the time to look into as of yet-- but zoning does seem to be an issue. It's just not fair to have some club move into a residential sim and lag it to perdition.

I propose limiting the P2P system to in-game scripts. Think: Phonebooths Bill and Ted style.

Basically limiting the P2P system to landmarks you have in your pockets OR the prim sitting right next to you OR a link in Classifieds.


This would do several things:
1. keep the system itself free for everyone
2. keep the performance bonus that a non-centric system gives us
3. adds an additional market for gadgetry and architecture
4. Adds value to placing a classified add
5. keep the P2P system the choice of the parcel controller

Imagine a casino who's popularity and foot traffic grows because they invest money into placing tp booths (or balls or sticks or any other doohicky) at the right locations. This limits the system by requiring the owner of the land to put his/her own links out there. Pass them around, whatever... the point being you put the invites out there and you can turn them off whenever you like. You paid a designer to make you a cool widget to drop your script into OR you hid it inside a blue banana with the words "i dare you" floating above it. The result is the same. You handed out objects with your destination in it for immediate access, or you rent out a little space on land or in Classifieds for some advertisement with the same function (hell, the ugly billboard could dispense the blue bananas)

in short, ANYTHING but allowing a double-click on the map or find places. Limit THAT to telehubs.

I guess the RL equivilent is the difference between
A. KNOWING the number you want to dial...
and
B. looking it up in the directory (a money generator) or walking around trying to remember which block that one shop was on (spatial awareness encourager)

~Lefty

ok now somebody build me a big red British phonebooth, a Futurama suicide booth and a Star Trek pad.

~Lefty

I'd like to have a meeting to talk about converting telehub land into public spaces. Originally I had hoped to have this meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon. However, it looks like it will have to be postponed until Thursday afternoon (12/1). I'll post more information about the meeting tomorrow.

So the only thing up for discussion is what to do with the old telehub land?

And we're talking about the forced landing spots and not even the land surrounding the telehubs?

Can you let us know what has already been decided?

You're absolutely right. Because now, I have to load several sims worth of stuff I don't give a damn about between me and my destination.



Not true in the least. I am in Eldora. To the north is Cottonwood. To the north of that is Afton.

Telehubs will go away, yet those facts will remain true.



It's nice to just blithely dismiss my argument, but how about actually, y'know, backing up your claims?

Reread what you just wrote. You've proved my point of landscape and its value being effected.
We were not discussing facts, we were discussing order of importance. Your quote: "I have to load several sims worth of stuff I don't give a damn about..." speaks to the idea of the spatial quality of SL becoming an alphabetized list.


This is a discussion not claims court. I am not making claims only stating ideas and oppinions. Relax your grasp on fact for the purpose of this debate.

~Lefty

Way back when SL was launched there was P2P teleport, but it cost L$ to use it; the cost was porportional to the distance travelled. This was an attempt at social engineering: instantaneous travel was allowed but the cost would sometimes convince people to chose to walk/fly instead. The hope was to encourage people to explore the terrain between their current position and their destination.

Telehubs were another attempt at social engineering. There was no technical reason for telehubs, rather it was an attempt to make teleport free while still forcing people to experience some of the environment between their departure and their destination. It was also hoped that the telehubs would provide some pressure for zoning and would catalyze the organization of small communities as the world grew from "small explorable world where everyone knows everyone else" to "very large world where you'll never be able to see everything or know everyone".

The decision to change back to P2P was driven mostly by efforts to simplify and improve the experience of travelling in SL. It has been promoted in the schedule because it is relatively easy to do for the improvement it is expected to provide.

Many good ideas have been mentioned in this thread. Some of the ideas we're currently planning to implement are:


(1) Teleports should be free for all SL Residents.

(2) Parcel owners should have the option to specify where teleports to their parcel arrive. The parcel 'landing point' can be used for this purpose.

(3) Estate owners should have the option of using the telehub system within their regions (and they probably need a user interface tool for managing their telehubs).

(4) Any resident should be allowed to set their 'home location' on telehub land.

(5) llTeleportAvatar(string URL) teleports avatars to locations around the grid -- only works by permission or for attachments.


While it might be nice to give parcel owners the option to set a "no teleports to this parcel" propery which reroutes incomming teleports to the nearest telehub, due to inflexibilities of our system this would be difficult to implement at this time. There are changes currently in the pipe that may make this possible in the future.

Rerouting a teleport to the nearest teleportable parcel in the same region is relatively easy and probably will be implemented to handle the cases where teleports should not be allowed due to parcel permissions. The same system could serve to prevent teleports directly into to a parcel whose owner doesn't want any. In general this would route most people to some spot directly on the border of the intended parcel.

Some people have expressed concern about griefers having faster return capabilities with P2P after being teleported home from a parcel. I don't know of a simple effective solution to this since most powers a parcel owner would have against griefers could also be used a to cause grief and that is something we would like to avoid. We're still brainstorming on this one.

due to the limitations you've mentioned, can I assume that transportation within the same Sim will probably have to remain the same?
I’ve seen some workarounds for teleportation type objects such as elevators or a transporter where you select your destination and then have to sit on an object at which point you’re flown around all over the place to get to where you want to go
But if the TP scripts are limited to attachments, and the restrictions are to only one landing zone within a parcel, then I’m not sure if this could be any different for transportation over short distances (e.g. such as an elevator)

Surely it would be better then to wait and just do it right?
I'm still very much against having completely unrestricted p2p teleportation. I think it would be better than NO parcels have p2p enabled by default, but a land owner can choose to enable.
This is simple and IMO a much more elegant implementation, as it means that shop areas can still be busy, while residential areas remain quiet.

It also helps against griefer attacks, if a shopping area has a small, group-owned piece of land (ie for all the shop-owners) then banning a user from this parcel immediately stops them easily accessing it, as they now need to TP somewhere else - hopefully far away provided the shops in the area have worked together to have only a single TP point (having these quite expensive to enable and maintain would encourage this).

I have 1/16th of a sim in Dari, one other person owns about 3/4 of Dari, surrounding my land (i'm in a corner of the sim). This would mean if I allowed p2p teleporting and this other person did not, I would have ppl dropping out of the sky on my land all the time. This would than force me to disallow p2p porting on my land. I would assume the three other small land owners may have similar feelings (save for the small casino). This would basically put us back to where we are now, not being able to p2p into a sim of choice, but going to the nearest telehub instead.

I quite agree. To implement too soon will cause major problems and it is best to wait till everything is well sorted out and READY. The current system DOES work at least! From what I have been reading, with the current ideas it should be renamed from P2P to GH for Griefer Heaven. One of the biggest deterants for griefers is that they have to fly all the way back after being sent home. If they can just teleport to the next parcel from yours (and most of us don't own very large parcels), that gives them to short of a return time to be any sort of deteraint.

Oh one thought I had, how about enabling P2P only for landmarks that you have personally made, otherwise it would use the hub? This would allow people to teleport to a point but only if they had to be there at least once and would keep the hubs semi-active, therefore not deprecate the land quite as much.

-DB

Actually, allowing people to set old telehub/new gathering areas as their home would help resolve the zoning issue, as well.

Not that I see it as an issue, but it would creat a higher-traffic area for those who see something desirable about such things.

deleted

lol, *perk*.

Well it seems to have all been said but I'll add my 2 cents worth.

P2PT is a good idea (this from a vehicle maker).

Charging for it would be inconvenient mostly because it would be hard to add an llTeleport function then. A Caveat would be if there were no charge within sim and/or between land with the same owner.

Landing points already do exist and should be used for P2PT. An option should be added to dissallow teleporting to a parcel. Trying to teleport to said parcel however shouldn't give you an error, instead it should teleport you as near as possible.

Griefing is a valid concern. The return time when someone gets teleported home really is a deterant. how about a minute or two delay before teleporting is allowed again when you are teleported home. Possibly a new tphome function that imposes the delay so there is still a delayless tp home possible. tp home by avatar death would also impose the delay. or possibly no new function just add the delay to av death. Just a few ideas, I have no preference, just trying pointing out that it does need to be addressed.

And now for something completely different:

Heads up Lindens. Currently you can offer to teleport someone into a full sim. Will that still work? and if so, will P2PT allow you to enter a full sim? It shouldn't obviously, but then again, an offered teleport technically shouldn't either though that's sometimes considered a feature.

Small personal request:

While you're working on this how bout a method to teleport a vehicle and all avatars sitting on it? This could be really fun for island hopping and might actually lead to sim transfer improvements. This is just to get an idea lodged in some heads, not a feature I'm expecting any time soon.

Thanks,
Rickard

Andrew, I think the fact that a simple effective solution to this problem is challenging for you to come up with illustrates how outdated and ineffective the current mainland parcel tools are.

While I understand changes couldn't be implemented overnight, Prop 244 offers some ideas on how to make the tools we have more effective. I hope you take the time to have a look.

Andew, is there a reason why p2p cannot be tied exclusively to listing in the Find Menu and landmarks?

This would provide parcel owners the measure of privacy desired and satisfy the #1 requirement of p2p implementation: that new residents be able to easily get to places without becoming confused.

This can be bad for us ppl who are in Alliance Navy and Mercz cuz then we dont have any warning on if anyones coming and what not. also i think this might lower dwell too now that ppl arent gunna pass places on their way from the telehub to their destination and stop in at a shop and go ooh i think ill stop here.