Point to Point Teleporting

I'd like to add that some of the ideas in this thread are excellent.

Especially these:

- Parcels should have a "No Incoming Teleports" flag along with the "No Build", "No Script", "No Fly", etc flags.

- Each parcel should have it's own specific incoming teleport point. This kills two birds with one stone. Estates could use it as they use Telehubs now, and people with privacy concerns could use it to control where people arrive.


Marcos makes a great point: This will reduce load on the grid. Most of the time, people fly straight from a telehub to their destination. Most do not look around along the way.

All those prims and textures are being downloaded for nothing, and even worse, they are overtaking spots in your cache! And we all know sim crossings are often problematic.


Also emphasizing what Briana said, SL had P2P teleporting a long time ago. It didn't destroy communities then -- in fact the communities were plentiful and easier to find than they are now.


I'd also like to propose that this will increase mobility, as people will be more likely to "pop over" somewhere and then "pop back" if they don't have to spend the extra time navigating from the telehub in both instances.

Imagine someone who just wants to stop into a store real quick and get back to their friends. They can just click a landmark, buy what they want, and port back where they were in much less time than they could do that in now. This should make shopping a lot easier, and even help expose less mainstream stores.

This is good for the grid, and good for nearly all the residents. The only residents who lose anything are those who invested in high-cost/high-payoff land. And they have already gotten payoff for their investment all along the way, so nobody really loses here.

We don't need forests, yet we have a tons of them, those are outside.

Don't we already have windowless boxes? Can't a club already survive wherever it's placed (Elite was three-sims from a telehub)?

Oh, by the way, I have land that often gets pass-through from a telehub, yet is a sim away from a telehub, the museum in Phobos, if telehub land owners get componsation, I want some too. At what limit do you say "No you can't have componsation because your land is too far"? Does not a peice of land 2 sims away feel effects of a telehub? What about 3? Also do Private Islands count, I have land right next to a telehub in a private island, do I get componsation then? Rediculous.

Hmmm ... Forseti, I have to disagree with you, which is rare
As much as I would LOVE better tool to effectively implement zoning, Telehubs did influence some kind of zoning. Like Travis said:If you look at Second Life now, most of the heavy commercial areas and the ugliest malls are near telehubs. In the neighbouring sims there still is some commercial activity and the club density is higher too. And sims, which are really far away from any telehub tend to be residential.

As much as I would love the added comfort of p2p tps, I fear that the chance for malls and clubs cropping up everywhere would be much greater under the new system. Mind you: I am not opposed to commerce in SL. I just would love a little seperation between residential sims and commercial zones. And without effective zoning tools this is nearly impossible to achieve.

I fear that Ellies concerns are not without merit, too:Of course this effect could somehow be compensated for by vehicles that work, that are really fun to use, or by public transportation systems which I could use and enjoy the scenery. But ... how long are we waiting for that already?

And honestly: the view of the landscape that the Lindens showed us in some beta pictures of the 2.0 engine was not very attractive. It was downright ugly with all the malls and skyboxes you can see for miles and miles ...

It exists already. "Set landing point."

Yup. This and the points Kex made remind me of how much of an idealist I can be. It's impossible to compensate people equally and fairly any time they change the paradigm, and realistically I can't picture any solutions to make the existing telehubs still "valuable areas to gather" - especally as "valuable" as they already are. Right now they are necessity, if you were even able to hypothetically relocate SL's most popular clubs at each telehub center the nearby areas would still get less traffic.

I do think it would be great if someone could prove me wrong tho and come up with an idea to make them places to gather, but the realist in me is not holding his breath.

I'm definitely a newbie, and probably too late to the discussion, but I thought that the non-P2P nature of teleporting was a genius touch to SL.

<Shout>
SL SHOULDN'T BE EFFORTLESS!!!!!!!!!!!!
</Shout>

Remember, the first Matrix failed because everything was easy and perfect. If SL doesn't have challenges (opportunities) it will be more like Brave New World than Neuromancer. I'm not a big one for Soma (tm).

Please, please, don't do P2P.

Ralph

SL didn't look like a featureless gray wasteland BEFORE telehubs.

You understand that we USED TO have P2P, right?

Ah, excellent. The work is half done already then =)

As far as zoning goes, I think that should be another issue to take up with LL. I wonder how practical it'd be to specify zoning on a per-sim basis as LL brings new sims into the grid? However, I don't imagine this would be simple, and it may cause as many problems as it solves. But that's another topic altogether. =)

A few points:

It takes less prims to build something that doesn't enclose space than something that does. If people are worried about prim numbers (particularly shops), they build open air structures.

The disconnected 3d webpages fear will happen in part, it's inevitable. It already happens with the hundreds of single sim private islands out there. If someone wants to build something that is only an interior, let them. Yes, the outside will be ugly, but much of SL is ugly anyway. Areas around telehubs for instance, are, last time I checked, often as ugly as a bunch of grey stacked blocks. Oh, hmm, they are a bunch of grey stacked blocks, because I'm out of there before their textures have changed from grey blocks.

I guess my point is that the outside looks nice when people put in the effort. People do that now, and people will still do it if/when p2p comes in. The grid is not entirely commercial, and people building things just to make something beautiful will still do so, independent of the p2p issue. In (many) commercial areas... well there may not be much difference, they'll still be ugly messes. In commercial areas in which the proprieters care about the look of the store, they'll likely care about the look of the outside too.

This is really a zoning issue. What we want is pretty residential builds near to other consistent builds, pretty commercial builds near to other consistent builds, and ugly commercial builds somewhere else that I don't have to go. I don't know of a solution to this, though whole sims dedicated to a single vision (often because it's owned by a single person) seem to be the best way at present. The p2p issue seems (to me) minor in comparison to zoning, other than in how it affects zoning (taking away something that seemed to attract commercial builds together).

*breezes through all the other posts*

I just want to get to where I'm going without crashing. Right now there are a couple of places that I try to tp/fly to that cause me to crash...not the destination itself, but something inbetween point A to point B always causes me to crash.

If P2P is the answer, then cool.

(Edited because I'm a groggy, sleepy mess.)

What if...(feel free to add on or shoot holes in this) the current telehubs are kept and turned into mini Welcome Areas? Complete with the basic information stations present at the WA and Waterhead and new residents are dispersed randomly around the grid as they log in to SL for the first time with these as their "homes". This would provide constant traffic to the hubs, thus keeping the land value and everyone still gets p2p?

Just a thought as I mulled ways to turn the telehubs into socialization centers...

but pham, couldn't you argue that telehub zoning was a self-fulfilling prophecy... of course things will get stacked on top of each other to take advantage of the avatar bottleneck, but does that mean the rest of the grid will become a mess with hubs taken away?

I did a recent walkabout/flyabout tour of a LOT of SL and there are clubs and stores scattered everywhere already. Yes, removing hubs and not providing anything else might worsen this problem as you and travis argue, but is this assured? Perhaps there might be a counter...

perhaps vendors won't need to have 300 hub stores anymore and can concentrate on creating one really good one and then just the best mall locations? Perhaps we'll have fewer mediocre malls? I don't know. I certainly respect your and travis' opinion on the matter, but I don't think anyone knows how it will play out... certainly not me... just taking guesses.

edit addition: but i'd rather see good tools, like real landowner zoning control tools, rather than the current (and imo failing) band-aid

Elle, i just don't think the residents nor the builders in SL will ever let your nightmare come to fruition. If you could only hear the nice notes I get from people who enjoy the park in midnight city or the bridge in garrison... this macabre world of grey boxes you present just doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, some box environments are really cool, like neil's skyboxes, but so are the outdoors, so are the grand spaces and architecture... that simply won't go away because you can get from point a to point b, because the good design you see around you is based on human perceptions of beauty, not just function etc.

Edit: ok, perhaps I am glamourizing our mess of a grid too much, but ... hmmm... right now SL is full of pockets of crazyness, pockets of ugliness and pockets of beauty, and I don't think that will change.

I am glad to see P2P coming back. I've missed it!!

As far as the world getting all disconbobulated over this, it was great when we had it, there were taxi services even when we had it, there was exploring, if anything I personally have done less exploring with telehubs in place because they are bothersome as all hell. P2P was a great way to explore the world jumping one spot to another, it was great fun.

I agree with the need to allow estate owners to lock it down to entry points, this could be essential in some circumstances, nice in others, but better to have an option than not.

Rock on guys, glad to hear its coming back!


awww thanks Forseti!

This is a great point. P2P combined with the new classifieds system makes redundant stores moot. =)

I agree -- in my experience, the telehubs are so clogged with eye-grabbing lag syrup that they actually discourage exploration.

i just edited my post because it's true that malls will always exist, and thus satellite stores will exist, but one could argue that the hub system enforced and encouraged mediocre malls...

So what you're saying is that you want a choice.

That's all that any of us are asking for: a choice. You said what I was thinking better than I could have, thank you.

The thing about SL is that cream quickly rises to the top. It's still a small enough community that attractive, innovative, interesting things will still be popular, regardless of where they are. On the other hand, droll, uninteresting, stupid things that are supported by the exploitation of a flawed infrastructure need to be eliminated.

So far, I hear two arguments against P2P: "My land will be worthless" and "people won't go outside any more".

If the only thing keeping your store successful is that you're near a telehub, then you need better products. Personally, I never visit stores near hubs because of the lag.

If the reason you paid an enormous sum of money for your land was because of its proximity to a telehub... well, things change. I hope you made enough money to make your land purchase worthwhile.

My point is this: the Telehub system is flawed. It's an artificial constraint, and while the idea has its charm, the current infrastructure doesn't work well with large concentrations of people in one place. Most importantly, though, we want a choice. We don't want to be dictated to because a few people like the status quo. If something's broken, FIX IT!

Personally, I'm glad that LL is bringing back P2P. I hope to enjoy it immensly. I also hope that LL manages to redue the problems associated with sim crossings... but I honestly doubt that things will get much better. As long as separate processes control each section of land, and as long as those same processes control the avatar, things will be problematic. There are solutions, and I'm sure those will come with time. But for now, I'm glad that LL is taking a step toward giving the end user more choice and control over their own actions.

Anything that has a chance to decrease the frequency of encountering the blight is worth a shot =)

As a user, it would sure be more convenient. However, I think convenience is overrated.



I hate see telehubs go simply because they currently provide the only meaningful geography in SL. I think the virtual world will be less interesting without the need for hub-to-hub and straight-flight travel between places ... when it all boils down to a set of point-to-point destinations with no relationships or perception of space between them, like a set of chat rooms or web pages.

We will be giving up some of the "world" part of "virtual world."

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At least in WoW nobody can suddenly destroy value of 20000 US$ investment in telehub land.

In one real casino most people loose and some people win. In one second casino, most people loose, some seem to win. Then the rules are changed, or the casino start compete directly with them and they loose too.

Investment is a risk. The only thing that is certain in any form of business is that things change. If you bet on things remaining the same, sooner or later you will lose.

True. The risk level varies from country to country though. Some countries care about their investors, others don't.

Past experience often determine future investment strategy.

One answer to inacceptable risk is diversification. If one country too risky, you diversify into other countries.

Eh?

The whole neighborhoods around telehubs are exactly the reason I want TP2P, I don't want to be forced to sit and look at ugly crap, I don't want to be in the business district on every teleport, I don't want to lag for 5 minutes before getting to my destination.

Funny thing that was pointed out, with direct teleport, not as many satalite stores may be needed... so... maybe not as malls either? One can only dream. I miss the old days when people had one elaborate store that was unique to their individual styles and products, those days rocked and I'd love to see it come back.

This just keeps getting better and better.

Paying an enormus sum for a product which could at any time become worthless is a bad investment strategy.

Agreed.