The Higher Life.

Among the discussion of the slightly troubled 1.20. Release Candidate viewer, I picked up the info that the build limit has been raised from 768m to 4096m. I put this to the test and sure enough, I managed to get a platform up there, rez stuff, set a landmark, leave and TP back there. Great! I also managed to TP up there using the regular viewer.

So I'm just wondering how the new build height limit will affect the SL environment.
I imagine a lot of people will move their sky stuff up a bit, where it's out of view from the ground, even at maximum draw distance.

Well, for one thing, it gives you a much larger area to lose stuff in when editing an object's z coord and accidentally typing in the wrong value...

Yes! We'll be needing a 3D mini-map!

Cool
If everyone raised their stuff out of the way, we can actually use flying contraptions without crashing into people's skyboxes.
Landing nose-first on someone's dance floor is a just a BIT awkward, I tell you.

B.

I really think an air travel corridor should be established.

It doesn't have to be hard coded, just a convention. No builds, say, between 50 - 150 meters, and maybe another flight level from 775 to 875 meters.

This is great news! The sky is sadly starting to look like the ground these days.Cluttered with crap.

That would be so cool. But would people respect it?

The problem with a no-build zone between 50 and 150 metres is that some people will want to build 100 metre tall buidings on their land, which is perfectly reasonable - there are much taller buildings in RL!

Probably not. I like to swoop down and buzz my own property, for instance.

While it's cool in many ways, being able to build this high will unfortunately adversely affect air travel. Before 1.20, you could build above 768m but you had to employ some tricks to do it and most people weren’t aware or didn’t care enough to do it. This meant that flying above 800m or so was safe from ban lines, security orbs, and just buildings in general. It was boring, but clear. Now that’s no more. If you want to fly across the grid, there’s no altitude where you can just point in a direction and go. You’re going to have to constantly be looking out for stuff to avoid. Hopefully with a 4096m range the builds will be spread out and it won’t be so bad.

ETA: To actually address your post, lol: Few, if any, will respect that. LL would have to code into the system the no-build zone. If there was a no-build zone, perhaps from 1000m to 1500m or so would be good.

--Hugsy

the main problem with this is that when the sky falls it doesn't have to drop so far now

Spaceships?

I can't run 1.20 for more than 1 or 2 minutes before it crashes. So, it's essentially useless to me.

Are you suggesting that vehicles can now go above 4096m? If so that would be cool. It's just alot higher you have to go to get up and over the build zone.

--Hugsy

I thought I read somewhere on here that poseballs could be rezzed and used above the standard 768m height, but if you tried adjusting/rotating them, then they would jump down to the 768m height.

Have you been succesful in moving,rotating poseballs after their initial rez point?

I think I found a bug with elevation - I made a build platform at 2048m and when I log out from there and login with "My Last Location", I appear at 768m instead. Landmarks work at the higher elevations.

I don't wanna fly cross country on a boring jet route with nothing to see, although I know some people (our airline captain, for one) would like this.

I want to fly low, and see the sights, which is why I suggested a low altitude corridor.

This would be interesting, but I'm not sure it's necessary. Once you're higher than the banlines, all the remaining "obstacles" aren't really obstacles. Sure, somebody could build a 200m-tall building here or there, or build a skybox here or there, but the sim isn't going to be so full of them that negotiating them becomes a hassle I would think. Maybe I'm wrong.

Like I said, it is interesting though. I'd like the idea of flying rather than using the teleport to get to some places. I don't right now, because I have a lot of trouble flying across sim borders. I don't have a lot of attachments, but still - if I fly across more than one sim border, chances are at some point I'll become "stuck" flying in a single direction and unable to stop, change course, or do anything else for that matter except log off. Perhaps that's my computer's fault - I gots a kinda mid-end computer.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure about your 775 - 875 idea. Geez, in the time it took you to get up that high, you'd be more than halfway to your destination I'd think.

Before the over-768m building gets going......

I WISH TA GAWD ....

....t hat LL would think ahead a bit and restrict access to the highest altitudes to IDV-verified avatars.

That way people could have restricted content up there. Then they wouldn't be feel forced to flag their land as age-restricted.
It would also do with the insanity of an unrestricted parcel playing host to unverified avatars camming into a restricted parcel. This is such a no-brainer that "the media" will have a field day when they get around to it.
The hosting parcel could be a neighbouring parcel in the same 'Mature' sim or in an adjacent 'PG' sim.


IDV has gone all quiet, but when it eventually arrives, we're going to have a maze of ban lines on the ground.
We'll have all of that inconvenience and ugliness...... and it will do zero to keep kiddies away from porn.

Gee! I hope you're not refering to the sky box we are renting from you...I think it looks kinda nice! (But yeah, look around and you see a lot of clutter)

I totally agree that flying low is much more interesting visually. I wouldn't want a no-build zone from 50m to 150m though. That would hinder general building too much. A no-build zone from 775m to 875m would probably would have been OK since there wasn't much there before anyway.

If LL is going to code anything to help flyers, it would be doing things to make it easier to see no-fly zones. Like use a special color on the mini-map to show parcels that have ban lines, no object entry, or marked as private (a new option). I think it would then be fairly easy to weave your way through fly-friendly areas.

--Hugsy

Your last sentence probably answered my question, but to clarify, can this new limit be used both to build and travel with ~any~ viewer or just the new RC?

I thought the new limits were due to Havok4 rather than the client.

The build functions for the new height limit are only enabled in the new RC.