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"Boundary boxes" proposal

Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
11-26-2005 15:52
This is an idea I posted in the Hotline to Linden forum and am now adding to the vote area:

Boundary Boxes
What in the heck is a boundary box?
A boundary box is a simple primitive, a cube, sphere or cylinder with hollow and cut options (perhaps others but they are more complex). It can be of unlimited size up to the edges of your land (ie, if it crosses over the edge of your land, it will resize to fit without re-positioning). It is completely invisible and can only be viewed/selected when a "view boundary boxes" option is set in the view menu.

Okay...but what does it do?
That's the beauty of it! The boundary box can do several things. It's general purpose is to define an area of space in which rules apply differently to everywhere else. The basic options as per my idea are:

Chat filter
Perhaps one of the most useful, this box allows you to erm...filter chat! Options for this one include:
- Exclude outside chat (whisper/say/shout/non-zero): you may choose to block each type of chat coming from outside your box (so avatars inside it will not hear these). Non-zero simply means chat that is in a non-zero channel (ie anything from any object or avatar that isn't audible) will be blocked, avoids interference with content that uses listens.
- Allow chat to exit (whisper/say/shout/non-zero): Same as above, but instead of referring to chat coming in, it refers to chat going out. So avatars inside the box can hear you, but avatars outside cannot. Same with objects. Keeps conversations private =)

Camera control
Two main options for this one:
- Restrict inner camera: Avatars inside the box may not move their camera outwith the box (handy for avoiding cheating by peaking around corners in a maze perhaps? Or just for streamlining a visual experience).
- Block outer camera: Avatars outside the box may not move their camera into the box, setting a box larger than a private room would therefore prevent spying inside.

Access restriction
Basically treats the box just like a parcel of land. You can set access to this box to be certain users/groups only, and/or allow passes to be bought. You can also ban users from a box. In this way you could create rooms (one box each) and define which user may enter this room, as an example.
An optional extra for this is to be able to define a box as being mature or not, if defined as mature it would display a warning saying "You are entering a mature zone" or such. Perhaps to reinforce that although the area may be a harmless shopping place that it is still in a mature sim and you have naughty things upstairs on a seperate floor =)

Object/Script restrictions
Allows you to restrict access to objects from other users, or which contain scripts. In this way you could allow free reign for certain items on one floor (perhaps the firing range?) but not on another. Block objects simply stop outside, in affect nullifying any force acting on them (so they would just drop). Objects using llSetPos() or such simply move as close as they can then stop.
Sub-options would include things like blocking exits by objects (so weapons fired inside the box cannot fire outside it) as well as blocking entry (firing into the box simply bounces off).
This could also apply to particles, so you can limit a particle effect to this box (the bounds of the box are sent to the client so they can process this). Or block particle effects from entering the box (so a griefer created cloud wouldn't get into your private room).



Conclusion
I'm sure there are other ideas for this, and they are welcomed! The basic plan which I think this would achieve is that it allows for a much more flexible system than the current parcel settings, which this could even do away with entirely (except perhaps for safe/non-safe, I'm undecided if a bound box would be appropriate for setting this).
It allows users to construct private homes without requiring the wasteful and often annoying security systems, which aren't always completely effective (as you can still look into these homes if you so wish). As a note, boundary prims could be linked to normal prims to construct a 'pre-bound' home for example.

One other point is that bound boxes would not count toward a parcel's prim allowance, but would perhaps have their own allowance for performance's sake.

Note on listens
Just a thought on how listens would work:
- The sim works out which avatars can hear a given message.
- If that avatar is intersecting (colliding) with a boundary box then it checks the box's settings
- If it is set to restrict that message then it is not sent

An alternative way to think of it:
- Messages that are intended for an avatar in a boundary box are given to the box
- The box then decides if the avatar can hear it or not


----------

Please comment and let me know if you think this is a sensible or stupid idea!

Click here for the proposal page! Please help vote!
Sator Canetti
Frustrated Catgirl
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 130
11-26-2005 17:24
While this is well thought out, has many good points, I can already smell the griefing applications cooking.
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
11-26-2005 17:39
How so? With the exception of the access options (which I'm not definite about, these may require some adjustment/restrictions) then the majority of these have no effect on anyone passing through them (if you can pass through that is, as they are really intended for going inside or around a closed room =)

The access ones suffer from the disadvantage that this would allow people to create inaccessible parcels that extend into the air, however, since these boxes can ONLY be placed on your land (or rather would only take effect on your land/group owned land) it would still be possible to fly around as you would avoid high objects in your way.

Or these could be altered so that they are always phantom? So basically to use the access box you would HAVE to place it inside something as it can otherwise be flown through, it simply allows you to create an absolute seal on a room, so even if someone got past the door/walls they would be stuck on the outside. If they stopped inside the box, it would eject them (so if you're flying at full speed when you hit it, you're fine).

I forgot to note in my post, boundary boxes could possess all settings at once, so I could restrict access to a box in addition to changing how it handles chat entering/exiting it.
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
12-31-2005 10:14
I don't want to seem arrogant by bumping this, but it seems to me that this is could be a very elegant replacement to the current land parcel restrictions system. Yet it's not getting much of a response =(

It allows for parcel access controls (with the exception of banning, which would be nice kept global) to be removed completely, replacing them with these prims which can define much more precise areas than simply altering your land!

One addition I'd like to make, now I'm not certain what banning does, is it the same as access where you only get ejected at a certain height? Or does it still keep you out when you're miles above the ground?
Well, if not then banning people from a boundary box could be EXTREMELY useful for skyboxes or tall buildings! Boundary boxes which are 'ban enabled' would automatically eject users who are banned from your parcel, but may also ban additional users if you wish.
Art Laxness
Registered User
Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 34
01-01-2006 01:49
From a totally selfish point of view, none of the benefits would apply to me and it would slow down my SL.
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
01-01-2006 06:35
How so? The idea if implemented correctly could allow for actual privacy in areas of SL:
- Block outside camera (no-one looking in via camera manipulation)
- Block outside chat and inside chat from exiting the block
- Block unwanted access (e.g to anyone but a group)

Instant sealed home.

Do the same thing but with the ability to buy limited passes and you have an instant event area, or private room for paying occupants.

The overhead wouldn't be huge, as calculations only need to be carried out if your speech would carry into/out of the box and these would basically be if statements (if chat is from a user in the box, and the block inner chat option is selected then only give it to users in the box).
The other features are only checked if an intersection by a player or camera occurs with the box.
Toy LaFollette
I eat paintchips
Join date: 11 Feb 2004
Posts: 2,359
01-01-2006 06:56
and how many prims would it take if someone wanted to enclose their 512sqm parcel say up to 500m high? Already many feel the 117 prim limit per 512sqm is to small.
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Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
01-01-2006 07:35
It would only take a single boundary box prim (assuming the entire space they wish to enclose is a cuboid shape, more if they wanted a cylindrical part).

One of the special attributes of these is that they can be any size provided they do not overlap onto neighbouring parcels (ie if it went past the edge of your land, it would resize to fit).
The box is of course untextured, so no texture information is rendered at all, it is simply 'there' for the purposes of collision, but completely invisible unless you enable the "view boundary boxes" option (for when you wish to edit them).

I am uncertain what (if any) height restrictions there would be. Obviously placing one these that extends into open air would be abuse which can be reported if it isn't enclosing a tower or whatever. However, as I noted a possible solution to this potential is to allow objects flying at full speed to pass through, provided they do not linger within the object (if they do then they would be ejected as normal).

As for prim limits, ideally these would have their own limit independant of ordinary prims. Due to their ability to resize to any dimensions within your parcel, you would only need a few, like 2 or 3 per 512sq metres, and even then that's probably more than you'd need unless your land is a funny shape.
Toy LaFollette
I eat paintchips
Join date: 11 Feb 2004
Posts: 2,359
01-01-2006 07:40
why does it need a prim at all? Seems a better solution would be to give us more tools for out property instead.
_____________________
"So you see, my loyalty lies with Second Life, not with Linden Lab. Where I perceive the actions of Linden Lab to be in conflict with the best interests of Second Life, I side with Second Life."-Jacek
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
01-01-2006 08:20
Well...no not really. If we can place a prim which creates these rules then we can define an area that is much more flexible than land parcel controls.
What if you want a secured and private skybox, but have a shop on the ground which you want people to visit freely?

Or even multi-level buildings with shops on some floors and apartments on others. Even just in terms of apartments, you could restrict access to individual apartments on multiple floors of an apartment complex.

For most things land restrictions are too restrictive, or impose on neighbouring land by putting up a big red barrier just to block off a comparatively small home.
In essence the land restrictions simply fail to adequately cover the very 3d nature of SL, it's fine if you have a land-filling bungalow, but otherwise they leave a huge amount to be desired which I think this suggestion could very nicely fit for a big update like v1.9.

In fact, a tiny bit off-topic, but I feel this and some more advanced method of caching textures in SL would be an awesome update, improving what's already there. To be honest things like Havok 2 and HTML prims aren't too thrilling to me.
Kenn Nilsson
AeonVox
Join date: 24 May 2005
Posts: 897
01-01-2006 08:36
I like the idea...and would be quite happy with just two features even: chat restrictions & camera restrictions.

I would think of a "phantom" bounding box as a type of "volume detect" box...where when a collision starts, it is able to trigger events...when a collision ends, it can trigger other events.

Regardless...I'd love ANYTHING that provided chat restrictions and/or camera restrictions.



PERSONALLY, I'd also like to see "resource allocation" divided among parcels as well (instead of sims)...so that guy who moves in next door with a gigantic high-lag club can deal with his own lag on his own parcel's allocated resources and I can continue to have my no-lag parcel.
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Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
01-01-2006 08:53
From: Kenn Nilsson
PERSONALLY, I'd also like to see "resource allocation" divided among parcels as well (instead of sims)...so that guy who moves in next door with a gigantic high-lag club can deal with his own lag on his own parcel's allocated resources and I can continue to have my no-lag parcel.


That's actually a really neat idea! You should put it up as a separate thread and/or proposal on the voting area, as it's the next logical step from limiting script speed to maintain sim performance. Could be complicated to do but it would be awesome if they could!
Jon Rolland
Registered User
Join date: 3 Oct 2005
Posts: 705
01-08-2006 18:59
1 thing missing

Radio override

If bounding boxes had the ability to set their own radio that would allow rooms to have their own radio. Both in family houses and apt settings not everyone wants the same radio stream. Media override might also be good but not near as critial as radio override. Also in your event context it lets you restrict the stream to just those in the box. And I strongly favor the ability to make the boxes completely secure against entry and cap their z at 778 - 10m allowance above regular build limits. Having to make a sky build be an ugly BOX and waste prims just to get privacy around your own home is silly. We have P2P teleport right of passage is no longer required to get to your destination scripts can take you over 778. And to say the rights of sightseer's many of whom are free accts exceed the rights of paying land owners over their own land is insane.
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
01-09-2006 10:52
Oh yeah, well if they can do it for land then I expect it shouldn't be hard for these boundary boxes =)

Might be worth noting too, that boundary boxes would be linkable, so you can take them with you somewhere after you've made them to fit your building.

Also (contrary to what I originally said in this post, I edited) I think it would be good to allow them to intersect. Now, the complication here is that if they have audio and video feeds then it there'd need to be a way to decide which one is used. Probably the one for the smaller of two boundary boxes, so if you place a box around a room within a tower, then it takes priority (e.g if the owner of the room wants a different radio station from the rest of the tower).
This allows you to construct as I say a large area which is say restricted, with individual rooms that impose further restrictions. In this way I suppose boundary boxes wouldn't inherit from each other (that would be quite a bitch to do!), but if you pass into a smaller boundary box on the same land, it will override what the larger box sets, if that makes sense?
Jack Sondergaard
Registered User
Join date: 28 Apr 2005
Posts: 5
Possibilities created by boundary boxes
02-23-2006 23:10
This is one of the best suggestions I have seen for SL. I have thought along similar lines many times. I have considered making something like a coffee-house, but who wants to go to one and hear every conversation in the room? Not to mention have your every word heard by everyone else. You could of course use private IM, but only with one person at a time. Better to put a bounding box around each table and make it like real world discussions. This would also be great for any public event where you want lots of small private discussions going on at once. You could put lines on the floor to show where each area is located, and have a big box for a more open chatting area.

I have also wanted to build an arcology of some sort in SL. This is a one building city that combines apartments and businesses: a self-contained city. It would need to have many private chat locations, for each apartment and business, on each floor. This would be a great way to demonstrate the advantages of such a city for real world planners who are considering making automobiles obsolete inside of new or remodeled cities. You could have escalators, moving sidewalks, electric scooters, bicycles, slides; lots of fun transportation options that would add excitement to SL. The same ideas would apply to underwater cities and space colonies.
Isaac Bergson
Registered User
Join date: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 66
02-24-2006 04:40
Actually I think this is a great idea. And just to add something to it about the safe/unsafe zone using this idea. If you have this and its unsafe, maybe bullets and such can not pass through the "wall" of this area into a safe zone? That would defanitly help with those Avi's that don't want to be shot or pushed from a stray shot. If this were possable I'd welcome it. I welcome it anyway. I think it's a GREAT idea!
Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
02-24-2006 08:13
From: Haravikk Mistral
Well...no not really. If we can place a prim which creates these rules then we can define an area that is much more flexible than land parcel controls.
What if you want a secured and private skybox, but have a shop on the ground which you want people to visit freely?
By sheer coincidence, the _Pay for play ban_ proposal I just made would cover this one.
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
04-27-2006 08:56
Bumping this one again, but to add something I was thinking about:

Implementation. It occurs to me that implementing this can actually allow for some interesting things.
The way I see it being added, what you'd do is essentially sub-divide the avatar list for a sim based upon the boundary boxes they are inside. For example your list might look like:

John Smith
David Brown
Jane Roberts
Chat-filter boundary box:
- Greg Arnolds
- James David
- Mike Oldman

Anyway, the idea for this is interesting, because if you run a sensor sweep, or send out a communication, then when checking for listeners you can check for anyone within range. If you hit the boundary box in your sweep, you can query it to return anyone inside it, depending on it's settings it will return those that are. ie if you are sending out a message, and the bound box blocks outside messages, then it won't return anyone at all. Otherwise it works out who is in range, then returns them to have a message sent.

I'm not sure why this is signficant, except that in some cases, for example a hotel with many rooms, it allows you to quickly eliminate groups of people if they are in an occupied boundary box (ie a box wouldn't be listed until it has someone or something inside it, at which point they are removed from the list and 'placed inside').
Also this raises the potential for another option "Removed from sensors", this simply means that people or objects in a boundary box are not returned by a called to llSensor() or llSensorRepeat() unless it originated from within the box. Similarly you could block inner sensors, so a sensor originating from the box would only detect things contained within it, allowing you to easily perform a sensor in a shape other than a sphere without additional scripting.

Also, it occurs to me that this thread is actually in the wrong forum. It should probably be moved or shadowed to Feature Suggestions? If a mod doesn't mind moving it then it would be appreciated!
Eep Quirk
Absolutely Relative
Join date: 15 Dec 2004
Posts: 1,211
04-27-2006 16:45
The problem with this is that a boundING (not boundARY) box has to do with collisions. What you want is a zone, like what Active Worlds 4.1 has.
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
04-28-2006 03:12
Does it matter that much what I called it? :P
Besides, it is technically still relevant to collisions as you aren't in the box if you haven't collided with it first :)

It's the concept though that's important, not the naming or how it works.
Eep Quirk
Absolutely Relative
Join date: 15 Dec 2004
Posts: 1,211
04-28-2006 03:31
It matters. It helps to know what already exists that may or may not do what you want so you can get a better understanding of what's possible. The fact that no Linden has replied to this thread (or the Hotline one) might be an indication of the proposal's technological ignorance. By giving examples of such functionality in other applications, you show that the idea is, at least, possible in part (as is the case of Active Worlds' zones, but I have yet to personally test them and am only going by what its documentation states).

Have you discussed this with any of the more technical/developer lindens like Cory, Andrew, Steve, Yedwab, etc?
grumble Loudon
A Little bit a lion
Join date: 30 Nov 2005
Posts: 612
04-29-2006 22:35
Have you turned on "octree" in the preview grid?

LL have jumped ahead of this and lot's of simular proposals by implementing something far more complex. "Object oclusion"

The only problem is that it is all client side processed, so chat ect... are not affected.

My proposal for manualy entered "Zones" under the land settings would be simpler to impliment, but harder to set up.

Back to building...

To take advantage of the new "Object oclusion" feature; you should place "invisprims" inside of your glass windows so that the object oclusion system sees your windows as solid, but you see right thrue them. If the walls are placed in the right spots based on the 5m octtree border, you will get a place where no one can see you since the "Object oclusion" would remove you from the drawables list.
Haravikk Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 8 Oct 2005
Posts: 2,482
04-30-2006 04:12
Way ahead of you on that, my house already has the invisi-prim windows installed :)

The thing with object occlussion is that due to it being client side then it can't change the game dynamic, only client-side stuff like the graphics. Now it could in theory decide whether or not to send the messages you speak, but occlussion culling doesn't actually look for completely sealed rooms, only rooms that create obstructions to your camera, so it could end up blocking chat even if there's an open space behind you.
A similar system on the server-side would be neat for finding such areas, but I'm not sure that it would be great to have it doing it all for us, better to be able to specify the areas ourselves than have an automatic system that may present problems (ie: you have an enclosed area but would still like chat to be heard outside of it).

The main thing that's needed is a way of restructuring current data so that you can detect if someone is 'listenable' or not easily, the "boundary boxes" or "zones" themselves simply tell the server "hey look, Haravikk can no-longer be heard by people outside of my area", prompting it to move me into another list that says that much.

While I am excited about occlussion culling, and the posibility having my entire home lag-free but still a view of the sky/sunset (using invisi-prims, my own test box in Morris on the Preview grid had some neat results) is very promising. And there are plenty of future possibilities to further improve graphical performance and the speed with which environments are loaded which will be neat. But I don't know if it's well suited to changing game-play as-such.
Eep Quirk
Absolutely Relative
Join date: 15 Dec 2004
Posts: 1,211
05-01-2006 01:43
From: grumble Loudon
To take advantage of the new "Object oclusion" feature; you should place "invisprims" inside of your glass windows so that the object oclusion system sees your windows as solid, but you see right thrue them. If the walls are placed in the right spots based on the 5m octtree border, you will get a place where no one can see you since the "Object oclusion" would remove you from the drawables list.
I thought the occlusion rendering "border" was 10m. I can't find where I read that but I know I did--from a Linden. Whatever it is, it's still too large.
Leaf Evans
Greenboy
Join date: 9 May 2006
Posts: 61
05-19-2006 12:51


I voted. I also voted for the more wide-covering proposal: Walls Must Limit Voice Range.

Cast your vote here!
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