Stop the Peeping Toms / Camera Limitation

One of those is mine!

Sorry, wasn't criticising you, but with all the people who want privacy but can't agree on the means I'm surprised the votes are so low. There's also a similar Improve Performance thread which has 12 votes in four days or so

and now some more reasons why parcel basements are the best proposal.

private parcels are an all or nothing approach in that you either have no privacy or you have no public space, so if someone wanted both they would either have a disappearing reappearing house and worry if they hid all their toys, or they'd have to spilt up their parcel/buy a nother parcel which would make it the same as [any of] the bounding box proposal only with a more concrete separation of public/private space.

at this point i would say that marked prims just cann't work. if we enable it grid wide then we have private caging guns, if we restrict it to land you own then we'd still have private caging guns for those get off my lawn types, as for the rest of us it would just be overly complicated while offering nothing more then bounding boxes, furthermore, marked prims is the only proposal that requires user intervention to make avatars themselves private which is not a good thing in my mind.

in addition, in order to make bounding boxes, marked prims, and magic elevations truly work (and fix the private caging gun problem) we'd have make the physics engine aware of them. which would greatly increase there compexities.

Boundary boxes/zones work exactly the same collision-wise as ordinary prims, except that when a collision is detected it performs additional checks, either allowing it to apply new settings to an object passing into it (to prevent it being seen or whatever, kind of like automatically marking prims depending on area), or prevent an object entering it in the first place. This isn't really that huge an extra step, the collisions themselves are the difficult bit, and since prims can already do that it's sorted

There are days when I am on my land, my virtual home as it were, and I wish that there was a way I could put up an impeniterable wall around it, where my significant other and I can be in perfect peace and privacy.

For the most part I don't care though. Our land is set so that people have to pay to get in No one comes around, only people on our access list. I don't care about the red no entry lines because frankly I don't see them, and for the most part we're in a beautiful spot aside from this glaringly hideous looking temple thing to one side on someone elses property. We're the highest spot in our sim though, or at least where we are, and it's really quite deserted for the most part. If people want to peep on our digital renditions of ourselves, neither of us could be assed to care. Is it rude? Hell yes. It's very rude. It's an intimate moment between us, and someone is infringing upon it. Is it the end of the world? Not really. Maybe a little kinky? lol. If they took pictures of my avatar nude and posted them around I think I'd have to say "My... Now if only I was that handsome in my first life."

I don't know anything about technical things. Are instanced interiors like all the other games have even possible with SL's type of coding? Or do only the SL devs know that answer? Sorry if it was answered before. I just can't tell from all I've read if it's already possible or if it would mean a whole new structure.

Not an LL dev, so this is a stab in the dark. But I believe instanced interiors would need the most drastic software changes to implement.

The physics engine and the rest of the sim's software all assume a 256 m by 256 play area.

Yes, that would need extensive work. Which of course is what makes Parcel Basements so magic ... they achieve exactly the same benefits as full-on instancing, with none of the complexity.

In fact, nobody has seriously argued against them (beyond pointing out that the engine *may* need adjusting for negative heights). Some people would prefer a more complex on-land system instead, but that's not an argument against Parcel Basements.

And what hasn't been pointed out yet is that Parcel Basements would in effect double up everyone's ground-type living acreage, while also reducing the clutter of objects above ground since presumably you would move some junk into your basement. That would reduce loading on sims, since they have fewer objects and bounding boxes to process every time that the land above ground has visitors.

What's more, doubling your acreage means more opportunity for business and fun. I bet that many people without any interest in privacy would love to use their basement as an invite-only games room or music venue or club, while using above ground as a public living space, or vice versa. So, it would extend the creation of events even to people who cannot afford extra land fees for them currently. A lot of people positively HATE skyboxes, which are the alternative.

Even better, it achieves the holy grail of pleasing subscribers by offering more solid-ground acreage without requiring an increase in fees, since a plot's prims are merely being redistributed and not increased, ie. no more resources are being consumed. Indeed, sim loading decreases which means that more visitors could be accomodated, and LL is likely to view that inprovement in perceived (if unreal) scalability as highly desireable.

With such a great package of benefits, I really don't see why Argent's proposal isn't supported by pretty much everyone interested in privacy, even if they'd like something else too. And even by those who don't need privacy! It's just a good all-round deal.

Morg.

Have you voted for anything at all on the JIRA, Morg?

If it was on Jira. I'd like someone to put up a proposal for it.

oh privacy... privacy.

yes, privacy sounds great in RL.
I'm all for the smell feature instead. I'm such a perv

this is like medieval philosophy no? the king wants privacy and so all the people must go blind for the sake of it...

I LIKE!!!

I'm still waiting for the "Sensory Suit" so you can feel things in-world

It's about privacy. Whatever he was doing, even it was a game of TicTacToe or checkers, if he doesn't want other people there, then they should stay out. And he doesn't need to explain here what exactly it was that he was doing either.

Nope, I've voted for nothing at all, despite feeling very strongly about this particular issue.

Why haven't I? Because LL does not implement features based on the votes they get. They never have, and there's no sign that they ever will. They implement things only when they WANT to, and never through community interest, let alone pressure.

Indeed, there have been numerous threads on issues that LL needs to address FOR THEIR OWN SURVIVAL (like scalability) ... but they're just not interested. It seems that they're not interested in anything, lol.

So, voting here is just completely pointless.

The subject matter itself is extremely interesting though, which is why I contribute to the discussion. Perhaps some other virtual world system will make use of the many ideas that people have outlined here.

PS. For example, I strongly recommend to any virtual world developers who may be listening to ensure that their engines continue to work for negative heights, so that they can implement a form of instancing trivially, as in Argent's proposal. That is such a good idea.

Morg.

I see that the eatch all JIRA proposal for privacy only has five votes, not likely to register.

Perhaps residents generally don't want or need privacy.

So instead of argueing about particular implementations, we need to talk more about why residents want privacy.

Two thirds of the residents voting in this poll did not want this.

Sadly, the voting population is statistically insignificant.

Even more sadly though, even if it were significant, it would be ignored. Ample precedent.

Morg.

Actually, the number of votes in JIRA *is* considered during the "Bug Triage" process, which happens in-world at regular times.

This doesn't mean the issue won't be ignored, but it does increase the chance it will get into the Linden internal bug tracker.

By the way, to reduce the effect of negative offsets in parcel basements, *within* the basement the coordinates could be offset by 1024, while llRegionCorner() was given a corresponding -1024 offset. This would give a consistent global coordinate but a script-friendly local coordinate.

The option to turn the ability on or off is a good one but it should be for any land owner even the smallest land. However confused about one thing... if you stand on land that allows it can you stil pan your camera 50 meters into land that doesnt?

Another option is to create an area off limits to anyone who isnt allowed ... so they simply cant see in it period... a space in the sky or in a basement under the ground of owned land that renders everything inside invisible to those trying to look in.

Elinah

If you REALLY need that much privacy in Second Life, there is something wrong. Yes I understand "role play”, but we need to realize there IS a separation of SL and RL…you should not need to protect the identity and actions of your SL ego.

I’m sure people will ream me for this, but let us keep in mind, this is only an opinion.

Perhaps you’re working on a super-double-secret new product that you don’t want people to mimic or put out before you. Perhaps you’re having a romantic dinner, followed by not-so-steamy sex? If you’re that concerned, maybe you should get a larger parcel, and set your private areas deeper inside your parcel…just an idea, I’m not really sure what the best alternative is actually, so don’t quote me on my particular resolution.

You really shouldn’t mind that people see inside your house…on the personal level. Like mentioned above, the only reason you should be concerned is if you have a new unveiling of a product (or a RL company strategy) going on behind closed doors—and you want to keep it that way. If those are the kinds of things you are working on however, you should think about a larger parcel where the camera can’t reach.

you can move your camera up to 3 sims away from your avatar so no, you can't just get a larger parcel. the only real option right now is to own a full sim with no adjacent sims.

I hate games that severely restrict camera movement.

SL camera movement as it exists (moving/looking anywhere within a 50ft radius) is a fairly good mime of real-life sight, with the exception of seeing through solid walls (which is honestly friggin useful sometimes - saves alot of time when you're shopping for clothes/skin/shapes/etc, or just trying to get the big picture on the area you just teleported to). I don't necessary want to WALK/fly everywhere to see things. It's nice to have a reasonably free camera to give normal everyday Joes that option.