Help! I've fallen, and I can't get up (or...Bridge Over Troubled Sim Border)

I have a walkway that needs to go between 3 sims in short succession, and needs to be a bridge. It's hard to explain, but if you want to try the adventure, it's at the corners of the 4 sims: Devolin Mal, Quietly Red, Sleepover, and a Linden Ocean sim. For some reason, it usually works okay when you're walking north, but when you take the path south, you fall through the planks and sometimes get stuck down there. I can get out of it okay, but it's really confusing to new visitors and newbies! It's also really embarrassing to me when I'm trying to show the properties.

No matter how many prims I put below the bridge, I can't get it to where we don't fall through it! I can get a bridge to cross between 2 sims without too much trouble -- you put the invisible prim below it, and it "catches" the avatar before he or she falls through completely. This just won't work at the 3-sim crossing. Is there a better way to arrange the "support" prims below the bridge, so that it catches my residents before they fall?

Short of a solution, I'm thinking I'll just have to put a "caution: deadly sim crossing: fly across" sign, or a sign down on the bottom of the ocean that says "So you've fallen through the sim border..."

-Avion

i'll send you something if you cant find a solution ..

I have nothing helpful to say.

However, HA HA HA HA HA HA! You crack me up. I want one of those signs.

I've read something about this but of course now I can't remember the details darnit!

There's something in either the Knowledge base or maybe it was the Wiki, about sim crossings, and specifically about crossing at a corner. It has to do with the direction you are going.

The bottom line was that you cannot go directly diagonal - you are handed off first in one direction to one sim, then in another direction to the other sim. I.e. if going north-east, you first get transfered to the sim on the east, and then you get transfered to the sim on the north. But if going south-west, you first get handed off to the sim on the west, then to the sim on the south... I may have the order wrong but that was the gist of it... And it is based on the direction you are going, which is why the results are different going one diagonal vs another diagonal.

So if it works one way but not the other, I'm thinking, the handoff is going to the one you don't want it to, and that's why you fall through. I think the solution would be to have invisible catch prims in all four sims in the corner area, so no matter which order the hand-off happened, the avatar will be in a sim that has something to stand on.

My apologies that I can't remember the key details.... the info is out there though.

-Atashi

He's fallen in da water!

I've been to a large store that crosses two sims. They have a sign at the invisible border that says "SLOW DOWN - Sim border." After falling through the floor a couple of times, I learned to slow way down at that spot and that seems to help.

Also when you wind up in the ocean they had placed a convenient teleport terminal to help you get back. -- KC

Why not use a path cut cylinder to make the bridge? Plus a slow down sign.

[EDIT: Hrm I was initially thinking rubber-banding was your issue, but after re-reading it sounds like it's a little more fundamental than that.]

Any idea what class the sims are? Here's my observation:

- Crossing from class 4 (or lower) to class 4 (or lower) can be painful.
- Crossing from class 4 to class 5 can be noticeable, but no worse than class 4-class 4.
- Crossing from class 5 to class 4 can really hurt, causing severe rubberbanding, even between low-traffic/low-lag sims.
- Crossing from class 5 to class 5 can be almost seamless. In fact one time the transition between 2 class 5 mainland sims was so seamless I accidentally bought land in a neighboring sim because I didn't realize I'd crossed the border.

Thanks for all the replies, everyone!

Egon: Thank you for the wonderful sign -- I put it up, and love it!

EREBUS: We miss you down in SE Nautilus! How you been doing? If you come back to visit, I will PERSONALLY fish you off of the sea bottom if you fall down there.

Atashi: I'll investigate. Unfortunately one of the Sims is a Linden Ocean, so I can't build there, and really don't like to let anything overhang into it.

Imogen: Give it a try if you're up for an adventure. Last night I just got stuck inside a prim rock, though. Felt like a bad Star Trek transporter accident.

KC: I like how they decided to embrace the problem. Yes I also considered a convenient teleport device down there.

Cristalle: Not sure exactly what you mean. It seems that the type of structure doesn't make a difference. The next Sim simply doesn't read the physical object until after you've fallen past it. Would your cylinder fix this somehow? And would it fit the surroundings (yeah I know, have my cake and eat it too)

Wildefire: How can I tell what class my servers are? The Nautilus continent is fairly new. Would all the servers at least be the same?

The trick is to put a prim on each side, overlapping onto the next sim. So a prim that has it's center on Sim A, but overlapping onto sim B, and a prim that has it's Center on Sim B, overlapping on Sim A. And of course These two prims need to overlap each other. The reason is so during the transition, there is always something to support the AV. You can go see my Bridge at Zebulon 175,75,26. Down on the Southermost border, between Zebulon and Raleigh Island, is a bridge. Hit Ctrl-Alt-T to show invisible, and you can see the two prims i have to support sim crossings.

I don't know what the surroundings would be, but it would be only one prim, beginning in sim A, crossing over sim B and then ending in sim C. No seams to fall into. And as for physical.. why does it have to be physical?

As for would it fit the surroundings.... no idea, but interesting texture work can do wonders.

I just learned this a couple weeks ago:

1. While standing in the sim, go to Help > About Second Life.
2. Your current sim will be the third line of text. For example, as I'm writing this it says I'm in sim: sim3038.agni.lindenlab.com
3. Open up a command prompt in your operating system (Start > Run > cmd.exe in Windows) and type the following, replacing YOURSIM with the address you got in step 2 (note that this might take up to 30 seconds).

tracert YOURSIM

4. If you look at the path data takes on its way to the server, you'll be able to see the geographic location of the sim. For example, the 4th-to-last line I'm currently seeing says "sl-st21-dal-13..." indicating that the traffic is ending up at the Dallas colocation facility. That means it's most likely a Class 5. (Some FIC folk have gotten their Class 4s moved to Dallas to improve sim border crossing times to their Class 5s, but that's not common.) On the other hand, if you see traffic passing through "sl-gw19-sj-14..." that's San Jose I think, which indicates it's a Class 4 or lower that you're on.

There might be other ways, but this seems pretty reliable.

NOTE: Also, make sure you close and re-open Help > About after moving to a different sim.