Maximum Altitude

I'm building sky boxes and wondered what the maximum height is an av can fly to (unassisted) so that when i write the 'set box altitude' script I can add a limit so the poor user doesn't lose it

I checked the faqs and knowledge base but couldn't find it

thanks

Many avatars use 'flight' scripts that allow them to fly up to, and above, 768 meters (which is the 'ceiling' of the metaverse atmosphere).

Other than that...I'm a bit uncertain as to the unassisted maximum flying height for an avatar. I know it's less than 300 meters...and probably less than 200.

Guess I'll knock up a quick 'report' onbject and experiment. thx

...somewhere around 200m I think, but why not try it.

However, even a flight unassisted noob can get all the way to 750m. Sit on a cube and edit its z-axis. You could even supply such a cube armed with your altitude setting script to send the homesteader up to their sky-box.

Maybe even better... don't allow the sky-box to set its altitude unless the person issuing the command is sitting on the sky-box (see llAvatarOnSitTarget). Just remind them to set a Landmark while they're up there!

Being able to auto-set the altitude sounds like a cool idea and prospective customers might be disappointed if you set a ceiling below what is allowed.

The maximum you can slide a prim upwards is 768m.
Yet you can pilot a vehicle much higher.
And Jetpacks will get you even higher.

I have used jetpacks (flight assist attachments, not vehicles) to get MUCH higher than 20,000m A friend put a weight on his keyboard, and wore a dozen or so jetpacks, and went to bed. I know that the height an avatar can reach with assisted flight.. is funtionally infinite. I can't say for sure WHEN a sim will crash, or a client will.. but as far as I can tell, that number (+Z) can be from 0 to infinite. (I'm sure that technically the maximum is far closer to that magic maximum number for a integer: 2,147,483,647 of for a float: ±3.402823466E+38 ... though what that looks like in terms of a "Real Number"... I have no idea.)

340,282,346,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
(Not sure why the forum is inserting a space between the last 2 zeros)

Or:
Three-hundred forty undecillion two-hundred eighty-two decillion three-hundred forty-six nonillion six-hundred octillion.

Hmm - built a little llGetPos reprter prim and experimented with free flight and Pale is right - its *around* 200m but varies from place to place. confirm 'sit on a prim and edit z' as abought 768. interesting. thanks for the input.

Or, you could have just looked at your region coordinates in the title bar.

It was just an experiment Still coming to grips with the way things work here...

It's admirable that you don't want to leave people stuck with a skybox that's too high for them to get to, but I think rather than limiting your product in such a way you might be better served (and better serve your customers) by allowing altitudes up to, say, 700, and explain how they need a flight assist device above 200 or so, perhaps with a landmark included to pick up one of the several fine free devices like that. Here's my reasoning:

- builds under 300 meters or so show up on the map, not usually desirable with a skybox. It's also not uncommon for estates or rental communities to forbid skyboxes that low, to keep them off the map and to keep from cluttering up the sky as visible from the ground.

- people often associate skyboxes with the illusion of privacy; yes there's no real privacy in SL, but at 200 meters you can't even pretend

- I'm not sure it's a good idea to encourage people to live in the sky if they don't know how to fly high. IMHO you'd be doing your customers a service by clueing them in.

Just some food for thought.

That's as close to infinite as makes no odds.

I am not gonna leave SL running for a month with the FLY UP key held down to find out what happens.

I'm guessing that looooong before exhausting the bounds of an IEEE 754 float, you'd reach a point at which the amount of induced vertical offset for a given frame falls below the possible precision of the number representing your altitude, and that would be your effective "ceiling."

well I know when you get up there, your avatar starts falling apart, because the calculated heights from "0" start getting way imprecise.. causing your eyes to fall out of their sockets, etc. That actually doesn't take long to start seeing.

That's not surprising. Above 262,144m, you only have a vertical precision of 3.125cm.

I wanna see my eyes fall out of their sockets...

*has visions of the movie Total Recall and starts flying up*

Back to the topic,

I previously noticed that I could fly higher in some places than in others, I did tests and as I suspected, the maximum altitude an avatar can fly by itself is precisely 172m above the ground.
The knowledge base poorly fails to tell this.

Notice : with the speed you actually go higher than 172m above the ground, but if you keep the key pressed, your altitude will decrease until 172m above the ground.

In my experience, there is a limit to the 172 meters above ground as well. In areas where ground-level is particularly high (I used to own land in Mimas, for example), the maximum height above ground an avatar may fly is somewhat less.

Well right now I am flying up rapidly and my altitude at this moment is;


2,382,000 Meters I have on four flight assists and set it on last night before bed time, so about 10 hours to get that high.
My avatar is completely gone- was all streaky and like it was being blown by a lot of high speed wind this morning around 1.3 million m I guess, now all I see is a large moon and stars.

And now 2 hours and change later, after some lawn chores I come in and look and have hit the 3 million meter altitude. Looks like about 5,000 m/minute, a shade less than 300,000 per hour

Does this go in the Guiness Book of World Records, or do we buy you a pint of Guiness when your remaining molecules waft back to the ground?

LOL, I stopped at 3 million and tp back home.
I found too that nothing will rez out there and not even my nuclear bomb nerf gun would rez the missile out, darn, wanted to see the effects up at that altitude.

I took a screen shot though.
I figure that was about 1800 miles up, the moon would be cool if we could fly to it, but that would take a LONG time if it was scaled 225,000 miles away and it took me 14 hours to go 1800 miles...

I've been up to 1 million meters myself using PAR (http://code.google.com/p/par/). Pretty quick too (instantly actually). It's really interesting to be up that high because the client cannot properly render the avatar, and you appear somewhat 'blocky' and 'melted'. Also, any attachments you're wearing bounce around the attachment point. There's a youtube video out there that shows an avatar at various altitudes up to 1 million meters. Fun fun

Easy way to do it with no flight assist or outside programs. copy the following including "/me " and chat it in world, then click on the link in chat history:

/me secondlife:///app/teleport/Morris/125/125/2147483647

Ever since I put a skybox at 1024 Meters Z axis I never leave my rental (another skybox) without flight assist (I have two cottages, one at 500m over one small parcel, the other at 1024m over another small parcel, plus the rental place that is "home". I got the free Flight Feather and attached it to my HUD, since it's controlled via the "X" command on the chat line. It's always there and I never think about it. I'd recommend that route in addition to TP'ing your guests...you may want to step outside and inspect the skybox. Jackie

Before they broke the ability to move linked avatars unlimited distances with llSetLinkPrimitiveParams, you could move them a distance of max float straight up in the air. Then, by moving them max float on all three axes and rotating the object they're on so that vector faces straight up, you get them faaaaar above max float. The client promptly crashes.