avatar visibility

[rotorhead Silversmith]

I've noticed that when the box in About Land > Options > Avatars on other parcels can see........     is unchecked there also appears to be vertical visibility limits for avatars in the same parcel.   Here is the test,  have two avatars in the same parcel, on above the other 60M vertical separation.  Have one cam on the other and toggle the visibility check box and watch the cammed avatar disappear and appear.  

Just wondering if this is as designed,  a side effect of the avatar visibility project,  or a bug

 

[Perrie Juran]

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rotorhead Silversmith wrote:

I've noticed that when the box in About Land > Options > Avatars on other parcels can see........     is unchecked there also appears to be vertical visibility limits for avatars in the same parcel.   Here is the test,  have two avatars in the same parcel, on above the other 60M vertical separation.  Have one cam on the other and toggle the visibility check box and watch the cammed avatar disappear and appear.  

Just wondering if this is as designed,  a side effect of the avatar

visibility

project,  or a bug

 

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This is as designed.  See here:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Hiding-avatars-and-restricting-avatar-sounds/ta-p/999779

and here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Adult_Content_FAQ

for more information.

Note, when you enable th e restriction , no one can cam into your parcel from outside of it NOR can you cam out.

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

I must be missing it; I'm not seeing the part where it says avatars on the same parcel are hidden from each other if separated by enough vertical distance.

Not sure if that would be by design or not. I could see how it might be a feature, or I could make up a story for why the bottom 50m above ground level (where whitelist access restrictions apply) might benefit from being hidden from above, but I wouldn't have known to expect it.

(By the way, rotorhead, is that 50m AGL boundary what's observed? Or does it happen with enough vertical separation at any altitude?)

[Perrie Juran]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

I must be missing it; I'm not seeing the part where it says avatars

on the same parcel

are hidden from each other if separated by enough vertical distance.

Not sure if that would be by design or not. I could see how it might be a feature, or I could make up a story for why the bottom 50m above ground level (where whitelist access restrictions apply) might benefit from being hidden from above, but I wouldn't have known to expect it.

(By the way, rotorhead, is that 50m AGL boundary what's observed? Or does it happen with enough vertical separation at any altitude?)

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ooooops

my bad

i need to read with greater care

thanks

 

[rotorhead Silversmith]

Good question Qie.

I did some more testing in a Bluesteel sim and a Magnum sim.  There does appear to be a  boundry at ~50m above ground level.  If one of the avatars is below that boundry I see the visiblity change with that check box.  Above the boundry, no effect.

And the blocking works both ways.

 

The parcel to parcel blocking is well documentet Perrie, but so far I haven't seen anything about the 50m AGL boundry

[Perrie Juran]

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rotorhead Silversmith wrote:

Good question Qie.

I did some more testing in a Bluesteel sim and a Magnum sim.  There does appear to be a  boundry at ~50m above ground level.  If one of the avatars is below that boundry I see the visiblity change with that check box.  Above the boundry, no effect.

And the blocking works both ways.

 

The parcel to parcel blocking is well documentet Perrie, but so far I haven't seen anything about the 50m AGL boundry

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I just tested this at my home, a Mainland Main Channel region.

I use Firestorm 4.

With Parcel Privacy OFF,  Flying up I could CAM my friend on the ground, only limited by my draw distance which I had at 256m.

With Parcel Privacy ON.

Friend standing on ground.  Flying straight up once I got about 50 meters away (above), I could no longer Cam to my friend.  Below that distance I could.  My friend could Cam to me from the ground until I exceeded that distance too.

We then went up to my Skybox @ 1500 Meters.   I was able to Cam my friend and my friend to me again only limited by my draw distance (256m).

 

Which leads me to believe the function is some how related or tied in with ban line height/function.  But that is just a guess.  Unfortunately my parcel is not big enough for me to do a horizontal test.

Whether this is new behaviour or old expected behaviour, I'd be clueless.  I'd never really looked closely at it before.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

When Parcel Privacy came out there was a certain amount of bawwwwing that passers-by could see into the sekrit area if they were on the same lot up high, i.e. above the no-pubic-entry cutoff. This was probably done to address this loophole

[Perrie Juran]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

When Parcel Privacy came out there was a certain amount of bawwwwing that passers-by could see into the sekrit area if they were on the same lot up high, i.e. above the no-pubic-entry cutoff. This was probably done to address this loophole

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That does make sense though I don't remember that part of the discussion at the time.  I was more concerned with how they were defining adult content / activity in a moderate region and what exactly was going to be allowed.

It would be nice if we could see the JIRA's for documentation.

 

[Qie Niangao]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

It would be nice if we could see the JIRA's for documentation.

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So very true, and especially in this case.

I know almost nobody can follow the link, but nonetheless, there's a bug filed 18 November, "Avatars cannot see each other between 50 meters above ground on public access parcels that have avatar visibility off." 

It was closed as Expected Behavior. Maestro comments in part:

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The behavior has changed since that KB's publication, on 11-08-2011, to prevent a 'loophole' where avatars who didn't have access to a parcel were able to fly above the implicit ban height and spy on the avatars below, despite avatar visibility being off.

With the new design, if a parcel has avatar visibility disabled, avatars below the implicit ban line height (which is terrain_height+50m) in the parcel can only be seen by other avatars who are also in the parcel and below its implicit ban line height, and vice-versa. You're right that this behavior is new; this change was released with Second Life Server 12.09.04.264357 (though the release notes annoyingly don't mention this change).

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So I guess that's the answer, and why none of us remember this behavior from back when the feature was new and everybody was testing it. I think I like the new behavior.

(I can't say anything positive about the jira-hiding policy, though, especially when there are changes that are neither mentioned in release notes nor documented in updates to the knowledge base. I suppose that's a virtue of these forums, and of having a few of us "spies" to smuggle information in and out of the jira, but I'm not required to be happy about it.)

[Triple Peccable]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

(I can't say anything positive about the jira-hiding policy, though, especially when there are changes that are neither mentioned in release notes nor documented in updates to the knowledge base. I suppose that's a virtue of these forums, and of having a few of us "spies" to smuggle information in and out of the jira, but I'm not required to be happy about it.)

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This is exactly why no one should count on SL for any type of business income, especially if you are a scripter.

Now, in addition to the closed JIRA, the release notes are pretty worthless. If they don't inform players (that is the first time I have ever used that word when referring to what used to be a resident) of the changes to the platform, then it is a crap shoot every time you script something.

I can't think of a more telling example of how SL has gone from a virtual world that at least tried to encourage businesses to a very unprofessional gaming only platform. Soon, I expect there to still be notices of the rolling restarts posted, but there will be no such thing as release notes at all.

FYI: The bug causing the diagonal sim visibility problem is (was) fixed in the latest code that got deployed then rolled back. I consider that one of SL's worst bugs, but try finding in the release notes any information that it was fixed. Pathetic.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

It would be nice if we could see the JIRA's for documentation.

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So very true, and especially in this case.

I know almost nobody can follow the link, but nonetheless, there's a

bug

filed 18 November, "Avatars cannot see each other between 50 meters above ground on public access parcels that have avatar visibility off." 

It was closed as Expected Behavior. Maestro comments in part:

---

The behavior has changed since that KB's publication, on 11-08-2011, to prevent a 'loophole' where avatars who didn't have access to a parcel were able to fly above the implicit ban height and spy on the avatars below, despite avatar visibility being off.

With the new design, if a parcel has avatar visibility disabled, avatars below the implicit ban line height (which is terrain_height+50m) in the parcel can only be seen by other avatars who are also in the parcel and below its implicit ban line height, and vice-versa. You're right that this behavior is new; this change was released with Second Life Server 12.09.04.264357 (though the release notes annoyingly don't mention this change).

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So I guess that's the answer, and why none of us remember this behavior from back when the feature was new and everybody was testing it. I think I like the new behavior.

(I can't say anything positive about the jira-hiding policy, though, especially when there are changes that are neither mentioned in release notes nor documented in updates to the knowledge base. I suppose that's a virtue of these forums, and of having a few of us "spies" to smuggle information in and out of the jira, but I'm not required to be happy about it.)

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Thanks Qie.

But that also brings up the issue of who is responsible for and who is able to update the KB and the Wiki.

This to me is just like when the ability to 'restrict creating landmark' was removed from the viewer.  It was simply left out of V2, with no documentation.  The function the last I checked is still in the Server code.  It just is not enforced in the Viewer.

 

[rotorhead Silversmith]

Well thanks everyone for coming up with the answer to my question

[Lucia Nightfire]

I created a  feature request that will allow land owners/moderators to input where the ceiling for visibility over the same parcel starts (50 - 5000 meters) above ground. It will give land owners more flexibility.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-951

Its currently in review.