Clear the Skies!

[Extrude Ragu]

SecondLife is a tricky environment because it lets people 'do what they want' - and in some cases, one user doing as they please will stop another, there is often a conflict of interests.

 

 In this thread i'm talking planes and skyboxes, on the mainland. People build Skyboxes to have somewhere private and less exposed to the people around them, other people fly planes because it's not something they cannot do in the real world.

  Skybox owners probably don't appreciate hearing noisy planes, or worse being hit by them when they lie hidden by a sim crossing, planes interfering with skyboxes defeats the purpose of skyboxes.

  In much the same way the plane flier probably doesn't enjoy having his plane entangled in someones floating home that randomly appeared 2000m off the ground, it defeats the purpose of flying.

  I'm not suggesting that either the plane flier or the skybox owner should have their freedom to one or the other taken away, infact, I'm suggesting a totally different idea - A sort of 'mode' that users can optionally have on, that will prevent the two different types of user from conflicting eachother -  If you'll bear with me whilst i'll explain;

  As a working name, let's just call it 'skymode' for now, I'm sure the lindens would have a much better way to call it, but I'm nowhere near as creative or intelligent as the linden team combined. Basically, users who plan to fly the linden skys without interupting or being interupted turn on this mode;

 How it works - The user turns skymode on, and any object above 200m no longer 'exists' for that user. When the user himself gets above 200m, he nor the plane he is sat on appears to other users. So the user could essentially be flying through 1000's of skyboxes and not see it, and the people in the skyboxes, won't see the user or his plane either, if that makes sense.

  This would grant skyboxers the privacy they aim for, and our virtual pilots to be the airspace of the mainland they came for, uninterupted. It would also result in less lag as script heavy planes don't need to be loaded by everyone, and the people in the planes don't need the SL servers to send them data about the skyboxes around them. Less strain on the linden servers + less lag for the end user + better overall experience.

  Well, I could be wrong. But this is just my suggestion. Feel free to comment, flame it, love it, whatever :P

[Amethyst Jetaime]

It doesn't address the issue of prim usage.  If someone uses all their prims, which is their right, a plane still couldn't enter the property.  It is also their right to not allow someone to use any free prims even if only a few minutes. And there is the security issue of griefers, which is a very good reason to not allow rezzing and object entry.   If the land is set to not allow object entry, then planes can not enter.

It may happen but I have never heard of anyone crashing into a skybox in a plane.  I've also always had a skybox or building platform on my land for near 7 years now and never had a problem with privacy or noise from passing planes either. The biggest issue most pilots have is they want to be able to fly through private land unimpeded by the prim permissions set by the land owner, but the land owner pays for every prim on their property and so their wishes and interests must come first.

For the sake of this discussoin, LL could perhaps increase the prims available on a sim and reserve the extra prims for vehicles, but I am not sure how that would work code wise, as I am not a coder, or even if they would consider such a thing.  Maybe they would if they saw a way to cover any costs and allow for a bit of profit, for instance by selling vehicle licenses with a monthly or annual fee to cover their costs.  But would vehicle drivers be required to have this?  Would they buy it if it were voluntary?  Would land owners that now allow object entry disallow it if they knew a vehicle driver had this option?  How would it effect people that sell vehicles (negatively I suspect)?

The bottom line is that there are places you can use vehicles unimpeded, such as the Blake Sea and other LL owned water and land.  I am a biker and a sailor, but I don't and wouldn't expect to be able to sail my boat or drive my bike through anyone's land just because I don't want to stick to the areas that allow it.  Why should pilots be entitled to do this?  There are HUDS available that show where land is that would impede their flight in plenty of time to avoid it.  I have one and use it and have no problems as a result.  I can sail all day and not be impeded. 

Just to add, we do have one home on the shore of the Blake Sea and allow object entry, as I believe in cooperation. The lot extends in the water a ways so it is not uncommon for boats to sail by on it. However at times we are using all the prims that come with the land if we are building or we rez out our boats by the dock.

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just so you know, planes CAN enter no-object-entry parcels and full parcels as long as there's an avatar in them. If they couldn't cross-country flight would be basically impossible. Vehicles are considered part of the "prim pool" a region supports over and above the prim totals of each lot (also used for things like temporary prims and prims worn by avatars) A full parcel will stop a plane or other vehicle only when it's crossing a region border into a full lot - that's a server glitch; it's not SUPPOSED to stop them.

The basic problem I have with the original proposal in this thread is it breaks the convention of having each region being a single consistent simulation - the server would need to simultaneously run "parallel universes" and that would bog things down for everyone.

[Horatia Abonwood]

On another area that the skies need to be cleared...

Can someone explain to me how a big image gets stretched across the sky as far as you can see? Usually when I've seen it in the past the image has been something wierd or nasty. Unlike particle bombs, I don't know how to find the image and get the owner info to report abuse.