Jessika Rang Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 I live on the Mainland and have for years. Luckily it appears that I have missed this phenomena completely (no nearby roads). It sounds awful. My sympathy goes out to the landowners that have to suffer this deluge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celestiall Nightfire Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Marianne McCann wrote: Supposedly these things learn, Well, not really. I had kind of guessed how the scripting worked, and my building partner spoke with the scripter and confirmed what I had surmised. Basically the script checks to see who owns the land. So, parcels on the side of the road show as owned by non-Linden. The road shows as Linden-owned. Then the script calculates the Linden-owned space and divides that so the vehicle attempts to stay in the "middle-of-the-road-Linden-owned" part. Built into the script is a contingency place whereby if the vehicle cannot proceed, it will raise into the air, go to the side, etc to try and get back onto the road. It's not really "learning" per se...it's all scripted. Just like when the military tank vehicle shot me with the missile, it used a turret script to aim and shoot. (which on a public road seems quite a bit like griefing to me) This isn't an AI at work. It's just scripting with a few contingencies tossed in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prokofy Neva Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 It doesn't just violate the spirit of the rule against ad farms, it violates the letter of two rules: o you can't sell on Linden Land o you can't have more than X number of ad signs on one sim -- and these are each mobile ad signs. The Lindens who are backing these because of some beloved stress testing or something need to weigh this alleged boon against the harassment and diminishment of Second Life for other people. If the Lindens need a stress test, they could script their own vehicles better and be willing to have them not go on certain sims. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celestiall Nightfire Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Prokofy Neva wrote: The Lindens who are backing these because of some beloved stress testing or something need to weigh this alleged boon against the harassment and diminishment of Second Life for other people. If the Lindens need a stress test, they could script their own vehicles better and be willing to have them not go on certain sims. I don't think these vehicles are "Linden" backed. From what I can tell, the scripter is just placing these onto the roads on her own. She has a location that abuts up to a Linden road, and the vehicles are spawned from that location. She just puts them on the road. You or I *could* do the same thing. The Linden roads could, in theory, be swarmed with a steady stream of vehicles from multiple people So, although I don't think these auto-run-vehicles are "backed" by Lindens...I do think it will take some action from Lindens to alter the vehicle spawning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pauline Darkfury Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Personally, the auto road vehicles on the roads don't bother me all that much, although I do think it's wrong to advertise/sell on Linden-owned land, so that part should be removed from them if they are to stay. Pushing AVs on Linden land is just wrong and they need to stop doing that. If those issues were fixed, then I'm generally supportive of auto-vehicles on the roads as long as they are not causing a major performance issue, littering, or harassing other residents. The scripting in some of them isn't that great, from what I've seen, with needless script per prim stuff, but overall they don't appear to cause a huge lag issue. Where they are totally wrong, however, and entirely harmful to the experience/immersion of others is when they are spammed onto the SLRR (road vehicles, that is). Auto road vehicles on the SLRR is just 100% abuse in my book. The SLRR isn't all that big, and it's just not fair on those who want to use it as intended (a public railway) when a road vehicle blunders its way along the tracks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nefertiti Nefarious Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 "If you want those cars toodling around on all the mainland roads, you certainly would also want to pay for a portion of the tier payments for all those who are affected by these driverless vehicles. " The Linden road through my sim is not part of the billable tier for anyone. It's listed as Linden-owned. I like the tank. If you time it just right, click on it as it crosses the border and it falls apart as it tries to shoot you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sable Valentine Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Our new home is in the Potter sim in mainland and we live right in front of the road I believe our address is Route 13 or 15. Personally, (I know I am going to hear some flak) but I like the vehicles. Yes, I have been hit by them and I just get up and dust myself off. Yes I have seen them somehow float into my yard and minutes later, leave. I laugh it off and think to myself, I am glad my home owner's insurance is paid up. My husband has some thingy on our back patio that monitor's sim performance and thus far no complaints. My favorite is the ice cream truck. For me and me only, it brings back childhood memories without the bell ringing. I have actually ridden in one of those vehicles and it took me across many sims and I enjoyed it. My WISH is that I can drive my Hyata race car, horseback ride, sail and fly through sim crossing with ease. I enjoy mainland because it possesses connectivity that a lot of estate land don't and I have lived on both. I respect everyone's opinion on the subject and if they go away due to ARing, no biggie. But I will miss the ice cream truck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randall Ahren Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Pauline Darkfury wrote: Personally, the auto road vehicles on the roads don't bother me all that much, although I do think it's wrong to advertise/sell on Linden-owned land, so that part should be removed from them if they are to stay. Pushing AVs on Linden land is just wrong and they need to stop doing that. If those issues were fixed, then I'm generally supportive of auto-vehicles on the roads as long as they are not causing a major performance issue, littering, or harassing other residents. The scripting in some of them isn't that great, from what I've seen, with needless script per prim stuff, but overall they don't appear to cause a huge lag issue. Where they are totally wrong, however, and entirely harmful to the experience/immersion of others is when they are spammed onto the SLRR (road vehicles, that is). Auto road vehicles on the SLRR is just 100% abuse in my book. The SLRR isn't all that big, and it's just not fair on those who want to use it as intended (a public railway) when a road vehicle blunders its way along the tracks. I agree with Ms. Darkfury that those cars on the SLRR degrade the SL immersive experience. When you're on a train riding the SLRR, you don't expect to see a bus, a garbage truck, or a convertible as in the earlier image someone posted, going down the railroad tracks. The cars on the SLRR ruin the magic of the experience. When you ride in the cars and exit, you're presented with a dialog requesting a tip to support the 70 rez zones that the creator maintains. I once IM'd the creator offering to provide a rez zone on the Hetorcera Atoll. My plan was to offer the rez zone if she would agree to direct her vehicles away from the SLRR. However, I did not get that far as she immediately rejected the overture. She replied that she did not need such a rez zone as her vehicles had already infested all the public throughfares and waterways. I distinctly remembered that she used the word "infested", which I thought was a rather negative word to describe her own creations. Notwithstanding, the word is appropriate as the vehicles have descended upon SL's public pathways like black plague and there is no escaping them. It would be quite easy for the creator of the vehicles to keep the vehicles off the SLRR with a few lines of code. All she needs to do is use llSensor to search for "Guide", which is what the trains follow. If the vehicle is within a few meters of a Guide, it's on the SLRR and should execute llDie. As Ms. Darfury pointed out, the SLRR is not that large. There are roads all over SL and on many different continents. The SLRR is only on the Heterocera Atoll and it is one of the smaller continents. She should keep her cars on the roads and off the SLRR. Those vehicles not only degrade the experience on the SLRR, they also ruin the magic along public waterways. I was once considering purchasing a parcel along a Linden owned ocean. It was quite expensive, but I thought it might be worth it for the view and easy access to boating. While I was there, one of those vehicles trundled past. Just what everyone wants, to pay 20L$/sqm for a parcel with a great view and ocean access and have it ruined by a garbage truck driving down the beach. I know the creator of those vehicles reads these forums. She has participated in the past. If she's reads this, I hope she takes it upon herself to voluntarily modify her behavior and that of her cars. Her cars are harmful to SL and ruining its magic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rufus Darkfold Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Perhaps she could be persuaded to have it fly apart and then llDie when it collides with something. That would at least be more entertaining. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marx Dudek Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Given the whole RedZone debacle as well, it brings up the question of "What else are these cars scripted to do while they're drunk-driving their way across the mainland?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ann Otoole Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Just a general reminder to everyone that I am not the person making the zombie vehicles despite the name similarity. As for on SLRR? I'll run over them critters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Marx Dudek wrote: Given the whole RedZone debacle as well, it brings up the question of "What else are these cars scripted to do while they're drunk-driving their way across the mainland?" On the plus side, they can't do much. They're on Linden-owned land, so they can't do any parcel media tricks to snoop IP addresses or anything. They could theoretically phone home about agents they encounter en route and where they're found, but I doubt they do that. They seem to have enough trouble just staying between the ditches. I sympathize with Prokofy on this because one of my very few tenants recently contacted me about these vehicles, wanting help to get rid of them. The rental is a particularly appealing little parcel between a Linden road and a strip of protected Linden water, two sims wide, along the east coast of the Atoll. Or it would be appealing except that these vehicles not only trundle along the road, but also fall off a nearby bridge and bumble along on top of the water for the length of several sims. So they surround on both sides my tenant and her waterfront neighbors. In such cases, there's a real L$-quantifiable erosion of the Mainland experience caused by the vehicles. (I suppose it's hard to tell, however, if that's offset by others' enhanced experience.) The vehicles bounce between some conceptual "edges" as well: Even if we like having some activity on the roads, how much is too much? And how much from a single resident? I mean, I'd like to make a little infrequently scheduled bus service that runs the length of Route 3, on the premise that it may bring more residents to see an interesting and pleasant span of Mainland... but I sure don't want to do that if it's going to add traffic on a roadway already cluttered by a single resident's automated vehicles. Just how bad does scripting have to be before it's griefing? Yeah, these vehicles have to operate in a challenging environment, but they use quite a lot of script memory to rather unimpressive result. I mean, they should be able to at least detect and avoid the SLRR. (Incidentally, I'd probably use the parcel name to detect that, rather than the Guide prim, because they're already navigating by parcel owner, presumably through llGetParcelDetails.) The "edge" here is that we can't demand that every automated vehicle in SL use the most advanced and efficient scripts, but... well, there must be some threshold of ineptitude where the resources consumed so outweigh the benefits that the whole endeavor needs to be discouraged. They use a shared resource, the "commons" of Linden-owned land, and access to that infrastructure is part of the appeal of the Mainland. They also use the "commons" of sim computing resources shared by all landowners and avatars on a sim. We certainly wouldn't want to ban all vehicles, and personally I wouldn't want to ban all automated vehicles either. On the one hand, I don't want my tier wasted on time-consuming judgment calls about which automated vehicles are acceptable, but on the other hand, there's no obvious, clear-cut criteria for determining that. (Well, I do think automated begging for L$s on Linden land is simply unacceptable, but if these didn't do that, there'd be that messy judgment call to make.) Because of these "edges", it's not necessarily productive to decide this problem on the basis of abstract "rights and wrongs." Indeed, on balance, I'd really like to support these vehicles. They have improved since they first appeared... but only very gradually, and anyone's patience has limits. At the same time, they've become much more numerous, multiplying the effect of every misbehavior and inefficiency not (yet?) fixed. Until they improve much more, it would reduce a lot of the pressure if they'd cut down to maybe a tenth of the current frequency -- and stopped with the begging, except on the owner's own land. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holocluck Henly Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Yeh Ann: you're missing an essential piece of name to be the culprit Can that thing of yours eat and spit out the ones we're discussing? Preferably spit far from mainland. Qie: If anyone should be making scheduled vehicles on Mainland, it's the moles or a special project in close cooperation with LDPW. What we have is a problem and the cons way outnumber the pro's. Anything pushing or shooting weapons is a violation of terms right off. Soliciting to purchase while on the road instead of from a vendor on their own parcel is also a blatant TOS violation. Pity I didn't take down all the names of people I met along the way during my travels. I could have contacted them... btw off topic: what is "robot happy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnMarie Otoole Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 * Most people love them, some hate them, can't please everyone. * They are popular. Over 50,000 rides by over 27,000 riders since January. * Over 5,000 free vehicles given away. About 100 have purchased the script license. * Use of the roads in this manner is available to EVERYONE and specifically permitted by the Lindens as are aircraft and boats to add RL realism. * Yes if you play on the freeway you need to be careful of traffic, not just mine. * Despite accusations, they doe NOT spam the public. They do offer free cars to PASSENGERS and allow tipping the driver. * The dead vehicles problem not only applies to my vehicles but all vehicles. The Lindens are considering a script addition that would remove vehicles trapped on no-script parcels. Timing??? * The number and distribution is strictly controlled. All vehicles are tracked. The goal is one every 10 minutes average but due to random travel sometimes you get more than one, sometimes none for over an hour. * Despite reports, the sim load is minimal. With Mono fixed even sim entry is no longer a problem. They use only one scanner every 5 seconds for pedestrian avoidance. * They do NOT spam menus unless you are a passenger * True the drivers are drunk but that's all I can hire. 18 months work in that script and at this stage most of the problems are limitations in the physics engine response time. * Originally there was no way to stop them going on SLRR, the railroads had the same parcel names as regular roads. That has now been corrected. I've debugged my TRANSFORMER script and gradually vehicles will be able to morph between road, railcars and boats as needed. * I'm a scripter not a builder. Most of the vehicles are freebies made by others. If you think they are crappy looking, make your own and run them on the roads or make good ones for me and I'll put them on the road for you. * Yes the tank will shoot you but it is a fake missile and does no damage. It ONLY shoots if you click on it, purely defensive. * The vehicles are nothing to do with any "Linden stress tests", I don't know where that came from. The Lindens do not support this project but do not restrict it while it stays within the TOS. They have placed restrictions on carrying advertising signs or spamming non passengers. * True the "scripting is not that great" but so far no one has done better, or even come close. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marianne McCann Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 AnnMarie Otoole wrote: * Most people love them, some hate them, can't please everyone. * They are popular. Over 50,000 rides by over 27,000 riders since January. Does this include the times I've ended up in them by accident (clicking to touch and instead sitting in them), etc? If so, that is no indicator of popularity. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holocluck Henly Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Whomever is running the vehicles is very selfish. Their vehicles bully people off protected land intended for everybody. Clearly they want to keep the routes to themselves as if they owned them. Most people despise the things. I sure don't want them passing MY property. Being that their creator is not a parcel neighbor, this isn't a property squabble but disturbing the peace; I should not have to be subjected to them and neither should my friends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laetizia Coronet Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Go to Cowell. Wonderful sim, next to Abbotts. A beautiful fishing village by the sea. You can sit there and relax... until one of those £)=$£ ice cream trucks comes FLOATING by. In the &=$?" WATER. Playing that terrible tune to boot. This woman uses the ugliest freebie cars, lets them run anywhere, andf they don't budge for legitimate road or waterway users like me. If I find a way to make these things return to her inventory, by God I will do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laetizia Coronet Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Take these hideous things out of OUR water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloo Uriza Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 * Originally there was no way to stop them going on SLRR, the railroads had the same parcel names as regular roads. That has now been corrected. I've debugged my TRANSFORMER script and gradually vehicles will be able to morph between road, railcars and boats as needed. Space on the SLRR is too limited for any unmanned vehicle traffic, which is why as rail travel increased, LDPW stopped working on automated trains and ultimately removed them from service. The currently operating automated trains are generally disruptive to most railfans, and discourage the rail community from operating as the line is designed to, thanks to the automated trains just plain ignoring signals and other traffic. Sure, they're set phantom, but that doesn't excuse the behavior given the nature of a railroad versus a road or waterway. This problem with automated vehicles is ultimately what the VRC used to convince LDPW to stop with the Linden automated trains on the SLRR. It would be a very good idea to avoid running automated trains on the SLRR except for occasional testing purposes under direct progammer supervision until they're able to handle signals and switches in a manner that other railway users expect. That said, the boat canals in Bay City have ferry platforms in the canals, which may have one time or in the future be served by LDPW boats, but are currently unused. Would be neat to see boat traffic lift the drawbridges now and then, and the high canal walls would help prevent boats from running into other parcels. AnnMarie Otoole wrote: * The number and distribution is strictly controlled. All vehicles are tracked. The goal is one every 10 minutes average but due to random travel sometimes you get more than one, sometimes none for over an hour. * True the drivers are drunk but that's all I can hire. 18 months work in that script and at this stage most of the problems are limitations in the physics engine response time. * True the "scripting is not that great" but so far no one has done better, or even come close. Ethics would suggest under these circumstances, a better option would be to use some form of garage that someone can spawn a vehicle from on demand, similar to how the Kama City Metropolitan Transit Authority in Zindra handles the overhead trams, while reducing the frequency of automatically spawned vehicles substantially. I realize that you're all about driving the numbers as high as possible, but I believe most users of the Linden right of ways are of the opinion that automated vehicles in excess of resident-operated vehicles, particulalry when they have difficulty staying in their lane and disregard accepted conventions at intersections, are considered harmful. I suggest at each of the rez zones you have, the frequency of vehicles rezzed should never (except when a vehicle is explicitly requested from a button push at the rez site) exceed (n / t) / 2 where n is the number of avatars that pass it over a given interval of t, which should be a long enough period of time to get a representative sample (such as one day or one week). This is likely quite a bit more infrequent than the current spawn interval but is probably more in line with the number of vehicles required for single-occupancy coverage and public visibility, without being so frequent as to be a nuisance to landowners with a frontage and other road users. Unrelated to this particular conversation, I should apologize for the ugliness of the above formula, for some reason this website barfs on MathML and doesn't consider it to be valid. Hey, Lithium: Web Standards: Do YOU speak it?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holocluck Henly Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Hello Baloo - when you refer to the rails, do you mean these same random type vehicles that push us around, shoot at us, and solicit product, or the Trolleys? I have to say though that the automated trolleys someone output on the SLRR tracks were a problem at first, but have dropped off to a more reasonable frequency AND are phantom. They're now a mild, tolerable annoyance IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloo Uriza Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 I like this idea, especially if it flies apart and cleans up after itself a-la the F-bomb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloo Uriza Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Holocluck Henly wrote: Hello Baloo - when you refer to the rails, do you mean these same random type vehicles that push us around, shoot at us, and solicit product, or the Trolleys? Both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holocluck Henly Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 In Bay City, an artist has a corner where you can rez a free convertible and ride down the street. I like this. First, the vehicles don't ride off by themselves like THOSE OTHER ones. Also, it derezzes when you get out. Truly an altruistic gesture with the intent to let people have fun. They aren't even automated. Cubey Terra's AI planes are phantom / temp. Every few minutes a plane on HIS runway announces its destination and you have an option to jump aboard. If no one does, they take off on HIS runway and fly as far as his neighbors' village in Cowell (which they condone), then derez. If you jump out of them (I've been known to parachute down into Nova Albion from a plane I took from Abbotts), Cubey's planes derez. His planes are for enjoyment and do not solicit his products. They are high up and out of the way of builds. These are the offerings of a responsible, considerate individual who provides a service and shares our love for Mainland. Cubey Terra is a class act. There we have examples of GOOD use of vehicles for the public. Their examples should be followed by those others. A garbage truck pushing a biker into banlines is NOT the product of a class act. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marianne McCann Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Baloo Uriza wrote: That said, the boat canals in Bay City have ferry platforms in the canals, which may have one time or in the future be served by LDPW boats, but are currently unused. Would be neat to see boat traffic lift the drawbridges now and then, and the high canal walls would help prevent boats from running into other parcels. That would be in error. There is an automated water trolley in the center of both the east and west side that serves the very platforms you speak of. These do automatically lift the drawbridges on their route. Why, here's a picture of one of the trolleys doing just that: http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=275631 One of the central differences between these and, for example, AnnMarie's vehicles is that hers are self guided, rather than on a set course. This is how you end up with them in places never designed for cars (such as the bridle path, where it is unreasonable to expect pedestrians to watch for automotive traffic). IMO, this is one of the key differences between her system and many (most) out there, and is the cause of a fair amount of the friction between her system and other Second Life Residents. Some places are just not designed for such a system, and are ill-served by it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holocluck Henly Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Ditto my pic from the Bay City thread: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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