Privacy and sightseeing

[nebulae]

In 1st life I can walk down a street and see the difference between private and public space (mostly) and it's easy to go sightseeing without upsetting people or getting thrown out of spaces.

In 2nd life, unless you're on one of the large spaces, there isn't a public road to walk down.

For islands we can't walk/fly/sail around them. We can look at the map and teleport to them. One of my fave activities. In 1st life I always explore a new area. In 2nd life that's a little more difficult, or at least visually disturbing when we are teleported back to newbie area. I also lose track of where I was up to with my explorations unless I've bookmarked something close by.

I do use destination guides and searching etc, but sometimes I just want to see 'what's over there".

I wonder if there's a way for the map to 'see' when an island has privacy settings, and mark them, so I can avoid teleporting on to there? Currently available? Future build of the software? Opinions?

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

The map and landmarks ought to look up the access settings of a lot - that would be a nice improvement.

As they don't - if you're on viewer 2 just use your teleport history to go to one step before the place that booted you.

 

 

[nebulae]

Huh! I hadn't thought of the teleport history. Thanks for that.

But maybe there could be a future 'improvement' down the line...

cheers

 

[Dilbert Dilweg]

That would be a nice feature to ad to the map maybe. When you mouse over an area it returns a privacy Report in a little popup bubble..

[Jaylin Wytchwood]

Nice idea actually.

[Wildcat Furse]

very interesting really ... I would also like to see how many prims are available on each plot on the map or if there are banlines, when flying over I can change course if I see the plot has no prims left or is locked, otherwise I end up in many cases this way ...... :smileymad: *meows*

[Bree Giffen]

It's a great idea! I too like to wander around and just TP into places on the map at random. We have parcels that are begging to have you visit sitting next to parcels that want to get rid of you as soon as possible. It sure would be nice to see if a place is public or private on the map.

[Hugsy Penguin]

Whenever these threads appear, they often times devolve into a Land Owner vs Explorer battle.  I prefer to wear both hats and think Linden Lab should give land owners better tools to specify privacy and explorers better awareness of privacy settings.

For land owners, allow privacy zones where you set a bottom and top altitude and everything in-between is considered private.  You could set the bottom to 0 and top to 4096 for full coverage.  You could also set a privacy zone in the sky around your personal skybox home but keep the ground open for your store customers.  It would update how ban lines, white lists, and black lists work.

For explorers, the privacy zone would show on the mini-map.  If you are at or near the level of a privacy zone it would show in a special color.  If you're above or below, it either wouldn't show or be filled will little up or down arrows (similar to the up/down arrow the green dot turns into for nearby avatars).  It would also be nice if the mini-map showed parcel full and no object entry.

The onus would be on land owners to setup their privacy settings correctly and then on explorers to pay attention to them.

[Drongle McMahon]

Seeing excluded areas on the minimap would be very good. Setting exclusion 0..4096 would be very bad. It would lead to instances of total entrapment. (Of course this is already possible with explicit exclusion lists). I think there should be some level where overflight is guaranteed. Doesn't have to be huge. I would suggest 1000-1200.

[Abigail Longmeadow]

There are ban line HUDs available in Second Life, to show you safe areas when flying, unfortunately I have not found anything that can detect security orbs. I also find that things come up fast when flying, so you may not have time to react even if you know there are ban lines ahead.

[Eileen Fellstein]

There's some public roads on mainland. A couple of them are right near my home. Search for route 9. You can walk/ride/sightsee for many miles without getting tossed back to where-ever, and there's the odd place here and there where you can rez a vehicle. I recomend something like a horse though as walking is very slow and driving a car causes issues when crossing a sim line. Just watch out for the scripted traffric. Don't want your horsie to get runned over.

I'm really glad whoever undertook these projects chose to do so and I really wish there was more of this type of thing. I like to explore too, which is why I leave my land barriers off. It's enough to have scripts and rezzing set to group. Someone crossing the lot doesn't bother me. After all, I'm here to have fun and meet people. If I see them, I will usually go out and chat with them a while

[nebulae]

I do go for walks on the mainland sometimes, and I've had some lovely conversations over there too.I really like island hopping tho, one of those things I'd like to do in 1st life...

 

I think it should be the world map, not the mini map. I want to see other islands around the one I'm on.

 

And I don't need to fly over, so I don't have an opinion on a fly over zone. I  think with sky boxes appearing at all sorts of levels that would be a problem.

 

Still, it seems this is an interesting topic for lots of people!

 

 

[Drongle McMahon]

Fair enough. Give it an on/off toggle on both maps and everyone can be happy.

[Hugsy Penguin]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

Seeing excluded areas on the minimap would be very good. Setting exclusion 0..4096 would be very bad. It would lead to instances of total entrapment. (Of course this is already possible with explicit exclusion lists). I think there should be some level where overflight is guaranteed. Doesn't have to be huge. I would suggest 1000-1200.

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I think there would still be a lot of open space to fly around in.  But then again, I’m sure people would just do the easy thing and set the privacy zone to max extents.  Perhaps what would be better is one privacy zone with a max extent of 1024 meters and a button to quickly set it to around your current position (512 meters above and below).

I’m not too keen on a no-build zone for land owners although I do admit that when max build height was 768 meters it was nice to pop up to around 900 meters and do fast cross-continental flights.



[Ahania]

I am still new here, and direct overland travel seems a natural way to explore, but teleporting blind onto an attractively-named island can result in anything, I am discovering. Anything from gushing welcome notices, to 10 seconds to get out. Most embarrassing was a delightful floral wonderland, where I wandered for a while, entranced, before coming across a plush honeymoon bed in the great outdoors. As I stared in delighted wonder, a lady rushed up and ordered me off in blunt, outraged terms, what are you doing here on private land?

The most civilized rejection is a simple 'You do not have access to this destination' message when trying to teleport. Saves everyone trouble, but perhaps is an expensive option for landowners?