Should Any Second Life User Be Allowed To Continue To See Another User's Camera Beacon Location - Privacy Issue?

[Quistess Alpha]

18 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Right clicking rigged mesh is a bit hit and miss. To put it in simple terms, the rigged mesh isn't where you see it in world, it could be somewhere else and you're not right clicking on that. Thank Kitty we can right click on it even half the time

if the viewer added an option to unrig and re-rig rigged mesh, maybe that'd make it easier for creators to put the unrigged 'actual mesh' somewhere sane. in Kokua, sometimes if a rigged mesh doesn't load fast enough, it shows in it's actual position and doesn't rig. . . (might happen in Catznip too, but I don't use your viewer regularly to notice many uncommon issues)

[Rowan Amore]

46 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Yes I get that but I find doing it through the Inventory is not as convenient as so often the names of the items are a bit of a jumble with not being able to rename them to something that actually includes the english term for shoes etc. R-click is faster and more intuitive.

I use the Worn tab in inventory.

ETA.  Or current outfit in main inventory, show original if I plan to reattach said item.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Rowan Amore

[NiranV Dean]

1 hour ago, Quistess Alpha said:

if the viewer added an option to unrig and re-rig rigged mesh, maybe that'd make it easier for creators to put the unrigged 'actual mesh' somewhere sane. in Kokua, sometimes if a rigged mesh doesn't load fast enough, it shows in it's actual position and doesn't rig. . . (might happen in Catznip too, but I don't use your viewer regularly to notice many uncommon issues)

It happens in all Viewers. Just the nature of how meshes are displayed in SL. You can see the actual position with Develop - Render Metadata - Update Type. However there seems to be no correlation between the actual position and where a click will actually hit. I did notice however that clicking where the underlying LL body is usually seems to improve the chances drastically.

What's more interesting to me is the Raycast toggle in there, the raycast is clearly able to properly raycast against the rigged and transformed mesh, why can't this be used to check whether we hit something or not? 

What's even weirder, with the raycast enabled every single of my right clicks hit perfectly... except, contrary to the above statement, when i click where the LL body is (its being highlighted too), where clicks seem to become like a 50/50 whether they hit the mesh or the LL body.

Edited January 9, 2022 by NiranV Dean

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

2 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

Now that is an interesting solution. I didn't think of that! I should prevent attachment derendering too.

But does that disallow me to r-click and detach my own personal clothing?

Derendering an attachment is different from 'detaching' it.  Derender simple makes it invisible to you.

[NiranV Dean]

3 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Derendering an attachment is different from 'detaching' it.  Derender simple makes it invisible to you.

What if i told you it detaches it too?

[Rowan Amore]

6 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

What if i told you it detaches it too?

Derendering someone else's attachment does not detach it nor derender it in anyone else's viewer but please, do explain what you mean.

[Arielle Popstar]

22 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

It happens in all Viewers. Just the nature of how meshes are displayed in SL. You can see the actual position with Develop - Render Metadata - Update Type. However there seems to be no correlation between the actual position and where a click will actually hit. I did notice however that clicking where the underlying LL body is usually seems to improve the chances drastically.

What's more interesting to me is the Raycast toggle in there, the raycast is clearly able to properly raycast against the rigged and transformed mesh, why can't this be used to check whether we hit something or not? 

What's even weirder, with the raycast enabled every single of my right clicks hit perfectly... except, contrary to the above statement, when i click where the LL body is (its being highlighted too), where clicks seem to become like a 50/50 whether they hit the mesh or the LL body.

 A while back I was comparing the LL to FS viewers for their ability to detach what I was r-clicking and I remember it seemed that the LL viewer was more consistent. I didn't go the point of actually factoring the hit and miss ratio but I did walk away with the belief that not all viewers are the same in that regard.

[Arielle Popstar]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Derendering someone else's attachment does not detach it nor derender it in anyone else's viewer but please, do explain what you mean.

My guess would be that to stop someone else from being able to derender another's clothes, they would need to block the ability to select it in the first place. 

[NiranV Dean]

6 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Derendering someone else's attachment does not detach it nor derender it in anyone else's viewer but please, do explain what you mean.

I was making a joke: Should i do it? Should i make it detach too? What's the point of it derendering if it detaches too... 

[LittleMe Jewell]

47 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

What if i told you it detaches it too?

 

24 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

I was making a joke: Should i do it? Should i make it detach too? What's the point of it derendering if it detaches too... 

 

You definitely had me wondering, there for a minute, how the hell that could be

Edited January 9, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

One , some or all of the OP's complaint (and many others) could be solved quite simply: Give avatars the ability to wear an invisible skin. The cammers-in would find nothing to see and their cross-hairs would move-along to the next interesting sight.

Of course, this does raise a new problem - I can't see myself.

So you'd need a new option in preferences to "unhide me to myself and friends"

Of course, it could be your friend's cross-hairs that are causing the annoyance.,,,

[Quistess Alpha]

8 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Give avatars the ability to wear an invisible skin

That's already a thing Prof. most people use it to fix clothing issues.

[LilNosferatu]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

One , some or all of the OP's complaint (and many others) could be solved quite simply: Give avatars the ability to wear an invisible skin. The cammers-in would find nothing to see and their cross-hairs would move-along to the next interesting sight.

Of course, this does raise a new problem - I can't see myself.

So you'd need a new option in preferences to "unhide me to myself and friends"

Of course, it could be your friend's cross-hairs that are causing the annoyance.,,,

Most mesh bodies (if not all?) come with the ability to alpha specific sections through a HUD or equippable alpha thingy. You could go through and alpha all the parts of the body covered in clothing so you still look normal, but derendering the outfit would show that your body is invisible underneath.

You could also use BOM underwear/lingerie that can't be derendered since it's applied to the body texture.  

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, LilNosferatu said:

Most mesh bodies (if not all?) come with the ability to alpha specific sections through a HUD or equippable alpha thingy. You could go through and alpha all the parts of the body covered in clothing so you still look normal, but derendering the outfit would show that your body is invisible underneath.

You could also use BOM underwear/lingerie that can't be derendered since it's applied to the body texture.  

Your tag would still show up though?

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Derendering someone else's attachment does not detach it nor derender it in anyone else's viewer but please, do explain what you mean.

The viewer is dumb like rock.

It only knows what the region tells it.

Derendering an object works by deleting the object from the list of things the the region told the viewer about. Things can get a bit clever with managing session or permanent deprendering and remember which are which .. but fundamentally, as far as your viewer is concerned .. there is no difference between derender and delete.

Viewer that support derendeirng attachments .. work the same .. As far as your viewer is concerned, the object was detached by it's owner.

It's ok for you viewer to be wrong as everything SL does is serverside, and quite often the easiest way to do things is to just trick the viewer somehow.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Henri Beauchamp]

Like already explained earlier in this thread, the avatar's ”look at” vector cross-hair display feature always existed in LL's official viewer, but for debug purpose only and thus was not showing avatar names.

Then some TPV (Emerald, IIRC) added the avatar names on the ”look at” cross-hair, and the feature became a way for some people to spy on what you are looking at (and not only their own avatar) and two categories of users then existed in SL: the ones who could tell what everyone was looking at, and the ones who could not (i.e. they could see the cross-hairs but not the names).

Some time later a TPV (not sure which did it first: perhaps Phoenix) added a way to stop broadcasting the look at vector (causing the avatars to stop looking around itself and making it look like a robot in the process...), so to regain some control on your privacy...

Over years, I watched things develop, resisting implementing the ”names on cross-hair” feature in the Cool VL Viewer, because I am a very privacy-minded man. Sadly, the result of those successive developments got things only worst on the privacy front: you now had people with ”spying viewers” who could stop broadcasting their own look-at vector and yet see the name-labeled vectors of all other users not using this feature (or with a viewer not implementing it). This pissed me off, and I then implemented the feature, but in my own, privacy and reciprocity minded way. With the Cool VL Viewer you can:

• Limit your look-at vector transmission to ”targets” within a configurable distance. For example, it makes totally sense to broadcast it for targets 20m away (the chat/normal RP interaction distance) but not farther; in real life, if you look at someone close to you, they will most likely notice it, but if you look at them from 50m away, they likely won't.
• Allow you to see the names on the look-at cross hair only for avatars looking at things within the same distance as the one you configured. This is simply ensuring the reciprocity and defeats ”spying”/unbalanced usage.
• I added an optional notification feature which can tell you whenever a given avatar got its camera focus locked on your avatar for a consecutive amount of time exceeding a configurable delay (defaulting to 30s), even when the look-at cross-hairs rendering is not enabled (also, the notification only happens once in the viewer session). The aim of this feature is to encourage a virtuous usage, by increasing the role-play opportunities while discouraging the permanent display of the look-at cross hairs and avoiding misinterpretations such as when someone simply have their mouse pointer randomly hover on some avatar while their camera is not focused on it (only the color of the cross-hair can tell you if it's a mouse pointer hover or a camera focus: many users are not aware of this and confuse the two, sometimes complaining vehemently that you would spy on them when you did not !); if your only aim is to know who is interested in your avatar, then you just need the one-shot notification and not the permanent display of the cross-hairs. The notify tip itself was worded so that users do not get upset (”[NAME] seems to be showing interest in your avatar's look...”).

I would go as far as daring to suggest that every TPV (and LL's official viewer) implements the same set of features, so to avoid spying usages and make the look-at vector something useful (and not harmful) for the interactions in SL...

Edited January 10, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[LilNosferatu]

8 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Your tag would still show up though?

Oh, yeah I don't think there's a way to make your name invisible to others or completely mask your avatar's presence. I don't think I'd want that though, lol -- while I'd love to run around in stealth mode, I could definitely see that being abused. 🤣

[Lucia Nightfire]

33 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

and two categories of users then existed in SL: the ones who could tell what everyone was looking at, and the ones who could not (i.e. they could see the cross-hairs but not the names).

More like, ones that could see that "someone" was looking and ones that could see "who" was looking.

37 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

For example, it makes totally sense to broadcast it for targets 20m away (the chat/normal RP interaction distance) but not farther; in real life, if you look at someone close to you, they will most likely notice it

I can assure you that if a random few lose their minds over someone looking at them, distance is rarely a factor. They could be a in a landing point packed like sardines and the person next them's lookat would irk them, whether or not the owner's name was hovering on it.

This is a online environment and we are in an era where AOs are so prevalent that the client-side, turn-to-lookat-target IK animation is overriden 99.9% of the time. Trying to associate/rationalize a distance clamp with a feature that already leaves zero guessing as to if someone is focused(alt-cammed) on them or just glancing in their general direction(unfocused or focused on something nearby but in same line of sight) and equating the performance with that of RL is kind of futile.

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

More like, ones that could see that ”someone” was looking and ones that could see ”who” was looking.

I fail to see any difference with what I wrote...

Quote

I can assure you that if a random few lose their minds over someone looking at them, distance is rarely a factor.

Thus why I still find it useful to limit the distance for broadcasting your ”look at” vector: this indeed avoids pointless drama. This is point 1 of my implementation.

But on the other hand, reciprocity should be ensured and when you limit the broadcast distance you should not be allowed to see the names for people looking from farther away... Thus point 2 of my implementation.

Quote

Trying to associate/rationalize a distance clamp with a feature that already leaves zero guessing as to if someone is focused(alt-cammed) on them or just glancing in their general direction(unfocused or focused on something nearby but in same line of sight)

And the reason for point 3: the notification about someone looking at your avatar only happens for actual ALT-camming, and after a significant amount of time (i.e. short ”glances” are excluded).

Quote

equating the performance with that of RL is kind of futile.

I disagree. Making it similar to what happens in RL not only puts some logic into it (I'm a very logical guy), but also can be used to enhance the role-play aspect of SL. Since this feature (the look-at cross-hair) existed like forever (it certainly already was in LL's viewer when I joined SL in 2006), and got (sadly) diverted from its original aim (pure debugging), let's try to at least make it beneficial (RP-friendly) and not harmful (privacy-threatening by encouraging spying usage)...

Edited January 10, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

I disagree. Making it similar to what happens in RL not only puts some logic into it (I'm a very logical guy), but also can be used to enhance the role-play aspect of SL. Since this feature (the look-at cross-hair) existed like forever (it certainly already was in LL's viewer when I joined SL in 2006), and got (sadly) diverted from its original aim (pure debugging), let's try to at least make it beneficial (RP-friendly) and not harmful (privacy-threatening by encouraging spying usage)...

Does your viewer remove lookat beacons of two close proximity users alt camming each other when there is a wall between them or when someone is facing away from someone nearby but alt camming them?

Let's remove lookat beacons entirely if we're modeling RL. Also, let's get rid of being able to have a disembodied third party camera perspective while we're modeling RL and go mouselook only. 😉

Edited January 10, 2022 by Lucia Nightfire

[Henri Beauchamp]

18 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

if we're modeling RL.

It is not what a genuine role-player awaits from a RPing platform... But some vraisemblance and minimal realism is indeed a plus for role-playing: for the genuine role-players the avatars are like characters in a (non-autobiographic) novel they would be one of the authors.

Quote

and go mouselook only.

As a role-player, I never use mouse-look (my avatar is not me, i.e. IC != OOC)... Mouse-look is more for persona-players (users with an avatar reflecting their own persona IC = OOC)...

[Rowan Amore]

Spying?  Huh?

[Quistess Alpha]

15 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Your tag would still show up though?

6 hours ago, LilNosferatu said:

Oh, yeah I don't think there's a way to make your name invisible to others or completely mask your avatar's presence. I don't think I'd want that though, lol -- while I'd love to run around in stealth mode, I could definitely see that being abused. 🤣

The easiest trick to get the name over your head to "not show up" is to hover-height yourself way into the ground (your shape also has a hover-height slider), and then use a special body (or animesh) that compensates for the displacement (if you actually want to look like you exist. . .)

[NiranV Dean]

23 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

The easiest trick to get the name over your head to "not show up" is to hover-height yourself way into the ground (your shape also has a hover-height slider), and then use a special body (or animesh) that compensates for the displacement (if you actually want to look like you exist. . .)

This wouldn't work unless you can rig the mesh in such a way that it moves normal despite being far off the actual skeleton. Animesh would work. Nametags are bound to your head so wherever your head bone is so will be your nametag. I've been thinking of reverting this to the old behavior (avatar position based rather than head bone based) or better yet use a combination of both with a distance limit which will make the nametag position fallback to your avatar position. I assume the reason the behavior was changed was due to tiny or huge avatars which had their nametags clip into them.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

Has anyone mentioned an actual valid reason for having lookats showing?  Maybe I missed it in the previous pages.

I can't think of a reason someone needs to know where I'm looking.  I also have no idea what use it is to me to know where someone else put their camera.

What debugging use do lookats have?  It's in the code for a reason, I assume.