1 second Orb timing, is it necessary

[Love Zhaoying]

5 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

In RL, in the US, there is at least a 10 foot easement on each side of the road.

 

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/easements-overview.html

 

Utility and construction contractors are all too familiar with easements belonging to municipalities, counties, states and private property. Lots of frivolous lawsuit hassles and a few legitimate ones.

There's an easement in front of houses in my neighborhood, more obvious if you have a sidewalk. People can park on the sidewalk or on "your" grass between the sidewalk and road, under the shade of your tree..and day they have the right because of the "easement".  Even though the sidewalk is for "public" use, they can block it. Even though you are responsible for the grass, they can park on it.

[Love Zhaoying]

If 1-second orbs are taken away, then there's one less "game" feature in SL. No rules, no consequences, not a game. #UnpopularOpinion #NotMine

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Gabriele Graves said:

The only problem I can foresee with this is that we cannot know the orb's area of influence and so it limits it's usefulness especially as often orbs can be anywhere on the parcel and so knowing it's location may not be that useful.

as a traveler it would always be best to work on the assumption that an orb operates on the whole parcel all the way up

when we start getting into an orb's range (area of influence) then we shouldn't rely on the orb's response always being correct. The only thing we can be sure of is that we received a location for the ping. Which we can interpret as an advice to give the location a wide berth on the X and Y (go around the parcel)

is possible too that when we ping, there isn't an actual eject method in place - is just a signal/sign saying please stay off my lawn.

the idea is to give travelers a way to get a forewarning, on which they can act beforehand

[Gabriele Graves]

14 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

as a traveler it would always be best to work on the assumption that an orb operates on the whole parcel all the way up

when we start getting into an orb's range (area of influence) then we shouldn't rely on the orb's response always being correct. The only thing we can be sure of is that we received a location for the ping. Which we can interpret as an advice to give the location a wide berth on the X and Y (go around the parcel)

is possible too that when we ping, there isn't an actual eject method in place - is just a signal/sign saying please stay off my lawn.

the idea is to give travelers a way to get a forewarning, on which they can act beforehand

Could maybe put the parcel name in the response message in that case.

[Mollymews]

9 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Could maybe put the parcel name in the response message in that case.

is enough I think for the orb maker to just send the location. The parcel owner (by virtue of the orb maker) is providing the traveler with the most important piece of information

when our orb gives its region location, then the traveler hud can get all of the parcel's details for the location when this is of interest to the traveler. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetParcelDetails

the onus should I think, be on the traveler (hud script) to fetch the more detailed information if this is what they want. And shouldn't be an expectation on the parcel owner/orb maker to try to decide what the traveler does or doesn't want to know

 

[Gabriele Graves]

6 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

is enough I think for the orb maker to just send the location. The parcel owner (by virtue of the orb maker) is providing the traveler with the most important piece of information

when our orb gives its region location, then the traveler hud can get all of the parcel's details for the location when this is of interest to the traveler. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetParcelDetails

the onus should I think, be on the traveler (hud script) to fetch the more detailed information if this is what they want. And shouldn't be an expectation on the parcel owner/orb maker to try to decide what the traveler does or doesn't want to know

 

Yeah, I was actually thinking of just getting the orb to IM the avatar who pinged with a humanly readable message instead but of course you would have to have a HUD to ping in the first place, so yeah.

[Theresa Tennyson]

6 hours ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

I agree it's a start.

And in fact it brings up another point:

Flight in SL is nothing like RL.

In SL it's more like driving ... jump in your vehicle, fire it up, and go.

In RL you need a flight plan. You need to take into account prohibited zones (e.g. the air above the White House), tightly controlled airspaces (e.g. airports), etc.

If our SL pilots wanted a more realistic experience they could collaborate on a 'registry' of 'problem parcels' ... places where the airspace was obstructed with skyboxes, security orbs, etc.

Then they could sit down with a map and figure out their flight plan fairly secure in the knowledge that they are able to get from point A to point B and probably not encounter any obstacles.

Obviously parcels can change fairly quickly, but if people insist on drawing RL analogies ...

Guess who establishes and enforces airways in RL? Here's a hint - it's not pilots.

[Mollymews]

1 minute ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Yeah, I was actually thinking of just getting the orb to IM the avatar who pinged with a humanly readable message instead but of course you would have to have a HUD to ping in the first place, so yeah.

we getting into the deep of writing a traveler friendly orb. Which is pretty interesting to me to do

so yes, this could be an option if the publicly known ping channel was a positive number. A person could manually send a ping. Example: /1886 ping

and get a llRegionSayTo response on channel 0: The response being. OrbName: <x,y,z> Name of parcel

this could be an extension that an orb maker could provide.  In the orb listen event then we can determine the type of sender (key id).  If ping sender is agent respond RegionSayTo on channel 0 (show in sender's chat window). If is an object respond on channel -1887

example is to use llGetDisplayName(id) as a filter in the listen event.  If the function returns empty string then sender key id is an object, else is an agent

 

[Gabriele Graves]

4 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

we getting into the deep of writing a traveler friendly orb. Which is pretty interesting to me to do

so yes, this could be an option if the publicly known ping channel was a positive number. A person could manually send a ping. Example: /1886 ping

and get a llRegionSayTo response on channel 0: The response being. OrbName: <x,y,z> Name of parcel

this could be an extension that an orb maker could provide.  In the orb listen event then we can determine the type of sender (key id).  If ping sender is agent respond RegionSayTo on channel 0 (show in sender's chat window). If is an object respond on channel -1887

example is to use llGetDisplayName(id) as a filter in the listen event.  If the function returns empty string then sender key id is an object, else is an agent

 

Could be done as a gesture with a hot key too and then anyone can use and easily not just the HUD wearers which increases the universality of it.  Though I think I would prefer an llInstantMessage() if I pinged and not a llRegionSayTo().  It all depends on the rate on pings I suppose.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Gabriele Graves

[Mollymews]

2 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Could be done as a gesture with a hot key too and then anyone can use and easily not just the HUD wearers which increases the universality of it.  Though I think I would prefer an llInstantMessage() if I pinged and not use region say back.  It all depends on the rate on pings I suppose.

gesture is a really good suggestion and I think would be quite useful to many travelers who are just moving themselves without a vehicle

like if walking along the road and think to go onto a parcel by the roadside. Play the gesture and we get told in chat or IM if there is an orb on the parcel

so we decided in our design that the ping channel is best to be a positive number

[Wulfie Reanimator]

@Mollymews The orb wouldn't need to send any specific info, you can get the position of the orb based on its key (which you have in the listen event). And I'm pretty sure viewers support negative chat messages these days, but I digress.

[Mollymews]

6 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

@Mollymews The orb wouldn't need to send any specific info, you can get the position of the orb based on its key (which you have in the listen event). And I'm pretty sure viewers support negative chat messages these days, but I digress.

i never knew that about negative channel chat messages echoing in the viewer text console display. I mostly use the Linden viewer so I dunno much about what TPVs can do. I will have a play with the Linden viewer just to see, even tho am pretty sure that the Linden viewer only echoes console messages received on channel 0

a thing about the orb. It has to send something for the traveler hud to receive a message in its listen event, so I think might as well be the location

[Mollymews]

was just thinking about which orb maker could lead this effort if was to be done

and I think Them Mole who makes the orb for Bellissaria could take the lead on it. Set a good example for every else who makes orbs

Them Mole what scripts that device who might read this, will probably go nuuuu! we got 1000s of orbs in place already !! You know how much work we would have to do to replace them all !!  And I will say to them, are you Crying Mole or are you Leader Mole. You look like Leader Mole to me, even if the thought of this makes you cry 😸

[sirhc DeSantis]

Be nice to have a server call that returned a 'map' of a regions restrictions (no entry, scripts on etc with an overall rating based on llGetParcelFlags). Would only need a granularity of 4m, simple list of 'go/nogo' per square (ok thats 4096 datapoints - not excessive). Would need to be heavily throttled but the data would only need to change, after initial setup, if any details changed - assuming the server knows of that in real time which seems to be the case.

Couple that with 'beacon' type scripted sec devices and you have both pre-plan probably safe route + realtime info on active devices.

[Mollymews]

altho just thinking about Them Mole's orb

might have to only respond to a ping when the agent's position is within some narrower XY region distance close-ish to the XY of the orb.  Say with 32, 48, 64 meters.  Otherwise if have 23 homes with 23 orbs operatiing on the region, then the agent will get a wall of text.  By narrowing the XY then reduce the wall of text

taking this up a level, could narrow it done further. Don't send any response when the agent is rotated away from the orb (don't respond to an agent who is facing away from the orb)

[Gabriele Graves]

I'm already taking a different approach though.  I am adapting my networked auto-banlines security system for more general non-networked use and plan to give it away free as a fully working basic system on my MP page as my contribution to improving things on mainland.

I believe that while traveller friendly orbs are obviously better than ones that aren't, as a traveller there is no substitute for seeing ban-lines as you approach because you always know where the no-go areas are and you still have the option of turning off the visuals and allowing yourself to bump against them.
For that reason, I feel ban-lines are generally superior but these limitations usually move people to choosing orbs instead:

a) You cannot protect high enough with general ban-lines
b) You cannot protect just a boxed area in the sky without restricting the land below and above
c) They cannot teleport a person home.

If I can a simillar level of protection for owners as orbs but with the visibility of ban-lines then it will benefit travellers too.

I've been trialing my system for some time now which can do a) & b).  It manages the ban-lines for you.  Once a person enters a region, this system detects them and puts them on the ban-list immediately so the only chance they can get where they aren't wanted is by tp'ing directly onto banned land and then they are ejected as they are banned.  It removes them from the ban-list when they leave the region as well.

The ban lines of course go all the way up, you cannot bounce on top.

If you keep your lands open except for a skybox then the system detects when someone enters the protected area, ejects them and puts them on the ban-list temporarily for a specified time.  All with messages telling them what is happening and why.

It can be set to none, full, whitelist, blacklist restrict for the whole parcel and/or the areas you define.  It's notecard driven as well as a partial dialog-based UI.  It has an API so that different UI types can be created.

The only thing that is doesn't do as a deliberate decision is option c)  There are no TP home options with this, it just uses ban-lines and eject for the rare occasions someone tp's directly onto a banned parcel.  So the orb owner would have to be OK with that to switch.  It is a much gentler way of dealing with unwanted people.

It cannot be used on Bellisseria or any Linden Homes 2 estates as auto-ban lines are forbidden and this is enforced by detection.

In addition I am considering giving away the two scripts as full perm (one engine, one UI) so people can learn, improve and extend it.  I am in the closing stages of development and testing the new more general non-networked form.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Gabriele Graves
corrected options

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

i never knew that about negative channel chat messages echoing in the viewer text console display. I mostly use the Linden viewer so I dunno much about what TPVs can do. I will have a play with the Linden viewer just to see, even tho am pretty sure that the Linden viewer only echoes console messages received on channel 0

Oh no, I only meant that you can manually type chat messages to negative channels. I don't know of any TPV where it's even an option to display nonlocal chat messages on screen.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

 

taking this up a level, could narrow it done further. Don't send any response when the agent is rotated away from the orb (don't respond to an agent who is facing away from the orb)

That wouldn't work so well if the agent is sitting on a sailboat perpendicular to the direction of travel with a somewhat sidewind moving towards the orb vicinity.

Another feature could be that the orb turns off or limits its restriction when the homeowner is not at home or especially online when the need for privacy is no longer warranted or needed. This is especially good for owners who are infrequent visitors to S/L and yet have a large impact on the travelling ability for inworld residents 24/7.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Another feature could be that the orb turns off or limits its restriction when the homeowner is not at home or especially online when the need for privacy is no longer warranted or needed. This is especially good for owners who are infrequent visitors to S/L and yet have a large impact on the travelling ability for inworld residents 24/7.

RL equivalent scenario: "I'm leaving the house now, so I shall turn off my security system. Oops! Almost forgot to unlock my door!"

[Mollymews]

42 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Oh no, I only meant that you can manually type chat messages to negative channels. I don't know of any TPV where it's even an option to display nonlocal chat messages on screen.

ah ok. I was reading you wrong

[Mollymews]

4 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

That wouldn't work so well if the agent is sitting on a sailboat perpendicular to the direction of travel with a somewhat sidewind moving towards the orb vicinity

yes thats true

maybe for a Belli type orb then within some closer proximity to the orb, other than the whole region, might have to be the way

[Mollymews]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

RL equivalent scenario: "I'm leaving the house now, so I shall turn off my security system. Oops! Almost forgot to unlock my door!"

was thinking about this a while ago. How we can make a smart home. A way it could be done is here:

 

[Arielle Popstar]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

RL equivalent scenario: "I'm leaving the house now, so I shall turn off my security system. Oops! Almost forgot to unlock my door!"

The main defense for the need of Orbs has been to prevent an invasion of personal safe spaces by the unwashed masses. Not really been many who stated a need to protect their junk when they weren't online.

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Gabriele Graves said:

the system detects when someone enters the protected area, ejects them and puts them on the ban-list temporarily for a specified time

a thing to think about for your system, is when a person is on a vehicle

the Belli orb handles this in quite a good way

it detects if the person is sitting on a vehicle. Then it gets the uuid of the vehicle llGetObjectDetails( vehicle_rider_uuid, [OBJECT_ROOT]). Unsits the person. Returns the vehicle to the person. Then ejects the vehicle person from the parcel

the person gets their vehicle back in their inventory immediately.  We don't rely on the parcel return to do this

[Silent Mistwalker]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

There's an easement in front of houses in my neighborhood, more obvious if you have a sidewalk. People can park on the sidewalk or on "your" grass between the sidewalk and road, under the shade of your tree..and day they have the right because of the "easement".  Even though the sidewalk is for "public" use, they can block it. Even though you are responsible for the grass, they can park on it.

Nope. There are laws/ordinances against blocking sidewalks and parking on the shoulder (depending on type of road and location) for any reason other than an emergency.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Silent Mistwalker