Experience train/tram system for tours

[animats]

Now that there's work underway at LL on making teleports work faster and more reliably, it's worth looking at experience teleport transport systems again.

Make it look like this before and after teleports (From this SL video on Reddit.)

Here's the concept:

• Avatar gets on a tram car and sits.
• Tram goes into tunnel.
• Tram stops, and a moving wall effect like the one above starts to indicate motion. So you don't need much tunnel. Most existing subway stations in SL would work.
• The avatar is teleported via an experience to a freshly rezzed identical tram car elsewhere, and seated in the matching seat to the one they were in. It's a teleport, but it doesn't look like one.
• More moving wall effect.
• Tram comes out of tunnel at station. (Or maybe goes onto SLRR track or a road trip like YavaPods.)

This is intended for short tours. When you get there, you get a tour of some interesting place in SL, and if you don't get off, you eventually ride back to your starting point. New user entry points might have a few of these, to show off parts of SL in a somewhat controlled way. An audio track of a tour guide might help. (Playing the theme from "It's a Small World" is tempting but has copyright problems.)

SL already has Portal Park, and Firestorm's help island has a ring of portals, but they're not used much. Also, those are one-way - it's not obvious to new users how to get back. WelcomeHub has no obvious way out. There's a little train station at the south end of the Linden Homes area, and a long rail bridge to Bellessaria, but you have to rez your own train. There's some signage which suggests looking at the Destination Guide. But nothing like an organized tour, with a stated duration. The only way out is a teleport into the huge, cold, hard world.

SL, as anyone who talks to new users knows, has a big "what do I do now" problem. (The other classic new user question is "how do I fix this %#^&! clothing problem?") This is a way to provide new users a safe introduction to SL beyond the WelcomeHub. It's a theme park ride. New users will get that immediately.

[animats]

Well, it beats shooting avatars out of cannons, which is an actual transportation system at WelcomeHub.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 hours ago, animats said:

Well, it beats shooting avatars out of cannons, which is an actual transportation system at WelcomeHub.

I'd prefer a nice trebuchet.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

On 10/9/2023 at 8:47 AM, Love Zhaoying said:

I'd prefer a nice trebuchet.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

On 10/9/2023 at 3:17 AM, animats said:

Well, it beats shooting avatars out of cannons, which is an actual transportation system at WelcomeHub.

At least Avatar Cannons have the advantage of being funny...

A friend recently built a test avi-cannon that can launch an avatar about 17 regions, tested in South Zindra. (region crossings permitting)

 

Edited October 10, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[animats]

4 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

A friend recently built a test avi-cannon that can launch an avatar about 17 regions, tested in South Zindra. (region crossings permitting)

There used to be an avatar cannon just west of the mall in Kama City which would shoot the avatar to a club a few hundred meters away. Worked fine, but the club was empty.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

4 minutes ago, animats said:

There used to be an avatar cannon just west of the mall in Kama City which would shoot the avatar to a club a few hundred meters away. Worked fine,

Alley Arcadia , back in ancient times, made a sculpty "Columbiad Moon Cannon", which fires your avatar  straight up about 4.1 km.

One evening, we were loitering on the beach on my friends region, and I rezzed a moon cannon, we took turns getting launched and trying to skydive back down, which involved detouring via the region next door.

So my friend wondered how far you could throw an avatar SIDEWAYS, and built the text gun.

4 minutes ago, animats said:

but the club was empty.

That's Kama city for you, haha.

[Extrude Ragu]

On 10/9/2023 at 2:50 AM, Zalificent Corvinus said:

More laggy Clueless Out-of-Touch Vehicle Fanatic Induced Planning Blight, in the name of the Almighty "Immersion".

You know what, you're right! What All new SL users REALLY need to EXPERIENCE is more of this!

https://i.gyazo.com/519cb7c6a4abf2ad8e4d718a824dd2c2.mp4

What kind of STUPID user needs immersion and curated destinations, when they can JUST TELEPORT.

On 10/9/2023 at 2:50 AM, Zalificent Corvinus said:

You managed to TELEPORT to the Portal Park, you GET BACK the same way, even noobs should be able to figure that out, those that are TOO STUPID to do so, won't last in SL anyway.

You're SO right, there are SO MANY stupid people who join SL! How stupid they are to not figure out OUR game

SecondLife doesn't need to attract ANY new users! All of the population are so YOUNG and TOTALLY DON'T have one foot in the grave!!

 

/s

 

[Extrude Ragu]

Now that I've got that out of my system,

On 10/8/2023 at 7:13 PM, animats said:

SL already has Portal Park, and Firestorm's help island has a ring of portals, but they're not used much. Also, those are one-way - it's not obvious to new users how to get back. WelcomeHub has no obvious way out. There's a little train station at the south end of the Linden Homes area, and a long rail bridge to Bellessaria, but you have to rez your own train. There's some signage which suggests looking at the Destination Guide. But nothing like an organized tour, with a stated duration. The only way out is a teleport into the huge, cold, hard world.

Personally I think that at minimum all LL-owned destinations should have a media signboard which shows

https://secondlife.com/destinations

The viewer should also have this web page on a button available to new users and feature somewhere prominent by default on new viewer installations to help them find it. The existing destination floater built into viewers is very limited in comparison to the full guide and most users don't even know of the full guides existence let alone which URL to access it on.

---------------------------------

As for the tram idea, I think it could be used as a method to revitalize some of the mainland, the same way that trains built America. The screenshots I shared above show barren mainland, but mainland around linden roads tends to actually get developed:-

Immersion and connectivity funnily enough, seems to actually attract users to develop virtual land, funny that isn't it?

Funnily enough, the few times I've played on the mainland, the destinations I ended up sticking around at was some place I reached in either a car, a plane or a train.

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by Extrude Ragu

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Now that I've got that out of my system,

No, you are still talking nonsense.

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

As for the tram idea, I think it could be used as a method to revitalize some of the mainland, the same way that trains built America. The screenshots I shared above show barren mainland,

A few years back, a Vehicle Fanatic, unilaterally decided that a piece of mainland URGENTLY NEEDED a privately owned rail-fail.

They planned a 7 Region long track, running from basically nowhere, to basically nowhere, to "Re-vitalise" mainland.

Having basically no real building or planning skills, they started in the wrong place.

Mistakes

1. Region 1. They had to put in a massive ugly prim foundation block, over a dozen m high, the sort of thing people like you complain about, on the side of a steep hill, and run their track in the wrong direction

2. To turn in the right direction they had to make a 45 degree left turn, make it late enough to avoid encroaching on somebody else's land, and their track runs into somebody else's house and garden, turn early enough to avoid the house and garden, and encroach on land at the turn. They compromised and encroached on both, cue a bunch of having their rail embankment prims returned.

3. To run their track across another hillside, they ended up making a 4 m high cliff face with a 4m high prim embankment downhill from it, so the neighbour was forced to replace their garden fence with a massive 8m high wall, the kind of thing people like you whine about. Eventually, the householder raised the wall to 12 m to block out rail-fail planning blight, then gave up and "skyboxed on the ground" with ban-lines to keep the rail-faiilers out of their home, another of those things people like you complain about.

4. The presence of the Rail-Fail convinced another idiot to claim a parcel next to the track, and install a fake club adboard & bot farm. This eyesore, the kind of thing you complain about, lasted several months before the idiot owning it accepted that the Rail-Fail generated no "revitalised mainland passing traffic", and abandoned the parcel.

5. Next Region, they ran their track across a region between the half region sized skydome rental, and abandoned land, up a moderately steep slope, so for "immersion" they added one of those ratchet systems that haul trains up hills, that went *clunka-clunka-clunka* 24 hrs a day at a volume that could be heard over 200 m away. Nobody has EVER filed a ticked to get abandoned land next to that mess. Noise pollution, the sort of thing people like you complain about.

6. The owners of the half region skydome rental, decided to fake extra traffic, by building an airport at ground level. Problem is airports are famous for being FLAT, and theirs had to run UP that big damn hill, they tried flattening their parcel, and THEN found out about the 4m terror-forming limit, so all they did was SINK their entire parcel by4m, leaving the kind of ugly mess that people like you complain about. THEN instead of putting in a half region sized foundation block, they simply build an "Early Prim Crap Double Decker Anti-Gravity Airport" that at the top of the hill is less than 40 m off the ground, the sort of thing people like you complain about.

7. Region 3. Then Mr No-Building-Talent realised that there was a 1536 m2 residential parcel on the edge of Region 3, RIGHT in the path of the rail-fail, so they detoured past it, leaving their new track running within 4m of the residents front door., but this detour meant they were now aiming their track at another residential parcel on the other side of the region, and one which obviously wouldn't sell up cheap, or cut out and sell a track sized strip through the middle of their home, so another detour back the other way, up a steep hill, encroaching on a 48 m2 "memorial plot" dedicated to a deceased loved one. Because encroaching on other people's land is allowed for Vehicle fanatic planning blight, right?

8, The rail-failer, then tried terror-forming a railway embankment for the end of Region 3's track, to connect their prim crap viaduct over a small terrain dip, to the next region and another substantial climb in elevation, but, oh noe, 4 m terror-forming limit again, so they had to fill in with an ugly FULL BRIGHT Wrong-Grass-Texture-Used prim crap embankment, the sort of ugly mess people like you complain about.

9. Region 4. In spite of the fake embankments and low skill terror-forming, there was NO way to run the track across this region, so they didn't, they put in two fake "tunnel mouths" one on each side of the region, and left a 3/4 region gap in their rail-fail.

10. They never finished the rail-fail, the centre section just does not work, they basically abandoned the project for nearly two years, then returned and aquired, by means of rule violating land cutting, a series of 16 m2 adfarm parcels, on which they rezzed 8m plus glowing adverts soliciting donations for the nrail-fail, adverts that openly violated the mainland rules regarding advert signs, the kind of thing people like you complain about.

I could go on, but you should have gotten the idea by now. I haven't even mentioned the "fake law enforcement RP port" with the 15 m high wall built near one end of the rail-fail, which also has it's own anti-gravity Airport less than 40 m off the ground,. Train to nowhere.

By my count, based off the things you complained about, there's at least 12 reasons for you to complain about the mainland blighted by the rail-fail, and thats's just in the first HALF of the damn thing, Encroachment, full0-bright, ad-spam, people having to put up ban-lines to keep rail-failers from crashing prim trains into their homes, prim-crap train littering, when rail-failers leave their damn train on land with excessively long auto-return times, or in some cases NO auto return at all, ready access for griefer attacks due to lack of auto return, etc., etc., etc.

Vehicle Fanatic Planning Blight is in fact responsible for quite a lot of the things on mainland that you HATE.

 

 

There was another thread not long ago about an airport, built on stilts, 40 m high that overshadows all their neighbours and illegally encroaches on LLDPW land. when neighbors complained, they were basically told to shut up, because "I'm old and my building skills are leet, it will look great when its finished, how dare you say it's ugly badly built prim crap, also, re-vitalising mainland with Vehicle Fanatic Planning Blight!".

THAT mess was built by somebody who still hasn't heard that you are allowed to use floor slab prims MORE than 10m x 10m yet, as it's only been what, more than a decade and a half?

 

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

mainland around linden roads tends to actually get developed

Where do you think the owners of massive full bright and/or glowing advert signs are more likely to place their eyesores, in the middle of empty rolling hills, or...

Right next to a damn road, in the mistaken belief that there will be a ton of passing customers?

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Immersion and connectivity funnily enough, seems to actually attract users to develop virtual land

On Region 3 of the above mentioned rail-fail, another Vehicle fanatic bought a 5k parcel off Gov Linden, and built an "art gallery store", because "immersive transport infrastructure attracts users" and would provide loads of customers.

They recently abandoned that, as it attracted NOBODY.

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Funnily enough, the few times I've played on the mainland, the destinations I ended up sticking around at was some place I reached in either a car, a plane or a train.

Vehicle Fanatics are FANATICALLY vehicular.

Remember the guy who demanded, here on the forum, that LL should "delete the whole of Zindra, as its just smut, and reuse the regions to build road bridges between all the NICE non-smut mainland continents", because HE resented having to get out of his primcrap car, and use NON-CAR-BASED means to get across the sea. They finally claim it was a "joke" several pages later, after most of the people in that thread turned on them, and their attempts to justify their demand failed.

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[animats]

People are getting too wound up about this.

What I'm plugging for is some way to do group tours. Some organized way to introduce new users to SL in groups. Something like a mentor-led tour every half hour or so, starting and ending at WelcomeHub.

SL's system won't support driving a bus of avatars through a portal, which is what's really wanted. Region crossings are broken enough that driving a bus of avatars around on mainland fails constantly. A group has been trying that on Drivers of SL drives, and somebody falls off at almost every crossing. Talking a group of new users through a group teleport requires a lot of teleport offers and IMs. Even when it's done with experienced users, people get lost, as I've seen in Lindall Kidd's old land classes.

So I described a way to do this using existing SL features.

Useful near term goal: New users should not experience an immersion-breaking bug on day one.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, animats said:

a group of new users through a group teleport requires a lot of teleport offers and IMs.

"Ok every one, gather round me, remember, I'm the pale goth who's not wearing a sux-ra avatar....

Thats right, come into chat range, gather round, now... Is there anyone here for has forgotten Lesson 1, how to teleport with a landmark, or an slurl in chat/im, or a notecard, hands up if you forgot, we can go through it again...

Nobody? Excellent!

Everyone ok with Lesson 2, where I taught you how to find things people send you, in your inventories?  Excellent!

Lesson 3, I sent each of you a notecard with a series of landmarks in, what we are going to do is visit them one by one, so when I tell you, teleport to the first landmark iin the notecard...

Ready? Now!

*******

Ok, quick head count, see who is not here, Drekboytrolthing764905, are you still with us? Oh there you are hiding under that woman's skirt, come out of there, we won't be covering Zindra and Perversion 101 until the day after tomorrow..."

 

1 hour ago, animats said:

So I described a way to do this using existing SL features.

Ditto...

Noobs don't NEED "immersion" they need tuition. Not the same thing.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Marigold Devin]

On 10/9/2023 at 3:17 AM, animats said:

Well, it beats shooting avatars out of cannons, which is an actual transportation system at WelcomeHub.

That, for me, is the highlight of the Welcome Hub, and has many a time prevented me from drawing a c0ck and balls on the chalk board.

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by Marigold Devin

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, animats said:

People are getting too wound up about this.

What I'm plugging for is some way to do group tours. Some organized way to introduce new users to SL in groups. Something like a mentor-led tour every half hour or so, starting and ending at WelcomeHub.

SL's system won't support driving a bus of avatars through a portal, which is what's really wanted. Region crossings are broken enough that driving a bus of avatars around on mainland fails constantly. A group has been trying that on Drivers of SL drives, and somebody falls off at almost every crossing. Talking a group of new users through a group teleport requires a lot of teleport offers and IMs. Even when it's done with experienced users, people get lost, as I've seen in Lindall Kidd's old land classes.

So I described a way to do this using existing SL features.

Useful near term goal: New users should not experience an immersion-breaking bug on day one.

I think certain people are trolling, because that's what they do.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I think certain people are trolling, because that's what they do.

Stating that giving noobs an "immersive" RP tour of curated places, that won't interest them at all, instead of TEACHING them how to get around SL and discover for them selves the bits that WILL interest them, is not trolling, it's common sense.

All this "immersion not learning" drek will do is post pone the problem and dump it on somebody else

5 mins after the tour guide has finished taking them round empty art installations on the Dumpstination Guide's "editors pick" list, and gone off duty, they will be asking somebody else "So, where do I get the subway car to this Zindra place and the afk hooker pits please" and then recoiling in horror when told they cant get there by "immersion subway" but have to TELEPORT, using an SLURL, which they don't know how to do. and which somebody else will have to TEACH them, because the "immersion tour guide" didn't bother.

 

TEACH THE ESSENTIAL BASICS FIRST, leave the "deep immersion" crapola for later when they can actually find their way to an "immersive rp sim".

Edited October 11, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Rowan Amore]

7 hours ago, animats said:

People are getting too wound up about this.

What I'm plugging for is some way to do group tours. Some organized way to introduce new users to SL in groups. Something like a mentor-led tour every half hour or so, starting and ending at WelcomeHub.

SL's system won't support driving a bus of avatars through a portal, which is what's really wanted. Region crossings are broken enough that driving a bus of avatars around on mainland fails constantly. A group has been trying that on Drivers of SL drives, and somebody falls off at almost every crossing. Talking a group of new users through a group teleport requires a lot of teleport offers and IMs. Even when it's done with experienced users, people get lost, as I've seen in Lindall Kidd's old land classes.

So I described a way to do this using existing SL features.

Useful near term goal: New users should not experience an immersion-breaking bug on day one.

There's a group started by Doc and BJoyful for new residents @ the Welcome Hub.  One member of the group has given several tours of SL regions.  They meet at a designated place with the LM sent in group chat and notices.  They seem to be well attended for a new resident idea.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

There's a group started by Doc and BJoyful for new residents @ the Welcome Hub.  One member of the group has given several tours of SL regions.  They meet at a designated place with the LM sent in group chat and notices.  They seem to be well attended for a new resident idea.

 

A simpler and far more educational approach, closer to what's really needed.