Let them stand up: Fixing vehicle auto-return

[Extrude Ragu]

You stand from your boat to take in the view from the deck. The boat disappears. You sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown.

You park your car to get out and see something cool. Your car disappears. Nowhere near to Rez. You're now stranded.

These are some of my experiences of vehicle exploration in SecondLife. Do you have similar experiences?

I think that the sim should remember the last vehicle we drove, and so long as we stayed in the same parcel or less than a certain distance away it wouldn't get auto-returned. But it'd just be for whatever vehicle you were in last, so you couldn't keep doing it for hundreds of vehicles.

I think with all that sailing water it would be great to pull up in a big old cruise boat and stand up, walk around on the deck and enjoy the view. I want to park my car and go shopping, and my car *shock* still be there when I get back!

If you got to choose how vehicle auto-return worked, how would you change vehicle auto-return? How far away would you like to be able to walk from your vehicle, before the sim considered the vehicle abandoned? Other thoughts?

 

[Midnoot]

28 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

You stand from your boat to take in the view from the deck. The boat disappears. You sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown.

You park your car to get out and see something cool. Your car disappears. Nowhere near to Rez. You're now stranded.

These are some of my experiences of vehicle exploration in SecondLife. Do you have similar experiences?

I think that the sim should remember the last vehicle we drove, and so long as we stayed in the same parcel or less than a certain distance away it wouldn't get auto-returned. But it'd just be for whatever vehicle you were in last, so you couldn't keep doing it for hundreds of vehicles.

I think with all that sailing water it would be great to pull up in a big old cruise boat and stand up, walk around on the deck and enjoy the view. I want to park my car and go shopping, and my car *shock* still be there when I get back!

If you got to choose how vehicle auto-return worked, how would you change vehicle auto-return? How far away would you like to be able to walk from your vehicle, before the sim considered the vehicle abandoned? Other thoughts?

 

Oh yeah, this is why I don't even bother with vehicles in Second Life. Completely not worth the money of buying a 3000+L vehicle just to be limited to sandboxes or my own land, or drifting between sims, knowing i'm gonna lose it if I stand up or get logged out.

 

Give a grace period before de-rezzing items. 5-10 minutes. But i mean, we're 23 years in and it's still not happening, soooo.. r.i.p.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

You stand from your boat to take in the view from the deck. The boat disappears. You sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown.

You park your car to get out and see something cool. Your car disappears. Nowhere near to Rez. You're now stranded.

You sit on your self replicating griefer prim, you edit it past the "no object entry" restriction because "vehicles with seated avatars" are exempt from that, then you stand up and push the "start griefing" button, and your many many many self replicating griefer prims do not get auto returned because you are "on the same parcel".

 

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

I think that the sim should remember the last vehicle we drove, and so long as we stayed in the same parcel or less than a certain distance away it wouldn't get auto-returned.

OH HELL NO.

 

[Eowyn Southmoor]

I've never found it to be much of an issue to be honest.  It's probably more of an issue for people new to exploring who aren't familiar with what areas have object entry turned off or auto-return set for a short time.  Certainly in most of my mainland travel it's never caused many issues, plus rez zones are rarely far away.

Then of course there's the potential griefing aspect (as mentioned above) which is why some places, like the Blake Sea and Bellisseria, have object entry set to off by default.  I've also noticed a trend where some vehicle users tend to just leave their vehicles laying about when they are done with them, on the surface this might encourage more of that.

 

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Turning off auto return would result in the Blake Sea becoming the Blake Scrapyard.

Just no.

[Arielle Popstar]

Oh an unlocked thread.

Ok how about a 10 minute auto return? That should be short enough for an auto scrapyard look but yet long enough to take a pee break outside of the vehicle.

[animats]

There are stores that have parking spaces, but instantly auto-return parked vehicles. That's lame. If you build a parking lot, make it usable.

There's a weak convention in SL that gas stations should have a rez zone. Some do, some don't. If you have a gas station, it's there for vehicles, so why not? GTFO hubs almost always have a rez zone and allow parking.

[Midnoot]

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Oh an unlocked thread.

Ok how about a 10 minute auto return? That should be short enough for an auto scrapyard look but yet long enough to take a pee break outside of the vehicle.

That's what I'm saying . Give us time to pee at least. XD

[diamond Marchant]

so get an alt and seat the alt on your giant mega yacht, then you will be able to stand and walk around your giant mega yacht.  understand however, that we have alt monitors and they expect all such alts to have beautiful mesh bodies, a full price mesh head, with beautiful clothes, hair, makeup and breast physics.... gotta keep up appearances

Edited January 29 by diamond Marchant

[elleevelyn]

3 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

so get an alt and seat the alt on your giant mega yacht, then you will be able to stand and walk around your giant mega yacht.  understand however, that we have alt monitors and they expect all such alts to have beautiful mesh bodies, a full price mesh head, with beautiful clothes, hair, makeup and breast physics.... gotta keep up appearances

yeah that ^^

maybe not make your alt too gorgeous or might end up crash your boat into the dock because too much ogle 😺

[animats]

52 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

so get an alt and seat the alt on your giant mega yacht, then you will be able to stand and walk around your giant mega yacht.  understand however, that we have alt monitors and they expect all such alts to have beautiful mesh bodies, a full price mesh head, with beautiful clothes, hair, makeup and breast physics.... gotta keep up appearances

Been visiting Siren's Isle on the Blake Sea?

[Extrude Ragu]

6 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Turning off auto return would result in the Blake Sea becoming the Blake Scrapyard.

Just no.

Who said to turn auto-return off?

[Extrude Ragu]

6 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

You sit on your self replicating griefer prim, you edit it past the "no object entry" restriction because "vehicles with seated avatars" are exempt from that, then you stand up and push the "start griefing" button, and your many many many self replicating griefer prims do not get auto returned because you are "on the same parcel".

You clearly did not read my post.

[Extrude Ragu]

3 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

so get an alt and seat the alt on your giant mega yacht, then you will be able to stand and walk around your giant mega yacht.  understand however, that we have alt monitors and they expect all such alts to have beautiful mesh bodies, a full price mesh head, with beautiful clothes, hair, makeup and breast physics.... gotta keep up appearances

It's certainly possible for a resident to do that today, but don't you think as a status quo, this design kind of sucks?

Do you think in a well designed virtual world, it should be necessary for a resident to have an alt to chauffeur them around?

[Extrude Ragu]

7 hours ago, Midnoot said:

Give a grace period before de-rezzing items. 5-10 minutes.

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Ok how about a 10 minute auto return?

I mean, we do already have timed auto-return, but the timer starts when your vehicle enters the sim, and can be set as low as 1 minute by the parcel owner. If you park up a lot of the time you are already past the timer and that is why the vehicle instantly disappears.

Personally, I am not really a fan of relying on timers, because a timer does not really represent if the vehicle is abandoned or not. I think it shouldn't matter if I'm standing on my boat, or sitting on my boat, I'm still here attending my boat - To me it does not make sense to return it, until I actually abandon it.

Edited January 29 by Extrude Ragu

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

You stand from your boat to take in the view from the deck. The boat disappears. You sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown.

You park your car to get out and see something cool. Your car disappears. Nowhere near to Rez. You're now stranded.

These are some of my experiences of vehicle exploration in SecondLife. Do you have similar experiences?

I think that the sim should remember the last vehicle we drove, and so long as we stayed in the same parcel or less than a certain distance away it wouldn't get auto-returned. But it'd just be for whatever vehicle you were in last, so you couldn't keep doing it for hundreds of vehicles.

I think with all that sailing water it would be great to pull up in a big old cruise boat and stand up, walk around on the deck and enjoy the view. I want to park my car and go shopping, and my car *shock* still be there when I get back!

If you got to choose how vehicle auto-return worked, how would you change vehicle auto-return? How far away would you like to be able to walk from your vehicle, before the sim considered the vehicle abandoned? Other thoughts?

 

Once you stand from a vehicle it stops being a vehicle and becomes an object on the land. Just as I think it's unreasonable for landowners to take extreme measures against vehicle entry, I think it would be unreasonable for a vehicle owner to request special status for their parked vehicle.

[Gabriele Graves]

I don't think there is anything to be fixed here.  Land owners have choices they can exercise to provide parking without auto-return if they want and vehicle owners have a choice they can exercise to keep their vehicles rezzed assuming it's allowed.  All in all just like most SL things, it's not perfect but it's a reasonable middle ground.

[elleevelyn]

8 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

If you got to choose how vehicle auto-return worked, how would you change vehicle auto-return? How far away would you like to be able to walk from your vehicle, before the sim considered the vehicle abandoned? Other thoughts?

 

i actual gave this some thought

would have to be a parcel setting that owner can set or not as they prefer

something like option: Pause Auto-return while object owner on parcel

a issue could be one or more persons filling up all the available LI  (Parcel full) blocking other people on vehicles from entering the parcel. Can see this happening for example on Blake Sea where people are playing war games. So public parcels probably not have this enabled

can see it enabled on some private owned parcels where car parks or boat marinas are provided, airports also

[Extrude Ragu]

Just now, Gabriele Graves said:

I don't think there is anything to be fixed here.  Land owners have choices they can exercise to provide parking without auto-return if they want and vehicle owners have a choice they can exercise to keep their vehicles rezzed assuming it's allowed.  All in all just like most SL things, it's not perfect but it's a reasonable middle ground.

Most of the land that llVehicles typically traverse over is not held by land owners, but rather on public roads and waterways held by LL themselves. Do you think it's a 'reasonable' experience to be unable to stand on a boat in the sea? Unable to park at the side of the road and go into a shop?

[Extrude Ragu]

21 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Once you stand from a vehicle it stops being a vehicle and becomes an object on the land. Just as I think it's unreasonable for landowners to take extreme measures against vehicle entry, I think it would be unreasonable for a vehicle owner to request special status for their parked vehicle.

So do you think the issue that holds us back here is the way the simulator treats personal vehicles? Eg. Because the vehicle counts towards LI, it places an unfair burden on land owners.

What if we could control what counts towards LI? or have a budget for personal vehicles?

Imagine that we can change anything about how the underlying SL system works, what would you change to make it work better, for everybody?

[Theresa Tennyson]

10 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Most of the land that llVehicles typically traverse over is not held by land owners, but rather on public roads and waterways held by LL themselves. Do you think it's a 'reasonable' experience to be unable to stand on a boat in the sea? Unable to park at the side of the road and go into a shop?

Yes. Now read the description of "action mode" for this car:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/EXP-Super-80-Resizable-Sportscar-with-Walking-Mode/24042976

Edited January 29 by Theresa Tennyson

[Gabriele Graves]

13 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Most of the land that llVehicles typically traverse over is not held by land owners, but rather on public roads and waterways held by LL themselves. Do you think it's a 'reasonable' experience to be unable to stand on a boat in the sea? Unable to park at the side of the road and go into a shop?

I don't think it's unreasonable.  I can see why LL set short auto-returns, it's to reduce vehicles being left all over the place.  It's not like RL where you probably aren't going to abandon your brand new super-yacht or performance vehicle and never come back.  In SL this happens all the time because of the ability to copy.  So this is where the comparison with RL breaks down which really demands different approaches in my opinion.  For me the alt solution, camming around shops or finding a rez spot afterwards is sufficient.

I would rather that than the vehicle litter than would ensue.  Lots of vehicle users would start complaining if the regions were too full to traverse too.

I think your proposal would be fraught with issues detecting what it means to leave vehicle if you are no longer sitting on it, maybe even be quite expensive to perform.  I can understand why you want it though.

I do agree that in principle that the auto-return timer should probably start once you unsit as that is probably what most people expect but there maybe performance issues with doing that, i.e. lots of timers vs. one timer that sweeps for all vehicles on a parcel.  I would put my money on that being the reason it works as it does.

Edited January 29 by Gabriele Graves

[Extrude Ragu]

4 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

 It's not like RL where you probably aren't going to abandon your brand new super-yacht or performance vehicle and never come back. 

4 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I think your proposal would be fraught with issues detecting what it means to leave vehicle if you are not longer sitting on it, maybe even be quite expensive to perform.

Abandonment - That's the key thing I'm trying to define here - When should a vehicle really be considered abandoned?

I think most posters with a negative outlook think the current system is reasonable, because the only way to detect and define abandonment that is known to them is whether or not the agent is sitting on the object.

We can do better - And it doesn't need to be expensive or negatively effect region owners. We just need to carefully define abandonment, and how the overall system would work.

 

 

Edited January 29 by Extrude Ragu

[elleevelyn]

11 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I do agree that in principle that the auto-return timer should probably start once you unsit as that is probably what most people expect but there maybe performance issues with doing that, i.e. lots of timers vs. one timer that sweeps for all vehicles on a parcel.  I would put my money on that being the reason it works as it does.

just on this

each object does have its own Auto-return timer. Instantiated when the object is rezzed or enters with or without agent sitting

so maybe thats a way to for this to work. Parcel setting option: Start Auto-return timer when object is not sat on

 

edit: so forpublic right-of-ways on mainland which are typically Auto return  = 5 minutes. Stand and  timer starts. Sit and timer stops. Stand again and timer starts over.

Edited January 29 by elleevelyn

[Gabriele Graves]

11 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Abandonment - That's the key thing I'm trying to define here - When should a vehicle really be considered abandoned?

I think most posters with a negative outlook think the current system is reasonable, because the only way to detect and define abandonment that is known to them is whether or not the agent is sitting on the object.

We can do better - And it doesn't need to be expensive or negatively effect region owners. We just need to carefully define abandonment, and how the overall system would work.

 

 

How can you be certain it wouldn't need to be expensive or negatively affect region owners?

The idea in your OP seems to indicate range from the object but I can see that this would require tracking that isn't done today.  What would trigger that tracking? Unsitting from an object you own but on land that you have no rights over?

Are there better ideas?  I'll admit I don't have any.