Mainland Land Rights and Neighbors

[Clem Marques]

15 hours ago, InnerCity Elf said:

And some testimonies of real estate buyers, saying they'd never buy or rent from someone who puts up big ugly walls. Dear real estate people, maybe consider friendly neighborhooding as a sales tactic if not a naturalness.

Unfortunately some people put big ugly walls up as a strategy. They do that in an attempt to make their neighbors' experience so unpleasant they move out. And that point, they might attempt to buy the land at a low price, then tear down all the ugly walls once they have served their purpose. It's malicious.

Some might also do that to sell a parcel. Making it so ugly that a neighbor buys it at an overpriced rate, just to get rid of the eyesore. This is even worse in my opinion. I love land and buy parcels for my personal use here and there. I refuse to buy anything from land barons/sellers that purposefully ruin things for neighbors. That type of predatory business model should not be supported. 

Edited February 21 by Clem Marques

[InnerCity Elf]

16 hours ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

LL has been pretty careful over the years to make sure we each have control over what we see.  This idea would allow me to control what YOU see.  Do you really want that?

Yes, derender should be available in the official viewer 

I agree, unless the person wants to, because for example they want to enjoy a mainland area that the person who owns it specifically set up. I wonder if that couldn't be done through something like Experiences which does ask the visitor if they want it. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

we already have VPS. It’s called skyboxes. 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, InnerCity Elf said:

17 hours ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

LL has been pretty careful over the years to make sure we each have control over what we see.  This idea would allow me to control what YOU see.  Do you really want that?

Yes, derender should be available in the official viewer 

I agree, unless the person wants to, because for example they want to enjoy a mainland area that the person who owns it specifically set up. I wonder if that couldn't be done through something like Experiences which does ask the visitor if they want it. 

I could imagine it being part of a land-scope Experience, but I'm genuinely puzzled by the reactions that this would somehow "control" what visitors see, any more than what EEP already does. Understanding that both are just choices of viewer options, do folks who would have a problem with a parcel-scope derender list also have problems with parcel-scope EEP? If not, why does derender seem problematic if EEP doesn't?

 

[Gabriele Graves]

38 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

we already have VPS. It’s called skyboxes. 

[Clem Marques]

13 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I could imagine it being part of a land-scope Experience, but I'm genuinely puzzled by the reactions that this would somehow "control" what visitors see, any more than what EEP already does. Understanding that both are just choices of viewer options, do folks who would have a problem with a parcel-scope derender list also have problems with parcel-scope EEP? If not, why does derender seem problematic if EEP doesn't?

I agree with you that the derender list is not bad at all, and that it would likely improve the experience of many land owners. Could even boost Mainland sales if that became an option. However, this is something to consider:

EEP tweaks the lighting for everyone who visits the parcel with "Use shared environment" enabled in their viewer. They can completely ignore the EEP and use their own settings if they feel like it, simply by choosing another option in the viewer. So EEP is ultimately a choice of the parcel's visitor, they can opt out of it.

If a parcel owner were able to derender things for all visitors, it could bother some people due to the concept of censorship. EEP changes something, derendering removes something. Some might not be comfortable with the idea that a parcel owner can control what they can and cannot see in their surroundings. So that's why derender might be problematic when EEP is not.

However, if users had the ability to easily opt out of the parcel's derender setting the same way they're able to when it comes to EEP, I think that would be perfect. When it becomes a choice, it ceases to be a problem. Then those who want unobstructed views could enable it, and those who want full control to see everything around them could disable that setting. 

Edited February 21 by Clem Marques
Grammar

[Gabriele Graves]

For some of the reasons succinctly identified by Clem, comparing shared EEP and shared object de-rendering aren't comparable.  I would go further and say that it should have to be an opt-in viewer setting rather than opt-out if at all.  In reality though I feel it's a poor band-aid solution at best.
 

[Persephone Emerald]

19 hours ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

LL has been pretty careful over the years to make sure we each have control over what we see.  This idea would allow me to control what YOU see.  Do you really want that?

Yes, derender should be available in the official viewer 

We can already allow someone else to control what we see with RLV in the case of virtual blindfolds that essentially put up a HUD that blocks all view of the environment. Of course, RLV is not part of the official viewer, I think with good reason, since it could be very confusing and upsetting for someone who didn't understand how to disable it.

I think derender should be part of the SL viewer, giving more control to the user over what they see or don't see. Whether it should be part of parcel controls could be decided later.

[Qie Niangao]

29 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

For some of the reasons succinctly identified by Clem, comparing shared EEP and shared object de-rendering aren't comparable.  I would go further and say that it should have to be an opt-in viewer setting rather than opt-out if at all.  In reality though I feel it's a poor band-aid solution at best.

I'm still trying to understand. Clem also said this:

37 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

However, if users had the ability to easily opt out of the parcel's derender setting the same way they're able to when it comes to EEP, I think that would be perfect. When it becomes a choice, it ceases to be a problem. Then those who want unobstructed views could enable it, and those who want full control to see everything around them could disable that setting. 

… which was always the intent: a viewer setting to enable or override parcel-scope derendering, same as EEP. But I get the sense that even so there's some way they're considered not comparable, and I'm just not understanding it.

Being a viewer option, it would offer the visitor the choice of temporarily hiding some objects, which seems distinct from removing them because they'd all be restored with a click, so I'm not really seeing how a censorship analogy works here. A library doesn't censor all the books that aren't on the top shelf.

Should a neighbor's ability to erect walls that diminish a landowner's parcel be favored over that landowner's ability to offer parcel visitors a view without those walls? I'm not seeing the business value of that asymmetry (unless to drive more Mainland customers to Belli or Estates).

Whether it should be "opt-in" or "opt-out" doesn't seem significant as long as it's a "sticky" setting the way the EEP "shared environment" setting works. (I'm not sure now whether that's the default or not, I've changed it so many times.)

Also, I guess band-aid solutions are the very nature of social problems. It's certainly true that somebody who really wants an isolated, private setting will only get from this a sucky substitute for a void-surrounded Estate island. But those who want to contribute with other residents to something more expansive, complex, and diverse than any one person's vision are not looking for that private setting, they're looking for a Mainland where their contributions can be seen by those who want to share them. By its very nature that takes some band-aids.

[Love Zhaoying]

53 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

a viewer setting to enable or override parcel-scope derendering,

Couldn't this be as simple as "Hide everything outside of this parcel" (instead of de-render)?

Then, with the appropriate (hopefully "invisible except from the inside") walls, etc., your parcel could be similar to a "skybox".

[Gabriele Graves]

The land owner is deciding by default what my view of the world outside of their parcel should look like once when I am a guest.  Whether you call that "censorship", a "curation" or any similar term, the effect is the same.

I just don't think that the land owner be should be able to decide that.  The land owner powers should be limited to what is actually on their parcel.

EEP is different there is only one sky/water possible at a time due to a technical set of limitations that mean the sky/water does not change as it drawn into the distance like people might expect with different sky/water settings across the region.

I guess if it's part of an Experience only then I wouldn't really care because I wouldn't be accepting it anyway and if anyone does then they know that they are giving ever more control to the land owner with it, so I suppose that's a conscious choice of a sorts.

However if this was applied by default like EEP settings are, without an Experience, then I wouldn't want that.  It isn't always obvious what EEP settings are being used most of the time when using region defaults unless I take the conscious effort to go and check. 

Who has the inclination to keep checking?  I wouldn't even know I disagreed with their choices without actually turning it off.

I am of the firm opinion that if someone wants something hidden then it should be a conscious decision to choose that and not because they didn't realise stuff was being excluded because they didn't check their settings.

That's my best attempt to explain my point of view.

On the subject of ban-aids, I don't really care about the VPS idea either to be frank, I was just pointing out there are potentially other more comprehensive solutions to completely controlling the environment for those who might want it.

[Gabriele Graves]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Couldn't this be as simple as "Hide everything outside of this parcel" (instead of de-render)?

Then, with the appropriate (hopefully "invisible except from the inside") walls, etc., your parcel could be similar to a "skybox".

Yes, it could and it could be reciprocated by hiding your stuff from others as well just like with the existing privacy settings that affects avatars only which would be fair.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Yes, it could and it could be reciprocated by hiding your stuff from others as well just like with the existing privacy settings that affects avatars only which would be fair.

Assuming it would still show the "terrain" around you, that could be very nice - kind of like living on a Ranch, makes your property "seem" bigger (when you are on the property).  Assuming the neighboring landscaping doesn't weird without the buildings on it, etc.

[Qie Niangao]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Couldn't this be as simple as "Hide everything outside of this parcel" (instead of de-render)?

Then, with the appropriate (hopefully "invisible except from the inside") walls, etc., your parcel could be similar to a "skybox".

That might be one option, and TPVs could feasibly do that much themselves, reading the parcel description as they did for altitude-specific Windlight and doing whatever rendering magic it would take to suppress out-of-parcel items. I assume, though, it would actually be easier to derender a tractable list of specific items if there were some way of communicating that list to viewers that already know how to derender a tractable list of specific items.

I'm afraid I'd much prefer keeping most of the environment intact, just suppressing the parcel-surrounding walls, the low-hanging skyboxes, etc. Personally, I'm not looking for that private space—it's not as if that's unachievable if I did want it—rather I just want a better Mainland.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 2/16/2024 at 8:39 PM, JUSTUS Palianta said:

I know it's wrong to build a higher uglier wall but it sure does feel satisfying.

No. 

No, it's not.

Works great.

Tell you what. A giant nuclear reactor turned on "10" glow works like a charm, too.

 

[Paul Hexem]

21 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I just don't think that the land owner be should be able to decide that.  The land owner powers should be limited to what is actually on their parcel.

EEP is different there is only one sky/water possible at a time due to a technical set of limitations that mean the sky/water does not change as it drawn into the distance like people might expect with different sky/water settings across the region.

 

22 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm still trying to understand.

I can pick some dark, foggy Environments that won't let you see more than a few meters in any direction.

If that's fine, then hiding what's outside of my parcel should also be fine. 

Add an override like EEP has and they're exactly the same, functionally.

[Qie Niangao]

19 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

The land owner is deciding by default what my view of the world outside of their parcel should look like once when I am a guest.  Whether you call that "censorship", a "curation" or any similar term, the effect is the same.

I just don't think that the land owner be should be able to decide that.  The land owner powers should be limited to what is actually on their parcel.

EEP is different there is only one sky/water possible at a time due to a technical set of limitations that mean the sky/water does not change as it drawn into the distance like people might expect with different sky/water settings across the region.

I guess if it's part of an Experience only then I wouldn't really care because I wouldn't be accepting it anyway and if anyone does then they know that they are giving ever more control to the land owner with it, so I suppose that's a conscious choice of a sorts.

However if this was applied by default like EEP settings are, without an Experience, then I wouldn't want that.  It isn't always obvious what EEP settings are being used most of the time when using region defaults unless I take the conscious effort to go and check. 

Who has the inclination to keep checking?  I wouldn't even know I disagreed with their choices without actually turning it off.

I am of the firm opinion that if someone wants something hidden then it should be a conscious decision to choose that and not because they didn't realise stuff was being excluded because they didn't check their settings.

[...]

After pondering this for a really long time, I'm pretty sure we're just wired so differently we're mutually unable to understand the other's position.

(Practically, it probably makes no difference because it's unlikely the Lab (or TPVs) will invest the development effort, up to their eyeballs in PBR, game controllers, and whatever they expose to LUA. So it wouldn't get built anyway if I were to resubmit this decades-dormant idea. Although I might, we'll see.)

Part of what I don't understand is who's ox would be gored by parcel derendering: the visitor wanting to see the optionally masked content, or the neighbor with the content masked by visitors who've enabled the option.

For it to be the visitor, they'd need to have enabled the option and forgotten it's enabled. Visitors who perceive that as a risk could simply never enable the option, analogous to never accepting Experiences or sticking with their own private EEP. So for this to be a problem, the visitor must want to enable the option sometimes and then forget to disable it. But they don't even have the option now—the very option they must sometimes want enabled—so I really can't see how they lose something by being offered that option they wanted.

In the scope of things landowners can do to visitors on their parcel, offering an option they might have forgotten they'd enabled seems pretty innocuous. Besides exotic stuff such as Environments and Experiences, a landowner can actually teleport a visitor home, off the parcel's entire region, with or without warning or explanation. I'd never suggest any landowner ever do such a thing, but there are those who think it can be justified.

So if not the visitor, maybe it's the neighbor who'd be done wrong. But here again, I don't see how the neighbor would be worse off from this option compared to things a landowner can already do. Landowners can (and often do) put up a wall hiding that neighbor's content, likely the same content they'd set their parcel to derender. The wall is different because the neighbor can see the wall while standing on their own parcel, so they know it's hiding their content. More likely, though, the neighbor is bothered by the view of the landowner's wall from the neighbor's own parcel, more than how some of their content may be blocked when viewed from another parcel. Still, it's true that a derendering option would change the view of the neighbor's parcel without that neighbor seeing it (unless they go and view it from the landowner's parcel). But a landowner already can do surreptitious EEP to the neighbor's content; for fun, I just did this to my Belli neighbor's houseboat: 
If I left it that way, they'd never know unless they came over to my parcel and looked back. Would the neighbor be justified in taking offense that I chose to add EEP content to my parcel that interacts with theirs when viewed at certain angles from my parcel? Again, I don't think so, especially compared to my erecting a wall.

And walls is what the option is mostly about: If a landowner can hide content they don't want to see from their own land without building a wall, I think a lot fewer walls will get built, which makes a better view from both sides, and from everywhere else, especially including other nearby landowners and those just passing through the area. That's why I think this would make a better Mainland.

 

[Gabriele Graves]

53 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

After pondering this for a really long time, I'm pretty sure we're just wired so differently we're mutually unable to understand the other's position.

I do understand your position though.  I understand what you are trying to achieve and why you think this is a good solution.  You make some good points.  I also appreciate you wanting to make mainland better even in a small way, I think we all want that in our own way.

I just don't agree that this would be a good thing and I failed to help you understand my position is all.  We obviously just see things differently and that's OK.

Thanks for the discussion, it's probably better for us to leave it there or risk beating that poor horse.

BTW I did like the rainbow rooster EEP
 

[diamond Marchant]

On 2/16/2024 at 1:39 PM, WaitsThomasBatriani said:

My neighbor is a real estate renter [landlord] and just put up huge walls all along our property line... Do I have any recourse with the Lindens?

We all know the answer (no!).

I strongly encourage anyone in this situation to reach out politely to the wall builder and work something out.

Linden Lab offers options at different price points for residents who desire to avoid seeing neighboring builds. Because LL is running a business, they are unlikely to use development resources to address issues that have already been resolved, albeit by charging you more.

 

On 2/21/2024 at 3:03 AM, BilliJo Aldrin said:

we already have VPS. It’s called skyboxes

Yup

[Clem Marques]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No. 

No, it's not.

Works great.

Tell you what. A giant nuclear reactor turned on "10" glow works like a charm, too.

Yup. Worked for me. I highly recommend it.

[xDancingStarx]

2 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

I strongly encourage anyone in this situation to reach out politely to the wall builder and work something out.

Please only do this if you are willing to accept the risk of a major backlash. Even if you try to be polite, some people in SL are just not acting rationally. The more outrageous the build/wall is, the higher the chance that this resident does not belong to the "rational" group. They may feel terribly offended by you not appreciating their glorious build/wall and may double down on it. You think this is exaggerated? No, this is reality. If you want to speak with someone about their build and you don't know that person well, do it on an alt to protect yourself.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Don't like the view, drop your draw distance. Your performance will improve too 😂

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Seriously, big ugly wall? Who cares?

On one of my parcels I have a pine tree privacy screen on all four sides.

Normal view, and view with the trees made invisible.

Wow, there's a big ugly wall? who knew.

Even if the prim is 64m high, looking at it you are only gonna see the bottom few meters of it. Obsessing about what you don't even see in your normal field of view seems kind of unnecessary.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

18 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

 

I strongly encourage anyone in this situation to reach out politely to the wall builder and work something out.

 

I personally would never reach out to a neighbour about this.

Two reasons:

1) Its their land, they can blight the neighborhood however they want, (in accordance with the TOS of course) 

and,

2) If they were a reasonable sort that would take into consideration other peoples opinions, they wouldn’t have built the wall in the first place.

😂

Edited February 23 by BilliJo Aldrin
added stuff for clarity

[Zalificent Corvinus]

30 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

2) If they were a reasonable sort that would take into consideration other peoples opinions, they wouldn’t have built the wall in the first place.

One former neighbour, started blatantly encroaching from day 1.

We tried "reaching out", they ignored us, we ended up having to deal with encroachment every day for 3 weeks, just punting their stuff back several times a day, before they gave up on that.