A Draft on a new SL concept evolved from landmarks - Places/Locations

[Psistorm Voxel]

Let me start off with a brief discussion about how we access certain places on the grid currently. Typically you use a landmark, which is nothing more than a region name and some coordinates with a name and picture tacked on. Sometimes we also access these things via classifieds and via search. And also quite often, people move, venues or entire sims move or close down for good or only just for a while.

This means you have a lot of landmarks which might say "Club Awesome" from 3 months ago, but if you use them, you end up in a river, or in someones living room all of a sudden.

 

This, among other beneficial reasons, is why i thought about suggesting a new type of asset, the landmark evolved, so to speak. It could be called a "location" or a "place", simply.

Now how would it work out? What would it do?

Places would be different from the general concept of SL assets. Once an SL asset is up there and distributed, the original creator cant influence other copies anymore. A place would be different. It would consist of a name, picture, description, and most importantly, a VARIABLE destination. So that your "Club Awesome" landmark would always take you to Club Awesome for as long as it existed.

 

Now for some details. How would you go about creating such a place?

First and foremost, my thought was to require admin rights to a parcel, so you actually own a place. From there, you may create a Place from this piece of land. It can be set to be a classified, and you get the appropriate item in your inventory after setting it up. Now, you may distribute it much like a landmark, with one big difference:

Any changes you make to your place are reflected in everyone´s inventory, meaning there is only one asset that is referenced to. The name, the description, the picture, the coordinates/region you are pointed to. It can all change. This lets you assign your venues such as stores or clubs to something that will never be outdated and always bring your customers where you want them to.

 

Now lets say you move. What do you do? You open up the parcel settings and assign the place item you own to this new parcel, and within a few moments, people are able to find the new location.

 

And what about cases where a location closes down, or moves and is temporarily without a location? My idea would be different status conditions for it. Either Open (default), Closed down (for when you shut down your venue, which would display a warning text upon double click, so people know they may delete this now), and Under Construction (or some such. this would be for when you move and dont have a new parcel yet, or your new parcel isnt ready yet for public use. This could display a special custom message upon activation).

 

The system is expandable, too. For instance, you could hook a group up to this place, and LL could offer a profile much like a normal persons social web profile. Perhaps a premium user could get access to picture and forum space. This profile could house a calender, staff list, a marketplace integration to let people see your latest offers. The calender could schedule events and new product releases and such, adding tremendously to the functionality of it all.

 

So what are the benefits I see in this?

• A universal "landmark" which doesnt get outdated anymore
• Less inventory clutter from outdated landmarks
• With the suggested expansions, you can create micro social networks within SL revolving around a persistant local identity. You can create a venue that feels more persistant, more like a social focus point than just a place on the grid
• Location independency. Do you really care what region your club/store is in? Probably not. Should it get in your way triyng to visit it? Definitely not.
• An extra incentive for premium accounts, since premium locations may offer extended services via the web profile options.

I woud like to hear some thoughts on this, criticism is very welcome, as well as other ideas. Just keep to the topic please, and have a serious discussion :)

[Innula Zenovka]

You might be interested in this, somewhat similar, proposal https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-11679

[Chelsea Malibu]

Using IPv6 we now have more IP addresses than atoms on the planet meaning it's nearly infinite (per Cisco's marketing materials).

Since each object has an IP address followed by the location on the sim, it would be possible to assign an IPv6 address to every asset in SL as well as every SIM.

I have never understood why SL uses their DNS the way they do and not assign permanent IP addresses to each sim.  If done this way, any change in the DNS name would still mean the data resolved on the right server.  Since IP blocks are near limitless now, I would hope they make the move to IPv6 if they have not already.

However, this may not work well for sub divided parcels as each parcel has it's own UUID.  If they combine or divide them, each new parcel gets a new UUID. As such, each parcel would become a dynamic sub domain and would be rather difficult to manage with their hierarchy of the parent domain/IP address. Which takes us back to identifying the UUID with an IPv6 address when an object is rezzed

In doing this, any name change would be irrelevant and the sim would always be capable of using the same LM.  You would also be able to change the LM rather than replace it with a new one simply by making a DNS change.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Psistorm Voxel]

I wouldnt want that to happen either. I would suggest teleport as default double-click action. Maybe once you hit "profile" or whatever the menu item was, it takes you to the web-end of this club, much like an avatar profile. Thatd fix the spammyness, because really, there wouldnt be any sense to enforce teleports via the web profile rather than directly

[Prokofy Neva]

No thank you. A similar idea was mooted by those Spaceship people who concocted the first versions of Viewer 2.x which were so horrible -- no.

We need to have a landmark as a discrete object in inventory for the following reasons:

o to be able to rewrite it with a store name -- tenants need to do this in rentals, people need to rewrite landmark names all the time -- "that cool store I liked" "where Sarah's birthday party is going to be, etc."  Any device, pointer, thingie that doesn't enable the user to grab it and rewrite it is counter to SL and hinders sharing and exploring.

o there are all kinds of devices that give out landmarks in stores all over the place. I have several servers that I updated regularly that give out landmarks to real-life country sims in what I call the International Bazaar and also Sacred Places of SL. Everywhere merchants, socializers, explorers have landmark givers that depend on their ability to take a concrete object and stick it inside a prim with a script to give it out

o it doesn't matter if they get out of date. Many people in fact LIKE the fact that they have a landmark that has a name on it of something that was once there, that is no more, or leads to "no parcel". Just about everybody probably has sentimental treasures of this sort

o no, we don't want some sort of clutchy, grabby, geeky override "into everyone's inventory". Heck no. Especially for the reason I just explained -- people rewrite landmarks all the time for various reasons, they save them for various reasons, it's all good. Let them. Don't invade their space.

o you can't have a system that depends on people owning land -- landmarking is currently open to anyone unless turned off, and it usually isn't -- this is vital for exploring, socializing, business

o there isn't a real customer need and customer requirement *and use case* (except in your hypothetical) that involves "needing to have an asset that changes as the location changes and doesn't get out of date". It's just not there. People put up a temporary landmarker giver leading to the new place. It's not that big a deal. The loss of control over that asset in inventory, being able to rewrite it, safe it *for whatever reason* -- this is just not worth the "convenience" that nobody has asked for, ever.

No one has asked for this; there is no clutter when you use search to find something in inventory; for most people, cluttery inventory isn't caused by landmarks; and we just can't have a system where these assets we currently control are then run centrally and rigidly hobbled like this. No thanks.

Of course I care what region my store or home is in. Sense of place is hugely important in SL.

You seem to be devising an abstraction from the symmetry of some system theory you want to promote, rather than actually studying how landmarks are really used by real users in the real virtual world. Have you explored, have you run a business or any other project with landmark givers, do you never rewrite them? I suspect not.