Extrude Ragu

Yes this is why I think that parcel auto-return timers are not really good enough, when it comes to vehicles. The amount of time a vehicle spends somewhere is not an indicator of whether it was abandoned. Timers will incorrectly return vehicles people are still using, and fail to return vehicles that people have since abandoned. I really do think we need to be able to set vehicle abandonment based on if the driver/passengers remain nearby. This would more quickly return vehicles that are abandoned, whilst not annoying people by returning their vehicle prematurely when it wasn't abandoned.

I don't know about you but I like to spend more than 5 minutes when I am shopping </zalificent> <thread>

Yes I am not imagining changing the existing system. One way to do it might be a new parcel setting, which defines Personal Vehicle return? Crude mockup, but something like this. As long as the avatar stays within the radius of the vehicle, it wouldn't be returned. Then if you're a store owner you could define parking that lets your customers shop as long as they like, without their vehicle getting returned. If you want them to be able to wander off to the whole region, you could type in 999. If you're Zalificent and want the cars to GTFO, you can type in 0.

No, you didn't, because you suggested something could happen that wouldn't be possible to happen, based on the implementation.

So I think this can be done pretty inexpensively. LL Servers are tuned for fast ID lookups of objects and avatars in their cache. Objects and avatars have properties, like their name, description, and hidden properties such as vehicle type or whether or not the object is sat upon etc. What LL would do is add a new hidden property called 'Personal Vehicle' to our avatars. It would contain the ID of the last vehicle you sat on. So if you sit on one car, the property is set, and then if you sit on another, the property is changed to the new car. This lookup would be just as fast as checking if we're sat on the object. The main challenge as I see it would be defining what constitutes abandonment. Someone in their private parcel probably doesn't want you to drive on their lawn, let alone park there, but a mall might want you to be able to walk pretty far from your car and spend a long time shopping before the vehicle is considered abandoned. Admittedly, this part I am not sure about. Perhaps it needs to be a land owner setting. What that looks like, I'm not sure.

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.

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?

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 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.

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?

You clearly did not read my post.

Who said to turn auto-return off?

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?

There are people on this forum who spend time day in day out trying to figure out the issues that cause SL's hiccups and eager to discuss them. Lindens on support dedicated to finding and fixing issues. Places dedicated to reporting bugs and grievances and getting the best possible outcome. But OP chooses to open a thread not for discussion with residents like the forum is for, but to address people who aren't even here. The mind boggles. What was this supposed to achieve?

One of the issues that leads to the 'Americana' of SL is that parcels are made up of rigid squares. Personally I think (and have advocated for repeatedly in the past) that we should be able to define any arbitrary space of any shape or mixture of shapes as a parcelprivate dwelling and let people create what they actually want.

I'm on Firefox 122.0 for Windows w/o issue here

me complying with the minimum height requirement to enter the club

Just going to do myself a favor and step right over all the silly nonsense but just make clear for anyone that might be confused that I was suggesting we added an additional privacy option for mainland residents and give them more control, not to take away any existing functionality. Hope that's clear.

I decided to go ahead and make a feature request to that effect:- https://feedback.secondlife.com/feature-requests/p/skybox-banline-option-for-mainland-2000m Feel free to vote on it.

The whole issue seems to stem from the fact that unchecking 'Anyone can visit' only sets banlines up to 50 meters, but mainlanders also want to keep people out of their skyboxes. What if that setting also made banlines above idk 2,000 meters, so that mainlanders can have privacy in their skybox without needing to add everyone to their banlist that entered the region. Seems like it would be a win for both mainland residents and explorers alike.

The way I see it, it's give and take. Some sims the region owner puts a lot of effort into making a high quality environment, making it immersive etc. And so, asking guests to similarly put effort into making their avatars fit the environment is not that unreasonable, and a pretty fair trade - You put work into your av, you get to participate in a sim that's had a lot of work put into it, and with people who also similarly put work into their av. Of course, that's not to say that every sim that has such requirements it is a fair trade. There are plenty of sims that place very high demands on guests whilst not providing an awful lot in return, those aren't worth putting much effort into at all. Personally, I prefer regions that do some level of vetting of their own content and guests, preferring quality over quantity both for the people I talk to and the stuff I interact with, but everyone enjoys things differently.

too much fps is a nice problem to have, all things considered

Well, the thing is there are companies out there that have gone the route of banning adult content from their platform that was mostly adult content (like tumblr) and it didn't end too well. One hopes the lab has kept their server software reasonably portable over the years, and they would just move to a new provider or go back to self hosting. Although I don't really do adult stuff 99% of the time in SL, I think the fact I can if I want to is what makes me feel happy on the platform, because I'm being treated like an adult. If that was taken away I'd probably seek out another platform.

I think the way in which you choose to interpret my statement says a lot more about you than me.

Even on minimum wage, It does not cost a months worth of salary to purchase a computer built in the last 10 years. Realistically, about a weeks worth for something entry level, and two for something quite decent. There are very few people who genuinely couldn't afford to put away $30 at the end of the month which would be enough to have an entry level modern computer by the end of the year. I'm not saying such people don't exist, but such people are the ones who should be getting help from the community, friends and family anyway because you're basically talking about poverty or severe disability and they are always going to need help. I am not denying there will be a transition period, but your stated aims seems to be to extend the transition period indefinitely and place the burden on creators whilst simultaneously telling people they don't need to upgrade ever. And I likely will, during the transition period. But lets not delude ourselves, it is a large burden for a creator, having to offer such a choice. Telling creators to give customers terrible experiences by putting albedo maps in diffuse is also not a reasonable ask. It's not sensible or realistic to expect the transition period to go on forever. Perpetually extending the transition period is not realistic and will drive up costs for creators to the point that many will simply seek to make money elsewhere. We should give people realistic expectations.