[Sound Messages while flying]

Again in Firestorm, if you disable the media filter in Preferences, Sound & Media / Media you can (and should) disable both media and music autoplay. You can still just hit the respective play button if you actually want to play media or audio, so there's not really anything lost and you're not bothered by permanently changing streams.

[How do I turn off the "BUMP!" sound when I walk into something?]

The current barrage of collision sounds are not fault of the viewer(s) but due to a bug in the server version (2023-12-06.7120498618) currently rolled out to RC regions.

For reference see https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234835

[Unashamedly Bots]

4 minutes ago, ArtCurator said:

All I'm advocating for is some kind of transparency whereby LL would email/tell all avatars that are being flagged as bots that that is the case.

Good news everybody! LL kinda sorta did do exactly that by introducing the AGENT_AUTOMATED flag.

if (llGetAgentInfo(llGetOwner()) & AGENT_AUTOMATED) llSay(0, "Eeeew, my owner is a scripted agent!");

[Unashamedly Bots]

6 minutes ago, ArtCurator said:

So you wouldn't be bothered if your main account was unfairly flagged as a "scripted agent" with no recourse to get it reversed because on your end, the "scripted agent status" in account settings is still set to "run by a human"?

That's an unfounded assumption, isn't it? Why would there be no recourse? Phil could have his ancient and internally flagged accounts fixed through support.

So it's not the drama you make it out to be. What I see in my numbers is that of the 425 accounts that are showing up in my "seen and kicked" list as of today, no one argued they have been treated unfairly. That's all there is to it in my view. I'm not throwing out the only tool we have on mainland to manage the up to ~30 roaming bots per region and day because there've been some three or five accounts that may or may not have been flagged internally by LL as bots some decade ago and that now have been exposed through the AGENT_AUTOMATED flag. Which gives them a chance to have it fixed. But that's not my responsibility any more as it is for estate owners who use the estate tools to globally disallow scripted agents to cater for a bunch of accounts that may or may not have been flagged at some time as bots. We are given tools and we use them.

[Unashamedly Bots]

24 minutes ago, ArtCurator said:

Does that not concern anyone else?

Not really, but nevertheless my homegrown solution predating the AGENT_AUTOMATED flag by many years will tell the ejected avis the reason and that they can call me up to defend their case. So far no one ever did. They just try to come back another day with the same result. This has not changed since the introduction of AGENT_AUTOMATED and my scripting change to make use of it.

So in my observation it may perhaps not be such a widespread issue at all if of more than 400 ejected avatars in just the last couple of years not a single one claimed to be mistreated.

[Help a new builder, please!]

The [AV[helper object must be a prim containing the [AV]helper script. Rez a standard plywood prim, drop the [AV]helper -script- inside, take the object into your inventory. It should have renamed itself to [AV]helper.

Now have a look at your 'furniture' objects content. When you see an [AV]helper SCRIPT inside, delete that from its content, it has no use within the furniture object. When you already have an OBJECT inside that calls itself [AV]helper, you may perhaps already have successfully gone through the steps outlined above. If not, add the [AV]helper object (the cube) you made in the steps above.

In short: NEVER add the [AV]helper SCRIPT to your furniture. It MUST be a prim you prepared with the script beforehand.

[Help a new builder, please!]

I would suspect that you did not only add the [AV]helper object but the script as well, or perhaps only the script. Take care that there's really only the object in your potential furniture contents.

[Parcel level bot detection]

1 hour ago, Paul Hexem said:

All this does is gives residents the ability to target people for following the rules.

There's the catch. In my experience it does not actually target the people, it targets scripted agents. People can still visit our marina as often as they like. Those 20 to 30 bots that get kicked daily have yet to make their case to me.

[SDR accounts]

It's a bunch of roaming bots with SDR themed names. Which makes them reasonably easy to spot as part of their own certain horde. If they have anything actually to do with the theme they are named after they are good in hiding it.

[A Suggestion on Improving Mainland]

There are certain blights on mainland that I'd like to see whisked away. Namely those stacked skydome rentals that do nothing for the ground, airspace or surrounding regions apart from being a complete pain to look at. Having those relocated to their own subcontinent would be some serious progress for mainland at large. And may be there'd be a re-use for some day to be vacated old premium home lands?

Such a move may come together with establishing some rules about minimum height for skybox installations. Which, I admit, needs some serious thinking about, considered that the idea of 'flying islands' could well be seen as in context with the lands below.

[SLGI Personal Autopilot Vehicle Project]

3 minutes ago, Anaimfinity said:

Honestly, I don't believe there would be significant help from others creating route notecards for this project.

While that may be reasonable true as an expectation, we sailing folks in SL tend to create many cruises every week. But not down to the micromanagement level an autopilot script would require. That's more what the Drivers of SL group does in their nav hud. But neither sailing cruises nor DSL drives actually work decently well without permanent human control.

Generally I may be too pessimistic about the eventual use a generalized autopilot scriptset might find, when its practical use would be very much limited to some short to mid range ferry services. But even those I'd not let this loose on general sailing areas like the Blake Sea other than in single well maintained and within the area coordinated service.

As we see in certain participants in this discussion there's enough general animosity and outright aggression against the use of vehicles as it already is. And while I'm not interested in supporting their polemics, I'd still want to keep vehicle travel in SL as a friendly and responsible social experience to all actually involved user groups.

[SLGI Personal Autopilot Vehicle Project]

17 minutes ago, Anaimfinity said:

these scripts will make vehicles phantom and non-physical during autopilot

As I explained in a later remark, that's not really helping a lot with random vehicles we don't know as phantom. Which would, by the very definition of this autopilot idea, every normal vehicle with this kind of script.

Initially I sort of liked the idea, but the longer I think about it, the more I see it used in ways that will only upset the rest of the vehicle riding users. We can cope with Yava Pods and your automated SLGI vehicles because they're easily identified, not very large, limited to specific known routes and tend to fly a lot of the way.

Having half a dozen 'superyachts' roam around the Blake Sea with people down in the cabins doing "cabin" stuff would just be a desaster. That they are phantom and we can sail through the master bedroom if we like isn't much of a deterrent and not something that actually helps cooperative, social behaviour on the seas a lot. Or on roads. It might work for airplanes if people would agree on flight corridors of sorts, mainly some flight heights for autopiloted flight. Currently not that many vehicles have a meaningul automation that they'd require some actual regulation. Give your autopilot away and I can see calls for regulation coming up really fast. Lots of random automated vehicles on roads and seas are not going to be a positive experience for us at all.

added: Use of the script would require a feeling for responsibility way above the average capacity of vehicle users. Sory if that's snotty, but this is a point of view I got from experience.

[SLGI Personal Autopilot Vehicle Project]

23 minutes ago, animats said:

Unless you're going to turn vehicles phantom, like Yava Pods, you have to avoid collisions. Or your vehicles will be a nuisance.

As sailors can't easily see if some random vehicle is phantom, any vehicle heading at you seemingly crewed and oblivious to you is a nuisance and its use should really be avoided. Not such a big deal for the yavapods because we know them by now. But when you can't tell if some upsized cargo ship does its GTFO run human controlled or autopiloted, you don't really gamble on it being phantom.

See if you can get @animats avoidance system. 😉

[SLGI Personal Autopilot Vehicle Project]

Please remember that certain vehicles out there are very vulnerable to collisions (and meant to be so), like N&K tall ships or Shergood Helicopters. And of course there's that ubiquitous sailboat racing with an expectation to not be actively disturbed by mindless vehicles crossing their path.

So I wouldn't really want to see an autopilot system without a very good collision avoidance in place, as fun and potentially helpul as autopiloting is.

[LSL Detecting a Scripted Agent]

See https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233274 for an already accepted feature request. This does not imply that the feature might actually get implemented any time soon though. But we can always hope.

[New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion]

No doubt that they can. It's about if they are willing to put the work in.

Take the subscription level flag for example. I don't think that a lot of users have been waiting desparately on a way to detect per script if someone else was basic or had one of now three different subscriptionl levels. I sure didn't. However, I suspect the work to make a flag "scripted agent" available is about the same.

Including a deny_scripted_agents flag on parcel level may be a different way but again I suspect with the introduction of the same on estate level a lot of the required basic work already is done.

[New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion]

11 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

What if these bots set this up so we will have to buy some kind of security orb.

Then they failed in my case. What bot invasions indeed made me do was to drop existing 'security orbs' because they just hadn't got the capacity to handle that many names. While there seem to be one or two offers on MP claiming to be specifically targeted to roaming bots, I'm not one to trust in someone elses closed source and closed data solution which might easily go the way of any other voodoo magic.

I don't actively offer my own solution beyond close friends because it only is open source, but I don't feel comfortable to provide my list of bot names. Trust goes both ways, so (generic) YOU don''t have any reason to trust me and my judgement. If you do, you can have that thing for free. But I'd rather have LL fill the gaps they left with the current implementation only available to estate owners and managers, leaving parcel owners and mainlanders alone.

[New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Conclusion: The new Scripted Agent controls are a qualified success!!

I imagine that the 6 or 8 newly created bots that dropped in on my land over the last couple of days (and not counting the old regulars) will wholeheartedly agree.

Or more serious, now I'd like to have some tools made available to mainland users. As I have to use a scripted solution for my lands anyway with more than 540 known roaming bots and new hordes popping up every other couple of days I'd really love to have the scripted agent status accessible to lsl.

[Owned Object No Mod , modified by another person ?? what the hell ?]

I still have my very first such cube. Fits animats description perfectly. Only, obviously it has my name. Aquired some time in 2018 when it came to be linked to whatever sailboat I sailed that day. I have a vague memory it may have been the ReneMarine Skipjack, but the vehicle really isn't at fault.

[Owned Object No Mod , modified by another person ?? what the hell ?]

The strange cube is indeed what remained from an unlucky sitter who ran into a bad crossing with the vehicle. It's a pretty rare case and, being an avid sailor, I've only actually observed this may be three times. Interesting enough, two of those instances happened in the last ten days or so.

Anyway, it's not some obscure hacking or some heavy handed circumvention of the permission system but 'only' a very rare phenomenon I've so far only seen happening on vehicles that lost their sitter(s) on some bad crossing.

In this special case you can do nothing to salvage the vehicle, no mod still applies to the linkset.

[💡 Positive News Regarding Scripted Agents Function 💡]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Now, put it on the Mainland, please. Oh, and Bellisseria. 

Problem is that technically it's right there on Mainland and Belli too now. But same as on estates it's only accessible to estate manager. Which we mainlander aren't. We would need something like the scripted agent flag made visible to lsl scripting if we want to have an equivalent.

[Not the Deploy Plan for week beginning 27/3/2023]

@Aishagain

and me providing said link is somehow making me suggest that their posts are unneeded? I don't quite see why you had to come back on me like that, putting words in my mouth I did not say.

And as a regular reader I'm well aware of your habit to complain here every time their deploy plan info is overdue and your reasons for doing it.

[Not the Deploy Plan for week beginning 27/3/2023]

Look, we love to complain. Get a post but no changelog, complain. Get a changelog but no post, complain. 😒

I like to get infos being handed to me on a silver tablet like everyone else but I know how to look up the Simulator Release Notes, so I can occasionally survive without the silverware. I'm sorry if that irks you.

[Not the Deploy Plan for week beginning 27/3/2023]

But then we have actual release notes for 578844

[The bot war is over and the bot farmers have won :-(]

3 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

If you don't want anyone visiting (bot or human) your parcel then why would it be open to visitors?

May be because bot visitors and human visitors are not the same? Human visitors may actually contribute to the theme of the place while roaming bots never do any of that.