I’ve mentioned before how it’s worthwhile keeping an eye on what they’re discussing on the Mesh forums and user groups, another group worth keeping an eye on is the Server Beta User Group. Now, you should bear in mind the name of this group and therefore be prepared for what’s discussed there never to reach the light of day on the main grid, some projects will prove not to be feasible, others will be superceded, but others will arrive on the main grid and one catches my eye, codenamed DRTSIM-65 and with a name of “Parcel Sounds” this has potential.
Basically the aim is for land owners to be able to restrict sounds from gestures and attachments, so when you’re hosting an event nobody can throw down the train … wait that’s World of Warcraft! Basically nobody will be able to do the woohoo’s and make them audible if you restrict sounds on your parcel, music streams and voice will be fine but those sometimes distractng gestures won’t be.
The other part of this is named Hidden Avatars and this will mean if you have this setting set, you will only see other avatars on your parcel and other avatars will only see you, if they are on your parcel, or to quote Simon Linden: “what happens on your parcel, stays on your parcel“. The good thing about this is that you can test this out on the beta grid right now, I’ll discuss that later in the post and with pics to prove it!
Now this is nowhere near my preferred solution of instancing, but instancing is not easy to implement at all and would take a lot of resources. Instancing would basically mean you could be on your parcel and someone else could enter the parcel and not see you, this was done in Blue Mars and others may be more familiar with how it’s done in World Of Warcraft whereby several groups can be in a dungeon but each group is in their own particular instance of that dungeon, thereby not seeing each other.
Hidden Avatars, if implemented (and having tested it on the beta grid I don’t see why it won’t be), would be an added step of privacy for people who don’t want folk camming around their parcel, it won’t stop people seeing you if they step onto your parcel, but that’s an issue for you to decide upon and if you’re a land owner and want extra privacy you could always setup access restrictions for the period of time you’re on your parcel. This is the sort of thing people have asked for, as is the limitation on gesture sounds so it’s good to see Linden Lab working towards solutions such as this.
What I also like about this is that it shows Linden Lab are working on social solutions as well as technical solutions. However let’s get to the testing of this feature, you can test this on the beta grid.
1. Login to the beta grid, for instructions on how to do this go here (warning people report problems of not being able to login to beta grid even when they follow these steps).
2. Head for oatmeal 6: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Oatmeal%206/133/136/23 Maestro Linden has kindly setup some parcels with this feature enabled.
I logged in with two avatars to test this, so avatar one is on the hidden avatars enabled parcel, avatar two isn’t, the avatar outside the hidden avatars parcel sees this:
As you can see, only one avatar is viewable despite two avatars being in close proximity. The avatar on the hidden avatars parcel sees this:
So at this point we can’t see each other, as the pictures show, then I stepped onto the parcel and voila:
Finally, just to prove there was no funny business going on, I took both avatars off the hidden avatars enabled parcel and onto a normal parcel, and as expected we can see each other:
Now this feature won’t stop you from appearing on the mini map, people will still be able to know you’re there but this does add an extra layer of privacy and looks like it will work, keep an eye out for an official announcement about this …. hopefully they will announce it!
Is good that LL are doing this. Will help when you want to try on your new skin and stuff. Is more bout “think of the children” tho. If was a true privacy measure then map, minimap and script scanners would not show you either. They would not also show ppl outside the parcel either to them inside. Is a good thing tho even without this.
We should see this in the proper context in the next week or two, it does look like a good project, although I agree with you that it’s not perfect due to how the minimap etc. will still work, but it’s early days yet.
This is an excellent idea- it will cut down on people camming into homes/buildings/asf that are not theirs.
However, I disagree with “the children” as the reason that LL is finally doing this. If “the children” were cared about at all, then they would never have merged the adult and teen grids. I would say it is more likely due to people leaving LL and their viewer for those grids and viewers with more enhanced privacy options.
Yes it will cut down on camming, it also gives people less of an excuse to be flashing all their accessories when undressing etc.