Holodecks as a tool to re-vitalise our community?

[Diderot Mirabeau]

Hey all

I know this is not a new topic: I believe it was Gxeremio Dimsum - another candidate of the Simplicity Party - who brought up the topic some time ago telling us about a wonderful gadget now available for purchase that enabled you at the click of a button to choose between a number of different furniture arrangements to switch the layout of a room between conference room, bed room, living room and park for example.

The device would automatically rezz and de-rezz the furniture for you and no arrangement would be more than 115 prims in total thus effectively enabling you to get a 5 room house on a simple plot of first land.

I believe the potential of this technology is truly mind-boggling when it comes to the CDS.

Consider the following:
1) Neufreistadt especially has a lot of rather small houses with a low prim allotment that have a hard time working as suitable, modern dwellings to which the owners would be happy to invite anyone.

2) The CDS is home to a thriving collective of creative builders hopefully soon to be organised in The New Guild. A framework which has proven itself to work in the Sim Planning Committee as one that is ideally suited for coordination, making best use of shared technology and bringing it into the hands of our citizens.

It is possible to buy a professional version of the holodeck for 9,000L$, which will enable you to create your own furniture arrangements to put into the deck.

I propose that we discuss whether we should spend this sum of money to give the New Guild a useful tool to experiment with. To allow its members to set up various furniture arrangements suitable for rezzing in a house the size of one in Neufreistadt.

On the basis of the experience gained from having some of our builders play around with the professional version we could then decide if we should enter into serious negotiations with the makers of the holodeck on the possibility to acquire some sort of group license or a special version for CDS citizens so that they could effectively turn their dwellings into modern, multi-purpose houses.

An alternative option could be to consider making use of the device to improve the utility of CDS Public Areas.

I'd like to hear what other people think of these ideas and hope to have thrown a constructive submission into the debate, which at the moment seems to be dominated by a strange kind of campaigning indeed dominated by political attacks and misrepresenting facts to make it suit one's own agenda.

[Desmond Shang]

About a year ago, I made approximately a quarter million $L in less than two months from rezzer technology of this type.

With concurrent sales of some other things, I used the money to buy a sim you might have heard of, and then a few more. It *still* makes plenty of $L, but not as much these days.

Rather than paying $L 9k for such technology, I'll simply tell all of you how to do it. Consider it a 'thank you' for the warm reception on these forums.

For items going in the rezzer, to be rezzed:

1. Make sure they are full mod, or copy/modify/no-transfer.
2. Add a script that will 'kill' them when a command is given, such as "/1 byebye".

You'll need a simple 'killscript' that listens for such a command, and when it hears it, runs llDie(); Any basic scripter can make one in short order.

To properly 'group' the items: (this is the 'big secret', meh!)

1. Make a full mod tiny phantom invisible cube, and add a killscript to it also as above; name it "room" or some such.
2. Position it such that will be AT THE CENTER of the prim that stores/rezzes all the stuff on command.
3. Place everything out where you want it to be, in relation to the little cube.
4. Using the shift key and the mousie, select the "room" prim cube FIRST, then everything else.
5. Take a copy to inventory. Now you have something named "room" that is really a composite object of everything that was out. Use 'properties' in inventory to make sure this composite object is still full mod.
6. Place the full mod, composite object "room" in a rezzing prim. Sometimes the floor of a room is a good choice for this.

For the rezzer itself:
1. It has the item to be rezzed, the composite object named "room" in its contents already
2. It has a rezzing script, which listens for a rezzing command like "1/rezroom" which will call llRezObject() and rez the "room"
3. If you want to get fancy, have the script say "/1byebye" to clear whatever was out before rezzing new stuff.
4. You can add different items to be rezzed on different commands. "/1 conferenceroom", "/1 poolofsharks" and so forth.
5. If you get really, really fancy, have texture-labeled touch buttons say inaudible (channel 1 or higher) rez commands. Oooh, spiffy!

Mind, I *could* dig up scripts that do all this. I've got them buried aside somewhere. But please, just find yourself a junior scripter who can write at least an 'action on listen for text' script. Which is just about anybody.

[Diderot Mirabeau]

Thank you, Desmond!

And my apologies for not giving you due credit of invention.

I think we could easily have some of our talented builders look into this recipe for creation.

[Desmond Shang]

No worries, and, incidentally I didn't invent the method - many had used variances of it but I had found (one of the) ways to bring it to market.

Do enjoy.

[biscuit carroll]

Hi! I'm one of the people in the Holodeck project so I'm biased, right? The free solution is fine but let's not pretend it's an identical product.

Disadvantages of the free solution:
Is based on listen scripts so will produce lag
Requires some scripting knowledge to add rooms (holodeck requires only very basic building skills)
Has no alignment checking which means if you re-locate your room the chances are it will appear with a different rotation to what you started with
Once rezzed you won't be able to add or move objects without completely recreating the scene
User interface is kludgy compared to Holodeck's menu system
It looks like it is unsupported. Who will handle support?

Other advantages of Holodeck:
Menu options mean you can have dozens of rooms. You could with the free system too but you'd have to remember the names/keep a list of commands
Allows you to restrict access to owner/group
You can sell the scenes you make through the Holodeck network

Note that although the Production deck costs 9000L, any scene created in it can be deployed in a Simple Holodeck and they only cost 500L.

In short, the reasons you would ante up for a Holodeck are lag, user interface, support, the ability to modify once built and the ability to make money. The free solution is simple to script but perhaps not so simple for users.

[biscuit carroll]

ps.

We have also just introduced a scheme whereby those unable to afford 9000L can purchase a holodeck by bartering 10 approved scenes. ie we swap you the Holodeck for the sale rights to 10 built rooms.

[Desmond Shang]

Menu option dialog boxes create as much or more lag than listens.

Go look at how they work sometime; script-tutoring is more time consuming and bothersome to me than it's worth, and I'm not here to educate you. Not that it matters much because the lag from all these sorts of scripts is trivial.

You'll have far more of a hit to sim frames per second from the image cache, once the objects rez and all their textures suddenly become viewable.

No harm intended toward your product, but please, do not spread misinformation.

[biscuit carroll]

I stand by the comments. Yes, Desmond, other elements cause lag. However, anyone who has used older auto-rez solutions knows that they produce serious lag. The Holodeck does not.

Your solution is a simple scripting job. Our solution took months of coding and has been acclaimed by some of the best scripters in Second Life. It has been adopted by NMC, the lead educational body in Second Life, after their tender process did not produce a workable solution.

We believe it is value for money at the price. There is lots of open source software but some people prefer to use Photoshop, Microsoft Word and 3DSMax.

That is all I have to say on the subject; the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

[Flyingroc Chung]

Hm, with Desmond's description, and biscuit's critique I think I can create a holodeck that would pretty much do what is needed. If I find the time to do it, I could give the CDS free license to use a few copies . It will come with all the bells and whistles that I am known for (that is, none at all!).

I don't know when I'll get to it though.

[Diderot Mirabeau]

FR, do you have any ideas as to how we could get a scripting school running in CDS - possibly under the New Guild?

[Desmond Shang]

[quote="biscuit carroll":13emap92]I stand by the comments. Yes, Desmond, other elements cause lag. However, anyone who has used older auto-rez solutions knows that they produce serious lag. The Holodeck does not.

Your solution is a simple scripting job. Our solution took months of coding and has been acclaimed by some of the best scripters in Second Life. It has been adopted by NMC, the lead educational body in Second Life, after their tender process did not produce a workable solution.

We believe it is value for money at the price. There is lots of open source software but some people prefer to use Photoshop, Microsoft Word and 3DSMax.

That is all I have to say on the subject; the proof of the pudding is in the eating.[/quote:13emap92]

Make a 'new script'.

Replace the default llSay "Touched." with the object 'kill' command.

Add an llRezObject command right after it to rez your stuff.

Toss the composite object you are rezzing into the prim as described above.

[u:13emap92]One[/u:13emap92] line longer than the default script.

Plays well with other rezzers because the kill command wipes whatever was left out before.

Heh, people thought there was some incredible... Idon'tknowwhat in there, some figured it was hundreds of lines of code with higher mathematics or whatnot inside.

I could barely contain my shock when people offered me a LOT of money for it, sometimes two or three people a week willing to pay just about anything to get their hands on it. That was Nov 2005; I didn't tell anyone then. Business decision.

The lag people get is from the hit the sim and your client takes when hundreds of prims and textures are suddenly rezzed into the world (by *any* rezzer, doesn't matter). Ah, and of course, from bells and whistles added to a rezzing script.