A Thought On How To Handle Long Load Times

[Sarge Misfit]

One of the drawbacks to Kitely is how long it can take for a world to load when we teleport to it. This can be frustrating and I expect more so for those not used to it. So, I am wondering if some sort of "light show" effect could be done. The Star Trek transporter effect definitely comes to mind. I think it would also have a positive effect for others as it would show them that someone is teleporting away and likely not available for conversation.

[Allen Partridge]

love that idea. The awkward social problem of - 'oh hi nice to see you but i'm already queued for .....' is one i've experienced.

you find yourself scrambling to get IM to the other party to avoid appearing rude. initiating a simple particle effect showing teleportation in progress would rock. I've also noted that the dialog says 'error' when it really is just an info dialog telling you that you're going being queued for teleport. It would probably be better to just see the particles - understanding that they indicate you are 'en route'.

--Allen

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Allen,

The dialog that says error is hardcoded in the viewer. We append the part after the "Teleport failed" prefix. One way to avoid this would be to teleport people waiting for a world to start into a transfer station. This would have the benefit of allowing people to teleport out of worlds without delays but will leave them in a transfer station where they will have a lot less to do while they wait. It isn't clear whether it is preferred to keep the existing "wait in origin world" logic or switch to using the transfer stations for inworld teleports to offline worlds (preferences differ on the matter and any change we make, if we make one, has to be system-wide).

Regarding having a particle effect on TPing, that could possibly be done if we had the particle effect to use. However, we have higher priority items on our todo list before we can even research this option.

[Sherrie Melody]

LOL. You know, if we always automatically went to a transfer station, when changing worlds, it would get rid of that awkward 1 - 2 minutes where you say, "Okay, by now" and then they say something interesting and then you try to hurry the reply, and get telelported mid-reply, LOL.

[Sarge Misfit]

With a transfer station, you still end up waiting. Have some fun with it, "Beam me up, Scottie!"

[Dot Matrix]

I'd argue against using a transfer station for inworld teleports because it could break immersion if travelling between worlds of a different genre.

Perhaps we need to develop a shared etiquette to relieve any sense of social awkwardness. Non-technical, but it might work.

[Dundridge Dreadlow]

I'd be forced to say a more immediate effect (like the transfer station) may be preferable, at least you'd be able to make an appropriate exit and not confuse people still talking to you

"bye".. ok, still here, now what..
I'll just wander over here and inspect those prims.. hey this is interesting... lets exa<beams out> bother.

[Allen Partridge]

I like Sarge's idea of particles - it kind of addresses what Dot mentions - as a social convention. An interesting approach might be to create a development opportunity - by exposing a special call when teleport is in queue? Then developers could build custom 'effects' to signal to others that a teleport was in mid process.

Examples:

Rez a Tardis and walk into it.
Star Trek Particles appear and partially obscure / fade player
Avatar freezes and a Mac spinning wheel appears over their head
Avatar assumes the True Blood Vampire Pre-flight mode and then skyrockets to absurd height

--could do tons of things, and people would enjoy customizing. Not sure if a tp queued message could be accessible via ossl script. Perhaps it's an open sim dev request.

--Allen

[Sarge Misfit]

I believe that there are three questions to be discussed.

1. What is easier to implement, visual effect or transfer station?
2. What do the majority want?
3. Can things be made optional? That is, can a sim owner configure their world to implement variations? Let them choose to use the transfer station, or a transporter light show. Perhaps a puff of smoke if its a magic themed sim, things like that. Perhaps set a default teleport out point, similar to restricting teleports in to a specific location.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Sarge,

Whatever option we implement will have to be Kitely wide.

If a social convention is used instead of a transfer station then it would have to be one that is easily understood and have the consistent meaning of "I'm in the process of TPing to some other world". This means we'll probably want to avoid having the animations be user or world manager selectable (I'm neglecting the additional development time supporting this would require which would make it much less likely that we''ll be able to allocate resources to implementing it any time soon).