Idle timeout sound

[Arton Tripsa]

I am wondering if it would be possible to have a sound to notify folks BEFORE the idle timeout text message comes up? I understand why the message is important and it needs to be there...and I fully appreciate the reason why the world should not be kept open for an idle avi who is not really there. However many folks who meet in world are from time to time off the Kitely screen while they read something out loud or check something or look up the net - this affects writers, readers, folks who discuss anything..... If your view is off screen reading a poem out loud to folks inworld, you cannot see the time out message - first you know you hear the ding of death and you are thrown out.

I meet with a group regularly who sit and chat and we often talk about things we then look up and frequently someone is off screen when they are kicked off. Members of the group are sometimes kicked off during the discussion because they do not see the text message on the screen...

The ding goes off after they are on their way out... It is too late.

If it went off a minute before, that would be extremely helpful....

I know this may not be possible, but it would sure improve our meetings ...

Just a suggestion, thanks for your time...

[Selby Evans]

Hi Arton,

I understand your usage scenario and I think that your proposed solution is a good idea but, unfortunately, playing sounds inworld requires an object to exist in the relevant world for our system to be able to call to play the sound. Automatically inserting this object into worlds may be possible but we won't know for sure without investigating it first. I'll add researching this to our todo list but it may be a while before we can get to that.

[Dot Matrix]

It might be worth asking Shandon what Seanchai Library does. They have a very visible green flash that goes off every so often to remind people to move their avatar when listening to their storytelling.

[Deuce Halsey]

It might be worth asking Shandon what Seanchai Library does. They have a very visible green flash that goes off every so often to remind people to move their avatar when listening to their storytelling.

If it happens "every so often" chances are that it's a timer in a scripted object that generates the flash. I suppose a world owner could do the same thing - have an object that generates some sound every few minutes that would be turned on during events.

[Alexander Zoltai]

Ilan said this up there a ways: "I understand your usage scenario and I think that your proposed solution is a good idea but, unfortunately, playing sounds inworld requires an object to exist in the relevant world for our system to be able to call to play the sound."

I wonder how the sound is played when the Inactivity detector kicks us out???

And, why is it not possible to simply give each world-owner the object you claim you need to make a sound??

The only rational way to treat people in a world like yours, Ilan, is to cause a sound to alert a person BEFORE they are being kicked out---expecting people to keep their eyes Glued to the screen---in a way "forcing" them to adapt their behavior to the limitations you impose on us---is, to me, unfair...

I'm sure, if you wanted to bad enough, you could provide people with an alert before you kick them out of your worlds...

The current set-up is, as I said, "unfair" and quite bothersome...

[Barnard Smith]

Hi Alexander,

Our system gives people an idle timeout warning 1 minute before disconnecting them and we spent a segnficant amount of development effort making sure that anything we could detect as activity will prevent that idle timeout from being initiated. We give people that timeout warning after they have been inactive in their own world(s) for two hours or after they have been inactive in other people's worlds for 30 mintues. The idle timeout we display uses a built-in viewer feature to display the message you see. That viewer feature doesn't include playing sounds.

Some viewers play the sound you hear on disconnect, that sound isn't something that OpenSim can initiate, configure or control. In other words, we aren't the ones playing it and the fact that it exists doesn't make supporting the feature you want any easier than I previously indicated.

AFAIK there is no OpenSim feature for playing a sound file (asset UUID) which doesn't currently exist on the simulator which the viewer is connected to. It isn't sufficient for the sound to exist in people's inventories. Attaching the sound asset to people's avatars may be possible but it will easily break when people use viewer features such as "replace outfit" on their avatar. Changing OpenSim to work around that default asset detach behavior may be possible but people can easily teleport to/from other grids where our code wouldn't be running so I doubt any solution we build using that approach would be very robust without a lot of work addressing all the edge cases.

The alternative of automatically injecting the sound asset into all Kitely worlds and preventing it from being removed using all the ways people can change their world is also possible but it too will require a lot of development effort to make it robust.

We've always had to prioritize what features we choose to spend our development resources on. Prioritizing one asked-for-feature means delaying other features. I agree, again, that this particular feature would be nice to have but there are still other features that merit addressing first.

[Dot Matrix]

Might a timer that plays a warning/reminder sound every thirty minutes be a possible item for the Market? Then world owners could rez one themselves when having a meeting.

[Selby Evans]

The need for a warning seems to arise when there is a group in the world. You can't close the world anyway in that case when the avatar is removed. Could you check how many avatars are present and skip the sign-off if there are 5 or more avatars in the world?

[Graham Mills]

Something like the following could be used (methinks it would also work in a HUD):

Code: Select all

//note that you need to touch the prim again to restart the timer

float minutes = 0.5;//edit to change duration

startTimer()
{
    llSetTimerEvent(minutes*60);
    llSetText("Active", <0,1,0>, 1);
    llSetColor(<0,1,0>, ALL_SIDES);
}

default
{
    
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetText("Touch to start", <1,1,1>, 1);
    }
    
    changed(integer c)
    {
        if (c & CHANGED_REGION_START)
        {
            llSetText("Touch to start", <1,1,1>, 1);
        }
    }
    
    touch_start(integer n)
    {
        startTimer();
    }
    
    timer()
    {
        llPlaySound("intermittent alarm2", 1.0);
        llSetColor(<1,0,0>, ALL_SIDES);
        //comment out to make recurrent
        llSetText("Inactive", <1,0,0>, 1);
       //comment out to make recurrent
        llSetTimerEvent(0.0);
    }
}

PS: You need to have a sound called "intermittent alarm2" (which I recorded from a fire alarm drill). Note that HUD sounds are only played to the person wearing the HUD. You need to touch the prim to start/restart the timer. Change the value of minutes to alter the interval.

PPS: to make a HUD, edit the prim and resize it to 0.2x0.2x0.2 m, take it into inventory and then rightclick, attach to HUD (I used Centre 2) and then move the hud to a convenient location and resize if desired. Close the Edit dialog and you are good to go. If anyone wants the alarm sound, please let me know (Graham Mills_2). This is a pro tem solution; ace scripters feel free to produce something more elegant/functional.

[Graham Mills]

Incidentally, this topic may be related to this one viewtopic.php?f=12&t=266 (notification when student enters world) which suggests using automated redirection of IM to emails (i.e. to generate alert) or use of Pushover (or similar) to generate iOS/Android notifications.