Idle timeout sound

[Barnard Smith]

Hi Selby,

The system you described could easily result in worlds being kept active while none of the avatars inside them are actually present. Consider, for example, what would happen when people just park their avatar in some popular world and go about their business AFK. Every avatar present in a world creates some server load (the amount of load grows non-linearly). The fact that more than 5 people are inworld doesn't justify keeping inactive avatars in that world and thus degrading performance for the people who are actually using it.

This could also result in what you see in some other popular grids where a significant number of avatars that are seemingly present are actually AFK for extended periods of time. Keeping a server active when no one is actually using it wastes energy and has a negative impact on the environment. Most OpenSim grids can't do anything about that but Kitely can and I believe we should continue doing so.

[Barnard Smith]

I don't have any of these timeout problems in Kitely, either in other worlds, my own, or when at a gathering/ meeting. If I am at a meeting, then I should be attentive enough to watch my screen to keep up with what is going on.

To beat the Kitely grid timer I find all one has to do is vigorously shake your mouse across your viewers screen, every once in awhile, or move ones Avatar once every 30 minutes. I mean really come on, the timer doesn't even notice you unless you haven't moved in 30 minutes.

And based on what kind of world Kitely is, and its operations that keep all our cost as low as possible this IS NOT unreasonable. Ilan is also right, if he always has to work on the little stuff (putting out fires, and working on this or that) then the larger plan just gets pushed further off the table...Sorry if I have offended..its just how I feel.

[Shandon Loring]

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.

We simply have an object on a clock that goes off every 30 minutes on the hour and half hour. We had it doing sound, but took that off. Now it sends a text in local, and flashes the users entire screen green.
(we use black to black out the users screen for scary effects sometimes, but green seemed better here)

Nothing tricky though, just a script on the clock and a fast rez/derez multi-plane mega object with a text shouter.

IF this is useful to anyone we'd would be happy to pass it along.

TY Dot.

[Graham Mills]

I made a simple HUD version of the timer and put it on the Market as a 10 KC "freebie". There is a 10 sec fire alarm so you might want to use it wearing earbuds if others IRL are likely to be alarmed rather than alerted. Inworld HUD sounds are only played to the person with the HUD.

Much as I'm reluctant to inflict my scripting on others, it struck me that this was an application with RL health benefits given all the bad publicity that extended RL inactivity gets. All I need now is an RL chair with a forced unsit...

https://www.kitely.com/market/product/9902274/HUD-timer

[Shandon Loring]

If anyone wants one, i put one of our Green Flash Signallers in the main Library Building at Seanchai.
It is a green cylinder... i will work on it a bit more and put it on KM..
grid.kitely.com:8002/Seanchai/143/129/29

[Alexander Zoltai]

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.

I find these words interesting:

"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"

I'm wondering how many avatars spend their time in-world constantly staring at the screen...

What would you say?

Most avatars constantly stare at their screen?

Half of all avatars constantly stare at their screen?

Let me guess...

Hardly any avatars constantly stare at their screen.

If my guess is right, would that activate a prioritization on your part to provide an audible-warning-of-imminent-ejection-system on all worlds---ya know, one that all owners would swear to not mess with?

[Barnard Smith]

Hi Alexander,

I'm not being obtuse, our stats show that people rarely end their session due to idle timeouts. Your requested feature would be nice to have but it would not benefit a sufficient number of user sessions to merit prioritizing its implementation sooner than some other features that people have been asking for.

The reason most people never get logged out for inactivity is that you don't have to stare at your screen all the time to avoid the idle timeout system logging you out. Most people take bathroom breaks, take phone calls, switch to other programs on their computer, etc. but return to focusing on their avatar and taking some sort of action inworld more frequently than once every 2 hours (when they're inside one of their own worlds) or once every 30 minutes (when they're visiting someone else's world).

If you need an audio reminder from the viewer to do something inworld in order to not get logged out for being idle then you can use a HUD such as this one to automatically remind you at an interval of your choosing: https://www.kitely.com/market/product/9902274/HUD-timer