Don't yawn: yet another hypergrid group teleporter

There has been interest lately in standardizing on a hypergrid teleporter design. Gates are much loved by sci-fi fans but there are other options such as the searchable hgurl boards. Personally, I think it too early to settle for one design, not least because the gizmos are not always in evidence and one design rarely fits all. That said, I do like the idea of a common icon to identify such devices.

Gates have the advantage that they are readily identified and groups of people can be channelled through them relatively easily. English people will also appreciate the opportunity to form a queue although this can be challenging for n00bs. Many variations on the gate theme have been devised. I like the in-sim teleport gates on the NWG Physics region as you can see what your destination looks like.

As far as groups are concerned, another option is a script that collects avatar touches and force teleports the "touchees" at intervals. This is particularly good for larger groups whose simultaneous arrival might otherwise overwhelm the receiving region. However, it does suffer from being somewhat mundane. The example used by the HGAC was based on a New York cab. While that's a nice touch, it is not very immersive -- you don't actually get in the taxi. Incidentally, the HGAC is back in session now that jokaydiaGrid has moved to OpenSim 0.7.2.

The design here involves the owner setting a destination based on a notecard-driven dialog (a search option would be nice but at least the teacher can specify/limit the regions available). A particle-based image of the destination then appears although this preseently suffers from persistence issues with the previous image. In a perfect world a map or a sculpted terrain prim might also appear, plus data on current occupancy. It would also be good to extend usage rights to named avatars on a notecard, e.g. other teachers.

The teacher then selects the Rez option to make the teleport sphere appear. The sphere senses nearby avatars and visits them one-by-one based on proximity to the teleporter (nearest go first). Avatars receive an alert by IM when their turn comes. If the avatar touches the sphere, it is teleported; otherwise (as with the first avatar in the movie), the sphere waits a short while before moving onto the next avatar in the list. It self-deletes when the list is exhausted.

The net effect is in my opinion pleasingly kinetic (although the sphere movement is physics-based so your avatar may get swiped), teleporting is phased (remember, good for groups) and avatars can readily see what is happening.

The downside is that avatars need to stay where they were sensed and there will be some lag generated by the script though that might be mitigated a little by using an OSSL function rather than llSensor. For some reason the physics movement also fails to run on at least one other grid I've tried (but that could be the sandbox settings). I think there's also a limit on the number of avatars that can be sensed though it would be easy enough to setup a second teleporter nearby. The teleport prim is current temprez but that is easily fixed.

With the proviso that I haven't tried this out for real, it looks like an interesting variation on the group teleporter theme. The main issue, of course, is finding good places to visit and there teleporters are of limited use. This is an issue I will return to in a later blog.