"Wormhole Regions" (Non-cartesian region crossing)
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SarahKB7 Koskinen
Imagine if you could walk/sail/drive/fly across a region border and arrive at another region border - but dozens, hundreds or thousands of grid spaces away! It would be comparable to using a "wormhole" to cross vast distances in Second Life.
Uses:
Imagine you're sailing a boat in the remote and isolated Gaeta I continent where there's currently no physical water path to other Second Life continents, other than directly teleporting there. That's where "Wormhole Regions" could be very useful.
Theoretically, you and the boat could sail south from southern Gaeta I continent, cross it's most southern border and instantly "worm hole" straight to the northern border of another continent, such as the northern border of Corsica (which is the nearest other continent to Gaeta I)
Although this sounds very similar to "Experience Teleporting", it isn't, because using vehicles with Experience Teleporting isn't possible, it only teleports the avatar, not the vehicle too.
"Wormhole Regions" could have up to all four of their region borders programmed with four separate "destination" targets too.
Proposal:
Allow a select number of special "Wormhole Regions" to have special borders that allow non-cartesian region crossing abilities which permit region crossing directly to other distant regions elsewhere on the Second Life grid. This idea would negate the need for dozens, hundreds or thousands of expensive "filler" link regions for linking multiple contiguous regions physically together.
Suggestions for placement of public "Wormhole Regions":
* Gaeta I continent to Corsica continent.
* Teen SL Continent (aka "Sharp") to Satori continent.
* Zindra/Horizons continent to Gaeta V continent.
* Nascera (old Linden Homes) continents to Jeogeot continent.
Other Uses:
A single private island "Wormhole Region" could be configured to allow "Pac Man" or "Asteroids" videogame-style region crossings where an avatar could move northwards across a northern region border and "reappear" in the same region on the opposite southern border. This would also work for opposite east-west region borders too, making a single region potentially have an infinite straight line travel pathway, which could be a lot of fun for those who enjoy flying aircraft.
(Based on an idea and conversation between Snowlord Resident & Philip Linden, 1st May 2025. See: https://youtu.be/1Ahm4VlMQPM?t=2591 @43:12 )
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Snowlord Resident
Thanks for typing this idea brought up at the meeting Sarah, you explained it perfectly and broke it down into more ways that I had imagined. it's good to see the conversation continue!
Dizzi Sternberg
Experience teleporting cannot move vehicles unless they are worn but then they dont really drive. The av just walks about wearing them. Lua is not going to change this
Oatmeal Linden
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Hello Sarah! We love new ideas! This is likely best developed by our creative userbase, and then promoted to the Lab. You could gather some interested parties and take a look at our recommendations here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Feature_Contributions and the developer resources here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Second_Life_Develop
Within our current toolset and capabilities, teleporting is the best method to cross the Void. An experience can be used for this, and I imagine that it could be used to emulate driving or riding a vehicle.
The experience tools rely on scripting, and the wiki has information on the applicable LSL functions here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Experience_Tools
Perhaps as SLua is developed there will be further updates to this set.
We rely on our Residents to develop new features and help resolve issues, via suggestions and reporting here. Keep them coming in!
SarahKB7 Koskinen
Oatmeal Linden You have misread and misunderstood this idea. I have already stated that Experience Teleporting is NOT the solution, as it can only teleport an avatar. The idea is not about teleporting, the idea is about physically crossing region borders to other distant unconnected regions.
Experience Teleporting cannot teleport a ridable vehicle that the avatar is using. And I doubt that introducing SLua will change that either.
The solution is to do as Philip Linden has suggested, by changing the region border conductors (in special "Wormhole Regions") so that Residents and vehicles can walk/fly/swim/sail "across" region borders to further non-linear regions not bordering that first region.
This would create "Wormhole Regions" and would be far cheaper method to connect distant places, rather than creating lots of individual filler regions to create a physical pathway between areas of Second Life. With four borders per region (north, south, east, west), we could have up to four destinations per "Wormhole Region".
I also request that Linden Lab develop this "Wormhole Regions" idea further in-house themselves, as Linden Lab owns Second Life and the SL grid.
Why should the SL Residents and third parties be expected to further invest additional amounts of time and money into developing a new region crossing system which Second Life would own and when Second Life's devs are already paid by it's Residents to develop these new ideas from Canny requests like these themselves?
Oatmeal Linden
SarahKB7 Koskinen: Please do also note Philip's comment here. We welcome collaborations with our userbase. One of our slogans - Your world, Your imagination - is in this spirit.
Should a system as you are describing be developed, it will likely have been started by a Resident or group of Residents using the resources Linden Lab freely provides. If it can be implemented in a non-destructive way, we may then be able to spend our internal resources for development and testing.
Atomic Infinity
Oatmeal Linden The experience teleport is an interesting method to explore for 'wormholing' if perhaps a resident creator developed more advanced wearable vehicles.
However, to do this anywhere but private regions with the Experience set on the land, we would need grid-scope resident-owned Experiences.
But grid-scope is reserved for LL projects only.
Resident creators could explore this and a lot more with a grid-scope Experience, but we don't have them, so we can't.
Bavid Dailey
Add in the possibility of changing the vertical coordinate on the transition as well, and the design possibilities for art galleries, musems, shops, etc. becomes a lot more interesting .
Philip Linden
We'd have to add a lot of code to different tools and systems to keep track of the neighbor sims. Technically it seems pretty easy, but probably a LOT of development and testing. But how would we gauge interest in such a thing? If the right parts of SL were open-sourced to allow it, could the community raise money as a kickstarter to pay for the development, for example? This seems like a perfect example of a cool change that a small percentage of people might want but that wouldn't make it high enough to merit putting the mainline resources on it.
SarahKB7 Koskinen
Philip Linden To guage interest, perhaps LL could do a limited trial, put in a pair of Wormhole Regions between Gaeta I and Corsica continents and measure the traffic it would create. There's a 13 region gap between these two continents which has existed for almost 17 years.
Who would pay for it? Linden Lab would, they'd own it like they owned all the old Telehubs!
I don't think SL's infrastructure should be outsourced to others to own or operate, it needs to stay within the LL family for long-term maintenance and continuity reasons.
Timothy McGregor
Open Simulator is already fully open source. I realize this is apples and oranges, but could a high level proof of concept be worked out there and adapted to SL if it made sense to move forward?
Spooky Shadow
Philip Linden We all pay LL so we need better features. Funding is not up to us. We already fund you.
steph Arnott
Stick a pin through a piece of card and look through the hole, what you will see is not the world.