Parcel Avatar Visibility Does Not Hide Avatars Beyond ~500 m (Bellisseria and Mainland)
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Rustv Resident
When Parcel Avatar Visibility is disabled/Privacy is enabled, avatars located in neighboring private parcels or Linden Homes become visible at distances greater than approximately 500 meters.
This has been observed in both Bellisseria and mainland regions.
The avatars appear in Firestorm's radar (often at long distances) as red bold text in the range section, and zooming to them reveals that their avatar is rendered even though Parcel Avatar Visibility is enabled and they are located on a different private parcel.
Expected Result:
Avatars located outside the parcel should remain hidden regardless of draw distance.
Actual Result:
At approximately 500–1000 m, some avatars are rendered and become visible despite parcel privacy settings.
Environment:
Firestorm 6.6.17
Firestorm 7.2.4
Second Life Official Viewer (used for comparison)
The official viewer cannot increase draw distance beyond 512 m, making it difficult to reproduce there, while third-party viewers supporting greater draw distances expose the issue.
Steps to Reproduce:
Stand on a parcel with Parcel Avatar Visibility disabled.
Use a viewer capable of draw distances greater than 500 m.
Set draw distance between approximately 800–1000 m.
Locate neighboring private parcels or Linden Homes more than ~500 m away.
Observe whether avatars become visible despite the privacy setting.
Additional Notes:
Reproduced in both Bellisseria and mainland.
The issue appears to begin around 500 m.
The behavior may be intermittent, with some avatars rendering while others do not.
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Maestro Linden
updated the status to
tracked
Maestro Linden
Okay, I think I see the nature of this bug now. The issue is that your the parcel settings at Shreve/136/31/44, Calleya/124/174/44, Shimmering Falls/28/196/40 enable parcel parcel privacy, but you are able to see avatars on far away parcels. Because parcel privacy is enabled, one would expect avatars in other parcels to not be visible at all, whether they are in the same region or not.
Testing again mimicking your configuration, I can reproduce this after all when I replace the _observing_ agent, with 1024m draw distance, on the private parcel, and have the other agent stand in a non-private parcel several regions away. In that case, I'm sometimes able to see the other agent, though it's a little flakey (sometimes the agent is invisible as expected, sometimes the agent appears as a never-loading cloud, sometimes the agent is visible).
I still can't reproduce it in the original case I tried (observer in non-private parcel, observed agent in private parcel) - in that case, the observed agent is never visible.
The shared screenshots don't indicate exactly where the camera is located, so we don't know if the observed agents are in a private parcel or not, but I suspect they are not.
Maestro Linden
updated the status to
under review
Maestro Linden
updated the status to
needs info
Maestro Linden
I'm having trouble reproducing this on demand with Firestorm 7.2.4 and server 2026-07-10.29122504250.
I set up a private parcel at the northeast corner of Preflight2 and had a Firestorm 7.2.4 viewer with 1024m draw distance stand at the southwest corner of 'Testylvania Sandbox'. The distance between the long-draw-distance agent and the private parcel would be about 1040m. I've attached a screenshot of the Firestorm viewer's world map, to give an idea of the layout.
I had the 1024m-draw-distance agent alt-cam all the way to the area with the private parcel, then had a 2nd avatar walk into and out of the private parcel. The moving agent disappears and reappears to the far-away observer when as they enter and exit the private parcel.
Rustv Resident , Zoren Manray, or anyone else who can reproduce: Can you provide a pair of example SLURLs where you observe this issue? One for where the private parcel is, and one for the long-draw-distance agent's position.
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Maestro Linden
I also tried having long-draw-distance agent relog to Testylvania Sandbox/10/10/20 while the other agent remained in the private parcel. In that case, the viewer's 1024 draw distance appeared to be initially ignored, and the viewer only connected to Preflight3, Preflight4, and Preflight7. I had to move the agent over to Preflight4 so that their viewer would connect to Preflight2 and then return to Testylvania Sandbox/10/10/20 for the 'long distance' setup. In that case, the agent in the private parcel was not observed until they left it.
Rustv Resident
Maestro Linden http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calleya/124/174/44 and simulator version 29110850825, also I believe it only happens on mainland and bellissaria
You will need more than just a few avatars, it seems it could be a land bug, not private sims like that sandbox
What I mean is that avatar parcel visibility on a mainland or LL home is disabled, if you watch the radar you might notice that some names have a red bold distance to them, if you zoom into those avatars on the radar sometimes you can see their avatar render, it's best tested on Bellissaria
Rustv Resident
Maestro Linden I should not be able to see these avatars, yet I can. I am on a parcel with avatar visibility turned off and some people render for me as you can see
Notice the parcel name in the address bar at the top, and notice how it has parcel Avatar Visibility disabled, yet these people show up
Where this was taken from
Also notice that all the avatars are sitting that are visible, and even display them as sitting with the "S" marker on the radar
But I don't think this is the case because I've seen it with standing avatars too...
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Rustv Resident
Maestro Linden here is another example taken from
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Rustv Resident
Maestro Linden https://gyazo.com/8a7c1e1b1c7f93c16f385fe98b44f7de
Here is a video of someone flickering in and out which also seems to happen too, they try to render when they shouldn't
btw sorry for the multiple pings
Rustv Resident
I should also mention that when I cam to someone and open my parcel settings, the parcel settings show for their parcel and not mine even though I am not within their parcel and my camera is. This is also a weird bug that I think has something to do with this too. I see their parcels info and settings instead of my own where my avatar is standing. Also seems intermittent too
new note: also happened at 300m and 400m too
Rustv Resident
I should correct myself
"that their avatar is rendered even though Parcel Avatar Visibility is enabled"
I meant Disabled
Also I should mention again that LL viewer is incapable of replicating the bug as there are camera constraints and you cannot zoom out that far... So it is not able to be replicated on SL's Official Viewer...
It appears to effect Firestorm but this started to occur a week ago I believe where they fixed problems for avatars not being able to access private sims
and the fact this bug started approximately after that time...
I shall note, Even third party viewers should not be receiving info/data to render avatars from that range anyway...
Zoren Manray
That's certainly a concerning privacy error. I wonder if the error has to do with being on adjacent regions and the client not fetching the parcel settings from that for away.
More specifically: maybe cashed regions would work as expected but regions that had not been cached before might have the error happen as the viewer does not know the full parcel details
Rustv Resident
Zoren Manray it happens on both same sim, and adjacent sims, and even past adjacent sims I believe