Point to Point Teleport and Telehubs

Point to Point teleportation has recently been classified "under discussion" at the SL feature voting site. Affectionately truncated, "P2P" has been a big topic of discussion recently in the forums. It's a controversial topic, because it has the potential to shape the very way we navigate through our virtual world.

It's rapidly progressing to a feature, and the newest Preview Grid has re-enabled it, along with some better scripting tools for allowing / banning avatars. This is an immediate issue being explored, and now is the time to consider what should be done and have LL implement the best option.

First, let's explore why we have telehubs.

"New York Subway" Theory

Back in July, a dozen of us invaded Linden Lab and wound up at a local San Fran pub with a large portion of the LL staff. The topic of telehubs and P2P came up, and Philip Linden (CEO) explained his rationale why SL uses telehubs.

Philip said that the reason New York City was so great, from a social standpoint, is travel via the subway. The consequence is that you wind up near where you want to be, and have to walk the rest of the way. On the way you see a bunch of neat places and perhaps meet some new people. Businesses and communities evolve around the subway stops as a matter of unintended city planning.

Sure enough, land near telehubs in SL tends to be visited more, and go for more money when sold. But do they really provide community? How well do they really fill this idea of the New York City Subway? And lastly, does this hinder natural Internet / Metaverse travel?

Community?

Do telehubs promote community? No ... not really. They serve as commercial advertising centers. If LL really wants to promote community, it needs to add a whole bunch of metadata into the back-end data for parcels. But I'm not going to discuss that issue here.

Realizing telehubs don't fulfill the purpose they serve, it would seem obvious that they should be done away with. Well ... not really. I think there are some way of restoring the original intent.

Robin Linden's take on preserving telehubs indicates that they are something LL wants to promote in the process of implementing P2P. Here's another good discussion.

Balancing Needs in a Plan

My plan is something a bit unique - a hybrid method that incorporates telehubs with P2P.

We should be tailoring the system to be compatible with the current Internet. Do people have to travel a distance to get to standard Internet websites? No, people are accustomed to the behavior of going right to the site that they desire. However, supplementary to this, people also have the desire to"surf" - wander from place to place. Because of this, it seems that both direct P2P and telehubs together are the best solution in line with keeping with current-day Internet behavior.

Let's first examine the needs of SL for the system:

Needs

1. Linden Lab has expressed the desire to preserve telehubs while implementing P2P. These telehubs should aim to be community centers.
2. The solution must be scalable.
3. The solution needs to leave alone or improve upon privacy of landowners.
4. The solution should consider the evolution of SL to the Metaverse.
5. There should be some compensation somehow for people who invested in telehub land - presumably purchased at a higher price than other land.

The question now is how to achieve that balance and fulfill the needs as stated.

My proposal consists of 4 parts:
1. Keep telehubs.
2. Alter the way telehubs are listed. (Explained below).
3. Allow parcels to have a "teleport here" feature to landing point.
4. Alter "port to me" to land at the nearest landing point. - and not work if the land that the person is on does not have the direct port enabled.

with an recent revision:
3-R. Allow landowners to be able to choose between porting to anywhere in the land or just the landing point.

How this fills the needs:

Need 1: Preserving Telehubs

Clearly, this keeps both the telehubs and introduces P2P to land.

Need 2: Scalability.

Telehubs can not be managed by a central database. This is unscalable. As is, there are problems with associating telehubs with locality - namely - that certain areas on the map teleport to inconvenient telehubs. (Try clicking the grid near Avalon on the main grid, and you'll teleport to Avalon - unable to fly to your location.- as an example.)

What seems like a much more intelligent solution would be to have data in a simulator to indicate which telehub it uses. When a new sim is added, the telehub data would be filled with the sim with the nearest telehub. This would have to be on the spot checked and verified automatically in the system - so bad data is not entered.

As for P2P, the landing points indicate where a person can tp to (if they are allowed by the landowner) - so it is scalable.

Need 3: Privacy

Direct P2P anywhere treads on privacy. Period.

It is the wrong solution for Linden Lab. Even "port to me" is obtrusive - since one griefer can quickly become many. The alternative is to let the landowner choose whether or not to enable a new land option "port here" - and have it work like land access. (With inclusion list, all group members, etc as options.)

In this case, to port directly to that land, a resident would have to find the land first, in one of a few ways:

1. a "Port to me" invitation
2. finding the land listed in classified
3. Finding the land in "Find".
4. A direct web-browser compatible hyperlink to SL land.
5. A previously established landmark

No matter which method, the person is then tp'd to the landing point listed in the land. This would need to have a Z-location (height) added to allow people to tp in higher than ground level. The result is that people would only be able to go where the land owner wanted, or anywhere if the land owner desired.

This not only lets people toggle it off for more privacy, but also satisfies ...

Need 4: Compatibility with the current Internet

The Internet is set up to allow people to go instantly to some places, but prevent people from instantly going to others. For example, if I need to pay for something off Amazon.com, I need to enter my credit card information before I go to the confirmation page. My proposed method allows landowners to follow this model.

If a landowner wants a person to be able to go somewhere immediately, they can parcel off some of the land and put the landing point there with port enabled. If a land owner wants a person not to be able to go there, they can just toggle off the feature, or restrict it to groups. (This is essentially how estates in SL work anyway.)

Need 5: Compensation for any loss

Because telehubs are not eliminated, the need for compensation is reduced. This is far less of a headache for Linden Lab. In fact, removing the universal "port to me" option and making it to enabled land only puts the control where it belongs - to the landowner, and further increases telehub's value.

Yeah, there will be whiners

Removing "port to me"'s ability to port anywhere, and only allowing it to work on designated land is a controversial change. I think it is one that is essential.

Consider the following problems solved by implementing the new method:
1. A person invites uninvited friends that are instantly ported there.
2. A person ports their friend into the middle of a game where access is limited to progress - thereby cheating.
etc.

Since all land is potentially portable - and presumably most people will want to allow the porting to their land, this will not be a big issue. The worst a person may need to do is walk from the landing point to the point on the parcel that they want to go.

Update: Please check out this thread for discussion about "port to me".

Of a variety of solutions, this is the only one I've found so far that's met all of the stated needs. I challenge the SL community to come up with something better.