[Last updated 12-Feb-2022]
Hello! And welcome to another of my little tutorials that have been born from a conversation I had in-world and thought might be useful to someone.
This time it’s to do with getting round within a sim and also keeping up with someone who is doing it. Or, to be more specific, the trials and tribulations of my hubby as he tries to keep up with me when I’m shopping!
I should note that I pretty much exclusively use the Firestorm Viewer, so please forgive me if any of what follows is specific to Firestorm. I’ve tried to talk in general terms so that this piece can be applicable to other Viewers as well, but your mileage may vary.
Getting around
As I mentioned in a previous post, many Third Party Viewers allow you to double-click teleport (Edit: and I’m told even the Official Viewer does too now!). In other words, the action of double-clicking the ground causes you to teleport to that point. If the Viewer uses a proper TP to do that then you can fall foul of any Landing Point the sim owner has set and you get an unhelpful message saying you are unable to TP closer than where you are. Or, worse, you get zapped back to the Landing Point.
However, there is [Update: was] an option in Phoenix and Firestorm (and, no doubt, other Viewers) called “Move To Teleport” which moves you straight there on double-click even if this sim has a Landing Point. It does this by making use of a script command called llMoveToTarget that moves objects around, and it applies that to the LSL Bridge that you wear (if you choose to wear it) which moves you along with it. So it isn’t really a teleport at all, which is why it is not affected by the Landing Point.
Different Viewers call it different things, but the option you are looking for is the behaviour when you double-click on the ground. You want to set it to ‘Teleport’, or if the Viewer supports it, ‘Move’. You probably don’t want to set it to ‘Autopilot’ or ‘Walk’ (depending on Viewer) as this isn’t very reliable and tends to faceplant you into walls.
In Firestorm you enable this with the Preferences dialog (accessed by pressing Ctrl-P), and the option you want is under the Move & View tab. You’ll want to set the ”Double click on land’ option under Movement to ‘Teleport’. The exact wording and layout differs for different versions of Firestorm.
Then, to enable Move rather than Teleport, you set the LSL Bridge to ‘Move To Teleport’
I make extensive use of this when I am shopping in a big store, as I tend to cam around until I find something I like and then double-click the ground near it to move over closer to it. This is necessary as often the “buy” scripts only work when you are near to the vendor display. Also, even with your Draw Distance way up, you sometimes don’t get key prims rezzing until you’re closer to them.
If you’re not familiar with the keyboard combinations for fast and smooth camming, I recommend reading my post on photography tips as I discuss how to cam effectively at the beginning of that.
[Update: The above was correct at the time of writing in 2012. However, it often doesn’t work any more. The SL servers have become a lot more strict about enforcing Landing Points, even within sims, which means Viewers can’t circumvent it like they used to. I think is a massively retrograde step. So your mileage may vary.
However, a very old school technique, which fell out of fashion whilst the above tricks worked, but is now very much much useful again now that they don’t, is to cam to the nearest object you can find that poses you (chair, bench, bed, anything for which there is the ability to allow you to sit), and then sit on it. You will effectively warp TP to it.]
Where did you go?
It’s easy to get separated when you’re exploring a sim with someone and they have a habit of wandering off. Not just camming & moving as above (guilty as charged!) but just plain old walking or flying. So what can you do?
Well, there are two options – find where they are and teleport / move to them, or find out which direction you need to head in order to walk (or fly) to them.
In order to teleport or move to them, you need to find them, obviously.
If you were cam-locked on the person then this is easy as you can see where they are already. Or you could cam around a bit and see if you can find them. In both cases, you just double-click the ground near them and, depending how you’ve set up your Viewer, you’ll TP, move or walk to them.
But what if you’re not cam locked on them and can’t find them by camming? Well, you need to find them by another means then!
Many Viewers have a built-in Radar now, and in Firestorm this is called the People Panel. You access this via the People icon that looks like this:
You’ll be presented with a list of nearby people. Find the person you’re interested in and right-click on their name to get a menu of options:
Zoom in
This option snaps your camera view to the person. You can also do this by just double-clicking on their name, making this the easiest option. Once you’re zoomed onto them you can simply double-click the ground near them as mentioned above. Bear in mind that on some Viewers this only works if the person is within your Draw Distance radius.
Teleport To
This teleports you to the person’s location. I find this tends to teleport you pretty much on top of them which can be annoying for the person as it often barges them; I prefer to arrive a little bit away from them which is why I prefer to zoom to them and then double-click the ground near them.
However, there’s no denying that this is very convenient, plus it works at distances greater than the ‘Zoom in’ method above. But do bear in mind my caution about teleporting on top of them – I used this to teleport to a performer at a live music event once and accidentally joined them on stage!
Track
This is probably the nicest way as it is a little more in keeping with how we do things in Real Life.
Selecting this sets a beacon on the person (an infinitely tall thin red cylinder with a red arrow pointing towards it) allowing to you locate them and walk towards them. If you have the mini-map up then the dot representing them will be highlighted on it in red.
If you keep the person tracked, then keeping up with them is easy as you always know in which direction to walk. Or, if they’re quite a way away, you can cam towards the beacon and double-click the ground near it. Either way, you know in which direction to head.
And finally
Everything that I’ve mentioned in this piece is for moving within a sim. If you’re in a different sim then really there are only two options; make a TP Request, or else ask them to enable the option that allows you to see where they are at all times. Many people are uncomfortable with the latter but the option is there. If they have enabled that option then you can always find them on the map and then teleport to them.
Obviously these options also work within sims as well as across sims.
