Transponder, Surveyor, Finder, Locator, Grid GPS
Kayaker Magic, March 2023
I have a series of 'location' based products I have been working on for some time.
They are built into many of my existing products, and now I am making them available for others to use.
For example, many of the critters that I sell have the ability to cross region boundaries.
A Surveyor tool allows me to mark regions that are safe to cross into.
Since they can wander off and get lost, I added a Transponder feature to track them.
The Transponder periodically sends the critters location to a Locator WEB page that reports their last known position.
I built an extensive GPS that you wear as a HUD. It worked all over the Metaverse, except under XEngine it crashes every other time you HyperGrid jump.
It also often locked up on a region crossing or teleport inside a grid. It is much more reliable under the YEngine scripting engine, so I am finally releasing it.
Here is the begining of the documentation for all of these new products. They will work on any up-to-date OpenSim Grid and will soon be available for sale on the Kitely Market
Transponder
This is a scripted prim that looks like an antenna or an instrument to build into the control pannel of a boat, plane or other vehicle.
Just link it into your build, turn it on and your critter or vehicle will be tracked all over your grid.
The antenna version is controled by clicking on it to bring up a dialog. There you can turn it on/off, mark your vehicle as public/private, (private means only you see it on the Locator WEB page),
force the vehicle to update its position, log you securely into the Locator Web page (without needing a password), and display various status messages.
The instrument version is another in my series of in-world instruments that really work. It has buttons that performall the above functions, instead of a dialog.
Surveyor
This is a prim that you wear on your wrist and fly around to survey all the regions in your grid.
As you pass through regions that have OBJECT ENTRY and RUN SCRIPTS, those regions are added to a database.
(I have already surveyed the oceans of Discovery Grid and Utopia Skye Grid.)
Kitely does not allow region crossings, so this is not very useful there.
The resulting list of regions is used by my critters to tell them where it is safe to swim, fly, or crawl.
My vehicles also have logic to automatically avoid region crossings if the region on the other side is not on the safe list.
Finder
The Finder is a script that can talk to the Locator database to find other transponders.
What good is this? It could be used to script critters to find each other anywhere in the grid.
I have used it in a rezzer that released another Flying Dutchman Ship every time one of them got deleted.
(The Flying Dutchman was part of a 'hunt'. But instead of going to fixed locations to find gifts,
you had to search for and find the ship wherever it had sailed off to! if you could find it, it would give you treasure!)