Without a wearable attachment, be that on the HUD or on the avatar, running RLV does not change the user experience of SL. You can run around skip through fields of daisies, cavort around the most notorious RLV sims of SL and you will be utterly and, some would say, boringly safe.
For the RLV viewer to be of any use to the bottom (and by extension the top), you need to wear something that allows RLV commands to be passed to the viewer. These come in two flavors.
The first is something that the top interacts with directly, be that a collar, a set of cuffs, a doll key; there are many variations on this theme but they have one thing in common; there is nothing required of the top other than an understanding of how the particular attachment works and access, which is controlled by some sort of authentication mechanism be that an `owners’ list, keys or even open access.
The second is an RLV relay. An RLV relay accepts RLV commands from objects and avatars and passes them to the wearer of the relay. This is a little more complicated as it requires something of the top, be that an RLV controller such as Susan’s or an object such as a cage, force sitter or what have you.
Authentication for RLV relays is a little more complicated as well. Firstly there’s the three modes of operation: off, ask and on (the terminology differs from relay to relay, so check the documentation that came with it). Off is fairly obvious, you may as well not be wearing it however some implementations default to no-detach even if the relay is off (which in my opinon is rather dumb but heh, I’m opinionated). Ask means that on receiving an RLV command, the wearer of the relay has to consent to the viewer being controlled by the external object trying to use the relay. The last option, on, does not ask permission of the wearer, it just does it.
Secondly, and this differs greatly from relay to relay, there’s object security checking. If the object is owned by a group which differs from the group of the sim you’re currently in, object security checking will flag a warning, regardless of whether the viewrer is set to ask or independent. This behavior in some relays can be disabled.
A special word about relays: as a top I love a fully permissive and open relay, for reasons that’ll become clear in a later post. It gives me a lot of power and I believe I use that power wisely. Thus far I haven’t had any complaints and every person I’ve played with in such a manner has offered me friendship (gladly taken, can never have too many friends)… yes I play with strangers. It’s a thrill I love but I digress.
As a bottom I love it when a fully permissive and open relay is used well on me, however sadly that experience can be spoiled by two things.
1) Utter prats who use RLV controllers such as Susan’s as griefing tools. Maybe it’s because they don’t know any better but standing around only to find that for no reason I can discern I’ve been stripped of all my clothes, my TAIL and my EARS, just about every RLV restriction known to man is in place because some idiot’s going “har har yeuck yeuck, I’m dominating you ’cause I’ve got control of your relay!”
No, she hasn’t. She’s utterly pissed me off and I’ll be taking a cluebat to her skull; except can’t do that in SL more’s the pity at times, so I’ll just settle for scathing comments in open chat (remember the bit about (( ))? ). Fools like this need to be brought in to line.
2) Utterly stupid RLV traps that automatically strip, restrict etc etc. That’s really good fun when you stumble across one in an empty sim. A certain force stripper at the entrance point to a certain island springs to mind, that particular one ignored the ask setting of the RLV relay as well which really annoyed me.
Now you’ve read that and you’re probably thinking, no way am I going around with a fully open relay like that! Well, I wouldn’t blame you for feeling that way, however as a bottom I’ve had some great experiences with a fully open relay, experiences that just wouldn’t be the same if I had a warning of what was going to happen in the form of a blue box popping down in the upper right asking me if it was okay for something to control my viewer. I like the illusion of non-consent (we all consent by running RLV in the first place) so for me it is worth the very occaisional annoyance of an RLV griefing to experience that buzz.
Incidentally tops, I’d reccoend getting a Susan’s controller and running RLV yourslef, it’s an easy way of finding out exactly what RLV can do and you don’t need another person around to do that.
Next up – RLV & Communication. Yes, I know that was going to be this one but I figured this one should come first as it’s kinda fundamental.
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