Fourmilab Cloud Halo Version 1.1

[UPDATE: As of 2020-11-19, all regions of Second Life (with a few exceptions for testing) have been “uplifted” to the cloud. There is therefore no need for this attachment, as every region you visit will now be in the cloud. It was fun to know where you were during the migration, but now that it's over, there's no need for this accessory. It remains available in case examining its source code may be of interest to others.]

As of the latter part of 2020, Second Life was in the process of migrating from hosting on its own server farm to a “cloud” service provider. This process was called the “uplift”, and as it progressed, regions (simulations) on the main grid were being moved from the original hosts to the cloud. This process was intended to be transparent and, in most cases, was, but you may have been curious whether places you're visiting were on the previous hosts or the cloud and, if you're a developer, interested in whether any curious behaviour you observe may correlate with whether a region had been moved to the cloud.

It is possible to determine whether a region is on an original host or the cloud by examining the host name of the simulation, but many users aren't familiar with the arcana of doing so. Fourmilab Cloud Halo is a light-hearted attachment which makes it easy to see the hosting status wherever you happen to visit and alert you to changes when you arrive in a new region.

To use the Cloud Halo, simply add it to your outfit. It is an attachment, worn on the head, which has the form of a halo floating above it. The halo is not normally visible. When you arrive in a cloud region, a glowing gold halo will appear above your head, sparkling for a moment, and an ethereal harp will play a few notes. When you arrive back in a non-cloud region, a dull grey halo will appear and a “Sad Trombone” will play. In either case, the halo will disappear in five seconds (you can configure all of these settings via a notecard). The halo appears only when you change to or from the cloud: it won't distract you as long as you remain in regions of the same hosting type.

Land Impact and Permissions

Fourmilab Cloud Halo is a wearable attachment. As such, it has no land impact and you do not need land in order to add it from your inventory. Only the owner (wearer of the attachment) is allowed to send it commands on local chat.

Chat Commands

A variety of commands may be submitted on local chat, over default channel /78. These commands allow status queries, testing, and configuration of the attachment's operation. For complete documentation, see the User Guide, which is supplied with the product or may be obtained with the command:
       /78 help
in local chat.

Development Kit

Fourmilab Cloud Halo is delivered including a development kit containing all of the object components, models, scripts, sound clips, and documents used in the objects. All items including scripts, have “full permissions” (copy, modify, and transfer), so that you can use them as the basis for your own development projects and/or share them with other users in Second Life.

Source code for this project is maintained on and available from the GitHub repository:
    https://github.com/Fourmilab/cloud_halo

The robot/terminator avatar shown in the illustrations is not included with this product. It is available in the Second Life Marketplace from its creator at:
    https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Full-Perm-Mesh-Rigged-Robo-Skeleton-Cyborg-Full-Avatar-Works-with-most-Second-Life-Animations/9778319

License

This product (software, documents, images, and original models) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode
You are free to copy and redistribute this material in any medium or format, and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercially. You must give credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon this material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.