pob

A pob is a Paper OBject, which is to say an object that only exists “on paper” in the inventory of an avatar. This is as opposed to a dob or Distributed OBject, which can exist in an avatar’s inventory or as an independent object in-world.

The idea is that a pob is a certificate, or a deed, or money, or a key: something with “legal” or “logical” significance that can be a component of transactions but has no physical embodiment in the world.

The major classes of pob are:

• Accoutrements, such as shirts, shoes, hair and other items worn by an avatar.
• Deeds for dobs such as PortaZones, hoverboards, paintball guns, document objects such as scrolls and QuestKit elements such as bottles or chests.
• Deeds for extension objects such as furniture, which only exist in-world when placed in a zone such as a house, FunZone or PortaZone.
• Avatar looksets.
• Avatar outfits.

You can use the ScriptHook mechanism to view and manipulate your avatar’s pobs. The different classes of pob are listed under the /pilotPobs path, as follows:

• /pilotPobs/accoutrements lists accoutrement pobs. Each such pob has name, status, type and “wearing” attributes, plus methods allowing the accoutrement to be put on, taken off, traded and so forth.
• /pilotPobs/deeds lists pobs that are deeds associated with dobs owned. These pobs have name and status attributes, as well as an attribute giving the doid of the dob they refer to. Unlike accoutrements, however, deed pobs do not have methods allowing trading, etc.; such operations are performed on the dob itself instead. Observation: the poid for a deed pob appears to be one more than the doid for the associated dob, although this might not be guaranteed. The implication is that the dob is created first, then the pob for it is created afterwards.
• /pilotPobs/extensions lists add-on kit pobs. Attributes are name and status only. Such a pob acts as a certificate allowing the avatar possessing it to modify the GameKit within a PortaZone or FunZone to contain the piece described by the pob; the pieces within such a zone are not first class objects in the world.
• /pilotPobs/looksets lists pobs for each lookset owned by the avatar. Looksets can be manipulated through methods operating on the pob.
• /pilotPobs/outfits lists the pobs representing each outfit set up for the avatar. Outfits can be manipulated through methods operating on the pob.
• /pilotPobs/therebucks presents the avatar’s ThereBucks balance. No methods are provided for manipulating the ThereBucks, and it doesn’t look like the individual ThereBucks are actually pobs.

When using the ScriptHook facility, you must access each pob according to its appropriate category, or the wrong set of attributes and methods may be presented. For example, if there is an outfit pob with a poid of 330230415, then you must access it through the following path:

/pilotPobs/outfits/330230415

If you access it through, for example, the /deeds/ category, no methods will be provided and a spurious doid attribute will be displayed.

OpenQuestion: are teleport favourites represented as pobs? The ThereClient log file seems to imply not, because teleports happen through an IhostService that contains a favourite number, not a poid.