Crosshairs

[stargazer1016]

Is there a way to tell if one avatar is talking to another?  Do the crosshair colors have any meaning?

 

[Rolig Loon]

Yes, there are some ways to tell if a person is talking.. if the person has enabled a typing animation in Preferences, you'll be able to see the person's hands move (and maybe more).  If you are using Firestorm, you can enable a setting in your own Preferences to make a typing indicator show up in a bubble over a person's head too.  I find that particularly helpful when I am in a group meeting or seminar, so that I can decide whether it's a good time to interrupt.  Neither of those methods will tell you if a person is sending an Instant Message, of course, since those are completely private.

The crosshairs themselves --- I assume that you mean the LookAtMe crosshairs --- are an unreliable indicator of what someone else may be looking at.  The crosshairs show where an avatar's camera is focused (normally, by Alt-Clicking on something). It doesn't necessarily mean that the person is looking at that point, however, since the camera view can be moved after focusing by means of the camera controls. And, of course, anyone can turn off the option to send that information, so many people might be looking at your without your knowledge.  The best advice I can offer is to disable the function and forget about it.  (Since that's exactly what I did ages ago, I can't tell you what the colors may mean.  My guess, though, is that they are similar to the colors on your minimap -- different colors for friends and everyone else.  But I don't truly know.)

 

[KarenMichelle Lane]

1st Question - Crosshair is a weird and useless feature that simply projects an avatars logical eye pointing direction and assign a crosshair to it. So if an avatar is looking at the beautiful plant, shoreline, sky, rock, person behind you, then you will see a crosshair that "Might" and I mean "Might" indicate they are looking at you.

In a gaming region where you are killing as fast as you can, this is great. Anywhere else it's a foolish exercise to even have it on. You know nothing from seeing a crosshair from another avatar.

Here is the Color Scheme for the Crosshair Feature

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Show_Look_At

2nd Question - No you can't know if one avatar is chatting to another. Oh yes Rolig is correct in regards to chatting animations but these too can be misleading[

Note - I'm very down about the whole crosshair issue because of too many paranoid people not understanding why it's a useless feature.