Sky objects

[Mircea Lobo]

This is a feature I've badly wanted to see, given that I like immersion and large landscapes. Currently some simulators work around this by having a huge mesh that's 3 x 3 simulators large simulating landscapes... but it's usually obvious that this is a hack plus it makes neighboring sims impossible to exist.

My idea was that region and / or parcel owners could attach objects to the sky. In some engines, those are known as infinite distance objects I believe. Such objects would only appear to avatars present in that region / parcel. They are rendered behind anything in the world, but in front of the windlight sky. They move together with the view, and the object's center is always located at the camera center. Such objects couldn't cast or receive local lights on / from objects on the simulator of course, but must be lit by the sky at least.

Such could be used to add a grand environment to simulators. In a city region for instance, people could texture several cubes with bricks and windows then attach the object to the sky, causing everyone to feel like they're in a huge city. In nature sims, it would be easy to add large landscapes with trees and rivers and other details, using an object consisting of just a few sculpt primitives. In a scifi sim, you could put custom planets on the sky, or huge space ships that circle around the place (using llTargetOmega).

What do you think about this idea? And if other people want it too, is there someone who can attempt coding it in the viewer, or embarking on the difficult adventure of convincing LL to look into it?