Standing up without standing on tables

[animats]

I'm experimenting with a better approach to standing. As we all know, if you stand up from a sit, you may end up standing on the chair, or a table in front of the chair, or worse. So I tried adding a little motion planning.

Seated at table.

 

Standing alongside chair. An attachment moved the avatar to the nearest reachable clear space. Default stand behavior would put the avatar on the table.

This borrows from the motion planning I use for my NPCs. When the attachment detects a stand, it uses ray cast calls to find a nearby open space big enough for the avatar to stand, and uses a "move to target" call to put the avatar there.

This works well when there's open space near the object being sat on, and there's a clear straight line path to it. It doesn't work well when there isn't. Chairs or seats close together with a table in front are troublesome. The avatar is physical and won't move backwards through the chair. Chairs can be set up to move back when the avatar stands (Rolig Loon has done this), and that helps. Theater seats are tough if tightly packed, as they are in RL. Inside seats in diner booths don't work.

Getting out of a vehicle sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Motorcycle, yes. Dune buggy, yes. Big truck, no. Cars,  it varies. With cooperation from the vehicle in opening the door, it could work better. Vehicles with bad physics models give trouble.

Unfortunately, because attachments don't get an event when the avatar stands, it takes a constantly-running timer to detect a stand, which increases overhead. Haven't found a way to avoid that. A high-end AO might do this, and add some animations like "move sideways off seat" to make it look smooth.

For now, this is an experiment only. Comments?

 

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

"Disembarking" visuals need to be less dependent on viewer Stand execution and more dependent on internal means explicitly negotiated by the user through a menu selection.

Think, RP elements. This, sadly, is not a widely practiced method, but the option has been used in some furniture/vehicles in the past.

It would still require a mindset change overall.

IMO, Stand should be a definitive and instant operation, not wait on visuals. It's too late in the game to add that functionality then offer convoluted exceptions options.

Most times when I stand, I don't want to have to wait and go through pretty visuals. If I wanted that, I'd click the furniture and choose "Get up from table?".