A few small features I'd like to see in SL.

[EliseAnne85]

5 hours ago, Orwar said:

   Perhaps, but surely there are better/more important features LL could allocate their time and resources on? Like 'inventing' a handful of new lastnames to flog for Valentine's! Incomplete avatars being rendered and loaded in is a very temporary issue, and the whole embarrassment aspect of showing off your bits can be negated with what we have available to us right now. Personally, I'd rather have baseline swimming than I would have the avatar loading process visually polished. Or in-world weather. Or a biscuit. 

I'm just quoting this because it's about swimming and it seems very important to you.

Is this for mermaids and/or just for swimming in the ocean that many people seem to want swimming?  So, couldn't private sims put up a little beach store that sold beach things including swimming AO'S, wind surfer's, etc?  That's about all I can think of. 

I'm not sure what you all mean by "baseline swimming".  Do you mean the water can swim you with pose balls and you don't need an AO?

Or, another thing, beach sims could put up a sign with a link as to where to get a swimming AO.

Edited December 3, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[PheebyKatz]

You know, like walk into the water and youre swimming, like when you take off flying and you just fly? Of course they'd have to give it a toggle control so people could still walk underwater if they felt like it.

Edited December 3, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Ayashe Ninetails]

52 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I'm just quoting this because it's about swimming and it seems very important to you.

Is this for mermaids and/or just for swimming in the ocean that many people seem to want swimming?  So, couldn't private sims put up a little beach store that sold beach things including swimming AO'S, wind surfer's, etc?  That's about all I can think of. 

I'm not sure what you all mean by "baseline swimming".  Do you mean the water can swim you with pose balls and you don't need an AO?

Or, another thing, beach sims could put up a sign with a link as to where to get a swimming AO.

Mermaids have special AOs. Pretty elaborate things.

Regular swimming AOs aren't too hard to find either. Pretty sure basic swimming animations are sold in regular animation override packages, but it's been so long since I've bought a complete one. I usually buy my animations independently, but there are entire AOs for swimming and diving, too.

Inmotion has a really nice swim HUD, for example.

But, I think the OP was asking for swimming to *just happen*. Like you hit water and take off without needing to have any huds or AOs turned on. That might work for human avatars, but I doubt there's a way for SL to detect when you're a mermaid or...sea lion or something, so that might look a little strange for us merfolk. 😄

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, PheebyKatz said:

You know, like walk into the water and youre swimming, like when you take off flying and you just fly? Of course they'd have to give it a toggle control so people could still walk underwater if they felt like it.

I see.  Press to swim like press to fly.  It would probably depend upon cost.  I'd have no idea whatsoever what something like that would cost.  

[Rick Nightingale]

I use the Oak swim HUD. It's tiny, can be turned on and off (and other options) and if just left on will automatically swim you when you enter water (with bouyancy control). I used to use it often when I was a pirate. Best of all it's full perms and free (there are pay for 'versions' on the MP too, no idea if they do anything different). The animations are... somewhat dated and jerky but could probably be replaced with something better. One day I might bother to do so. Most of my swimming time is spent as a Triton so no need for the Oak.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Thors-Oak-Swim-Animations-Test-Version-with-HUD/3308143

As to the OP... I especially agree on the graceful animation termination. In stuff I make for myself I try to have a 'moving away' animation to prevent the climbing or often just being launched vertically 20m into the air.

What I would like to see? and I know I'm not alone... being able to sit on an avatar attachment! Wouldn't that make so many things easy? I guess we'll never get it, given how long people have been asking for it fruitlessly.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[PheebyKatz]

5 minutes ago, Rick Daylight said:

I use the Oak swim HUD. It's tiny, can be turned on and off (and other options) and if just left on will automatically swim you when you enter water (with buyancy control). I used to use it often when I was a pirate. Best of all it's full perms and free (there are pay for 'versions' on the MP too, no idea if they do anything different). The animations are... somewhat dated and jerky but could probably be replaced with something better. One day I might bother to do so. Most of my swimming time is spent as a Triton so no need for the Oak.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Thors-Oak-Swim-Animations-Test-Version-with-HUD/3308143

I've handed out so many of those it's crazy. It's the best swim HUD on the MP and it doesn't even cost anything. I tried one that cost 400L$ and it was awful. Thor's Oak is the best, hands-down.

And I'm not sure about sitting on attachments, but I've seen similar things, like riding equipment that allows a humanoid-ish avi to ride around on non-humanoid-ish avis like dragons. Pretty sure it was free, too. If I find it I'll look at it and see if it's anything close to what you mean.

Edited December 3, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Rick Nightingale]

@PheebyKatz My issue is that the only way for two (or more) avatars to do something as simple as walk hand in hand needs a 'vehicle' that they both sit on; effectively mobile pose balls. I suppose what I really want is the ability to truly synchronise the animations between two avatars, without having to sit on anything. Given the poor implementation of the SL animation system to begin with (why no IK???), that's an even less likely ask to be granted than sitting on another avatar's attachment.

At least if we could do that, then such things would be possible in no-rez places and those that disallow vehicle entry. Plus the sat-on avatar could still use their own animations and not be limited to what the pose ball has (like some janky walks I've seen on such things). Bonus points for the sat-on avatar being able to teleport with the sitee still attached.

[Orwar]

9 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I'm not sure what you all mean by "baseline swimming".  Do you mean the water can swim you with pose balls and you don't need an AO?

   Baseline, as in, a core feature available to everyone - I know there are swimming HUDs, I've got ones both for swimming, mermaids, and diving, but it feels like a pretty antiquated world design for water to, by default, be treated no different from air as far as avatar movement goes. 

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, PheebyKatz said:

I've handed out so many of those it's crazy. It's the best swim HUD on the MP and it doesn't even cost anything. I tried one that cost 400L$ and it was awful. Thor's Oak is the best, hands-down.

The best thing about it is that the whole thing is full perm. That means my script can just temp-attach it to anybody in the water, and by making it an AVsitter prop, it will automagically attach for anybody already a participant in that Experience. I tinkered a bit with Thor's script to start swimming immediately when attached and to let the rezzer know there's already one attached, but the script is mostly unchanged.

A swimmer HUD will "feel" a bit like swimming, much more than just an AO with some swim animations. I agree with @Rick Daylightthat the Oak swimmer's anims are pretty weak, but being able to distribute them freely is a quality unto itself, getting us near to the "built in swimming" feature that was in the original post.

But not that close. The Experience-based attachment can only be done on land that enables the Experience—not from a boat cruising the Blake Sea, for example—and will fall off if the swimmer crosses a region boundary. The alternative is to offer the attachment to prospective swimmers and tell them to attach it from Inventory as needed,  which is how it was originally designed but far from a built-in swimming feature.

[Rick Nightingale]

Yeah, full perms on the script is handy. I'm currently modifying the AVsitter code to integrate my Experience into it, along with some other remote control ability from other scripts. Great fun! I just merged an animesh water horse, with a unicorn horn I rigged to attach to it, with a full AVsitter setup (pulled out of Libertine Stuffed Unicorn; any Witcher fans here?) so the animated horse unicorn can be used as wandering, riding or seating prop when rezzed. A bit of scripting manages the changeover. Adding in my Experience and some sequenced stuff is next. If you're wondering why I wanted it as a unicorn, I'm doing a Legend based dungeon (the movie with Mia Sara and Mia Sara* Tim Curry. Oh, and Tom Cruise was in it too.)

*I like Mia Sara so much I typed her twice even as I thought 'Tim Curry', lol.

[EliseAnne85]

21 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

I've used both of those tricks and a few others, like making the chair back up a bit when you stand.  They work reasonably well, but sometimes they just aren't appropriate.  If you are getting out of a vehicle, for example, there's no way to move the vehicle out of the way and making it phantom is inconvenient, to say the least. 

I just tried putting two chairs and one table on phantom and then standing and one can unsit gracefully and go right into their AO.  The trick is the chairs have to be turned at an angle as if it's a table for two and they are looking at a view for example.  If the chairs are facing the table, the avatar goes forward thru the table to the chair opposite, so it only works for chairs turned at an angle.

But, I was wondering, what is inconvenient about setting a car to phantom?   I don't have anything ridable, so I can't try it.   If I can sit on a phantom chair, why couldn't I sit in a phantom car?  Just wondering here cos it's better than standing on the roof.  

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Rolig Loon]

21 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

But, I was wondering, what is inconvenient about setting a car to phantom?   I don't have anything ridable, so I can't try it.   If I can sit on a phantom chair, why couldn't I sit in a phantom car? 

If nothing else, a phantom car would have trouble driving on many surfaces, and would not carom off of obstacles like rocks, curbs, and walls.  You could try making the car phantom only at carefully-chosen times, but that opens up a universe of Rube-Goldberg mechanisms.  

[Qie Niangao]

On 12/2/2022 at 3:35 PM, Rolig Loon said:

As Orwar suggests, you can always write a scripted exit routine (with a fancy exit anim perhaps), but that only works if a seated avatar can find the script's special "Get Me Out Of Here" button and remembers to use it instead of the default "Stand:" button. 

Right, looking at it practically, it would take a long time before a critical mass of furniture creators included a "GMOOH" button and exit anim, and even longer before many users realized it was preferable to poking the viewer's "Stand" button (which would still be required to stand from an unscripted seat). And I'm not sure we want to be making "standing up" another complicated process to learn. So I'm convincing myself that @animats' option of a built-in functionality, perhaps a "standing" event that, if handled, extends the scripts animation permission for a couple seconds or until that event handler exits.

(I sometimes give my standing-up avatars a gentle physical nudge, which can help if the geometry is just right, and the timing, and the force. With enough tweaking, it can leave them standing next to the table rather than atop it, most of the time. I find it particularly useful for "collide to be seated" Experience scripts that need to get the standing avatar off the device quickly and able to intentionally collide with it to sit again.)

[Nick0678]

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

But, I was wondering, what is inconvenient about setting a car to phantom? 

You can. There are many phantom cars  Only some parts need not be phantom for specific reasons.

 

[shireena1]

On 12/3/2022 at 6:42 AM, animats said:

Also consider going to pink cloud mode during clothing changes

I suggest a pink cloud for girls, a blue cloud for boys, and a rainbow cloud for everyone else.

[animats]

47 minutes ago, Nick0678 said:

There are many phantom cars  Only some parts need not be phantom for specific reasons.

i consider that tacky. At least put a physics box around the car. Convex hulls are cheap.

My NPCs will walk through phantom cars, which looks silly. Especially since some of the NPCs are at a car dealership.

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, animats said:

i consider that tacky. At least put a physics box around the car. Convex hulls are cheap.

My NPCs will walk through phantom cars, which looks silly. Especially since some of the NPCs are at a car dealership.

I see.  

What I really, really don't like though is when my avatar is "trapped" upon stand, and it's not silly, it can be emotionally upsetting to be trapped.  The legs start to wiggle trying to find a way out of certain objects.  The legs wiggle for awhile like the avatar is trapped, and that has the possibility of scaring some newbies also, that "trapped" exit from sit to stand where the avatar is struggling like it's trapped in a force field.  So, putting some items on phantom is a good idea, at least it gets rid of trapping the avatar.

Couldn't you rez phantom cars but the ones on the showroom floor are not phantom?  

Is there any way to improve STAND itself?  A question just to anyone in general.

Edit:  What it would really need for STAND is to change it to STAND FRONT, STAND BACK, STAND LEFT, STAND RIGHT, and move the avatar and that sounds expensive.  

 

Edited December 4, 2022 by EliseAnne85