Second Life Wish List

[Maryanne Solo]

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Jo Yardley wrote:

I wish that one day SL will be like this;

 

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That was truly amazing Jo. Words cannot describe the emotion that video imparts.

Imagine how well SL will be placed in our future world. Thank you.

[Penny Patton]

Couldn't resist pointing out a few things.

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Spectran wrote:

Gosh, I'm new here.  I fell like i MIGHT  be saying something stupid,  But I still feel that the need to complain might be something beneficial.  I would wish that Second Life Forums would contain a whole 'Wish List" subforum.  It is manufactured by jinnis after all, right?  What else do I wish for  'Second Life'?  Plenty of wish for its evolution!

* Better graphics over time-- can it compete with PS3 and Xbox360?  Can it compete with film?

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 Actually, SL is capable of far better graphics than most people realize, including the Lindens.

LL's approach to graphics has always been 100% technology. Adding local lighting, flexi prims, windlight and glow, shadows, mesh. Technologies that make better graphics possible.

This ignores the artistic and aesthetic side of things. LL's own windlight defaults are terrible. The human starter avatars and default "new shape" are horrendously bad, LL's new "Depth of Field" effect defaults are also terrible.

We lack tools to make better looking content. Do you know how large your avatar is? Probably not. Until Viewer 2.1 LL provided nothing about avatar size in the appearance editor. Now they do, but the height displayed is wrong. Scale is an important design element, but issues like this toss it out the window. Proportion guides, decent starter shape templates to work from, the ability to lock proportions or scale a body shape up or down while retaining proportions!

The system skins could be made to look every bit as good as uploaded texture layers, just by improving the art assets that make them up! The Fallout/Oblivion games use basically the same setup and achieve much better results. Built-in sculpting tools allowing people to "bake" regular prims into sculpts to save prims would go a LONG way towards improving how SL looks.

 Ever considered camera placement? It has always been a hot topic in videogames. Good camera placement is considered a feature, and until Resident Evil 4 arrived in 2005 videogames were constantly striving for better camera placement for third person 3D environments.

SL's camera placement has not benefited at all from that, it still looks like camera placement from a videogame made in 1996.

 

 A talented and skilled 3D artist who understands SL's tool set and its problems can manage to turn out some amazing visuals in SL. Ever seen the futuristic city at Hangars Liquides? The sci-fi/horror sim Doomed Ship? The African safari sim Cap Estel? Amazing looking sims seem to be SL's best kept secrets. You wouldn't need to be a pro level artist to turn out such amazing builds if LL helped out new users a bit more with better tools and some proper building tutorials. Every Linden sandbox should have a set of building tutorials in it, talking users through creating simple to increasingly complex items.

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Spectran wrote:

*Better interactivity-- how easy or possible is it to go jetboarding, skiing, snowboarding, parachuting, flying a kite, adventure gaming, imagining anything, interacting with the environment in any which way?

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 SL has some clunky capabilities in this regard, but a certain level of interactivity is possible with adequate scripting capabilities.

I'd like to see LL add in the ability to animate environments and the ability to populate sims wtih faux-avatar "NPC objects". Fake avatars you can dress up and animate like a real avatar, but also use an NPC tool set to make them walk/run around on a set path, engage actual avatars in scripted dialogue, and interact with the environment via scripted events.

I'd also like LL to finally give avatars the ability to crouch and crawl under low ceilings. Long overdue.

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Spectran wrote:

 * Vehicles please!  Or at least the ability to run, fer Christ's sake.  Am I missing something here?  There should be the ability to purchase your avatar a vehicle, be it a flying saucer,  truck, scuba gear, jet pack, cheetah, snail, or portal gun, all with different speeds.

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We already have both vehucles and the ability to run. I do wish we could do more with vehicles, like give them a suspension system that actually raises and lowers wheels/treads/etcetera with the terrain. 

Double tap in any direction to make your avatare run.

 Vehicles do have different speeds you can set (most people make their own vehicles too fast, making them difficult to control and making SL's large sims seem smaller than they are) but we're stuck with one set of walking/running speeds. I think if you crouchwalk you walk a bit slower than regular walking. I wish we could have some control over this as a "Wearable" like avatar physics. I'd love to make a big, bulky avatar carrying a huge backpack and make them walk slower than a short, thin avatar that sprints everywhere.

 

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Spectran wrote:

* Better sound synthesis-- when there's a song playing, I don't want to suddenly hear it.  I want to slowly hear it more as I get closer to it, just like it is in 'real life'.  Same with voices.

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 SL already has this too, just lots of people set it up poorly. Voices give you the option of setting your ability to hear them according to either your avatar position or your camera position. In-world sounds are also dependant on where your camera is (so if you zoom in on a radio playing a music loop, the radio will get louder as your camera gets closer to it).

 I'd love the ability to stream music/media audio directly in-world via prims. As in, instead of a parcel music stream, the music stream plays through a radio on the land, subject to your distance from it like voice and in-world sounds.

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Spectran wrote:

* Better customization over time-- customize the flash of light that happens when you warp to new worlds.  Customize the way your voice sounds.  Customize the censorship.  Customize the desires.  Customize everything!

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 SL already pretty much does this. It just takes a bit of know-how. 

I'm beginning to realize you're new here.

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Spectran wrote:

* Earn your magic-- maybe you shouldn't even let these people fly to begin with.  Make it a game.  Do you realize how much you could be selling?  !00 Lindens per angel wing~!  Okay, maybe we should fly to begin with, just as in a dream.  But can you imagine how much more is possible, and what secrets to behold?  Only when you won sacred dragonfire can you see what lays behind the curtain!  Make it perfectly accessible for people to create a video game in each world!  How about the Sims version 900000000000000000!

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 Don't really agree with this. I'm content with landowners being able to turn the ability to fly on or off.

The extra immersion by keeping people grounded is great for game and role-play sims, but awful for shopping malles and sandboxes.

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Spectran wrote:

* Make a complete synthesis with the genius of the computer!  Can you Skype people you know at second life while driving down the street?  What's their cyber-cell #?  Can I watch true cinema at the cyber-through theatre?  Can I completely interact the virtues of my PC with the the Cyberian outback?  Certainly possible! 

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 I think LL introduced a feature giving avatars a "telephone number" or something like that a while ago, but to my knowledge nobody uses it. Not sure if the feature is still around.

 Being able to skype with a person, or group, in-world could be a nifty feature, but probably very limited in usefulness for most of us.

 And yes, you actually can find movie theatres in SL playing actual movies. I watched War of the Worlds in SL around 2005-2006. Being a virtual theatre did not make the movie any better, but being able to heckle it in a virtual theatre with friends was a lot of fun.

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Spectran wrote:

* Infinite programming possibilities

* And I'm sure I could think of a bagillion more.  Can you?  In good conscience, what would you suggest?

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 While not infinite, there's certainly a very broad amount of possibilities in SL, you just need to have the know-how.

If I made a wish list for SL it would mainly be themed around a couple of concepts, providing the tools to help people create better content regardless of their initial 3D modelling/programming experience.

Second, I'd wish for LL to do a better job in actually protraying the possibilities of SL to new residents. Why are none of SL's welcome areas as good looking as the sims I named above? Why doesn't LL show people the possibilities with avatars by providing good ones (they actually added some great robot and vehicle avatars recently, but the human avatars are still terrible), why does LL provide so little direction, so little instruction to new users? Yes, SL is a world where people make their own fun, but you are much better equipped to do so when you understand how SL works.

 LL seriously needs to revamp the content creation tools, the new user experience, and their presentation of SL to both new users and via their marketing materials.

[xela Sweetwater]

heart broken husband! ='(

Seeing everything in our marrage was going great! Slowly notice a change in my wife's feelings towards me when she joined a virtual reality on-line sim i was playing for a few years and notice she changed the passwords in our home PC. Also noticed her logging out of the sim once i walked though the door home from work. Our House was untouched & the way it was when i left in the morning, due too she spent her whole day on that sim, whilst i was off to work. So once i got into our home PC she spill the password to me while she was at work & she bolted it home cause she wasn't off till late but flew in the house 40mins later too explain herself . Behold of my surprise on the chat logs i found on there: coo's, hugs & kisses between them was a shock but to hear she was snooping around on my laptop PC while i was away from it & when i left it logged on. Trust is a major issue here in this household now. She told me she was just expolring her other side she never explored before? WTF? to start something with a on-line stranger was is her way to explore and satisfy some sicko in N.Y.? what if i didn't find out about this trist? how long would she carry this on? or what would have come out of this if i didn't intervene? Well i totally lost her now. 17 years of our lives are going to be gone. I'll miss you C.H. Thank-you for the best years of our lives! Lots of loves & xoxo forever, X.S..    ='(