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Nikkesa

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  1. Interestingly the new puppetry system basically provides an entire python-based animation framework which executes the python plugin from a separate process and communicates with the viewer process.
  2. Theoretically you could have a script that pings someone's RLV plugin and if it's disabled or doesn't respond in a timely manner the script insta-bans them. You obviously wouldn't tell anyone about this and you'd have to look for some sort of exploit in existing default RLV functions or something. You need to just somehow secretly check for it.
  3. The solution to that is to simply lower resolution locally/do what they already do. They can dynamically allocate further server resources now that they're running on AWS, so definitely shouldn't be a problem server-side.
  4. I think the biggest problem with sansar was majorly UX design, the fact that it was VR for some reason, and according to someone on glassdoors it was an "every man for himself" "everyone working on different stuff uncoordinated" I got the idea that it was kind of a mess. imo theres a few changes that could be made to majorly improve the metaverse we have already though, I listed on page 2, 7th post down: and here I went into more detail not to entirely focus on animations, because that was the original post that I was talking in there, but mostly around the "new user experience" which should be less about "here's some cool stuff you can be" - instead it should focus more on "Here's some new stuff you can do". The game needs a "How it _feels_ to play" uplift more than anything else. Starting up the client, then being able to run around like you're playing mirror's edge or breath of the wild or super mario 64 or NieR:Automata or some wicked hoverbike racing game. https://hopefulhomies.com/2017/02/18/movement-mechanics/ <- some more research on the topic I understand you guys probably already know this stuff and there are probably tons of leaps and hurdles you'd have to go through with to make this kind of thing a reality, but idk man, I'm really hoping that we get to see the metaverse fully realized at some point. I feel like if Linden Labs doesn't do it themselves, someone's going to realize how much potential there is on a platform like Stadia and just do it there... Or some rich VRchat player will invest and it'll get a major tech overhaul that puts it in league or something.
  5. I definitely understand how complex these things are, at least some of them. A few of them simply involve implementing already finished products that got put aside, or increasing bandwidth.... I'm a game designer myself and have an intimate understanding of how complicated this stuff can get. Probably the most complex would be anything that breaks away from strictly server-sided stuff to half-local-half-server... Sometimes I wish second life was on something like stadia. I know they tried it already and failed spectacularly because it was too early to implement and they didn't really have the server infrastructure needed to do something like that, but nowadays would be alot more possible.
  6. I'm pretty sure opensim isn't really restricted - it's just, if you're gonna build your own game, it's probably more worth it to do your own stuff from scratch, then you can call it yours and sell it and stuff.
  7. Yeah imo the old system _worked_ and the new system, for power users who want to do photography, is kind of rendered null by a few things... You can render depth textures, so basically photoshop would take care of everything anyways, or you can use reshade (though it's not allowed to use the depth buffer since reshade disables it for online games)
  8. So, I kind of disagree with this. I feel like most people pick up second life and it's not immediately apparent that the game is _fun_. They walk around a bit, they notice "hey, these walk animations are pretty plain". The controls feel off, there's no way you'd play it reasonably with a joystick. So what if you can make a pretty avatar - the potential isn't immediately there. For the average person, it's going to be "Open the game, is it a game? Yes? No?" and the answer is "No." Because Second life right now is not presented to new users as a game, per se, it's presented as a 2004 attempt at a snow-crash-style metaverse that's had 2-3 big updates to do with adding things like sculpts, mesh, etc... Presentation matters. If the users are pulled in by the fact that it feels _great_ to just run around in the game, I feel like that would be a _huge_ plus. Start them off in a solid, stable, well-optimized sim that's layed out with reasonable detail and looks nice, with some "fun" stuff to do. Let them get in a car and drive around, with some decent fun driving physics, or fly around, or race around on a hoverboard. Let them jump around and interact with their environment. Have them sit in a chair, where their avatar seamless crouches forward and smoothly takes a seat. Show them a stylish array of posters that "show off" the various avatars you could possibly become, and when they click on said poster, turn them into that avatar! The new user experience in this game is going to be the key to getting future players interested, and I feel like so much can be added to this game with a few simple improvements: scripted/interactive/IK/rootmotion animations - the FINAL step we need for making avatars look good and immersive in the game. This would add SO MUCH. Avatars would actually look good by default moving around in the game world Non-human avatars could use IK for limb movement. Imagine a big dragon latching onto the roof of a house and actually being able to perch somewhere Avatars would look good sitting down, getting up, interacting together, etc. INTERACTING TOGETHER. Need I say more? Faster, more responsive controls and a built-in game-like control system for the avatar this takes like 1 guy a couple weeks to implement. Some viewers almost do this, except they are limited by what you're allowed to do in game already Add a couple different well-fleshed-out control modes. First person isn't very smooth right now. Movement feels floaty. It would be nice if responsive movement was an option, along with camera smoothing and the like for third-person. I've implemented this personally in Unity for a character controller that feels hella nice - I can attest to the fact that it's something easy to implement that would add a LOT. That being said, I understand it would be more complex for second life, but camera position only needs to be smoothed locally, and avatar movement could be more locally responsive, with some updates coming from the server to apply changes. Do the same thing for vehicle controls. Less floaty, more responsive. Give new users this experience right off the bat if they choose to sit on one of the presented vehicles. Present new users with a car, a hovercar, a skateboard, a hoverboard, a motorcycle, etc, all nearby a racetrack as part of the "new-user" sim. Show users the available avatars that are popular on the marketplace. An actually DECENT 2D user interface API. Second life needs an API for 2D user-interface drawing. Using server-side 3D models to show up on a slow-to-load, laggy user interface is not really acceptable. There's no reason that HUD objects that show up in 2D need to be 100% server-sided imo.
  9. If it's the firestorm built-in AO, it's almost certainly the fact that you're wearing some object that animates while your avatar walks. Anything that animates your avatar in response to movement keys etc while the firestorm AO is running will basically freeze your avatar.
  10. As detailed here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Puppeteering and here: http://avatarpuppeteering.com/ I've been rather desperate recently to see something decent like this - I've been desperate enough to start exploring puppet-like avatars made of linked sets and actually have a reasonable 20-30-ish prims being animated at around 14 fps, but those are pretty much the limits. It's jarring and nothing more than a novelty, and it seems to actually lag the sim when several of them are running. I'd love to see my avatar walking around the world and actually interacting with it in a way that isn't just jarringly unrealistic, sliding, with basic input controls that don't feel smooth etc etc... I'm sure it's possible still to do things like vehicles that read off animation root-motion vectors baked into a notecard or something, but that's a ton of work and you'll only ever get to use it realistically in a sandbox. There are also alternatives for controlling your avatar via a script (like those flight huds that make you go extra fast), which could theoretically be synced with animation as well, but it's never guaranteed to really be working properly or look smooth. It looks like a lot of the work for puppeteering is already done? As far as I know, this would be absolutely massive for second life - if you add that, and then add something that makes the user say "Oh jeez, it's actually pretty fun to just run around in this game", I feel like a lot more users will pick up second life and be interested in it as a _game_ rather than it's current function of being a chat simulator with some out of date novelty stuff like vehicles and neat tech design and stuff. Not to mention how much it would add to the adult portion of the game, which iirc means $$$$ for linden labs.
  11. If you have an animated tail that responds to motion (walking etc), and you're using a viewer AO, chances are that's what's causing the issue. Sometimes a tail messes with other AO's as well.
  12. Second Life seriously needs an update to the animation system with root-motion animations, proper and obvious animation permission system, scripted movement etc...
  13. I think it would entirely benefit. Heck, even sansar was looking to be something like that - integration with marvelous designer was genius, but the user interface and new-user-UX was so horrid it's not even funny. I think it would HEAVILY benefit, but definitely not if it was done by linden labs. I think you'd need to hire an entire new team (obviously take some of the lindens, no idea who they are), ditch the board of governors, have a group of leaders who are passionate about possibilities and metaverse, and less passionate about shareholder-profits, have some rich billionaire who believes in the cause fund it with a few billion dollars as investment without expectation of profit-generation, and voila, you could probably have something pretty darn amazing after a good 8-12 years of development with constant review of upcoming technologies, cloud-capabilities, infrastructure design and several layers of abstraction and modularity to let them keep things updated. The problem is that there are no billionaires willing to just casually throw money at something that wont guarantee profits in return, while also ignoring the fact that they could have spent that several billion dollars on building homes for the homeless, or investing in education, infrastructure etc in developing countries - stuff like that. The other problem is that when someone like linden labs makes something like sansar, well, all you have to do is go to glassdoors and check out some the employee reviews of the company to get a fundamental understanding of how it really went wrong. Also the fact that we only see palpable updates to second life every 2-5 years... I'm hoping eventually they will buckle down and make something like looks and feels fundamentally awesome to play. I feel like they'd get a lot more users if it was possible to switch between making it feel like a smooth first person shooter to a smooth third-person ARPG-style fast-paced combat-style thing, then back to chat simulator as easily as pressing buttons, with each of the different interface and input modes being a user-designed and customized experience. More complicated, scripted animation controls, a proper 2D user interface API for people to make decent HUDS. I feel like the average person starts up second life and is immediately turned off by the fact that the avatar has the same default animations as they did in 2004, and moves around feeling like it did back then too. If they just made it fun to play the game - made it satisfying to do something as simple as run around without glitching out and crashing during a sim crossing, or even having a palpable minute amount of lag during a sim crossing.... If you started them off in a smooth, optimized, cool-looking city with a decent vehicle and showed them the possibilities, way more people would get into this game.
  14. I've yet to come across any animations that actually use the toe bone when walking, standing on tip-toes, etc... It's like people don't know it's there? I've personally created an animation that moves the foot and rotates the toe-bone on a rigged mesh and it works fine in SL, does anyone know of an AO or animation walking/standing set that actually uses it?
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