Programmable mouse gestures

I'm spoiled now from using Firefox and the gestures extension. SL could do something similar, where gestures could be enabled and set, then triggered by secondary mouse + movement. This way gestures would be, well, gestures, rather than thought out macros that have to be typed in, or odd and finite key combos.

Example:
secondary mouse click and hold +
UP DOWN: Shrug
UP LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT: Wave
DOWN RIGHT DOWN RIGHT DOWN: Trigger a sulking animation
UP DOWN UP DOWN UP: Trigger a excited heel rock/bounce ani.

Or it could be used in combat:
secondary mouse click and hold +
RIGHT LEFT: Trigger slash script
LEFTUP DOWNRIGHT: Tigger block script
UP DOWN UP DOWN: Trigger thrust script

Now, imagine playing SimCast or boxing with that ease of use!

I heard once that animation should be able to tell the story even with no sound. Second certainly has the technology and artistic merit to support this theorom. I'd like to think that easy mouse gestures would prove a viable outlet of emotions. Imagine a room of people busy working on something. Someone makes a joke and everyone stops and types:
lol

:0
rofl

Now imagine the room where everyone continues to work and just holds right click and moves their mouse with a few flicks of the wrist and the room erupts into trigger laughter, knee slapping, and booing. Which one would you like to see after telling a good joke?

I just don't see the necessity of this feature. You're talking about something which would be laborious to implement, and which the vast majority of users wouldn't even use. How do you propose that the Lindens may this feature accessible to scripters? Would there be a catalog of a few dozen gestures which they could assign commands to? How would this work with mouselook? Why should they implement this, when they still haven't even given us the ability to accept input from any of the other keys on the keyboard?

I'd like for the Lindens to expand the functionality of existing interfaces before they begin to add completely new interfaces like gestures, which are of dubious benefit to most users. Regardless, I think we're both in agreement that the limitation of the SL interface is an impediment to progress.

That would be a very nice addition. I think it would be a killer idea if the possibility to bind mouse gestures to Gestures existed too ; it would be very convenient and customisable for the user.
The up down up down for thrust could be used through a gesture that say on a sword command channel to slash for example (by making the gesture say something like "/23 slash" )
And it would allow for more spontaneity. When you are typing a sentence, you won't delete it just to lol at what someone just said ; while a mouse gesture would allow you to react without canceling what you are typing.

Very cool idea. And I don't think it's so hard to implement ; opera has it, peoples implemented it for Mozilla in a plugin ; "Black & White" had it (and it was a few years ago).

Best gestures example I remember was from Black & White.

That would be kinda cool. But we'd have to restrict it to a local function tho, right?

I'd probably keep gesturing and trying to incinerate other players. Stupid Black and White, grr.

But I think it would be a neat addition to the interface, at the very least. It might not start out all that terribly useful, but we have an awful lot of creative people in SL, and who knows what they might do with it?

I think it is a great idea too. I use the mouse gesture support in Maxthon quite frequently, mostly using both mouse buttons in a certain squence to scroll a long forum thread to the top or bottom easily, or to go back or refresh a page. Once you get used to them, they become a very natural way to interact with a program. Certainly not a priority, like, um, INVENTORY, but a very cool addition that would be part of an improved customizeable UI. Great suggestion.

While I certainly like the idea (the next step would be having a recognition system for VR gloves), I think it is not something for LL to program - but for the community.

All we need is a complete separation between the "viewport" and the User Interface (instead of the silly mix we have right now, where menus, inventory icons and text chat are textures streamed from the region simulator... argh). Once we get the User Interface in our hands, and the code to the API, well, there is no limit to imagination then, is it?

We could do whatever we wanted with the UI. Don't like mouse input? Write your own VR goggle handler! Tired of struggling with Inventory? Create your own! Want IM integration with your current RW favourite system? Sure, why not? All these things are really UI, and have nothing to do with the "game engine", which SL should continue to improve. Give us control over it, and all our dreams will come true.

Yes, even a proper keyboard where all the keys work. Do you know the difference about an US resident and a Euro resident? Euros don't smile at a joke - ever. It's not that we are humour-impaired, our keyboards are broken in SL and we can't type smileys!! (unless, of course, you use a Mac ).

Note: rumours say that SL developers have been working on the separation of UI and viewport for a long time. This is certainly in the works. Whether we'll have access to the API or not, that's a completely different story.

Postmark, already I like your ideas pointing to automation that would provide a more intuitive way to use SL. More programmable macros and extensible options to the Gestures system in the vein that you have laid out would be definitely welcome in my book. There's got to be more expressive ways of acting out a variety of emotes. This would be on the right track to a highly advanced future which Gwyn touched on. It is good to get the ideas flowing.

I've been an advocate for awhile now for more commonplace "foot pedal" controller support for SL.

Why?

So you can walk and talk at the same time!!!

Much like cruise control in vehicles (thankyou to Rickard Roentgen who also realizes the value of this), it creates a kind of... how shall I say it... communication + motion = communimotion.

I'm working on using my stationary bike to control z-axis movement, with a long term goal of modeling my own world to bike in. I also thought about what you said and plugged in my Gravis gamepad and mapped the inputs to keyboard keys and mouse controls and buttons, then tried using that instead of a mouse and keyboard in SL. While it worked, it certainly was difficult. I shouldn't be hard to create your own controller to do what you want it to do. Just steel your nerves and visit a Radio Shack!

Another thing I'm toying with is having an object in my little punk dive that sells temporary Ventrillo passes. That way people who come in can have almost real time conversations via voip and really stir things up!