Vector Surface Controls Interface (VSCI)

A Previously mentioned idead of mine where one could create a set of "controls" on the surface of a prim (probably a side of a cube) where elements such as:

1. tables
   
2. text boxes (possibly scroll-able?) // not sure if thats a word
   
3. textfileds (pasword fileds "*"'s)
   
4. basic geometric shapes (height, width, color, etc)
   
5. layer presidence
   
6. alpha value (opacity)
   
7. images
   

could be defined much in the same way HTML is and all the controls could have the possibility of having callback events (I.E. onClick(), onHover(), onEdit(), etc). This would allow a user to create a control interface while minimizing the use of primitives (single prim vendors any one? ;D) and in conjuntion with the possiblility of inter-sim object communicaion and out of server communication one could create many things such as improved objects controls, banking terminals, security systems (minus the sit hack ;D), telecomuncation terminals, streaming news feed terminals text or video (now with the possibility of streaming video), live web data feeds, the list can go on. Actual implementation can be on the basis of what is most logical to LL but just the sheer potential is exciteing.

Just a well desired feature/dream

I've heard they're looking at more UI control, but in some ways this would be better -- more immersive, because it's in-world rather than in new popup windows or whatever. I'd recommend sticking with known standards like HTML, however. Don't go for basic geometric shapes, just make it render its own little web page per face using textures and other data in the prim or provided by a script in the prim. You might need to do without alpha variability and layering for the first version. They should be able to get all the code for this from Mozilla.org.

neko

i was looking for something that would be closer to the flashmedia engine, where what ever you make can be scaled to what ever size you want. HTML was just an example of how the interfaces woiuld be created, the geometric shaped would be really low bandwith/performace taxing i.e. sape, height, width, color, alpha. simple string of text that client side rendered

Well i guess no one seconds this notion, i dont think people reallyt realize the possibilites with a system like this O.o

Eze, these are indeed good ideas and I don't think it's so much a matter of people not wanting it or not realizing it as needing to get the word out more and having people be aware of its potential coolness.

LL has said they want to do this right -- as opposed to some mediocre, half-baked approach -- but definitely post in Hotline To Linden if you have specific questions that need official answers regarding the roadmap of the future of SL.

There's nothing you can do with this that you cant do without it
It just takes more prims. The scripting effort ought to be the same, though.

I beg to differ. This can be used to implement better interfaces in vehicles, where you don't have the luxury of (for example) adding 54 XyText prims to get a simple 40x4 character display.

I built an object wrapper around the GD library a few years ago that did all this stuff:

1. Render lines
2. Render ellipses of any aspect ratio and between any two radian points
3. Render polygons with any number of sides, filled or not
4. Render images from a file
5. Blit a rectangle of pixels from one place to another
6. Render text using TrueType fonts
7. Simple character cell controller that understood commands for setting colors, linebreaks, etc.
8. I don't think I bothered with scaling, rotation, or translation, but they would have been easy enough (I'd done them in the past and you can get the rotation matrix formulas from Google)

GD is open source (LGPL) and very easy to work with. In my case I used it to build a chart generator in PHP.

Transmitting the parameters for this stuff would be pretty low-bandwidth, except if an image had to be loaded & copied into some rectangular area on the surface. Client-side load would be a tiny fraction of whatever QuickTime eats up.

I would definitely like to see a client-side-only HUD option, since there will be times when having a texture on a face everyone can see is not optimal - poker games and ATMs would require some privacy, and an aircraft HUD should be snapped in place and not depend on where the camera is.