A thought occured to me the other day, SL can actually be rather pretty, graphically, and the features I'm suggesting already, in a round about sort of way, already exist in Secondlife but could be put to better use.
Exhibit A:
Camera fun!
When zooming in with the camera, (ctrl+0 for those who didn't know), the focus in your field of view remains on a central area, meaning things in the foreground and background go fuzzy and soft. You also get more of the atmospheric "haze" in your immeadiate view, where you normally only see it in the distance.
Using this can make for some really nice screenshots that look much better than how SL normally looks. Unfortunately, it's really impossible to move around and do things with any accuracy when zoomed in like that.
However, it seems to me it would be possible to make use of similar effects in regular view, which would really add visually to the graphics. Adding an optional point of focus (pardon my lack or misuse of technical terms her, haven't taken a photography class in years) option, with the camera's focus resting on whatever avatar or object your view is currently linked to (defaulting to your own avatar, of course, when you're look mousing around with the camera to look at other avatars and objects).
Another idea, though in my mind quite on topic with the focus suggestion in the visual improvements department, would be graphical filters. You sort of get that effect with the atmospheric haze when zoomed out, but if it were an actual video filter you could turn on or off (or possibly even customize) you could have everything from slightly softening haze, a film grain texture to make the visuals look like an old movie, X-ray and heat vision filters just for fun. I imagine the latter would cause a significant amount of system strain compared to simpler filters, which might not add much strain to our computers at all.
Thoughts?
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