Features second life needs

Hi. I believe that the following features are missing in second life, and will be needed to remain the best.


MIDI - Second life should have the ability to upload and play midi music files. they contain way less data than the wave files everyone uses, and most of the work is done with the sound card. This should not be overlooked.

Voice chat/kareoke - I'm sure you've heard this before, just reiterating. Many people suggest using a third party software for this. but I just don't want to. A voice chat system which can be turned off on the client to save bandwidth will be used in the dominante virtual community, which ever that might be. Heck, why not even have something like dragon dictate transcribe text for the speaker or bandwidth impaired. Well, I can dream can't I? I sure can!

Commercial "zones" - Where businesses can make their second life presense. preferably on some far off islands somewhere. I think that there should be some income and *growth* potential in this as virtual worlds eventually replace the world wide web as a dominiant route on the information super highway. I'm sure you are ready.

Public beta sim - it seems that their are many unstable features via scripts that can crash whole sims. A sim dedicated to people looking for bugs and trying to stregthen SL might be a good idea. Face it!!! The dev's can't perfect this by themselves in a billion years. Especially when they must constantly implement newer engines and software packages. And things aren't moving any slower in the future.

Mirror object - I would really appreciate a menu funtion that made a duplicate mirror image of a selected object. It would just make second life alot easier if I could avoid running for calc.exe, messing with rotations, and adusting twists, shears, and whatnot.

Speaking of mirrors - why aren't their any? I know that having reflective mirrors in a 3D environment is much harder than it seems, but here is a suggestion that might help. Remember the game Duke Nukem 3D? When building a mirror in the level editor, you had to create a room on the other side of the mirror at least twice the size of the room which contained the mirror. Then you had to use some special mirror texture on the transparent glass. Why or how this worked I don't exactly know, but it sounds like it has something to do with actually reproducing the mirror image of primatives in the space on the other side of the mirror. Hope that helps. The ability to create mirrors would add a huge touch of realism. Right now it's like everyone is a vampire.

Well there you have it! Now I'm actually going to read the archives and find out how many times you have already heard this before

Good luck

Coming, as soon as, in their words, they "develop a voice filter so you can change your voice without it sounding like shit".


Yes, it really is much harder. The technique you suggest will double the rendering load for each mirror that's visible. Further, it will only work on flat surfaces, and will not work for mirrors that are capable of reflecting each other (aka. hall of mirrors). Proper handling of reflection requires a rendering technique called "ray-tracing", and current hardware cannot do real-time raytracing of anything more complicated than a few prims. Ray-tracing of something including a few mirrors can reasonably be expected to take a day per full-screen, antialiased frame.

Pretty good ideas. I'm gonna explicitly bump the Mirror Object function, since mirroring large objects, like anything animal/av-like, by hand is horrible and could be so trivial.

Just to recap, it would suffice to have GetPrimitiveParameter and we could build a Mirror script very easily to do this.

Azelda

MIDI - I wouldn't mind seeing this.

Voice Chat - Yes, but not untill they get masking done right, I like LL's stance on this and wouldn't want them to change it, its a cool mentality to have and actualy makes sense.

Commercial Zones - We already have these, just buy a private sim, and setup shop there. Honestly you could do it in any sim, even though the TOS claims "no real world ads" or some such, its not really enforced, however most likely you'd get flamed by the community, where-as having your own island with ads will get you less heat.

Public Beta Sim - Yes, could easily be done, even just 2 sims will do it, 1 would be too overcrowded most likely (object wise). Have 2 beta sims online 24/7 with nightly/whenever builds, then still have "previews" where more test sims are braught online for a greater influx (as I'm sure not everyone will want to do beta testing all the time) of people.

Mirror Object Building - Yes, this is a feature thats been asked for, for some time now, we need more building tools and this would be a great addition.

Mirrors - Would be nice to have, but I know there are reasons why we don't have it (reasons that are too technical for me to think of right now).

OK, I just thought of three more building fuctions that I don't think I will be able to live without.

Set object center - I have a pair of flapping wings that currently rotate from the middle of the wings rather than flapping from static shoulder blades. It looks like a mess. I've even tried doubling the mass of the object by adding invisible primatives, and it still rotates from the middle of the wing. Arggg!!! I appologise if their is a way to do this, but noone seems to have an answer for me so far.

Rotate a Single axis - I request for the ability to just tell the compiler to rotate the object on a single axis by supplying one vector argument. For example llRotLookAt(llEuler2Rot(<z=-1>, 0.001, 0.00);

the following is an example why..

--------------------
rotation original = llGetLocalRot();

llRotLookAt(llEuler2Rot(<0,0,-1>, 0.001, 0.00);
llSleep(0.5);
llRotLookAt(original, 0.001, 0.00);
----------------

basically this is how my wings flap. they rotate to a specific angle represented some how by a -1 for the z parameter, which equates to about 80 degress (don't ask, I don't know, I just used the best product of trial and error)
a half a second passes, and they rotate back to their original rotation.

However, that's only if your object starts out with a 0,0,0 rotation. if not, then you may have a REALLY hard time figuring out what the other axis rotation parameters of your object curently are, so that they will not rotate aswell. And no, putting in the current rotation vector doesn't work. Leaving an axis parameter as zero will cause your object to rotate from whatever rotation it is currently at, to <0,0,0>.



Linkable Joints - This sounds like something that would have already been done if it was possible, but never the less, I asked for it. Why you say?? Because I have a beautifull pair of wings made of 18 feathers with a touch of particles and an animated texture. They flap just like a real pair of wings and just make tears come to my eyes. That is because I can't link them together, or attach them to my avatar.
If their is any possible way in the future to link hinges and joins, please make it so. PLEASE!!!

I've tried not using joints, but otherwise the wings rotate from their own center rather than flapping from the shoulder blades. (see above)

Repositionable joints - Albiet, I don't know how to use hinges and joints that well, but sofar, I have been at the mercy of the sim when it comes to placing where they connect. Hinges seem to do what they want. I would like to be able to place the connectors where I need them. Maybe their is a way to do this already. Nobody seems to know much about how to use hinges.


That's it for now. Currently my flapping wing project is at a halt. I can't attach what I have sofar, but at least I can make a nice flapping wing statue, vehicle, or robot.

Most of what you people are asking is either:
A) Not possible
or
B) Not a priority
Sorry
I just want to know when the hell is the new version coming. I want my HavoK 2!

OK, I got two more suggestions


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AttachInventory() -

I could really use the ability to attach an object inventory item to my avatar for the use of utility belt like objects. that way we can attach items on command. this would require attach permisions for the attached object ofcourse, but it might also be cool if an object could pass it's permissions to it's inventory items.

My utility belt can already be accomplished with a llRezObject in the container and a llAttatchtoAvitar in the inventory item. But an attach function would make (second)life much easier, as well as allow "utility belt" objects to be attached in non-build areas.

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llDieFromAvatar() / llDetachToNull() -

llDetachFromAvatar is causing my utility belt (container object) to detach copies of it's inventory into my inventory. I tried using an attach event to llDie() the object when it's detatched, but that only works if it's dropped into the world. Since we can only detach objects back into inventory, mine is quickly filling up with copies of objects in my "utility belt"

If a method/function could also delete an object while it is attached to us it would be a great help for many purposes. Besides a "utility belt" this would allow shoppers to try on items that will delete when they either take it off or leave the store. The best way would be a function to block the item from retuning to a user's inventory when it's detached, and just be deleted instead.

MIDI sounds different from one sound card to another. It's usually very cheesy. MOD/ULT/S3M/XM/IT music is way better - it sounds the same on every sound card, being the functional equivalent of MIDI with built-in patches.

On top of that, SL's sound engine (FMOD) supports it natively.

The following mods are damn awesome:
http://www.chiptune.com/files/it/beek-substitutionology.zip (129K, 3:5
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/yolk/temples.zip (452K, 3:12)
http://kadath.org/audio/notByHuns/mods/Mindfuck%20-%20Mindkickers.amf (558K, 4:51)
http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/D/DOPE.MOD (935K, 8:54)

You can get zillions of them at http://www.modarchive.com and http://www.scenemusic.net.

Kex Godel just reminded me of a feature idea that kept slipping my mind!!

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llHyperlink() / llWebLink() -

Send's a URL to the user's web browser.

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Web Browser in SL client -

I expect that some future (evolved) version of SL will have a World Wide Web browser incorporated into it, which can be used on the side of an object inplace of a texture. See Kex Godel's thread "Web Textures" for more info. /13/85/13765/1.html

The method I propose is to have the client donwload webpages directly from target sites. This wouldn't use any Linden server resources.

This would make the world much richer and more dynamic. People could use Java-Applets, shockwave, streaming sound, etc. This would keep second life on the cutting edge, and move further towards it's TRUE destiny of being the most heavily used channel of the Information Super Hyway.



---
Paradigm
--eye on the future--

Lipmann, I'm sure that some of what we ask is like asking Bowing to re-design an entire ship to include an ash tray (ergo impracticle and/or not worth it) but we can only ask. I'm sure the devs will forgive us for not knowing the inner workings of thier design.

Also, it's expected that our suggestions are not a priority. If they were, then there would be no point in suggesting them.

Infact my purpose here is to think of things they might not have even throught of yet. Hopefully they will become a priority when they have a chance to think about it.

I know they are busy, and i appreciate them providing this forum to communicate what we think.

Brodsky, by not a priority, I mean, people have been suggesting it for a year, LL hasnt implemented it yet, and hasnt stated that they will in the future.
IMHO we really need some sort of roadmap/feature voting system to automate Linden <-> Player collaboration.

I second that!

This is actually why I've started a "what do you want to see in SecondLife 2?" thread in Concepts.

My own personal opinion / belief based on what I see is that SecondLife 1.x is now in plateau phase: there is no more dev going into it apart from anything a dev / support person wants to do in their own time.

That's not a big deal because either LindenLabs are working on SecondLife 2 behind the scenes, or someone somewhere else is.

In both cases, they're probably reading what people are posting in these forums, and are probably receptive to the ideas that are here, so posting big picture ideas right now could influence SL-derivatives released in the future.

It's not impossible that SecondLife 1.x will serve as a prototyping platform for features that are being considered for a hypothetical SecondLife 2.

Just my humble opinion...

Azelda

You've got to be kidding me.
1.4, custom animations, Havok2, XML-RPC
1.5, avatar as a prim
What else do you need?

NO!

Visit activeworlds for 15 seconds, then please revoke that statement. MIDI is evil. What we need, is a format like midi, that doesnt sound like ass.

Enter MOD/IT/S3M - www.modarchive.com has a good collection. This was the same format that the Unreal engine uses, and it doesnt sound horribly, has small filesizes, and would be better suited. And FMOD (the engine SL is currently using for 3D positional audio cross platform), has native support for all the Amiga mod formats, including all the extra's such as DirectSound filters, etc (emulates on Mac/Linux).

You mean like

llHyperlink("http://www.goatse.cx/");

or

llSetWebTexture("http://www.goatse.cx");

(Warning: Site not safe for work, or any other time!)

Heh, SL with a browser? Let's not turn this into emacs now

<<NO!

Visit activeworlds for 15 seconds, then please revoke that statement. MIDI is evil. What we need, is a format like midi, that doesnt sound like ass.>>

MIDI doesn't sound good or bad. It is a way of encoding musical data so that your sound card can convert it into sound. If you have a rubbish sound card it will sound like rubbish. If you have a sound card which uses sound fonts, you can create your own sound font which will give results that could almost be mistaken for a recorded performance.

I would love to see MIDI incorporated into sl, and it would be nice to have it on these forums as well.

llList2Notecard
llNotecard2List (with asynchronous event to receive)

No to midi(I dont want to have to keep a 128mb soundfont loaded to make it sound half decent) But I guess some people dont mind FM modulated midi music, hehe

I much prefer MOD type music formats, its much more flexable, and most importantly, it will sound the same on everyones machine!

Something I recently found out about VOS (thank you to CrystalShard for showing me this), has some interisting features, such as Webcam feature that takes pictures of the world, and a built in Mozilla style browser that can be rendered onto objects.

See: http://www.interreality.org/

Personaly I think launching websites via LSL would be nice, to prevent malicious launches have an approval dialog come up "<objectname> would like to open your default webbrowser to <link>, do you want to allow this?".

If you're so worried about getting a bad texture in your face, whats to stop it from happening now? Anyone can upload any texture they want.

So llSetWebTexture would actualy be a great idea, but the usual arguements come up about bandwith and all that sort.

Actually, back at the day when Active Worlds was -the- 3D world system, -everything- you loaded - from 3D objects to textures - was hosted on someone's website.

And it did pretty fine.

I think that putting links to texture URLs shouldnt be a real problem, especialy if you pose afew limitations:

1)URLs can have their content changed without notice, therefor linking keys to URLs would be futile. So you could limit URL based textures to be script-accessible only, for example.

2)If you do want to assign keys and make sure the content is the same, you could run a checksum test on the image when its first references to, and then have the client check the checksum after downloading. If it doesnt match, do not display the image.

Yeah, that would be great.



Well sort of. I think we should avoid having SL Servers turn webpages into texures, or infact doing any webserering at all. The client should simply view the website with a built in browser. I would rather something like

llSetWebAddress("http://foo.org";

infact, if this were available, people could use it to host all sorts of textures for all sorts of objects, all without lagging the SL servers!!

llSetWebAddress("http://foo.org/myTexture.jpg";

Why lag Linden when we can Lag Yahoo for free!!!

Even on top end cards, MIDI still sounds like ass, compared to similarly file-sized formats like MOD. Download the BASS MOD plugin for winamp (winamp has it's own decoder, but it's not very good.), then download anything from: here.
Please also make a note to check the amount of time in each track, compared to filesize. The format is extremely good, people have been using it for literally decades now, there is plenty of programs that support it, and again, I repeat, it doesnt sound like ass, compared to midi.

Another note with the MOD's, - lots of them tend to have 3-10 songs inside them, however most players only play the first. Get modplug to listen to all. ( Amazonas - Dynomite for example has 11 tracks in it. - doesnt sound like ass, and is 202KB)

What is the likelihood that that is going to work out for everyone, vs. MOD files, which sound the same regardless of soundcard? How many people are going to, as you say, create their own sound fonts, vs. MOD technology, where it sounds the same everywhere with zero effort? How is your sound font going to work on my machine? Am I going to have to download an instrument bank?

<Mr. Horse> No sir, I don't like it.

Now I know you're trolling. Websites that play MIDI files are the work of the devil.