Change ALT-LOOK to be easier for newbies

Alt-Look is an essential mode for being able to navigate SL. It allows one to look all around an area without moving, and it allows zooming in on vending devices to get a better look at the picture.

However, the current Alt-Look command is ALT-HOLD LEFT MOUSE BUTTON-MOUSEMOVE.

Seems like one unnecessary move... and it's tiresome to hold down the left mouse button all the time.

Why not just use ALT-MOUSEMOVE ? Much easier.

I would recommend needing to hold down the ALT rather than making the ALT a toggle key. Otherwise a lot of newbies (and existing users) will get stuck in mouselook and not know how to get out.

Would make for a much friendlier Alt-Look.

Where the mouse is when alt-zooming is very important, since it determines what point the camera is centered on. Often when looking around I will have alt held down and click around the screen to move the camera around. It really is an act of clicking on something to choose the camera center, and I at least would (perhaps initially) find it confusing to be now "clicking" with my other hand using the alt key.

Possibly at first, but I think one would get used to it very quickly. It's just a matter of placing the pointer where you wish to look and then holding the ALT key. It's pretty much what we have to do already anyway, but now we have to click and hold the left mouse button as well. If they would just have your view freeze on that spot when you let up off of alt (untill you press esc... as we already do) it shouldn't be a problem.

I don't see how it's that hard. I think it would be easier if the camera centred on where you touch though, and didn't do that annoying thing where zooming into the prim you clicked on stops you at the prim's edges, ie if you click a side of a prim, should be able to look inside the object by rotating around it and zooming in.

But yeah, focus on actual click would be better. On the Mac version I don't recall if the cursor changes when you hold alt? Also having a tooltip after first opening the game would be good, or even a little key that hovers in the corner until you switch it off that shows you alt-click = move camera.

A number of users have commented in these forums regarding a number of items on the user screen are difficult to access and unfriendly. For example, why should someone have to TURN ON THE DEBUG SYSTEM and tell SL to turn off clouds EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY LOG ON if they never want clouds to lag their system? It should be a toggle, easily accessible.

The ALT-Look thing is another one. Why use 3 key items when 2 will do the trick? That may not seem like much, but a study was done a number of years ago on how many man hours were lost nation wide by pressing the ENTER key unnecessarilly. The result was astonishing. That's when a lot of computer companies started using automatic-feed-to-next-field for single-key or set-number fields.

Having to hold the mousekey once a day wouldn't be that big a deal. But people use ALT-LOOK all the time, every day, 24/7/365. Eliminating that extra step would greatly simplify that function and make using SL easier. Add enough of those little tweaks, and SL would be considerably more user-friendly and intuitive.

It all gets back to: new toys are nice, but how about firming up the foundation so the core product works better?

I don't see how it's hard. It's useful and flexible. Changing any default behavior in SL is surely not a good idea. Do you know that beside Alt-Mouse, there's also Alt-Ctrl-Mouse and Alt-Ctrl-Shift-Mouse, all doing difference thing?

LOL. And the sky is falling, right?

Listen, no insult intended, but being afraid of change just because it's change is anti-progress. The key is to recognize potentially beneficial change and test it to see if it is.

Now if you can point out one solid, verifyable reason why it's not beneficial to change 3 keypresses to 2, glad to hear it out. Otherwise... your objection lacks validity.

*chuckles* Okay. Now this is interesting. I like your reply actually, simply because I can't denied it no matter the idea is good or bad. *lol*

Alt-MouseMove simply won't work because it lack of target for the client to use for calculation of where the 'camera' should go. When you click mouse, it tell the client that that point in the sim is target for the camera. So it will be centered while moving mouse.

You can look around yourself easily (without Mouselook) by just hold mouse on yourself and move mouse around. The camera will be rotated using you as center. Now, I wish I can just PgUp and PgDown to look up and down like in usual game engines. But then, you'll have to find a replacement for Jump and Fly key.

Now, using Alt+MouseClick to enter free-camera control could be a good idea.... actually, that's a really good idea if it will be implemented wisely. And just release Alt to stop controling camera.

But you know when LL changes things that is default behavior in SL. They tend to generate bugs and crashes with it as well.

Already pointed out: the target would be decided the same way it's decided now: where you place your pointer at the beginning is where the camera will be rooted. If you point to the upper left and press the alt key, then moving the mouse will cause the camera to pivot on that point.

Try it. If you use AltLook right now, you will discover that logically speaking, the left mouse button is a redundant task. It's totally unnecessary.


Now that I cannot argue with.

I think Alt+Look works perfectly right now. I have never had difficulty explaining it to newbies.

Actually.. ALT+LOOK is holding down the alt, plus using the cursor keys and pgup/pgdn..

Alt with a mouse click is focus. Then use Alt + cursor for looking around that spot.

Alt+and hold down the mouse button is an alternative to ALT+LOOK that is conveint and smoother than the cursor keys.

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Either way, the camera functions are probably one of the easiest features to learn as a newbie. Heck, walking is harder.. How many of us _still_ bump into people by accident from time to time.

Lets not make things more complicated

Oh....now that's new knowledge o.o

I don't think that alt-mouse-move would actually save any time. A lot of the time when using alt-click you may do so repeatedly, in which case you are holding down the alt-key, and clicking in addition to that to focus the camera on a new point. Instead you'd be releasing and pressing the alt-key all the time, which is more cumbersome and technically slower on the majority of keyboards out there.

its too hard to hold down left mouse? ha! maybe computers and their peripherals arent for you...ya know, all that typing and button pushing can really wear a person out!

phew im tired now...

I think removing the click would be *more* of a pain, personally. But I'm finicky.

Though the mention in one of the replies about the debug menu is spot-on. I have to de-rez clouds, fogs, particles, and a ton of other stuff to avoid killing myself on SL right now with lag and such. I'd like it to stay off when I turn it off instead of making it easy for me to forget until I start locking up.

Because Alt's used for other things.

Like, alt-arrow keys to spin around you.

Or hold-alt for physical.

I don't want my camera soaring all over the place when I tap alt for some other reason.

Plus, you know you can let go of alt once you have focus on someone? I don't want to lose that...

Indeed, what if I alt-TAB to another application?