Interface with non-SL applications

Something that seems to get mentioned a lot is the Croquet project. Well, Croquet isn't ready to be widely used, but it has one feature that I would love to see in SL. In Croquet, you can run external applications in the 3D environment; this means that you can browse the web, run SSH sessions, and so on, allowing you to do "real life" work while you are in-world.

My proposal:
1) Allow users to run external applications from SL via command-line or shortcuts. This option would only be accessible from the menu, to avoid malicious script issues. ALTERNATE IDEA: allow SL to "capture" the window of a currently running application.
2) Display the application in a window, much the same as the scripting window (or any other window for that matter). No "prim displays," nothing fancy, just a simple interface to another application. Maybe you could use some partial transparency, but that would just be gravy.

Doing this would let people blog, work on web pages, check email and IMs, code, make graphics in Photoshop, and so on. It would also encourage people like me to buy land; I don't care about having a house in SL, but if I could work in-world then I would definitely want to build an SL "studio."

A future idea would be to allow others to see your window; perhaps you could "detach" windows from the display and move them around like an object (within a limited range of course).

I hope that other people find this idea useful. As I said, the benefits run both ways... we can stay in-world more often, and Linden Labs would get more land money.

I can already do this, just by running SL in a window. If you can't display it on a prim so other people can see it (which would be like doing 60 texture uploads a second!) what's the point of having SL instead of Windows or OSX being the window manager?

It doesn't have to be real-time; it could send one screenshot per second, at a slightly lower resolution. As long as you can demonstrate things in-world, it should be adequate. This would be great for collaborating on projects, showing amusing things to people, and so on.

And yes, you can just run SL in a window to use other apps... but I prefer to run full-screen. I suspect that other people do as well. Besides, switching between SL and other windows is distracting; it makes you feel like you aren't really in-world anymore. You may as well just leave IRC up in a background window (albeit a very pretty IRC client).

If you are a programmer by trade, why code in an office when you can do it from a mountain chalet? A virtual chalet, yes, but this kind of integration can help you forget that.

Besides, I just really like the idea of sitting down with a VR headset to do some coding. Oh, we'll get there eventually...