What should Philip work on next?

Philip Linden seems to have kicked serious butt on the slurl rework. There's still a few bugs to work out but it looks like huge progress in a fairly short time. As somebody who's been writing software for a RL living for more than a few years, this isn't a surprise to me - having a project lead who's as motivated and passionate (not to mention technically able) as Philip can really do wonders for any job..

So.. Seeing as the slurl stuff is at least somewhat wrapping up, if you could pick Philip's next project, what would it be? In general, small-medium projects are better than long term ones and certainly better than "just fix it!" ones. Looking for "low hanging fruit" and high "bang for the buck" stuff.

One thing I'd like to see tackled is ban line visibility. Land owners with paranoid neighbors hate being forced to see them. Vehicle operators wandering the grid hate not being able to see them until it's far too late. Lots of new land owners enable them (as is their right) but have no idea that they're putting up annoying walls to the rest of the world. Most people aren't happy with ban line visibility and there's no one-size-fits-all solution..

Anybody else? If you could pick Philip's next project, what would it be?

edit: and I'm not, in any way, shape or form, saying I have Philip's ear (/me checks her pocket.. nope - no ears!) or that he even knows about this thread...

Managment behaviour course perhaps? Since they treat us like we just don't exists...

How about something technical instead?

One quick solution to this is to show the ban line legend on both sides of the wall.

or no legend at all.. or an option to set it visible or not.
and a popup when one set's the land access that way, that there will be (by default) banlines visible for people outside your parcel, and not in the group/list.

and i would see, that banlines are raising to a higher level then 80m. height. 500m or so would be better.. And when you setup a skybox, the banlimit height raises another 500m from the heigest point of your skybox. so always 500m above the highest point uses (by objects or terraform)

optional, it would be handy to shape the banlines to your liking, e.g. circular, and also not horizontal only, but also vertical (handy for many story buildings..)

Personally, I'd rather have a complete solution!

The ban lines stuff was just one example of something I think a couple engineers could fix up nicely in a semi-short amount of time. Anybody have other smallish-project-type stuff that they'd like to see reworked in SL?

I know what you mean.
But many people came up with sensible solutions that could have been a benefit to SL and therefore, it's members too.
They all have been ignored so far...

Philip is a special case.. As chairman of the board, he doesn't really have a boss so he sorta gets to work on whatever he wants. As founder, he may not know the guts of SL as well as somebody like Andrew but he's got a serious clue having been there from the start.

So.. There's this guy at LL who's technical, motivated, passionate and can sorta do whatever the hell he wants. What would you like him to do? Not some huge, ginormous project that's gonna take years but something that would show results in a shortish amount of time and be something that residents would like?

A method of temporarily turning off group chat without leaving the group or hiding the chat window off the side of the screen.

Transaction history for groups.

Oh i know..

As you know, LL is busy expanding, seeking new ventures and business models.. to keep up in the category virtual worlds.
(more players are raising in this field... and SL is not going good in that perpective , anymore.)

That why they are busy with decentralizing their services, by means of interconnecting (connecting multiple standalone worlds/grids together, as expansion, and future possibilities)

See this blog entry, if you have no clue about what i'm talking about:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/31/open-grid-public-beta-begins-today/

Well, their are currently heavily busy with a slow developing protocol set, called ogp. This new protocol set should make it possible to interconnect.. but, it's going way to slow in development.. infact..
hypergrid, the new developed protocol scheme, is made in only a few weeks, and is working brilliantly, everything goes, that linden tries to achieve with OGP (with their closed beta program).. (And development is already 2 years underway, but not coming far along compared to hypergrid)

so....

what about quiting the OGP (open grid protocol) all together.. and focus on the hypergrid system. That way, Opensimulator grid can interconnect with LL's grid, INCL. asset transfers and permissions.
And the avatar will not be ruthed! but stays at is is on the grid the user uses to login.

INfact, drop the current server model, and migrate to opensim code within a half year from now. (or make it possible to "rent" their code, ll's code that is , so others can run their own regions on their own network, connected to the grid.)

I think if they don't focus more on the opensim project or providing their services (software server based), LL is going to get hurt deeply (financially and userbase levels).. and the opensim grids will win on the long term.

More on this, good explanation into this vision (part of a long review of both techniques.. this is only page 6, but goes about this topic):

http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2009/01/01/opensimulator-the-choice-for-2010/6/

all in all, new possibilities, that has a handy benefit on the long term too.. SCALABILITIES, and STABILITY! yes, that's right...

Sindy, you're a stubbornhead. I like that...lol!

Well, first of all i miss Philip too.
If i was him, i would stop introducing new things for a while and create a stable, good working world. I remember people screaming they've got stuck inworld, login problems, major lag and in some case, inventory loss, etc....
SL's answer was "hey, we're introducing voice!"

Stop being creative for a while, hold back the new inventions and make sure we have a stable world.
Oya, they might reconsidder the opensim price scam too.
Well, at least they admitted it was the mistake of 2008, so that's a start....

Philip, please come back......SL residents needs you.....

For me it has to be dynamic shadows. That is the one single thing that would make the greatest improvement to SL. We have hints that shadows are in the piplene and the Kirsten version of the SL viewer can be tweaked to show them if you've got the right computer (I haven't).

The main problem with shadows, from what I've gleaned here and there, is that most PCs would struggle to get a decent frame rate.
Noooo! When I go to OpenSim I'm now stuck one place kneeling in mid-air. SL does at least work better than its open-source clones - and so it should.

Thus, it wouldn't be a great improvement afterall
if many won't be able to use it at good performance.. heck even now the performance is under the level as it should be

I'm guessing that he would mostly enjoy working on something that doesn't involve interracting with the entire rest of the Linden Lab behemoth. It can be so tiresome to make sure your code doesn't break anyone elses and then go through QA and PR and whatever else. Something small and self contained might be more his style.

All that said, perhaps he could work through the user submitted patches and get more of them into the viewer. As I understand it there are tons out there that solve dozens of bugs that are simply not being integrated.

Built in Sculpty or Animation/pose maker.

It would be an improvement because a) Like with WindLight, shadows would be disabled on comps that can't cope and b)Computer power and internet speed are improving all the time.

Hehe, i said within a half year.. so they have a half year to further develop.

Btw. your experience with the being stuck and all, is not on every opensim grid/region out there..
unlike SL, you cannot say, i go to opensim.. would be the same as saying, i go to website (but not telling which site.. and each site is on their own.. some sites are down, others overloaded, and other quick)
SL is a name of a specified grid..
opensim is a mechanism to run a grid (with many configurable options and modules)
the grid that runs opensim software can be called whatever the owner of that particular grid want it to be..
With the options/settings as whised.

I run a grid.. and it's not having that issue you describe.. not do i see it on other grids i went too. (the major big ones)
so, i guess you logged onto a grid that didn't had the physics module enabled (one of the three supported ones, e.g. ODE or BulletX).

LL is inside the opensimulator project themselves.. (programmers engineers.. )
so, they put back code and patches back to the project..for their own good.

I know that. So is OpenSim the name of a specific grid (OS Grid) - the one where I'm stuck - I wasn't stuck, but I am now . I also belong to OpenLife grid, I'm OK there, not stuck at all!

why must they have shadows BEFORE opensim software provides this? i don't follow that logic..
LL is heavely involved in opensim's codebase now.. putting employees to that project. so, LL wants to coop with opensim themselves, for no strange reason, as i described a few posts earliers.

/me adds a better scripting interface to the list of ideas. Definitely adding tabs to the script window (like the IM window) and maybe something that interacts with my local disk. Would love for scripts I save in SL to also be saved to my disk and some way to get them back in SL again. Doesn't need a whole source control-type merge system but something basic would be great.

LL might be involved in the OpenSim project but they aren't necessarily involved with rival grids that have been set up based on OpenSim like OpenLife or Legend City, who could conceivably perfect a viewer with shadows before SL does.

PS I used to have a 2-sim standalone island, it used to work well and had some nice things on it but it got lost in a computer crash when Vista had to be uninstalled and then re-installed

I'd go for better building and scripting facilities
Anything to ease making animations would be good too.

i have a few.

Id like the stats window to work. More specifically the total time and its sub menus. If these worked, one would know if their regions were running great or on the edge of lagging.

Since King Philip is physics inclined it be great if he could iron out the rest of the Havok 4 stuff. Maybe even open up some of the fun stuff H4 can do.

Then I'd also like to be able to set windlight setting for my regions. Or at least be able to hand out free setting at the door.

Soo two "please fixes" and one shinny. A fair balance.

Joints