What's The Next Big Thing?

(I probably should have put this in Feature Suggestions, but I think we'll get more discussion here. Millie, feel free to move it if you think it best.)

We've seen a lot of technical changes and improvements in SL this past year.
- Voice
- New physics engine
- Improved lighting, sky, and water reflections
- Choice of viewer appearance
- Reduction in both server side and viewer side crashes
- Increase in build height

(We've also seen a lot of social changes. However, can we save discussing those for another thread?)

So, where do you think that LL should go from here? What should be their priorities for technical work on SL? Here are my suggestions, in order of priority.

- More robust asset servers
- Support for higher concurrencies
- Official support for mega- and microprims (I mean, full support. Let us rez the things directly, using the Create/Edit tools.)
- Implement shortcuts for inventory items, allowing multiple instances of no-copy items in the inventory
- Shadows
- Re-make the avatar mesh and attachment system. (I'd have put this #1, because I want a more realistic avatar SO bad...but I realize other things have to be done first).
- Grant mainland owners the same sort of management tools that estate owners have
- Support for additional groups. Or possibly, allow "groups of groups", where you can load one set of groups, and change them out for another set.
- Support for text-to-speech and speech-to-text
- More texture channels. Support bump maps, transparency maps, reflection maps, etc.
- Standardize the aspect ratio of images in the Profile tabs
- Support higher local concurrencies (more avatars per sim)

I'm sure Mono should go in there somewhere, but not being a scripty type, I don't know where to put it.

Not sure your list is gimmicky enough.

I think they figure out to work on by the number of geeky types that go, "That'd be so cool" at a brainstorming meeting.

a couple of things I would like to see:

better inventory controls

the ability to have seperate linden accounts on one avatar instead of creating an alt to hold money.

BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!! At least a new form email for the "to bad so sad, not our problem" email.

We have the day cycle now, how about some weather? Thunder, lightening, snow, windy days etc.

AV mesh and attachment points are high on my wish list.

But for something new, I would like to see a better way to put a web page on a prim, or at the very least, display text on a prim.

I'm only really a casual visitor and don't spend a lot of time researching what's available and what's not. But talking to people outside of SL, I'd probably suggest.

1.Browser based access rather than the SL Client

2.Implementation of the Mono VM and the planned support for languages other than LSL.

3.Allow seamless access to remote databases and support for SQL type data access.

4.Support for viewing/publishing/amending Microsoft and other application file types.

I don't really know if any of these exist, or whether they are in the pipeline. So apologies if I'm barking up the wrong tree.

B

Both of these, though in the former, I'd have to redo a good portion of my stock.

In order of importance for attachment points I'd like to see, with the first listed being MOST important: Neck, wrist, ankle, and elbow. Neck alone would relieve so many necklace issues...

As for new something new? A stand alone IM system to be able to communicate with those inside SL when you are unable to be in SL. And visual muting!

ROFL like this will ever happen.

If they ever do it they'd more than likely add a backward compatibility mode. I doubt they'd do anything that would completely hose all the existing content for avatars. The massive amount of existing content is too important an asset to SL. At this point I'd be willing to live with it though if they did decide to make all existing content obsolete.

I have thought about this because it comes up often. It seems to me that a utility could be made to remap existing textures to the new mesh. Moving pixles from one place to another. Whether this would be resident created or LL made I'm not sure which would be best. LL made would mean no cost to designers other than uploading the new textures. Resident made would mean a better tool. Replacing the billions of copies of clothing would be major undertaking tho.

That's an intriguing one, but I can't imagine how it would work. Not the technical details, I'll leave that to the code boffins. I mean, my browser's got no avatar movement controls, no camera controls, no object creation menu. When you get done adding all of the stuff to your browser, I think you'd wind up with a browser that looked a lot like the SL client, but capable of opening other webpages...and we sorta have that already.

Chip, this is an important comment, because I see it all the time when this discussion comes up. I haven't taken a poll, but my impression is that most merchants and most consumers would put up with having to re-build content if it meant a big improvement in the SL avatar.

I know that I would, and I have hundreds of dollars invested in my inventory.

Maybe an SL "light" then for when you weren't building perhaps.

It certainly would reduce the overhead of accessing SL, particularly for organisations which wanted to support more than a single access point.

The avatar and object control issues aren't really a problem.. I know it isn't anywhere as sophisticated as SL but Runescape seems to provide a pretty good example of a similar sort of environment.

I suspect there are lots of reasons for a "Light" SL Client, and as bandwidth increases I suppose it needn't actually be that "light".

B

I would have to agree - a lot of the stuff built into the viewer people do not need for every session in Second Life.

The building tools being a big one.

I'd put Mono as #1 priority, but not because of its "next big thing" potential, but rather because it plugs a big hairy security vulnerability.

Then, for the scripting "next big thing" there's much needed more urgently than Mono itself--and some of it will arrive Real Soon Now. For example, slated for the next release is the huge win of llDetectedTouch*(): instead of needing a separate prim for each possible point of user interaction, scripts will be able to detect *where* on a prim a touch occurred. There are tons of places of where this simplifies stuff and cuts prim count (consider a chessboard, as one example), and will enable content that's just simply been impractical to create before. (I wonder how many frustrated attempts there were to use llDetectedGrab() to achieve the same thing.)

So, the arrival of new LSL functionality is, to me, *way* more grid-changing than the performance improvements that will come with Mono. And even those performance improvements are way more important than the "syntactic sugar" we might someday get by supporting other languages.

Oh, also, off the scripting subject: I'd love to see the current sculpties have more of the properties that were originally described as in the works--most notably, a collision envelope that matches the shape. On the plus side, there's a team working on sculpty-like objects defined by meshes instead of NURBS... dunno if that would be a next-big-thing for the builder types.

*nods* I honestly think that a new avatar mesh is needed for SL to move forward and like you, I'd be willing to deal with obsolescence of much of my stock to see this happen. Although like you said, they might include a backwards compatibility or as Yosef suggested, a program that would at least allow us to update the old stuff to the new mesh.

Of course, this could be the hang up of the thing, but I'd do anything to get rid of the freaking rib cage shadow/highlight!

Inventory shortcuts (as mentioned by Lindal) and overall better inventory controls (as recommended by Fand) are very high on my list. These improvements wouldn't generate any stunning headlines, but they'd make our time in SL much easier.

It's interesting to note what hasn't been mentioned yet, but probably would have had a Linden added his/her L$.02: Intergrid teleporting

Wishlist
-Prim sizes upto 30 meters.
-Increased prim allowance/sim by some 50-100%
-A new type of notecard, let's call it a Datacard, which can be modified/created/edited by scripts
-More texture formats. Still TGA, but allow for more resolutions, i.e. 800*600 snapshots etc, not the distorting options we have now.
-A new clothes-rack system, basically an item which links to specific items in your inventory, denoting them as part of an outfit, instead of moving all items into 1 folder >.<
-Adding images as properties of inventory folders, so hovering over a folder for several seconds gives a popup of the attached image.
-Restrain the camera of an avatar by avatar access options to a land. No access for avatar -> no access for camera either
-Group IM controls for group owners
-Bigger grouplist

I want to see texture clothing for an a-line. Straight from shoulders to ankles or shorter) dress (Most Second Life dresses made with texture are shirt waists or suits. This is true even for a lot of prim dresses which are two piece. The alternative to this is the "barrel dress" which has a slightly puffy silhouette and is modest to a fault.

Avatar texture pants with a natural female waistline (not hiphuggers). I'm sick of pulling down shirts and pulling up pants as far as they will go.

A system ONE PIECE bathingsuit. I'm able to make one of these with prims but the choice is an egg shape or somewhat bell shaped silhouette. I'm somewhat plump on SL so I don't mind looking fat at the beach, but not everyone wants to live out the "I don't care about my figure" fantasy. There could also be vintage one piece bathingsuits for men or if the mesh were done right union suits for both sexes so this has possibilities for the Y chromosome crowd too.

http://www.realxtend.org/page.php?pg=media
^^^
Open Source Avatar mesh and attachment improvements that LL can snag and put in the code if they wish. OpenSim already is working on getting it going soon.

I would say that it is probably dynamic shadows, as per the shadow draft viewer already in development. It would be welcome, especially if the shadows on avatar faces get softer. It might also stem the use of facelights for casual, non-photographic use.

Oh, just wanted to throw in for consideration: Physical Avatar and the old Expressive Puppeteering stuff, which was exciting for a while. (I thought of this while reading another thread where somebody--Sindy, maybe?--suggested the need for Twister! )

Some improvements I would like to see:

A real "privacy zone", say the area between 3000 and 4000 Meters, roughly, that is only visible to others if allowed by parcel access controls. This would allow skyboxes that are secure, without columns of ban lines, and it's higher than where most people want to fly, so doesn't interfere with flyers. There's a JIRA out for roughly this idea, and it is similar to the "Privacy in a pocket" suggestion that LL already ACCEPTED, but never implemented.

Better avatar mesh, with more attachment points.

A way to privately link alt accounts, to share funds and inventory.

I'd like to see colour coded folders in the inventory. Allowing different types and groups of objects to be identified at a glance by the colour. e.g. Red= Clothing, Green = Jewelery, Blue = My builds etc.

Or something similar that speeds up inventory access and manipulation.

I have no idea how easy it would be to implement.

I'd also like to see visual muting of parcels with adfarms or ugly builds on them. It would make mainland a lot nicer.

Just thinking out loud here - I wonder if this suggests in any way that (under the hood) we are getting closer to interactive HTML on a prim face.