Current Best AO devices and/or Couple Animation devices?

I am curious what residents think is the best in AO devices (Not animations sets), Couples Animation Devices, and AO + Couple Animation device? I have been looking/shopping around and everyone talks big about their device, list great features, ect. But which actually work well and are easy to set up and use, and which should really be avoided?

The things that are important to me are that they don't take up much HUD real estate, are as low lag as possible for daily wear, and are easy to use and set up. What as my fellow residents would you suggest out of those that are currently available?

Zhao II is my personal choice for best AO device if you are setting it up yourself. I can't remember where I got mine but if you look up Ziggy Puff's profile in world, he has links to where you can get it and it's free. I also have a prepackaged set from Abranimations that works quite well, but I don't know what it is off the top of my head. I think ZHAO gives me a few more options, though.

At the link Ziggy provides, you can find the ZHAO II, but also a modded version with more UI. Very nice indeed.

Also, you can buy devil wings there.

Love.

SEmotions has a teeny tiny hud with two small buttons. Press one button and you get a pop up blue menu with the different sits/stands/timing options, etc. I use it rarely. The other button is an on/off for the AO. It's got to be the cleanest hud I've ever seen. The only problem that I have with SEmotions is that I feel like I look a bit twitchy. Each anim has a lot of movement in it, and I'm constantly shifting around. I've had to go and pick up a few separate anims from other creators and stick them in my AO.

I like my HUDDLEs HUD. I have two full AOs, a bunch of extra sits, and 12 or 15 dances in it. It's capable of even more, but I have everything I need.

Thank Oryx, I looked at SEmotions but it seems to be more animation sets they are selling with the Zhao device previously mentioned, they did have some animations I was interested in for their upcoming male collections so I will be keeping an eye one them. However the point of the thread is not the animations themselves but the device, so unfortunatly your response was not quite what I was looking for.

I think the ZHAO-II is the most efficient running one available - look down the threads in the Animation forum as there is lots of udeful information there.

Medhue Animations - the best - I have the female full - wonderful series of standing/idle poses that it circulates through.

Sorry Talon, again I am not looking for animations. I am interested in the devices themselves that run the animations.

Mortus,
I have absolutely no idea if SEmotion's HUD is different from other HUDs... I only have the one. It was just a suggestion, as I thought you were actually looking for HUDs that don't take up a lot of screen real estate, and AO's in general that are easy to set up and use on a daily basis. I found that one to be so. I understand that you're not looking for animations! You said that in the OP. I just mentioned the twitchiness as an aside. *shrug*

I am actually curious as well, but not about the AO HUDs themselves, but more of the animator attatchments, for example I have the vampire one that comes in the Thirst kit, and it is great, kind of. I have yet to find one that actually makes the kiss work, the hugs look great, as long as you are standing right in front and facing them, but the kiss animation never works right. What kind of things do you all use along these lines, and with what results?

I think you will find that all AOs, including the "hug" are based upon Francis Chung's open source script.

Really? I had no idea, I thought that there was going to be one out there that did it right. My avitar is 7'5" and it just looks so wrong when I go to kiss some 5'-6' avitar and end up making out with her forhead, you know what I mean? I was hoping that there would have been something out there that did it right and took height into the equation.

Ironically I use Francis' original Franimation with NO HUD!

I just leave the sit line blank so I never have had a need to turn it off, ever!

Of course it's filled with my own standing poses...

Absolutely zero screen clutter this way!

Every time I use a 'kiss' animation from an animator attatchment, it always looks so wrong... it must be because I'm so freakishly tall....

This is completely in the animation, the script has no control over what your av actually does when an animation is played. So it doesn't matter what AO gadget you use, the same animation will play exactly the same way with every AO.

What you need is an animation that makes your av bend lower. You can then use that animation with any AO/hug/kiss/whatever gadget.

It is important to understand the distinction between the AO device (which plays whatever animations are in it), and the animations themselves (which control what you actually see your av doing).

Then my next question would be, assuming I can find said animation, how do I replace it in the device? Just rez it and change out the animation?

Yup. Most AO's that I know of have a notecard in the contents that you edit to tell it which animation to do for whichever action you want, so you'd need to edit the notecard too. Yours might be different though.

Sorry Oryx, I did misunderstand the intent of your response after investigating. It is entirely possible that the Zhao used is modified in some way. I am not about to shell out L$ for an AO set I will never use to find out though.

At any rate thanks for your response and sorry for the misunderstanding.

I think I will go with the Zhao-II or some variant for my AO, it's just two buttons for the basic UI and that is great, I may use the MB variant if I find I need more of the features at my finger tips.

Moving on, Couple Animators. Other than the Huddle hud, which is to big, to clunky, and from the description and pictures I have seen just to complicated to configure and use, what HUDs would you suggest?

Depends on the device in question. It should come with instructions on how to replace animations. In general, what oryx said - you'll need to put the new animation into the gadget's inventory for sure. Then there will be some way of configuring the gadget so it knows what animation it should be playing. Most AOs use a notecard, some other gadgets may use a touch-based menu, or some other scheme.

Ziggy - I'm not much of a scripter, can you give your opinion on whether it would be feasible to amend an ao script to play a different animation depending on the avatar height? Animators do sometimes create variations of their animations for tall avatars and obviously a tall avatar can load the tall version into their ao - but could the script detect the avatar height and play the appropriate animation according to a parameter input for the avatar height range?

I haven't used these, but they look promising:

Pandora HUD - It is a couples animator that keep a list of permissions so that you only have to grant permission once, and it will work from then on. I think the deluxe version also tries to position you for hugs/kisses

Rendevous - This isn't a HUD, it's actually a couples vehicle. It has the standard stuff - hugs, kisses, sits. But it also has coupled movement - walking, flying swimming while holding hands

I'm not Ziggy, but.... in theory it should be possible. It would have to measure both avatars, and choose based on the difference in height. You would need different animations for height difference ranges, and...the function that measures avatar height isn't entirely accurate so there could be times when the wrong one was automatically chosen putting you back at square one.

I don't think any AO's do this at the moment. You would need to customize a script for this. (Not too difficult with basic scripting skills. It's definitely not advanced work)

A better bet would be to have all of them on a menu and for you to pick the one that works best for you and your partner.

FYI : The SEmotion AO is a modified ZHAO II.

Thanks Lindal, any idea how it is modified or enhanced? Or is is modified only in that it is pre-configured? Yes I know I am being a little picky about the subject but as they don't seem to sell or give the device away on it's own, and there is only one of their animations I am interested in, not even the set, I am curious as to if it would be worth my while to buy the whole set for the modified Zhao, or just wait till I can buy that single animation.