NO SHAKING HANDS—gaping holes and missing the obvious in SL

I dont know where to start or where to jump in on this very unstructured thread, but a couple of thoughts...

One is that the holding hands thing is hard (as one poster already pointed out), and that's why you dont see it. There are "holding hands" attachments that are similarly difficult. Anything that has to have two avatars line up and coordinate that closely is *almost* impossible to get right.

The second thing is that I completely agree with your musings in general. Without being negative and allowing for all the wonderful things folks have created, I too was really surprised by the things like this (simple social things) that we *dont* have in SL.

Sl is a "social" game, yet even smiling (in a non hideous fashion) is dificult. One can't shake hands or kisss or hug very well. Well there is a hug & kiss attachment I know, and I *do* use it. My point is though I would have expected (before I started playing) that things like that would be built-in to the UI.

Things are working ok as it is, but if these kinds of actions were a part of everyones set of "social tools" I think it would strongly affect the sociability of the game, something the Lindens always seem to be searching for, yet they dont seem to realise. Think of all the misunderstadings that wouldn't happen anymore if instead of walking up to someone and staring like a zombie, you could curtsey or doff your hat and say hello.

We should really have an entire repetoire of greetings and salutation gestures as well as facial emotions, that can be easily keyed or worked into the conversation. The whole "gesture" thing is supposed to be that I guess, but it is really kind of "broken" and has been for the whole time I have played the game. Does anyone use it at all except for typing "/smile" or somethign before a sentence now and then?

I find all these things very odd, and genereally have to assume that perhaps (behind the scenes), there are reasons for not doing these things that we dont appreciate or know about.

What? Hotcakes are just pancakes? Well I'll be. Must be one of those petrol/gasoline, lorry/truck, biscuit/cookie things.

On second thought, I don't know about the handshaking. Sure, you can have a friendly handshake but to me it's always kind of formal. Especially in SL, which seems to have quite an informal atmosphere to me.

I can just imagine a video clip of two avatars in suits shaking hands and then being viciously firebombed seconds later.

An opt-in account (meaning you don't have to choose to opt-in) for real life names.

Great thread Torly.
The rumor is that Jeff Ventrella is working on better animations.
link to thread


Hell ya. That would be great. I have been thinking the exact same thing.

What i have been thinking about is also a means to have a visual way to transmit Townhalls over the grid. Right now we have text repeaters, but i think it would be a improvment if we could also see Philip. Link to thread

Keep the ideas comeing.

TRUE!!!
Having that Video Linden chap in attendance at Town Halls, perhaps?
That would be an interesting place to start with something like that.
It would be the fabulous to be able to watch the events without even having to log in, also. Good for the folks at work.
(dont get caught, tho )

Right now I would just be happy to be able to log on invisible. Not really invisible like in transperant, but invisible as in my name doesn't show up as being logged in. I would get so much more work done, and I wouldn't hold off logging in until I feel chatty, which is hardly ever.

AMEN.
Many would be comatose with joy if this were implemented.

This is such a great suggestion that I wonder if it has been submitted to the quasi-democratic lobbying tool (feature voting tool) yet.

~Ulrika~

Prop. 52

Prop. 52 Discussion Thread

Caveat: After reading the discussion, there seems to be some confusion as to what exactly is being asked for in the proposal. A more concise proposal is probably in order.

I don't think we have a good way to point at things. If I'm standing in a large room with another av, and I want to point out a particular detail on the ceiling above us, the easiest way to visually indicate the precise spot I'm referring to is to fly up and hover near it.

An attachment that was basically a non-damage gun with a long bullet/beam might serve.

I'm lurvin' seeing all the great ideas here!

Torley in every sim? Awww shuckleberries. ~blush~

I must gently nudge that "shaking hands" was merely meant as an amusing example of what got me started on this thoughtline... just something that is commonly done offline that isn't done here.

There's a lot of creative chaos in this thread, but the overarching theme is, well, obvious—

Where the magic lies is connecting that to other things that are dear to your heart, things that you feel you stub your toes over each time you encounter them and say "I WISH THERE WAS A SOLUTION FOR THIS BLATANTLY EGREGIOUS PROBLEM!"

Dianne got me thinking on a tangent, isn't it messed up we only really have TWO types of smiles (not including intermediary mixes) and limited facial animations, and yet we can move the rest of our bodies all the merry way? That is quite bizarre, considering how much time humans look at each other's facial expressions. Right now if you smile, it looks like everyone has the same dentist. Or something.

I'm also personally a fan of being able to appear offline—something which doesn't sound technically difficult to put in SL! Travis Lambert made a good post to the Hotline about it recently. And there's this thread here. Some will point to using alts to hide as a type of money sink, but that's awkward given the permissions system, plus the inconvenience of logging on and off instead of flipping a switch. I have very chatty times, great! I also want to have some quiet times, the whole spectrum, yaknow? I can see how this is a big boon for people who do customer service on here but then want private time with loved ones. It is a bog standard feature on many IM programs. It doesn't impose on others because it is a personal choice.

Saben, you make good points on how awkward the interface is at times. It is not the most flexible as it currently stands. When I operate SL UI, I see colors like a starfield on the screen. Commonly I get a lot of "bad" colors. A crude example of what I mean is this is playing a fighting video game (Street Fighter II will do) and getting some of my great 99-hit combos blocked.

Nephilaine makes an astute observation about "My Notes"—in a world of connecting people, it is peculiar that one can't easily display a global overview of info you've made. Heck, you could have made a note on someone looong ago and never see it again, so little hope of tidying things up until that's addressed. I don't know how hard this is to dev, but as it stands, hardly anyone I know uses "My Notes" because of this so-called fatal flaw. Notes are supposed to keep track of things, not scribblescribblescribble-and-get-lost-like-the-Forrest-Gump-leaf-in-reverse!

I can't tell if they're asking for Yahoo-Messenger/IRC style invisibility or the ability to become completely invisible and fly around undetected. Judging by the Linden quote attached, with some gibberish about private islands, I don't think the Lindens know either.

Hmmm.

If accepted as noted for private islands only, then it might spell the end of places like Neualtenburg which need the possibility of private conversations to exist as a prerequisite.

I guess by private island they are thinking only one person owns it and thus it's okay to be invisible, but in cases like Nburg we would be citizens of a state that could eavesdrop on our every conversation.

Not good!

Use an IM window.

Just because an avatar appears offline doesn’t mean if that avatar was right in front of you or in sensor range, that they would not appear, it just means they would not appear online in find.

The privacy abilities in SL are severely lacking, and as it stands now is a stalkers haven. Unless you have a private island and remove it from the grid and stay there exclusively, you have NO privacy in SL. How can the community continue to grow with this blatant disregard for the privacy of Residents?

Omg. Ulrika would become the Phanthom Prankster.

I think the invisiblity could use a proper proposal. One that is a bit more thought out and comes with some answers for the questions the first proposal creates.

We need no private conversations in Nburg as related to the government -- the system should be completely transparent and accountable.

Private conversations in the city however, should be private.

~Ulrika~

I'm a fairly private person myself, outside of SL... but at the same time, there's very little true privacy available on the Internet. At bare minimum, any yahoo can look up your IP address; using a proxy just gives law enforcement something to sieze and examine if you get up to doing anything shady.

So while I think a lot could be done on SL and I wholeheartedly agree with the "don't show me as online" proposals... the lack of "privacy" apart from IMs in the sense of keeping people away from where you are and ignorant of your whereabouts hasn't bothered me as much as perhaps it could.

So, I'm in principled agreement but I don't see it so much as a "blatant disregard" as much as "online status quo".

Except I can hide my online status almost everywhere else.

If you're making a connection over the Internet, you are ultimately hiding nothing.

Now, you have a point - which is why I agreed with you - that if you're passing through some intermediary (i.e., Second Life, or World of Warcraft, or an IM service) that doesn't come into play, but there's always a trail of some kind, just not one a casual user can follow.

Yes, it's a technical point. Technical is what I do, so I think in that fashion. A simple "don't let all my friends know I'm online because I need to get crap done!" switch IS totally useful.

That's what I said.

A citizen has to be able to have a private conversation or government would become untenable.

I suppose I could add "unless it's facsist" or something on the end to make it more accurate since all kinds of totalitarian "governments" would still be possible, but I dont want to use a lot of negative language and stir things up.

Right now we can scan for spys and chat-loggers, but the possibility of invisible avatars gives the Polzei just too much of an advantage IMO.

However, as Eboni pointed out, it does seem more likely that the original feature request was more to do with on-line status, and that it is the Linden response about "invisible avatars" that is the mistake. Making the whole thing academic I suppose.

Configurable, movable volume in virtual space with at least 3 fully utilized dimensions.

P2P teleporting or a telehub in every sim.

File transferring.

Whiteboards.

When the local grid is in use in the object editor the units should remain meters on the local axis instead of multiples of the size of the object in the direction of the axis.

Wow, thanks for the lesson on the internet! I had no idea it worked like that. There IPS just running loose and wild everywhere. This is crazy! When I got my CCNP they never told us anything earth shattering like that. Whoa. Let me recover...


I am talking about a very simple concept. When I log on Yahoo, I log on invisible, everyday. I make myself visable to two people, the rest of yahoo and the people on my buddy list see me as invisible.

It is not rocket science or some great internet mystery. I would like the option to set myself offline in SL when I am in fact online. Some of the most productive days I ever had in SL were when my Island was still private and I could be in SL for hours and no one would bother me....

One thing about Second Life we love is the major diversity in avatar appearance. I mean yes there are a lot of people with same skins, hair, etc but there are all those little details you're able to change that still make your avatar different. This is something you won't find in any other game that *I* know of. The unfortunate thing, as Siggy and some others mentioned, is that because of those many differences we can't have a "one size fits all" interaction. Hopefully in the future we'll have ways of detecting another avatar for lining up animations, etc. Would you rather have our avatars more similar and give up being able to customize so much? I've often wondered how people felt about that.

Nephi, one thing I was thinking the other day about HUD attachments was some kind of notepad thing lol. Something where you can have notes visible all the time of important things to remember that day. I'm not sure what exactly is possible when it comes to that but I thought it would be handy lol.

I would *love* to see more facial animations for sure. We have created gestures and done what we can to make our avatars more expressive but oh to have a more "natural" way. The way a person just kind of looks around, blinks, smiles, raises a brow, etc when they're just standing is missing. I'd love to see actual mouth movement and talking also lol.

not to be crass but where are the buttholes?

whew mentioned 2 punk bands there hehe!

ok, so you were the drummer for 'not to be', make that 3!

I put all my votes into the proposition I have linked below, for just the same reasons. It's the only thing I miss from TSO (except for a couple of friends I have lost track of).

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=479

Please vote for it folks. There's really no reason we should not be able to go invisible in Calling Cards, IM list, Friends list, and the World Map list, if we so desire.