Crazy Suggestion - Or is it?

This is a suggestion for a new feature, but IMO not ready for the Feature suggestion forum yet, so I am posting it here.

It's kind of like a pre-pondering of something that *might* become a feature sugestion in the future. There is a technical issue at the bottom, that I hope to solve by posting it in general. If it cant be solved then it is never going to be a feature suggestion anyway.

Okay, so what it is, is that I want to be able to sleep while I am in SL.

By this I dont mean nod off at the keyboard (do that all the time already), I mean I want to be able to put my avatar to "sleep" in a bed, log off and have the avatar still be "sleeping" when I log back on. This makes leaving SL and coming back online equivalent to going to bed at night and waking up in the morning, which is pretty much how it is for me anyway.

I thought at first this was just a wacky idea that I had, but every time I mention it to someone they go, "Wow!, I would totally like to be able to do that as well!" (or words to that effect).

One of the cool aspects to this would be that if your friends come over to your house and you are offline, you would be sleeping in your "bed" and they could see you were there and that you were offline etc. There might even be a way to touch the sleeping avatar and send a message to you in RL so that you log on. (ie - to "wake you up."

I think that lots of us behave in a fashion that indicates that we feel similar about offline status equating to being "asleep," or at least having "gone home" for the day.

As an example, I live in a sim-sized area with three other women. We each have our own house and the rest of the sim is forested with a few meadows and so forth. I notice that when we log off or say goodbye for the day, *all* of us go "home" to our houses before we log off! There is no need to do this of course, but it "feels right."

I see this sleeping thing the same way. It's just a metaphor, but it "fits." It feeds both that impulse to go home at night as well as the need that many seem to have for an offline status indicator.

The major technical problem I see is the lag caused by avatars never going offline. If that can't be solved then likely this is a non-starter for an idea.

I have hopes that "ghosts" might be employed for the job however, and I seem to remember that ghosts *dont* cause lag, but I could be wrong about that.

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Some people sleep walk, or talk in their sleep. Wonder whether the avie would do that too... If an avie did sleep walk where would it go?

I always go home before logging off. No reason for it. I tell myself I'm crazy for this idiosyncrasy, then the voice in my head tells me to pipe down because he's working on something.

Well, the lag caused by it wouldn't be as much as you'd think, because there'd be no communication between the offline avatar and the server.

However, I'd be worried about "Avatar Litter" more than anything- tens of thousands of "sleeping" people around the world.

Might be kind of interesting to have bodies all over the place
Perhaps they could uh... slowly recycle themselves (rot) if they lay around long enough?

Does anyone have the definitive answer to the lag question though?

I know in the past I have lived in a sim where the skys were literaly full of ghosted avatars (dozens and dozens sometimes). The sim was laggy, but I never knew for sure if it was the ghosts or something else.

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I know this has already been done. When I lived in Mocha (in the bosom of betaville) there was a house within which it's owner lay asleep. I'll have to go see if it's still there; it was located near the pyramid. I also came across a napping trio tucked away inside of house in the toonville type area nearby. They were apparently scripted to respond to disturbances, initially asking to be left alone and escalating to ear piercing screams. For the record, I disturbed no one's slumber; it was an irrascible zebra who felt bound and determined to rescue them from the spell under which he felt they had been cast. Something about fetid milk, if I recall.

Haha!
This is a wonderfull story.
Exactly the kind of thing I was envisioning.
Did they look like actual avatars? or were they just images you think?

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Definitely looked like avatars. When I came across the first sleeper, I has been exploring the neighborhood prior to buying to see if this was where I'd want to settle in. I was a newb and thought I had walked in on someone; it took a few minutes before I was able to comprehened that there was no one at the other side of the computer terminal. She was tucked under the covers in her bed, eyes shut tight the same as the snoozing threesome.

You know: those double-ghosts, those evil-spirit imposters of yourself who can manifest only if you're asleep. (Relevant here only tangentially,perhaps; but, curse me, I'm typing my thoughts again ...)

I'd be very happy if avatars stayed rezzed but went to sleep when their meatbased controllers were offline. It doesn't seem right that my partner, who says "G'night!" and lays down on my bed, just disappears when his RL person logs out. He should still *be* there to be seen, his sleeping form a presence (if an unconscious one) in the world of Second Life.

Also, I can imagine the hilarious stuffonmycat.com-like shenanigans that would ensue ... and this makes me (evil, doppelganger me) smile.

Thanks for cluing me in about this website. When I got to "Sammy is All About Teatime," I completely lost it, lol.

coco

I've always wanted something like this. You would only be able to "go to sleep" on land that you owned, or where the owner has given you "sleep permissions."

"You have given avatar xxx permission to sleep with you."

I've done something similar where I rigged an avatar online checker to a particle emitter. Basically, when I logged off, it would display an image of my avatar in a cage, explaining where I was at that time.

I'd suggest doing something similar.

Heartily seconded, paulie!

Cool. (except for the cage maybe)

I had also thought of doing the same thing with just a 2D model, but a real "breathing" avatar would be so much better. Have you ever flown up to a ghost inthe sky and hovered in front of them? They are still very much "alive" looking (or at least as alive as any of us are).

How cute would it be to sit and watch someone sleep?

I think a lot of folks want this feature, or that it would be popular if we had it (not necessarily the same thing of course). I guess it's up to me to find out if it's technically possible though before I post it as a feature suggestion.

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