More modeling options?

Are there any plans on adding new modelling tools or shapes in the future?

For example, how about individually manipulatable control points on objects? Instead of just resizing the x dimension or y dimension of a cube, you could drag *one corner* of the cube to create a sort of deformed...cubeish thingy. Or you could select two corners and drag them, etc. You can do this kind of thing in 3D modeling programs I've seen like Rhino 3D. I know by experience that being able to do this would help immensely (at least myself personally, so I assume everyone) in creating MUCH more realistic models.

I figure the reason we can't do this sort of thing is either that it was more complex to implement and design (meaning it could be added in the future), or that the hardware/software limitations of the graphics engine will take too hard of a performance hit. Although, if down the road we'll be able to (hopefully) add stuff created out of game using 3rd party modeling programs, the current shapes and options we have would still place alot of restraints on models.

I'm not very familar with the workings of 3D software on it's lower and medium levels, but AFAIK this ability only changes the shape and positioning of a model's faces (rather than adding new ones) so it doesn't seem like it'd create much of a performance hit. --Would it? Hardware optimizations can do some weird things...

The way the system works AFAIK is that there is a set of primitives defined on your computer, with some parameters. So you see a cube, the server says 'There is a cube at X with params Y,Z,A and B'

This is done for bandwith reasons - there are lots, and lots, and lots of objects that have to be downloaded. Up to 10,000 in a sim.

So it is basically a parametric model. The server never tells your computer where each corner on that cube is or where the lines or sides are. You computer figures that out based on the parameters given. If you think about a hollow cut square (will ignore the tori for now ) and how many adges and sides it has, adding the paramaters to allow for stretching those sides or corners individually could add a lot more data to be sent.

I'm not saying its impossible or can't be done. Perhaps in a limited manner the overhead wouldn't be too much - add one parameter that lets you stretch one side or edge. But then people would want more sides, more edges of course.

And texture stretching to arbitrary shapes is never 'trivial'. SL has enough trouble with texures on some shapes already (when the top size is less than 100% for example).

Such a system could be a significant issue in terms of bandwith and rendering among other things.

My guess has always been that the SL building system has been designed to more or less mirror the OpenGL functionality which is why they havent added any new building features or prims. In order to do such a thing as stretching only one corner of a cube they would need to either make a convoluted, inneficient workaround to make it fit the current system or redesign their system from the ground up
I should really look up the OpenGL specs one of these days...

Well if Eggy's right (probably) that could be a problem...

As far as bandwidth, you could always have people cut down on using complex objects like that by using a form of complex object tax (like a light tax), which hopefully would limit the number of objects that require extra data.

Or they could create 1,000 differently shaped cubes (which would be on the clients already) and let us pick which "shape" we want in game along with a size. rofl.

I had a feeling the problem is that they're using basically pre-determined object shapes, like Eggy implied. I'm not familiar with OpenGL either.