Dear Linden Labs,
Secondlife is in need of a more intuitive gesture system, and while the ability to create and activate gestures through the chat should remain, there is still much room for improvement. In Philip Linden's keynote at SL6B, he talked about the use of webcams to track facial gestures for future viewers. While this is a wonderful idea, and would make conveying emotions much simpler, the rest of the avatar's body would still remain motionless. My idea for a new gesture system is quite similar to the gesture system of LittleBigPlanet (naturally being much more customizable given that it's SL). Basically, a different point on the avatar would be mapped to a key, which when held could let you manipulate and control that body part. For example, perhaps in order to move the right arm, you would need to hold shift, then the right arrow key in conjunction : making your mouse (while these are still held down ) control the motions of the arm. So basically, holding a modifier key such as shift, or control, would in effect turn the arrow keys into body part selectors. The up arrow would control the head axis (for lack of a better word), the right arrow key would control the arm axis, and so on. The resident should also be able assign other points of control to the arrow keys if they have different gestures in mind. So maybe one user would want the right arrow key to control the motion of the right hand, or midsection, instead of the right arm. Also, if you held two gesture keys in conjunction, you should be able to move those two parts in unison. This system would allow for quick, intuitive, gestures on the fly, and would make socializing much simpler. I'm sure after a little bit of practice, gesturing with this system inworld would become just as easy as making gestures in real life. Moreover, I don't think this would be very hard to implement, giving that you have already made the head move around when you move the mouse. This wouldn't even have to be included by default, and could be an advanced menu feature. I would be delighted if you even considered this proposal for a second. Thank you for your time!
Mahabala Muramabhad