Features that SL should have

Hiya

I have this big laundry list of features that I think SL should have. I keep getting asked to post it, so here goes:


Features that SL should have

Things that should be easy to write in. "Low hanging-fruit"

1) buy->for friend
Usually we prefer copy/no-transfer, because you can make backups/create outfits, except when you want to give it as a gift. This way you can safely and simply give notransfer items.
2) More texture layers for our avatars
(under-under-shirt, etc) We want to combine multiple garments from multiple outfits. This won't add to lag for other people, because all layers are baked together into a single texture.
3) Ability to change a garment from a shirt to undershirt, pants to underpants etc.
Sometimes you want to wear an undershirt on top of another garment, without having to bug the creator.
4) More attach points, ability to attach multiple things to one point
Some places, such as your lower back are impossible to attach a point to so that it deforms with your avatar.
Some attach points, such as your hip, you want to be able attach more than one thing to. The hips are unique, because they are the only place that you can position programmatically, because it is not dependent on avatar height/proportions.
5) Shirts layer that actually reaches pant layer.
Right now, if you're just wearing a shirt and pants, you're going to be showing some skin in your midsection. This is stupid.
6) Objects (vehicles!) that are partially phantom
There's no need for collision detection to run on every single prim in a vehicle. This will ease load from the physics engine.
7) >15 groups
15 groups is not enough, especially because we need groups to help control building rights.
Auto-renew classifieds
Nobody remembers when their week is up.
9) A way to turn off foot shadows
Foot shadows are done badly. They go through your feet, they get in the way, and they can ruin an otherwise good photo which you want to photoshop anyways. Right now, the only way to turn them off is to edit viewerart.ini, which is highly inconvenient.
10) recursive permission set
Setting permissions on objects, object contents, and child prim contents is excruciating. "Did you get them all? Double-check. Triple-check. Whoops, forgot one, too late, it's pirated into the oblivion."
The ability to set a single set of permissions on an object and all its contents and all its child prims' contents would be incredibly helpful.
11) Animations that actually set your hands
When you play an animation right now, your hands may or may not do what you specified when you uploaded the animation. I thought this was a bug when I reported it, apparently it's a feature.
12) A slingo/tringo tab for events
It's popular! Tringo players want to find a game easily. Non-tringo players don't want to surf through the listings.
13) Once upon a time, a certain Linden once asked me "how much do you make selling seburos?" I answered, "I don't know", because I didn't know. (I don't calculate revenues like that) Moments later they broke down how much I made on all the items I sold in the last 30 days. It'd be nice to have that feature exposed to the users
14) A way to apply 2 textures to a prim face. This would be good for adding light maps to builds, or making the bumpmapping option actually useful.
15) More classifieds forums.
This is the real reason that classified thread-bumping was such a big problem - there aren't enough forums for items not to slide off the front page too quickly.
Clothing-Male, Clothing-Female-outfits, Clothing-Female-shirts, Clothing-Shoes, etc etc
16) Show as offline
Sometimes we want to log in and build, without being IMed by friends/customers/etc
17) How many prims am I using on this parcel?
Property owners can easily count how many prims on a given parcel you are using. But you can't count your own prims on other people's parcels. This is an inconvenient and arbitrary limitation.
1 Delete items in your trash that are over 1 week old
We often avoid "emptying the trash" because it's not easy to avoid deleting things you worked on yesterday that you still might need, but throw out older items.
19) A way to broadcast a message to all people in the group without having to start a vote. (Even delivering messages to people who are offline)
20) A way to allow people to join group while a group vote is running
21) Search and replace functions in the in-world notecard/script editor.
22) A maximum of 16 matches returned by llSensor() is not enough. You should be able to llSensor() as many people as can fit inside a simulator.
23) A way to exchange calling cards while offline or not in the same sim.
Sometimes you really want to have a dialog with someone in-world - maybe you've communicated via forums/email/offline IMs, and now you need to actually talk. But you never realize when the other's online, because you've never exchanged calling cards. Maybe make offline calling card exchanges cost L$1k if they're not accepted to avoid spam.
24) A way to differentiate objects that IM you, and objects that are chatting. They both show up in green.
25) llShoutToSim(). llShout() has a distance of 96m. This is highly inconvenient if you have two objects in the same sim, but may be farther apart - you have to build a relay system/network for quick communication. Basically, something like llOwnerSay() that works between objects.
26) When you bring up someone's profile, the "Online" status should be resolved on online or offline, not "unknown". This will cut down on the amount of "hi r u ther" offline IMs we all get.
27) Storing a larger queue of offline IMs. I'm sure it's happened to everyone - "maximum number of messages - offline messages capped". Maybe store up to 200 messages, for a week at most.

Things that might not be as easy, but are still important.

1) Privacy
Right now, the only reasonable way of having privacy is to buy an island, and make it invisible. $1200 + $200/month is a bit stiff. Ideally we could host our own sims on our own computers, which would exist only while we're logged in to SL. Ideally, we could even run our own private sim offline.
2) sim-crossings
Sim crossings suck. When I fly around, I have one eye on the map to make sure I don't cross on a sim corner. This is dumb. Sim borders should be handled transparently. Second Life should give you the experience that you're in the middle of a vast landscape, not set of square tiles roughly stitched together.
3) Actually loading textures
HTTP is 15 years old, and is contrained by TCP's performance. SL is only a few years old, and there's no legacy compatability issues. There is no good reason why loading pictures on a webpage should be so much faster than getting textures down from SL. And it's maddening sometimes, textures just won't load no matter what you do.
A friend of mine told me she walked around for half an hour, topless, thinking "oh, my texture just hasn't loaded yet." This is what we're used to now, and there's no good reason for it.
4) Fix up the avatars
Avatars deform terribly with animations. Our shoulders, stomaches and back-sides are big problem areas.
6) Inverse Kinematics
We need some way of telling an avatar to try and perform an action, like "reach for this pencil." There is no way in SL right now to get two people to shake hands, without creating a custom animation for each avatar, dependent on their size, shape and proportions.
7) Real-time scripting
The new script scheduler sucks a lot at this task. LSL was slow enough before. Writing interactive scripts with real-time constraints (like shooting a gun, driving a vehicle) give you unpredictable, and highly varying results.
Secure data-storage, accessible by scripts.
The only way for scripts to store any significant amount of information in SL, is to communicate it to a server off-world. In addition to being inconvenient, this is not a reliable operation, since off-world communication doesn't always work. (eg. SL's mailserver is not reliable)
9) Sensors that can extend into adjacent sims. Right now, sensing something just across a sim border is not reliable.


This last feature suggestion is a bit 'out there' and doesn't quite fit in with the rest:

I'm told that LL, internally has some software package they call "the love machine". Basically, as I understand, it's a way for LL employees to give each other feedback that's stored by the system. Things like, "Thanks for helping me track down that bug". These little comments are archived, and then brought up at review time. I've been lead to believe it's an effective way of using positive reinforcement that's helped increase productivity and identify good employees.

I frequently hear complaints about LL's customer service quality, often singling out particular Lindens. What about having a version of "the love machine" that SLers can use to leave feedback for Lindens? "Hey, thanks Some Linden for rolling back my sim so quickly, just in time for my event."

I'd love to see a Linden response to this. Francis, there isn't one item on your list I disagree with.

My only complaint: The list is so big I'd worry folks would tune it out. But each and every item is important

Great ideas.

If they fix the problems with linking flexiprims and physical objects, you could just attach an arbitrarily stiff flexiprim with 0 friction.
Or, more commonly for me, I get complaints that some object they bought is broken because it's trying to rez a prim that is (as it is by default) trans/no-copy.
How about "being able to change the priority or scope of a full-perm animatyion you bought"? From scripts? llStartAnimationExtended(string animation, integer priority, integer joints, integer loop_count);
Or even just being able to download a month's purchase history at a time!
Yah, I want llSetPrimitiveParams([PARAM_FILTER,integer face,integer type,string texture,vector color,float alpha]) with at least FILTER_MULTIPLY,FILTER_SUBTRACT, and FILTER_BUMPMAP.
And without losing inventory or messages while we're doing it!Yeh, I have a "Junk" directory that I put stuff in so I can empty trash, but it's a pain.
Kelly Linden has indicated that there will be functions to at least enumerate the keys of objects on land (and hopefully sense just the keys), along with new functions like "llKey2Name" that work on any object in sim... not just agents, to get past the 16 match limit.
I've been pushing the idea that we could use the unused half of the universe for this. Let people buy "basements" for their parcels that would be located underground, out of range of camera from any other basement or with impermeable walls. The basement would be relatively cheap, and access would be controlled by the landowner (ideally via something like llTeleportAgent(llgetPos()-<0,0,1024> in a script owned by the landowner so you could use it for "virtual tardises" and wotnot if you want).
Yah, texture loading is a background process, it should be handled via a TCP connection, not this broken-subset-emulation-of-tcp-over-udp they use. Hell, make a texture accessed via https://...sim...secondlife.com:9999/nonce/uuid. With streaming http this should be way faster...
Oh yes. Lots of scripted animation. llTargetJoint(integer joint,key prim);
If they come up with llKey2Foo() that I'm extrapolating from Kelly Linden's message, at least you'll have up to date position and velocity info to work on.
llHTTPRequest() should help. I also do things like saving a vecor as teh color of a transparent face of a prim.
Kelly indicated that other kinds of scanning functions than sensors were the preferred direction, though I'm not sure I like the idea that sensors won't be improved even if you can "llScanMyLandForGreyGoo".

I think there might be a way to do what you're asking for. We can "purge item" on specific items in our trash to get rid of them permanently. We can sort items in our inventory by their creation date (or is it modification date? Is there a difference?). So, theoretically you could just scroll down in your trash folder and delete everything below a certain line... you could even delete an item named with the date every day just so you know where things are in your trash. The only problem is that folders aren't included in the sort, so I guess you'd have to do each folder individually or something.

Anyway, an easier way to do this might be cool. I'm right there with you on most of the other features in the list.

Terrific features list, Francis.

Of course, there isn't a cat in hell's chance of even 5% of it being implemented by LL, even if they wanted to do so. It's a matter of manpower.

For making any significant inroads into wishlists, you need to wait until either SL goes open-source, or else for an open-source or megacorp competitor to appear, leave LL in the dust, and become "the new SL". These are the only places where sufficient manpower can be found.

I have my own wishlists too, not as huge or as well thought out as yours, but nevertheless occupying some significant thread space in the past, but they will never be addressed by LL in-house either.

The current rate of development is miniscule, despite LL's best intentions, and it takes no great feat of mathematics to extrapolate how far they can get under existing manpower conditions.

They got the first bit right: let a community of hundreds of thousands develop the content. They got the second bit wrong, thinking that a tiny in-house team can stay the pace.

Stellar post Francis! You should get a medal for that!
I was considering forming some kind of group in SL, for the sole purpose of trying to get SL residents to vote on really useful new features for SL.... basically, it'd be a political group aimed at turning "I wish SL had..." into votes on secondlife.com/vote, to make these ideas clear to the Lindens, who often say "we only accept suggestions if they get over 500 votes, and sometimes not even then".

Please, IM me inworld if you'd be interested in a project like this which aims to improve SL by getting people organised in voting for proposals like most of yours above.

Some other comments...


This is already in development. Even the guys at tech support for LL now tell me this is coming 'over the summer'... so I'm hopeful.


Problem: will cause a whole new kind of griefing where grifers pretend to be your friend, offer to exchange calling cards, maybe even offering you theirs first, and then declining yours, thus putting you out of pocket 1k.
Personally I hope they revamp the friends system entirely, and give people the option to choose who can get their online status, location, object modify rights, etc... be it everyone, friends, members of the the same groups as they, or whatever... and the ability to customise this per-person on your friends list so you can, for example, give your annoying little brother the ability to see when you're online but not to get your location and teleport to you when you're in bed with your GF.


Absolutely : especially given the fact you can just tell someone's online status by putting their name into FIND anyway!
The friends system needs to be revamped and have much more fine-grained permissions built into it.

Things that might not be as easy, but are still important.

I have a proposal that fixes this : see /13/35/105158/1.html

Great stuff everyone

Argent, I like a lot of your ideas, especially llStartAnimationExtended(). I think there are a lot of animators that, while good at making BVHs, don't fully understand how to exploit SL's animation priorities. It'd be a great way to 'fix' people's animations.




I really dislike the voting thing. I think the main problem is that it's not well administered/organized. There are many nearly-identical product features that need to be merged, and I'm not sure how often LL reads that list.

Also, 10 votes is not enough, and I don't think that 10 votes/person is a very good metric.



Well, I don't really have time to actually organize these kinds of things, but if you make such a group, I'd be glad to donate my 10 votes



Hah, okay, what I mean by "calling card", I think LL now calls "Friendship". Anyways, what I mean is to that it'd be bidirectional - you get my card, I get your card.



It's a good suggestion, but I still prefer the idea that we'd be able to run our own sims - it solves more problems. In addition to privacy, it's like getting your own personal sandbox. You'd be free to play around with scripts/physics without negatively impacting anyone

I agree, but atm, it's what the Lindens seem to want us to use.
I've tried sending suggestions via email and such, but they simply say "put it to a vote on secondlife.com/vote...".
The idea of a voting system, I think, is a good one... it's just that LL doesn't pay enough attention to the system, and it's too easy to create duplicate proposals.


Yup... and the only way to change that is to.... propose a vote on it.
Bit of a catch-22 there... unfortunately.

That explains a lot

That'd be nice but I doubt LL will get around to allowing that any time soon.

This is a great list. Everything should be straightforward to implement and would be a welcome improvement. I just hope they actually pay attention to it.

Huge list Francis, and I agree with all.

Sim crossings are a nightmare. From the way it performs, I doubt that sim crossing traffic has any priority over child agents. It should! I don't believe that anything is more important. Sim crossing traffic is a tiny amount of data, it should be processed immediately.

I also get the impression, but I have no proof, that travel between certain ajacent sims perform less well than others. I can give a demostration - guaranteed between two particular sims that always allow a walking av to fall through a non phantom floor, and this now seems worse following the change from all data going via a central server, to direct sim-sim communication.

My main point of interest though was:


Secure data-storage, accessible by scripts.
The only way for scripts to store any significant amount of information in SL, is to communicate it to a server off-world. In addition to being inconvenient, this is not a reliable operation, since off-world communication doesn't always work. (eg. SL's mailserver is not reliable)

I was thinking along similar lines. How about being ably to rent a MySQL table, for which we pay a flat rate, then another fee based on max size over the period (month), and some llSQL function to access it. Fast, secure, unlimited data storage, plus pulls a little more cash out of the economy.

thanks

Balaura

mmm, mysql tables for us... that would be nice

What LL are doing with regard to groups :
/139/cf/107872/1.html

Woot!
Nice stuff we are getting, even if it isn't everything we want.
I like the idea of a permission based system, lookies, I have 7! *bad 'nix joke*
What was the number of different ones? Abotu 35? Hmmm.....
Wow, the first permission would be worth 34,359,738,368 in *nix terms... (and all of them would be 68,719,476,735). Don't think we'll be using that system to define our permissions!

List of all features I support (most important ones marked with *s)

Security :
* Fine control of push permissions - stop griefing in a fair way - forum topic
* allow bans on parcels/sims to affect and account's alternative avs
* don't render inaccessible parcels for people who can't go there
* increase height of ban lines to 768
* copy protection for notecards and written works -

forum topic

Permissions :
allow creative commons licencing
split the resell and transfer permissions
allow an option for fair use copying
fine-grained control of what permissions 'friends' are assigned

Voting System : overall suggestions
* Allow an unlimited number of 1 point votes per resident
Give more votes per player
redirect people to voting system when grid is down
allow voting on acknowledged proposals
* clear up the voting system
link from feature suggestions forum to voting system
allow rating of proposals from "strongly for" to "strongly against"
let proposers cancel their proposals

Groups :
* llInviteToGroup function to invite avs to a group from a script
* huge list of changes needed in groups!
* officer-togglable permission to stop non-officers opening group IMs

forum link
a ban list for public groups

Billing :
allow payment via Egold
fine people who break the ToS/CS

Messaging :
allow emotes in IMs
better handling of notecards sent to someone who is offline

Avatars :
allow easier use of non-human avs
multiple attachments to each body part #1
multiple attachments to each body part #2
multiple attachments to each body part #3

Misc :
allow printing and saving of notecards
remove modify permission inheritance
allow swimming
allow an 'other' option besides male and female for avatar gender

For an updated version of my comments in this topic, go to /13/0e/112690/1.html

A shameless bump for a topic that deserves it.

I'm bumping this topic again..... because it has a lot of ideas in it which are still good. Oh, and people are starting to re-propose ideas from it in other topics because they don't know that the ideas are already here in this topic.

Here are my favorites, some posted elsewhere, but may as well add them to this thread.

Anti-light - a way to make darkness.

No ban lines (possibly encompassed by FC's "real privacy" item) - get rid of ban lines and replace them with a better privacy scheme.

Auto tab indenting in the script editor, so that hitting tab anywhere in a line indents the line correctly, rather than inserting a tab in the middle of the line.

A way to save your scripts straight out of your objects without saving the whole object or copying the script into your inv each time. Perhaps create a link to the script in your inv, so that each time you hit ctrl-s you save it in the prim and also in inv.

'twas always thus.

You're not going to get people to change that because, well, this is a discussion forum, and separate topics are how it's organized. People are going to be reluctant to reply to or even look at a megatopic.