WEHT: Ragdoll Animations/Animation Overriding via Preferences?

I got killed on the side of a mountain in Entropia Universe this afternoon and it was beautiful. My avatar went predictably limp before slumping sideways onto the crags, but then gravity pulled my right arm over the front of my torso, the weight of which rolled me over and sent me tumbling down the mountainside like a ragdoll - gaining constant momentum until I ended up in the Loch at the bottom beneath some piranhas.

The words 'rag doll' in that paragraph are key. Whatever came of the Rag Doll Physics plans for Second Life, expressive puppeteering, and an in-world animator?

I also remember, sometimes towards the end of last summer, a Linden - perhaps Jeska or Robin - asking what we thought of being able to override the default animations via preferences.

It occurred to me that I'd have expected all these things before voice and Windlight - the first of which seemed like a distant pipe dream; the latter nobody had even considered.

Well I can't answer your question but I will say I too wonder about the much vaunted Havok Physics that was talked about. I'd like to see ragdoll and better simulated vehicular physics (and possibly some upper oscillation physics for the ladies 0_0) but it seems that it's been swept under the rug lately.

I don't think it's been swept under the rug. You have to think about it, most of SL is put together with tape and folded cardboard...it's been mostly a rush job partially because of the rush for millions of accounts by Captain Phil and partially by the legitimate popularity SL has.

From my admittedly limited understanding of the physics system they will have to pretty much start from scratch to get the desired effects mentioned above...hell MOST of the stuff they want to do will require starting fresh.

V-chat and windlight are systems that were able to be added on top of everything instead of having to integrate them. They're also two items that were made by other companies.

If LL was doing these things on their own I think we'd still have no sign of v-chat or pretty clouds (that don't work for me yet.)

I wonder if it would break content too?

No matter how hard I look, I cannot find the blog entry or forum post in which Robin or Jeska talk about allowing us to override the default avatar animations in preferences (which would be very cool).

I've found the blog entry relating to rag doll physics and the in-world animator though.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/07/13/notes-from-second-life-views-part-i/

July 13th 2006.