How do animations and avatar movements work?

Are animations downloaded and played locally on the client or are limb coordinates transfered between servers and clients?

In other words, are animations and movements sent and played locally or are movement positions and collisions of limbs with objects possible as information is shared between clients by combining position data on the server?

Does this even make sense?

SL doesn't allow us to download animations. I'm afraid that's all.
And you'd better also know that any collisions of limbs doesn't occur because of animations. It is morph, not movement actually.

I think you guys are using "downloaded" differently

Seagel is right in that we cannot download and save animations to our drives for further editing, as we can with full-perm textures.

Tinker, the animations are indeed downloaded (transferred from a server to a client) and played out by the clients. Which is why nothing server-side knows what is happening.

To tell the truth, I've just known that. Yeah, it makes sense. Thank you, Ben.

So if I'm avatar 1, avatar 2 sees my animations loaded and played on their client and I see there animations loaded and played on my client. (In much the same way that particles are drawn locally using parameters passed to the video card.) However, the clients only receive the animation information and cannot save it.

That means that My waving avatar may be out of sync with my waving avatar as viewed in each and every client viewing it. That also means that collisions of say a hand reaching for a book case, would never be dected on that level. The avatar's mass may collide at some point but not an individul and extended body part.

I guess that means no one will ever develope a sensory suit and be able to wear their avatar then. (Wouldn't that be cool?)

No. And you're totally correct. That's (Second) Life.

I don't get it. "No" to what and "totally correct" about what?

I think it would be cool to be able to grip virtual objects using an old nintendo power glove.

http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/powerglove.htm

hehe sorry for my poor usage of English.

No, it wouldn't cool at all. The process of your thinking was totally correct.

I'm told LL had 3d interfaces in mind when they started work on SL, allowing for players to actually interact with the 3d world. But alas, too many patents stood in the way.

Yes the client downloads the animation, yes they can be out of sync. There is good evidence to suggest the God Mode Lindens reason can download and extract anything from the client. As to the users ablity to edit downloaded animations i'm not at liberty to comment.

The heck with gloves!!! I'm thinking SL would be more fun if we had Sensory Suits.

No one would ever leave the house!!

The heck with Sensory Suits!!! DNI baby! Direct Neural Interface