Male or Female?

I have been developing animations for furniture sitting other things. What I would like to do is be able to have the script detect if the av that sits is male or female and run the appropriate animation. I have not been able to find a way to determine gender. Any help?

That's because there is no LSL function to determine gender. AVs are genderless, the shape has a gender setting but it's not accessible from a script.

Thanks for saying it is not possibe, but I do apprecriate your response. Let's move on...

If there is not a direct way of determining gender how else could it be done. Scripting takes creativity, that is why I am asking y'all.

i've seen a number of chairs that ask you "are you male or female" when you sit down.

yup, you pretty much have to assk the user... there might be an exception for people wearing xCite! items. I believe their newer products include settings for male/female/other. you'd have to talk to them about how you might communicate with their items to get that info... I believe they also have a website that might contain methods of doing this.

Even determining gender via Xcite! attachments will be problematic as it will require the addition of their script to the furniture in question (getting that script entails an application process complete with a demo of your item) and even then their own documentation says you shouldn't rely on it for gender verification because, err, sometimes people aren't wearing the attachment you'd expect based on their shape's appearance.

I've made perfectly good male avatars with the female button ticked. Surely, even if the LSL code existed, it would be tripped up. (^_^)y

Any scripter that provides APIs for third-party products but doesn't document them (let alone hides them like XCite is doing here) should be boycotted. I don't care if they're selling sex toys or swimmers, secret APIs are just plain rude.

Perhaps before you enter rant mode it would be helpful if you actually knew what you were talking about. The do not offer an API, if you become a partner you get a script that will allow your product to communicate with their product. They are well within their rights to protect their intellectual property and to make sure that any third party product that attempts to communicate with their product will not cause their product to fail as an incorrectly written script could.

Heh, I don't think it's incorrectly written scripts they're worried about. It's what would happen if anyone could send commands to those attachments. Griefers would have a field day.

That's an API. It's a *secret* API, but it's still an API.
Secret APIs, interface copyrights, software patents, and all related forms of intellectual property that are intended to prevent free interoperability between independent applications are obscene.
That's the usual bull that Microsoft, Sony, Apple, and every other company that uses secret APIs comes up with. They may even believe their bull. It's still bull.
Security by obscurity is no security. If their APIs aren't secure, that's their problem.

huh, I thought they offered info for basic communication out of hand... it's not like their regular channels aren't already known so picking out the protocol should be pretty simple. you'd figure for basic coms they'd just give the info out to increase market interoperability and add to their market share.

You'd think that Microsoft would support people writing drivers for FAT file systems on other platforms, too, instead of suing people for it.

"DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run"

I'm a furniture builder myself(Fornaphelia and soon Shibari). Currently I just use the everyday seen poses and build around them. I'd be interested in seeing some of your posework being the only thing I need now is a pose creator, maybe we can talk business. Contact me inworld sometime

If whoever is sitting on the object is using the Restrained Life Viewer, you can use @getdebug_AvatarSex to find out what they're supposed to be at the moment. The API says this returns the "gender of the avatar at creation," but that seems to be a mistake -- I've just tried it and it's returned whatever I've just set my gender as in the edit appearance window.

By no means either wholly satisfactory or foolproof, I know, but maybe the best one can do.

Maybe we as a group should develop an open-source attachment that would answer the question when queried by another device.

Should be very simple.

Would answer the gender question. Optional information like Tiny, Furry, Neko, whatever.

Only allow one device to be worn at a time.

Just thinking out loud, but what do you think?


?

This is kind of what I want http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1406 and http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1115 for.

::thinks about all the possible answers and miscues to the seemingly simple question of gender in real life::
ya know what... scrap the whole MorF system and use yellow and green poseballs... that should screw everybody up =)

Or can make them the same colour so macho guy avatars not have to worry about their machismo when they get told to click the pink ball if they want to get some =p =)

LSL doesn't leave many alternatives. Especially sensitive material I transfer either through email or through a private web server, and any information I send via chat from one object to another is encrypted based on a rotating key, which is also hosted on a private web server, where I can keep it more secure than LSL allows. Even if somebody found my API, it wouldn't be of any use to them.

That being said, why shouldn't developers have the right to keep their APIs private? Consider my situation, for example: I focus my efforts on interactivity between objects and avatars, and to do this requires a relay system with a library of functions that I've been building for the last two years. The relay itself I use as a plugin that I give away for free, so that all of my revenue comes from sales of objects which utilize the plugin.

Now, if I were to give away the API, and if I wasn't so security obsessed, builders with very little scripting ability could easily profit from my hundreds of hours of work, and I might never see a penny. Given the amount of intellectual property theft running rampant throughout Second Life and Xstreet, would you like to explain to me why protecting my work is apparently "obscene"?

By the way, you have yet to actually justify your criticism. All you've said is that hiding the API is "obscene", "bullshit", "rude" and that the scripters should be "boycotted", but all of these statements amount to ad hominems, and you have yet to provide a single argument to justify your claim.

Meanwhile, you're clearly not a content developer, are you? Or, not a working one, at any rate.

Sure they do. I didn't say you don't have the right to keep your APIs hidden away in plugins. I just said that deliberately preventing interoperability between products by forcing people to pay to use APIs is bad. You've got the right to do bad things. I have a right to point it out.

You end up with multiple independant non-interoperable products. We have dozens of combat systems in Second Life, at least three ring teleport systems, none of them interoperable with each other. And occasionally one of these secret systems will get popular enough that they get an effective monopoly, creating a barrier to entry of competitors.

So we either end up with a "plug nightmare" like we have with cellphones, where you have people carrying around half a dozen chargers for different products, or a Microsoft-style monopoly.

So you've got a Microsoft-style monopoly.

I've been writing software for a living for almost 30 years, and my Flight Feather and Tinycam are ubiquitous throughout SL. Oh, and I put my money where my mouth is... both of those are distributed full perm.

PS: I did not use the word "bulls**t". This is supposed to be a civilized forum and I try to avoid the use of expletives.

Damn...

When debating Argent, never bring a knife to a gun fight because that guy shoots information bullets that kill, maim, and educate.

Ok this male - female determination thing is just a bad idea.

It has been brought up before and argued elsewhere i suppose it is the first time here.

There are LOTS of people in SL who prefer to be gender unspecified. Women who like to sit on male pose balls for couple interactions every time and men who use female pose balls every time.

No person who is ambiguous about their sexual identity in SL wants to be pigeonholed by some scripter's overly complex chair. Many people do not want to be labeled and love the aspect of SL that allows a great deal of androgyny to take place without ever having to click a button verifying or choosing a sex.

Use external products to do gender/sex identification in SL, that works great because it is optional. The moment SL has built in identifiers that can be used reliably to identify an avatars gender/sex you will see discriminating items come out that only allow certain sex avatars to use the object.

Pretty lame.

This thread has been going off topic, but I wanted to say we at Xcite! have very good reasons for protecting the protocol in question. At first, our intention was to leave it unprotected and let people use it, but it quickly became apparent that a lot of people out there were intent on causing harm, not just to us, but to the innocent people who use our items. It is because of griefers that we have had to close off our protocols and instead rely on partner scripts for interactivity.

As for our partner program, it's free. We use an application process to make sure only legitimate business (not griefers) can gain access to the technology. We ask them to provide samples of their products so that we can be sure that the products out there that carry our brand have passed a certain quality check. We do this testing for the partners and assist them as needed. We do it at a significant cost of time to us, and ask nothing in return because it's in the best interest of our partners AND ourselves to make sure Xcite! gear works. This helps to reduce upset customers and serves to protect the brand name.

I'm not out here trying to defend our system as perfect. I'm saying that we've come to where we are as an evolution and out of necessity, and that what we have in place is the best system we believe for ourselves, our partners, and our customers. To strike down our decisions without first understanding the nature of our business and the difficulties involved in it is naive.

- Javier Puff, Xcite!

At the moment you're really stuck having to ask the person having a seat. I recommend using a Menu Dialog that asks them their preference, which may not be their actual avitar sex, when they sit on the pose. It could provide Male, Female or No Gender. Then based on the answer provided the proper pose could be utilized. I've seen this used in other furniture in SL and it works very well. Also you put the decision back into the hands of the person having a seat and don't have to worry about "Big Brother" emails. You can't please everyone all of the time so let them piss themselves off if they make the incorrect choice.

Good Luck!
Sed.