A brand new(bie) poseball question

This is going to sound dumb, but it's one of those SL inconsistencies that I never had to resolve until now. When I sit on a poseball, I usually find that my camera's position is in front of me. I see myself face-on, sitting down. That's true maybe 90+% of the time. As I'm trying to teach newbies, I am discovering that many people look at the back of their head when they sit on the same poseballs I do. There's nothing "right" about either way, but I can't explain why it isn't always the same for all people. Can you?

I hesitated to post the question in this forum, but I have a feeling this is at heart a scripting problem. Is there something that "good" poseball script should do to force the same camera POV on everyone who uses it?

Camera angles are a property of the prim an avi sitting on. The camera position and target are set with llSetCameraAtOffset and llSetCameraEyeOffset. These values take effect when an avatar sits on the prim.

These values can be cleared by using ZERO_VECTOR as the vector argument in the function call. Good pose ball scripts will do this since, as you pointed out, most pose balls do not have one right angle for viewing. Also, all good scrubber scipts will clear it for you.

On the other hand, the pose vendors in my store have a back on them, and viewing them from behind would be useless. So I long ago set the camera position for the avatar to be from the front and at a nice angle and distance to see the poses. You probably know that this can easily be overcome by hitting esc twice and moving your camera yourself.

The only time it should be different for different avatars is if the camera properties are cleared. If those properties are set, it should be the same initial camera position for everyone.

Thanks, Cheree. I knew you'd probably have a good perspective on this. I like the way your vendors are set up, BTW.

I am prepared to set the camera positon and target, but was puzzled by the irregular way that various people were already experiencing the poseballs. I wouldn't expect people's perspectives to differ when they're sitting on the same poseball, so I was hoping that I had somehow overlooked an obscure toggle that some people set and others don't -- something that I could override with the proper code. Still, as you said ....

Exactly. I knew it was a long shot, but I figured it was worth asking.