Suggested Settings Notices

It's often occurred to me that when I build something it's really designed for certain client settings, e.g. shadows, local lighting, etc. I even build things for myself with certain times of day or night in mind. But residents who visit my builds typically have no way of knowing what those intended settings are. For instance, they might not realize something looks off because I used shininess and they have it turned off.

So I was thinking that it might make sense for public builds to present notices to visitors that let them know what the "suggested settings" are. One way to do this would simply be to give them notecards or chat to them. Another idea I had was for standard iconic signs representing various settings. I attached a couple examples of what I had in mind. One sign shows that the best sun position for viewing the build is near noon, and the other shows that local lighting is used in the build. I'm no graphic designer, so these are just meant to get my idea across. If people liked the idea, I think the best way for it to happen would be for the Lindens to create the signs and put them out as textures so there would be a genuine standard everyone would understand. What do you think?

As an adjunct, I wonder if there will be a future scripting setting in SL that allows for the sun+moon to automatically be set to a certain position for the viewing of a particular build -- of course, a permissions dialog would come up to inform you that such a thing was taking place -- and after you left the parcel or whatever, the sun+moon would go back to their "normal" places in the sky. The usual gradual fades would apply so it wouldn't be a sudden jolting change in environment.

(Gosh knows how much of Chinatown's ambience is lost if you Force Daylight there! )

Yeah, that would be cool, Torley. If llSetTimeOfDay() existed, you could also set objects to light/not light appropriately.

Another way to approach suggested settings, if we're talking about adding SL functionality, would be to have it be part of the land info. So as the owner you could check some checkboxes for different suggested settings, and they would appear as icons on the user's screen kind of like the unsafe area heart icon.

But that kind of thing depends on new features from the Lindens. I'd be more optimistic about coming up with some signs.

Yeah, I get ya, Cadroe -- do what ya gotta do in the meantime. I like those signs, they're cute! Actually, I feel SL needs more helpful signs like that. Since our roads are largely devoid of them, symbolic indicators can help a lot and be an iconic guideline (in some strange neo-bastion of returning to hieroglyphs in the 21st century).

I'm gonna have to work on my Mouse Moves Sun jiggling, though.

so your house would be like those annoying websites that say "best viewed at 1600x1200 with infinity+1 colors in a browser nobody ever heard of while drinking dom perignon 67 from the navel of Cindy Crawford"?

i could see stuff like that for an art installation but it's just weird to build your house so it only looks "right" under one atmospheric condition.

I'm pretty sure my builds are best viewed with Jill Hennessy, but I haven't been able to arrange a test

Yeah I agree it's kind of weird for a house. But the last few things I've built have been a starship bridge, a Greek theater, and a Romanesque church. Features like shininess, particles and local lighting can make a big difference.

I like your signs, Cadroe. If you just post them outside your builds and make them llGiveNotecard when clicked, and make them free to copy but no-mod, I bet they catch on much more broadly than you'd expect, even without a Linden-generated feature to support them.

Very true.
I try to make my builds decent looking on different settings, but it's hard to make something that looks perfect on all settings. For example, without shinyness enabled, golden objects appear as a matte mustard yellow. Still viewable, of course, but very different from what the builder intended. Another example- I built a fireplace with animated light textures for the flames and the flicker of light it casts. It looks normal without the "light glows" setting. With "light glows" enabled, it's enveloped in a weird globe of light which looks very odd.