OSCC21 Suggestions

From Joreon Frans (Frans Charming in OpenSim) who helped organize [OSCC21]. The audience was asked what features they would like to see in OpenSimulator. Keep in mind these were informally asked from the audience which could be either viewer or server features.

What Feature would you like to see in OpenSimulator


 * 1) PBR Textures are only partially supported. It would be nice to see more of a full implementation to help bring the virtual world up to the standards of the gaming industry that people see when they play games.
 * 2) It would be great if Open Simulator could import other formats like FBX and/or glTF with mesh, textures, and animations able to be uploaded. That would make content a lot easier to bring in than the archaic BVH and DAE formats. Most modern virtual worlds work with these formats and some even have ability to pull from places like 3dwarehouse and import avatars from http://readyplayer.me.
 * 3) The OpenSimulator-Wiki needs a massive update. Most pages are either confusing, outdated or incomplete. E.g. the page 'Upgrading': It says "We don't recommend that you simply copy over your existing config files". Some lines below it says "Copy... The opensim.ini file". And it says "SEE Discussion at Talk:Upgrading". When you take a look at this, it says "last modified on 24 July 2009". And why are instructions at all in a discussion page? The Wiki software itself is outdated, it is from 2013. The privacy policy page is empty. It requires also RL name and address of at least one person who is responsible for the website and its content. Without that it is neither legal nor trustworthy. The same applies to the Mantis. Ever tried to delete your account or the contact an admin via email? Not working. Do you think, anyone will ever take OpenSimulator seriously?
 * 4) On performing a HG teleport it should be possible to access the welcome page of the target grid.
 * 5) One button publishing of Blender scenes to opensim. There was once a project to allow people to build a scene in Blender and publish it to opensim / realextend. There are now many many more Blender users and there is now a huge interest in the metaverse. This is an opensource project. It could be resurrected and bring a LOT of Blender builders into opensim. Here's the code: https://github.com/b2rex/b2rex. Here's a youtube description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8biEltPsWT8
 * 6) A massively improved system avatar, which makes mesh avatars obsolete ? (at least partially). Those system avatars are easier to customize, so new/older/handicapped users have it easier.
 * 7) Copy Complete Prim and Mirror Complete prim buttons or options for symmetrical builds
 * 8) Having the system trees and plants (those in Build window) updated to properly made mesh objects, but also in the ways they automatically snap to ground level. And when it is grass, it still has to be placed as mats keeping the terrain topology. So we have a bunch of standard plants in our libraries. At least you should publish information on how we can change the library content by yourself.
 * 9) Chat decoupled from core
 * 10) Secure HG protocol decoupled from core
 * 11) Code modernization/modularization
 * 12) Community support
 * 13) Interoperability with other platforms
 * 14) TTS and STT
 * 15) Instead of new features I would like to see getting the many bugs fixed and the installation simplified, because so many people just want a local grid for content creation or tinkering. if we could make it easier for them, they would also become members of the HG community one by one.
 * 16) The platform is an amazing and suitable tool for learning and social networking by design. The viewer is extremely powerful and has very advanced features, and as such, can generally be considered rather insanely difficult to get into for a new user. Viewer devs and grid runners could form teams, or otherwise work together, to ensure new users have access to that information globally, from the beginning. Things like object creation, inventory usage and avatar customization should be more accessible to all users.
 * 17) Easy access viewer for new users
 * 18) New renderer that can support VR - and then a Steam VR, Quest 2 or VRML client.
 * 19) A kind of .htaccess, so I can route teleport attempts to deleted or renamed regions to another region. It should in addition send a message to the avatar, and tell him to create a new landmark.
 * 20) A way for scripters to know under what opensim environment / scripting engine the region is running under . There is a OSL function to have that reported but its rights of use is too restrictive . It should be allowed to know that information from any scripts since X and Y engines are not fully compatible.
 * 21) Programmable TEXT-TO-SPEECH in the Viewer with associated VISEMES for AV mouth, face and eyebrows...
 * 22) Meta (impact of Facebook work on "Metaverse")
 * 23) Since most grids are just small standalone ones with hypergrid enabled, there is no need for huge MySQL databases. Running, setting up and maintaining a MySQL instance is far over the top for such tiny grids. SQLite is sufficient. The only problem which remains, is that the asset database blows up quickly, because content deleted from all regions and inventories remains forever in the database. If you are into content creation and upload mesh and textures very often, the database blows up to several GB, where maybe less than one is required. Therefor a kind of garbage collector would be fine. (one can export and reimport regions and profiles into empty databases, but that breaks up too much and is too complex for most grid owners). So I want to see - a garbage collector for the asset database - SQLite support for groups
 * 24) Support for Shared Environments that Firestorm has build in.