[Opensim-users] OSCC21 Audience Feature Suggestions

[Frans]

Hi, I'm Frans Charming inWorld, and helped organize OSCC21.
During OSCC21 I asked the audience what features they would like to see in
OpenSimulator.

We were doing our post mortem for the conference today, and thought it
might be useful to share their responses with the community.
Keep in mind these were informally asked from the audience which could be
either viewer or server features.
Maybe they are of some use.

*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 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   confusing, outdated or incomplete.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 The Wiki software itself is outdated, it is from 2013.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 perfoming 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 ourself.
   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 acces to
   that information globally, from the beginning. Things like object creatino,
   inventory usage and avatar customization should be more accessible to all
   users.
   17. easy access viewerr 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
   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.
   SQLight 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 - SQLight support for groups
   24. Support for Shared Environments that Firestorm has build in.

--
Jeroen Frans

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay