park life

every once in a great while i run across a bug in sl. rare, i know :p but me being a good citizen, this is one i haven’t heard a lot of people complain about, so i decide to report it.

second life used to have a bug-reporting feature built into the client. it popped up a little window where it asked you a few questions, and you could automatically include a screenshot of whatever you’re doing. then it whisked it off to a big labratory somewhere with lots of blinking lights and you went right back to your pixels.

but not anymore. now they have jira! a comprehensive end-to-end proactive solution for your bug reporting needs. it’s basically an issue tracking web app for quality/testing departments. i assume. it is clearly aimed at programmers, those working on sl; but not actual users of sl.

and off i go…

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i was reading about avatar height in one of the forums, and the discussion seemed to go the way these normally do. people start to compare their heights, measured by one of the scripted height detectors, then someone pipes in and says that those aren’t accurate. it’s a bit of a downer for the conversation, but that is true. they only measure up to the avatar’s eye height (i think), and don’t account for things like non-human avatars. the only real way to measure your height is by standing straight, without shoes, and rezzing a prim to match your height. however tall the prim is when it meets the top of your noggin, that’s how tall you are.

it got me thinking that there must be a better way to do this. not everyone can build, and it’s really not that convenient. if i were to build something (and i just might some day!) it would need to be:

• simple to use. once it’s rezzed you would ideally do as little as possible. there shouldn’t be any setup or configuration. the current height detectors just require a click, and with what i have in mind i don’t think i could make it that simple, but that’s the goal.
• going along with the previous line, as with all good software, don’t add unnecessary features. get the height of anyone who uses it, and say what that height is, in metric and imperial.
• combine scripted height detection as a best guess with some human interaction to get it accurate. the LSL guess might be way off. so you need a chance to get it right.

so here’s my basic concept of how it would work. it would be a doctor’s office style device, with a place to stand and a bar to rest on top of your head. when you first stand on it, it guesses your height and puts the bar there. it might be through your face or way above it, so you click an up or down arrow a few times to get it right, and click the big green button to tell you what the height is, which will be chat in both meters and feet/inches. and it unseats you so the next person can use it.

that is actually more clicks than i would like, and i have to wonder if it’s really that much easier than rezzing a prim. but i find design exercises like these fun, and won’t mind trying to build it