Merged in a post from Woolfyy Resident:

Title: Replace the standard walk and run animations by a smoother MOCAP version

Details: It will make new users have an experience not looking like a 20 years old prehistory where avatars move like robots ... BTW it will promote the much wider choice at disposal from creators.

Anyway, it would be time to stop promoting what many call an oldish SL with only 60+ y/o real users ...

I couldn't agree more.

Linden Lab could even promote a grid-wide contest to design a set of new animations, with a prize (in L$... or US$... or a lifetime SL subscription... something worth the trouble, anyway!) for the winner. It would very likely be cheaper for LL in the long run, and at least they would engage the whole community — always a plus!

All others would be allowed to repack their proposed animations to sell on the SL Marketplace, and, say, get one month of free ads there. It would be a small compensation for the time spent on designing a whole set of animations, but the creators would be free to sell their animations anyway (so, no big loss there!).

And I suppose that a few ground rules ought to be stated, e.g. animations should be Bento-ready, and either unisex (as the original 2002 animations were) or, well, split between the genders (which makes more sense, although I suspect that this would require a change on the viewer itself, and might not be on LL's list of priorities...)

Yep, ya gave new avatars, now should follow up with animations.

Honestly this might sound like a non-issue since so many people are used to AO's since forever, but the default avatar animations are ancient and we are now in 2024, with how ugly the default animations are AO's has become mandatory, not optional, you can't expect anyone to play SL without a real AO, even when LL created the new senra avatars they had to create a basic AO that can be worn along with the avatar for them to look decent.

If the basic default animations could be upgraded into properly made modern animations, that would improve the new user experience while at the same time making AO's optional again instead of mandatory. I'm sure there might be more improvements that could be made to the animation system through a complete overhaul, but just upgrading the basic avatar animations for people not wearing an AO would be a good first step.