Before I even read below: Today I updated and installed the official SL viewer after 3 years of ignoring it completely, preferring Firestorm. I did so after hearing Philip's call to help improve.

ALL of my preference had been reset to the default at install, and I expected that. It's messier than I remembered, and I like it less. But I'm here to help.

If someone asked me to help them into SL today. My very first obstacle is what viewerer they are using, because I can't help if them if it's so vastly different from what the majority of people use.. It shouldn't be that way.

It's the small things like a built in AO, that would help us loyal FS users, to better serve new users signing up on the SL viewer. (And bring back the build pie menu we've used thousands of time a day for literal yrs -wtaf?)

No one wants to stand/move around like a poopy pants stick puppet until they figure out they even need an AO to stop looking like that.. and then they have to figure out how to find one? At least give those horrifying Senra bodies better options then standing around looking poopy and confused by everything. It's demoralizing, really, what default options we present to our new residents.

Both need to be addressed. Built in AO, that offers at least a couple options of more modern, clean, and dignified default avatar animation for walk and stand. They don't have to be spectacular, but can't we grow up from suffering the waddle, and scavenging for more reasonable 'basics' like a built-in AO?

vote for built in AO, very good feature of firestorm!

100% this.

We (catznip) proposed something similar to LL a while back, there were follow up discussions but they proved fruitless. Mainly dominated by trying to bring developers up to speed on animation overrides in general; Why people have them, why they might want more than one, and why the existing script interfaces are inadequate.

We proposed ..

-- A new "Animation Set' inventory asset. --

This editable asset would bundle many animations, under many common slot headings (such as stands, walks, etc). The animation set could then be declared as 'active' in the viewer. The server then automatically selects the correct contextual animation from the active set / slot.

Animation sets would allow for multiple animations to be present in each slot, and present the option for the server to select the playing contextual animation randomly, sequentially with options for timing.

-- Why this is important. --

Animations over rides are SL's body language. It is not uncommon for users to have multiple AO's and pick and choose depending on mood or context. An animation set asset would make selecting the desired 'mood' easy.

Any updated animation override system needs to be at least as capable as a script AO, or it wont get wide spread use.

Animation sets could be included with outfits like avatar physics - different avatars automatically get different AO's without the need for scripted objects.

Animation sets can be sold by merchants as a single item. Buy an entire AO, and get an editable single asset rather than a scripted object or animations.

Animation's should be copyable/transferable from the set to inventory, just like AO's can be rezzed in world and their contents extracted.

If this gets picked up please re-write the animation system or replace it with something else. currently there are a large number of animation bugs from animations failing to transition from one to the next and animations just waiting causing you to lose control input when it hangs on prejump and standup just as an example. the list goes on. IK is also a much desired function we want and want control over as scripters and animators. Give us the tools to make the game feel much better than is.

Preferably something better. The FS one mostly emulates the standard features seen in old scripted AOs with some extras for states that the viewer has better visibility on verses LSL.

The LSL AO functions were a step, but that was a very long time ago now and are basic.

I'd settle for a built-in pose stand :)