Feature Requests

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Second Life residents could post pictures directly from the viewer to Twitter. However, since then, Twitter has evolved, and this feature has been removed from viewers. The transformation of social media has also led to changes on Flickr, where adult or sensitive content can no longer be shared, prompting many users to abandon the platform. Considering Bluesky's rapid and dynamic growth, along with the challenges surrounding Meta and X, it might be worth exploring the possibility of integrating picture sharing with Bluesky. More information about the Bluesky platform: https://docs.bsky.app/

Sorely missing from the prim edit window is an undo feature, which should be multiple levels, much like is common in word processors. How many times have you moved, reoriented, reshaped, retextured, or changed a prim or linked prims and then realized that you made an error and wanted to be able to just click UNDO, so you can start again? With me, it happens often!

First I want to say I love working with the new PBR material features, and I'm not quite sure how hard this would be to implement since I realize that PBR Materials have standards that needs to be followed, but I would love to see an extra texture box when editing a PBR material that will override the metallic layer and tint the gloss on the object. With the current implementation of PBR we are stuck with a grayscale metallic channel baked into the ORM, with no further possibility of tinting. If we compare this to the older Blinn-Phong materials, then we had a specular texture (which could have multiple colors) and a sepparate tinting channel. Having the ability to color and/or tint the gloss on an object, like we could with the old Blinn-Phong materials, allowed for the creating of very interesting objects that had an irridicent shine, having one color on the actual base texture and shining in a different color. This would be similar to mother of peal or certain car-paints that change color depending on angle of the light. Due to the current implementation of PBR with the metallic/gloss layer baked into the ORM these kinds of shifting gloss materials are no longer possible to create when PBR is active.

Fairly simple one this. Grid wide, where we have objects that are textured with ONLY PBR textures, replace the blinn phong "default" plywood texture, with the "Base Colour" from the PBR material. This will have the effect of instantly "texturing" a VAST amount of objects that otherwise look like bare plywood on mobile, or just a blank texture on older clients. Now, in fairness.... I understand it's likely not feasible to retrospectively apply this to every item created since PBR was a thing - However.. It would be feasible to make the default blinn phong texture change to the base colour texture from the PBR, where not other blinn phong texture is selected . In other words, when a PBR is applied, "if blinn phong texture = default, change it to pbr base colour map." The same thing can be done with the normal map as well. Huge improvement, super easy. Just pull the UUID of the base colour material from the PBR and apply it as the blinn phong. The server has to call it anyway to build the PBR right? So, have it use that UUID string in 2 places not one and it's GG, EZ. This would mean people building stuffs with PBR would automatically be texturing their objects for mobile / older / web clients, but would retain the option to specify a different texture if they chose to . LindenLab has stated that PBR is the future (I agree, I love it) and blinn phong is going to be phased out, but I also know the lab has plans to use mobile as a big onboarding tool, and unless you plan to offer cloud compute to every mobile device, for free , forever , then those mobile devices will never be able to handle PBR. So some kind of accommodation needs to be made, or the retention of new users will be pants because vast parts of their world will look like untextured plywood. At that point we'll really have to work hard to remind ourselves why their experience is an improvement over a good text-only client.

Apparently, Invisiprims, a neat feature for being able to use a shape to hide parts of objects, was not actually removed for a reason; it simply didn't get implemented because it was never an official feature. Per the latest SLCCUG: https://www.youtube.com/live/VNeuZap3lyc?si=D90wKzjlQQruS4qU&t=3496 Link is queued to the time explaining that there's nothing preventing invisiprims from being a thing again, and it'd be neat to have the option again!

As a creator who already pays for a large community region, sometimes I want to dip for a while and have some private space to build. It's not economic to pay for another full region to be up all the time. Mainland homes and Premium homes are nice but too small for creating and have neighbors. Similarly, sandbox regions lack privacy. I'd like to be able to spin up a region that only exists for as long as I'm in it and pay only for that usage rather than have it be on all the time and the associated costs. Ideally, some way to backup the rezzed contents of the region would be present, so I can pick up where I left off. Better yet make a region save state an inventory asset so I can switch between different environments quickly.

Back when premium plus was first announced, there was mention of free mesh uploads as part of the package "coming soon". This is a huge deal to creators wanting to test, try and iterate on models and essential for collaborative building in world. Getting onto the beta grid is a chore, getting a few people together on the beta grid to give feedback is difficult. Getting a test model, surrounding contextual elements and other residents for feedback is impossible.

I've meant to ask about this at 3 past Meet the Linden Events and keep forgetting, but I'm downloading an update right now and saw the Donate button, so while it's on my mind... Open Source projects supporting one another is key to our mutual survival, right? Blender's Founder publicly asked for greater donation support earlier this year. The software that helps SL world-building remain free is receiving donations from less than 0.1 percent of its users. We need Blender. Blender supports us. Really! The DAE file format--the one and only format for importing mesh into Second Life--was discontinued in 2016, and Blender's Devs decided to carry it forward another 10 years specifically because Second Life, a fellow Open Source projeect, relied on it and needed it. I know SL is small and throwing money around isn't easy, but the conrporate fund memberships have 6k and 12k tiers that should honestly be a drop even for LL. Heck, it's a non-binding membership and can go "on hold" if the $ becomes an issue. But going through the corporate fund means that LL would get a designated board contact and designated developer liason as well. Linden Lab could actually have a direct line to the communicate about the tools we need. And, if LL is looking to increase its visibility? Second Life's name beside Epic Games, NVidia, Meta, Adobe, Ubisoft, Wacom... Anyways; it is a small investment in something very core to Second Life's needs, so a little spot in the back of my mind would feel more at ease if LL were to join Blender's fund. *I should disclaim, I have nothing to do with Blender's operations, development, etc nor with LL operations. I'm just an enthusiastic user of both, requesting an alignment that benefits each.

Some of the library plants created by Eric Linden track the terrain, for example Leafy ground cover Grass - short 1 Grass - short 2 Grass - tall 1 Grass - tall 2 The above also track the terrain as it is moved, which is simply fabulous. I believe it would be a useful feature to allow the creation of custom ground cover that was able to use this system rather than the current mechanism of having to manually create a mesh that follows the contours only to have to re-do or hack something else in if the land needs to be changed. I'll admit I was 6001 days old before I realised this when I decided to decorate some ground with Linden plants to match the surroundings!

I just learned that Blender will remove .dae export in version 4.5 (current version: 4.3). Apparently, Linden Lab was the last remaining user of note for .dae - the discussion on the issue can be found here: https://devtalk.blender.org/t/moving-collada-i-o-to-legacy-status/34621 Blender is a widely popular open source tool for mesh creation. The .dae format is the only format for mesh import currently supported. What is the Lab's roadmap-timing for the replacement?