so this is a topic that's bugged me for at least four or five years: why isn't there better support for game controllers and joysticks in second life?
i know.. i know.. the SL viewer has had support for game controllers since days of yore and i'm just whining to suggest it's less than stellar. and before i sound like a complete ass, let me just say, the people that added joystick and game controller support to the SL viewer are ossm, ossm people who did an ossm, ossm job.
but it always seemed to me that game controllers are "second class citizens" in most of the SL viewer domain. if i had my way, you could fire up the SL viewer, and start interacting with the world via a bluetooth (or USB) game controller and microphone.
even with the current support, you still have to interact with the system by way keyboard and mouse far to often to be able to kick back and have a quality "game controller mostly" experience.
the reason i find the game controller + microphone use case compelling is that it's in-line with user expectations about how a virtual world should operate. (i'm saying that, but i really, honestly have no data to back that up. if someone has data one way or another, i'd love to hear about it.)
i demand freedom from the tyranny of the keyboard! but when you look at the second life web viewer beta site, the video they play while setting things up shows avatars typing away.
i guess my point here is, thought second life started as a virtual world where typing was an integral part of the social experience, voice is overtaking (or has overtaken) keyboard use. optimizing for an experience which supports a more naturalized interaction with virtual environments just seems like a good way to attract more users.
okay. i feel better now for having gotten that out. would love to hear what other people think.
LOL - I asked the same question in 1997 with VRML. No one could give me a good answer so I whacked up a driver-interface for my joystick (which wasn't hard, as in those days, you got to know a LOT about joystick drivers from trying to make them work in 3D games and it was a much simpler system.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea why joysticks seem to be considered red-haired stepchildren, esp when most of the major games have interfaces that work well and seem intuitive for 3D space.