SL navigation helpers and scenic sign-on screens
I’m lazy about updating the SL software these days so the following might be old news to those who upgrade right away. After several passive reminders at the sign-on screen I finally downloaded and installed version 1.20.15.92456. Second Life has had scenic island shots on the logon screen for awhile, but this one stuck out:
Once logged in, I noticed a new navigation help UI (Update 8/5/08 7:18am PST: after publishing I’ve been told by others in the comments that this navigation isn’t “new” at all, it’s been around awhile) above my avatar:
And one below too:
Here’s how it looks fit together (I cropped out the right side of the screen):
As you might expect, you can adjust the camera position using these navigation helpers. I x’d out of them. I can see them being a little helpful to new folks but man is the SL UI getting cluttered. There does come a point when too much information is no longer helpful. With the client being open source anybody is welcome to create an SL-lite UI, which maybe somebody already has.
Do you find the new navigation helpers useful or did you X out of them right away too?
August 4th, 2008 • 
TD Goodliffe • 
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comment | August 4, 2008 at 16:04 | individual comment-link
Those little camera annoyances aren’t new, in fact they are the camera thingies you could always get when you could access them from the view menu as a pull-down option. I remember as a very new newbie, I was instructed to use those to be able to turn the angle around 360. I found it very clumsy, and was so glad when I finally learned the much easier trick of hold down alt/left click/arrows on numeric keypad. I think that’s just much easier to use as a touch typist.
So the Lindens thought it would be “helpful” to impose this thing on everyone because they also think it’s “helpful” to newbies — but it isn’t. Teeaching them alt/left click is much better, and in fact now, there is the additional feature that if you left click and hold on your avatar, that also rocks the view around 360.
The worst thing about this camera thing is that you can X it out, but not forever. It will be back on the next log-on. There’s no way to get rid of it permanently. And that’s just inexcusable.
comment | August 5, 2008 at 02:15 | individual comment-link
/me smiles
those “new features” have been there forever.
comment | August 5, 2008 at 03:28 | individual comment-link
Interesting that your movement and camera controls came up as “on” automatically. Mine didn’t.
Both those UI have been around for many builds, actually, but needed to be turned on manually (under View menu). Because I use the up/down/side arrows for movement, I’ve always left that one turned off. But the camera controls are far easier for me to use than the keyboard, so I do have that one activated. It’s easily moveable and I have mine in the upper right corner where it’s out of the way. In fact, I have it placed over the top of my animation hud in one of my avatars and that works very well to limit the clutter.
Because you are right about the space too many HUDS take up. In fact, I’ve recently stopped purchasing anything that requires one as I want to actually see Second Life…not a bunch of control screens. So overlapping them (I’ve another hidden behind my mini-map, for example) helps.
comment | August 5, 2008 at 06:16 | individual comment-link
Thank you for the information that these nav helpers have been there awhile and aren’t new but it’s the first time I remember seeing them come up automatically as default anyway and they were new to me