When I first joined SL, I thought the default typing animation was kinda cute. Over the months it's really grown on me. Now I regard it as a completely annoying thing that takes me right out of the suspension of disbelief.Consider: the animation is meant to indicate that the avatar is typing a response. That's all fine and well, but if the overarching metaphor is of residents talking to each other, then typing ruins the illusion. Granted, instead of hearing a voice, we get text floating in a bubble above the avatar's head, but in your mind, when you read text, you supply a voice anyway, so the concept of text-to-voice is a smooth, unobtrusive convention.
I think the metaphor would be better served by having the avatar adopt a thoughtful pose, perhaps something like *chin cupped in one hand, elbow of the same arm cupped in other hand*, showing contemplation. Or anything that makes it look as though the avatar is considering its words. Plus, it's faintly ridiculous to have the avatar 'typing' on thin air, when the whole purpose of having your virtual world is to provide virtual analogues of real world objects. There are some fun keyboard objects that appear when you type that help bridge this divide, but they're not the default. If someone has already made something like the above-outlined typing replacement, I'd appreciate your contacting me in-world; I've got some money for you.
1. I know I've seen what you're talking about. I mean, besides the cell phone AOs and stuff, I think I've seen someone whose typing AO was just gesturing with her hands.
What makes this information unhelpful is that I don't remember who. I think I saw her while out shopping.
Posted at 4:50PM on Aug 30th 2006 by Patience Xie