Sit a spell. Or don't

A recent scripting forum post asked for help with Second Life objects we sit on, and listed examples: a prize-awarding chair, a dance pole, and a teleporter. That list reminded me how often in SL we use a "sit" interaction to trigger some wholly unrelated event -- nothing about conventional "sitting" at all -- because scripts get these handy artefacts of the avatar being on a scripted seat assembly.

Teleporting, for example. Scripters have several variants of "sit teleporters" but anybody new to SL must wonder why ever they should "sit" on a thing in order to be transported somewhere else. After a while we get so used to it that we worry that, instead, walk-thru (Experience) portals might "break immersion" -- as if being transported by sitting is somehow more intuitive. We can disguise the "sittingness" of the interaction with llSetSitText() so the right-click menu shows something like "Teleport" instead of "Sit here" but still it involves an explicit right-click gesture. Or, we could make the teleport trigger with a left click with a llSetClickAction of _SIT, but that makes a mouse cursor of a chair -- hardly universal symbol for teleportation!

I have no idea why a prize chair should be a chair. Somebody scripted one that way once, I guess. Maybe it gives a hint of exclusion to others who'd want to claim the prize? Because the sitter is occupying the space while the prize is distributed, so nobody else confuses the process? From the prizewinner's point of view, though, the chair is just weird. Analogue of a throne for coronation? Seems a stretch.

Even though dancing isn't much like sitting, the dance pole is the LEAST artificial of the examples. The real reason to "sit" on a dancepole is to lock the dance animation to the location of a static prop (the pole). Again, using "Dance!" as the sit text makes it a little more intuitive, but a chair -ClickAction mouse cursor is no more evocative of poledancing than of teleporting.

Builders and scripts - particularly those developing with an Experience target - might consider adopting, whenever possible, some more natural interaction, even if it needs to secretly trigger a forced, scripted "sit" behind the scenes, and reserve explicit "sitting" for those special occasions when the user is literally choosing a place to play a real sit animation.

Reporter Qie Niangao

20200605