What is a HUD?

Posted on April 16, 2008
Filed Under Interesting Items, Newbie Help | 2 Comments

Contributed by PAYPABAK WRITER

Hi, I’m Paypabak Writer and I asked Shauna if I could add my two cents to her wonderful articles about our collective SL Fix! I hope to develop a series of articles that look at all the various HUDs, Heads Up Displays, that avatars use to make Second Life work better. I’ve been rezzed for more than a year and part of my First Life work involves Second Life, and I work for a Gadgeteer so to speak. I’m always on the lookout for my boss’ competition, so I’ve come across a lot of HUDs in my time. Hopefully my articles will be helpful!

HUDs come in various forms, including free and retail! I have HUDs that help me operate my Neko tail, various swords and weapons, sort through landmarks, scan the area around me for avatars, provide information on the sim I’ve entered, help me do personalized teleportation, handle griefers (and to a certain extent, be a griefer), vote on the popularity of stores and places, translate chat text into and from other languages, handle my schedules, and yes, improve my sex life!

Some HUDs attach to your person (technically this is an “implant” not an HUD per se) and work using the chat channel where you supply, for example, “/56 command” to make it do things or have it affect your avatar. Probably the most well-known of this type is the Multi-tool Hug implant. You type “/hug avatarname” and the avatar named is asked if he or she wishes to be animated and hugged by you; if the answer is yes, the avatars are animated and embrace.

Some implants work in conjunction with an HUD, and then you have the HUD part attach to your viewer window either in upper or lower corners of your screen . . . you have the option to choose where. The Crystal Gadgets Mysti-Tool comes with a collection of various add-ons and implants; it’s considered by many to be the definitive “personal assistant” tool in SL, which I’ll describe in a future article in greater depth. And there are HUDs that work without implants but in conjunction with something else that attaches to your avatar. The HUD for my Neko tail, for instance, lets me change its “moods” and the way it moves around. Many weapons work with the help of HUDs and I look forward to showing off my Musashi swords in a future article!

Some Web sites have HUDs to help you interact with them. SL Exchange and onRez both have HUDs that help you shop online inworld. I haven’t really played with these yet, but I will do so in a future article or maybe talk to someone who has! There’s a SLurl Web site that is devoted to storing SL landmarks so people can share their SL discoveries with each other and the SLurl HUD makes that inworld connection for you.

I just want to close this article by thanking Shauna for letting me contribute and look forward to being a part of SL Fix!

SLurl HUD http://slurl.com/
SL Exchange http://www.slexchange.com/
onRez http://shop.onrez.com/

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