[sldev] Estate Windlight Settings?

[Jason Giglio]

Brad Kittenbrink (Brad Linden) wrote:
> Argent is correct, that is the planned functionality for WindLight 
> milestone 2.  Currently no one is working towards that milestone as the 
> former WindLight team members are all focused on viewer stability 
> projects.  We are currently in the process of evaluating project 
> priorities for the upcoming quarter, and WindLight server side 
> interfaces will, I'm sure, come up in the discussions this week.
> 
> I think it's likely that stability work will be a higher priority 
> though.  WindLight 1.0 was justifiable in that it included significant 
> performance, stability, and compatibility improvement work on the 
> renderer.  WindLight 2 is purely a feature.  Hopefully by next week I'll 
> be able to report back on how it's been prioritized.

I have to dissent with my associates here that are calling for no new
features.  I don't think there should be any such "feature freeze".  Too
often that seems to translate to "work on features *I* care about".

When a feature enables new forms of creation, such as Windlight region
settings would, I believe that is inherently more valuable than a purely
user-centric feature.

I've written an entire essay on this topic:
http://www.gigstaggart.com/blog/?p=13

So for me, the priorities look something like:

1. Serious Bugs
2. Platform Capital Features (that allow new forms of creation)
3. Other Bugs
4. Non platform capital features


Note that Windlight, in terms of its visual enhancements alone, is
purely in category 4.  Adding the ability to create, impose, suggest,
and share atmospheric presets is a category 2 effort.

Obviously you could argue that this is just a representation of "What
Gigs cares about"... Maybe so.

But I think the arguments are pretty compelling to divide up features
into two categories, rather than the overly simplistic bug/feature
dichotomy that doesn't work so well when your product is also a platform.

-Jason