Force avatars to wear clothing or edit the default avatar

[Sully Sullivan]

Hello,

I would like to use our Kitely world with my students soon. I was wondering if their is a script that exists that forces students to wear a ceratin uniform or a script that prohibits nudity in a region?

Last, is it possible to alter the default avatar that renders in a world through a script? Not sure I will be able to deploy Kitely without these restrictions in place.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Sherrie Melody]

Unless you can control the students' computers, so that you are controlling which viewer they use, I don't know of a way to force an avatar to wear a particular skin. I think there are viewers out there that allow someone to control pretty much everything an avatar does, if the avatar is logging in using that viewer. If you do control your students' computers, let us know.

If you don't control the students' computers, you can force avatars to wear objects while they are in your world. If those objects are scripted, you can poll the objects to be sure the student continues to wear particular objects while on your world.

Now, once an object has been forced onto the student, the student could choose to detach it. But if you are polling to check that students are still wearing the objects, if they aren't you can force the objects back on them.

So, for example, you could make a prim/sculpt/mesh based jacket and shorts objects to be worn by the students.

Would something like that work for you?

[Sully Sullivan]

Thanks for the fast reply.

I would like to use kitely in a fashion that they could access it anyhwere from any computer. So, it looks like I may be looking into a script that does what you suggested. Just so I am clear, polling with a script would enable me to consistently retach their clothing? Is their lag in this process? Like once they remove their clothing, is it immediately reattached or no?

Thanks again for the info, you guys are extremely fast to help

[Sherrie Melody]

The potential delay between the time that a student chose to detach the object and the time that your script detected that it had been detached is up to you, and can be set in the scripts. But, the more frequent the check is done, the more resources you are consuming.

I would need to look more into it to determine the best way to do this. There would be a controller object in your region, that tracked the students, and the keys of prims that are force-attached to each student.

I think the attached objects would just have to communicate once with the controller when first attached, in order to provide the controller with its key. Once an object is attached, it is possible for that object to send a message if it detects an attach event and determines that it has been detached. See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Attach for info. It's not fool proof, but looks like if the script is simple without a lot going on, it should work pretty well.

Then, you could have the controller:
1) Force attaches objects when students first teleport to your world. Keeps track of their keys. After that first time, always checks to make sure they are wearing the objects each time they teleport in.
2) Then, while student is inworld listen for messages from those objects that have detected they've been detached, and force re-attach when that happens.
2), every X seconds, use llGetOjbectDetails to double-check that all the proper objects are still attached to all the avatars at the correct attachment point. Because it is a double-check instead of the only check, the X seconds interval could be longer.

Using the above method, the delay between a student removing an item and the controller force re-attaching it should typically be very small, I think.

I'd want to do testing to determine how reliably a message can get sent by an object when it is detached. And, do some testing to figure out how much of a load shorter intervals in the controller's periodic checks would put on your world.

[Sherrie Melody]

A couple of things to consider:

1. avatar's can change their shape and size through the appearance editor. A prim, or sculpty, or non-rigged mesh item set to be positioned and shaped to fit one particular sized and shaped avatar, is not going to fit exactly the same on a different sized and shaped avatar. Even with rigged mesh, I believe the fit of the mesh is affected by the avatar size and shape. So, say you made a prim that covered the chest area, and it fit me properly, and say I was a "medium" sized female. That prim would fit differently on a "very large" sized female. I am definitely not a clothing creator. Whoever designed your clothing objects would have to have real skill I think in order to create something that will fit all of your students, if they adjust their size and shape dramatically different from one another.

2.
you can make prim/sculpt/mesh based clothing no modify so students can't change the properties of the object, but I am pretty sure the avatar can still re-position the items once they are attached. So, if you have a student who is really determined to show his or her private bits, they could just move the item to expose a body part.

3. nothing is completely fail-safe when it comes to SL/OpenSim environments. Scripts can become corrupted, the environment itself can become temporarily buggy. Scripts can be reset, worlds can be restarted, but there is the potential for unexpected behavior for a period of time, and that should be taken into consideration. If a student, temporarily, suddenly becomes able to disrobe for a couple of minutes, what would the consequences be? If you are inworld at the time, you can force-teleport them to a changing room once you notice, but if you allow students inworld unsupervised ...

I wonder if defining rules of participation might be a better way to go. That, along with controlling access to your world, so that students are only allowed in when you are there.
What if you stated that, in order to participate in inworld activities, all students must wear Abc modesty skin, and must always remain clothed. If a student breaks the rule, they are banned from your world. If their participation results in some sort of grade, breaking those rules could result in a failing grade.

In the real-world class room, children can swear, hurt each other, and even take off their clothes, and do it so quickly you can't stop them, maybe even run around the room a few times before you can catch them.

But there are consequences, they get in trouble, go to a timeout corner or to the principle's office. It seems to me, that the same consequences should apply in the virtual class room, and that the burden be on the student to follow the rules to be able to participate.

EDITED: fixed a typo, "can" to "can't"

[Marstol Nitely]

Hi Sully. You might want to re-post that question in the Education section, under Communities in the forums. There are educators there who have been using Kitely for classes for some time now. They might have some ideas for you too. I'm wondering if it would be possible to have a skin designed that has the clothes on it that you want them to wear? I know that children's avatars are often designed with underwear. That way you could have a private world for them to sign on and provide them with the clothed skins you want them to wear. Just a thought. Good luck!

[Sherrie Melody]

I've moved this thread to the Education section of our forums.

[Graham Mills]

I don't have any easy fixes -- this is what I came up with last time when the discussion focused on access-level controls (lightly edited):

I teach at university level but age is not really relevant as accessing adult content from university systems is contrary to regulations. I can understand your G-default perspective but my (not necessarily typical) requirements would be better met by insulating students from the remainder of the grid. I've also commented previously about the need to provide class enrolments and it would be good if students could automatically be assigned to access groups and provided with education-appropriate avatars, e.g. in terms of dress and baked-on underwear. In a more general sense, while I might be reasonably broad-minded, I can't make that assumption on behalf of my students or colleagues. Moreover, relying on people to "proactively" manage access is equivalent to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

I don't think Kitely is entirely averse to some of those sentiments though clearly there's a lot of work required so it's unlikely to happen soon.

Scripting-wise, two thoughts occurred (plus one bonus one):
1. A transparent follower prim that becomes opaque and surrounds the avatar when some default scripted item of clothing is removed on purpose or by accident. People have already commented on the shortcomings of this type of approach.
2. A sharded world where NPCs replace all but the user's avatar, their movements being mirrored across multiple worlds. Not very credible in my opinion.
3. A cut-down viewer that allows you to replace but not remove clothes.

Beyond that, maybe some incentive strategy backed up by a red card system and good provision of changing rooms?

[Sherrie Melody]

This request to be able to force wearing of G-rated skin is pretty common for educators, isn't it?

I wonder how difficult it would be to add a couple functions, something like osForceWearClothing(string inventoryItemName, integer clothingType) and osGetClothingWorn(key av, integer clothingType), to OpenSim. Wonder if there is a request for something like that already?

[Graham Mills]

I'm not sure. Some students may find it irksome, disrespectful or silly to be told how they should present themselves and that's probably mirrored in a spectrum of staff attitudes as well. Moreover, many staff cope with the existing situation after a fashion (of course, those that don't effectively disappear) and, if it is an insuperable problem, there is always recourse to sim-on-a-stick.

This request to be able to force wearing of G-rated skin is pretty common for educators, isn't it?

I wonder how difficult it would be to add a couple functions, something like osForceWearClothing(string inventoryItemName, integer clothingType) and osGetClothingWorn(key av, integer clothingType), to OpenSim. Wonder if there is a request for something like that already?