Hi Serenity
I've rezzed a copy-enabled, full perms flashlight at the entrance to the mall on the world known as Stuff. Just rightclick & Take copy. There's no animation but by default it should go to the righthand when you use Wear. As I said, it is very basic.
In terms of your general comments, I haven't been in SL for some time but I can well imagine that the competition from other platforms has been beneficial for SL. As a platform I find OpenSim to be largely comparable and in some respects (cost of land, scripting via OSSL) most likely better. Clearly the userbase is smaller and the Kitely Market lacks the depth of SL's. However, the former is relatively unimportant to educators and the latter not so crucial if you are doing either very basic or fairly innovative things as I mostly do -- and are not at all fashion conscious! I appreciate that might be a minority perspective.
There is, of course, some excellent content on the Kitely Market and also inworld, much of which is also available and considered first-rate in SL.
As an example of innovation I would mention that over the last few days I have scripted an OSSL-based graphing tool that allows you to create simple charts without recourse to MOAP. I haven't seen anything like that in SL that didn't depend on clunky prims or particles because you can't easily create dynamic textures. Likewise, being able to create notecards dynamically has been very useful. I'm also pleased to avoid SL charges associated with uploading images and mesh (easily forgotten). And I like being able to archive regions as OAR files
Yes, there are some annoyances, most notably the default sit orientation though this is easily fixed using the free Magic Sit Kit. Most of the others have not proven to be an issue for me on Kitely. Use of OpenSim-specific OSSL commands can cause issues where grids have them disabled but, as I just found out, they are more flexible than the equivalents in SL. Ace scripters like Handy and Kayaker will identify gaps and bugs but historically that was true for SL as well.
Incidentally, the URL I provided to Ferd Frederix's collection of scripts (the largest anywhere to my knowledge) changed recently as Ferd moved his operation from SL to OpenSim. Perhaps people will add comments on whether scripts work OK or not in OpenSim. That would be useful. I think Fleep Tuque also maintains a list of OpenSim-tested scripts available from FleepGrid. Many SL-specific scripts can be adapted fairly readily to OpenSim but, yes, it helps to know something about scripting first.
Even with the long hiatus and being excited to return to all the new stuff, seems like OS still can't pull itself out of the 2010 era and work out collisions and teleporting avis and damage and flying and bullets and trains.
Collisions work OK as far as I know.
Teleporting avis works well using osTeleportAgent
Damage works same as in SL but has additional OSSL commands
Flying (avatars? vehicles? Keith and Kayaker can comment better on the latter)
Bullets (not an interest of mine but I modified a script from the Scripting Recipes for Second Life book which are most likely available from that URL I gave you)
Trains (I haven't tried it but Oddball Otoole has a freebie train kit; there was an excellent roller coaster on OSgrid)
As to the other stuff, have patience...
So out of everything on the list, looks like a door and flashlight are about all I'll be able to expect.
