Now with the integration of voice in the main client some weeks ago already I wonder what the next big thing is going to be in the development of Second Life.

I mean, using voice is not for all and it’s always bringing RL into the game and such, so whta is the next thing going to be when you take in account that LL is making most money with land sales and so on?

I guess those are things that are going to happen sooner or later or might happen:

• Integration of Windlight into the main viewer. It’s been in the internal builds for a really long time already, with Lindens always showing pictures of it.
• Integration of a newer Havok physics engine. People have been waiting for it since years, this is for sure going to happen sooner or later. If it happens, this is going to enable for example vehicles consisting of more than 31 prims.
• The migration of the LSL engine to Mono. This is going to make the running of scripts on the server much more faster than today.
• A better mesh for the avatars. The avatars as they are available today show their age compared to other game engines, so a better mesh for the avatar shape would be quite refreshing.
• Better interfaces for integration with 3rd party tools, perhaps a stable API, too.
• The possibility to backup stuff from the grid on your own server. There are some little ways to do it so far, but all are still quite hard to handle and not for the non experienced user.
• More and better localized versions of the client.