Mesh Body Addicts posted about Vista Animations (VA) new Bento Head animations. The post content is actually within in a video (vlog), Vista Diana & Lia.

The explanation she gives of the existing onion-skin animations used before Bento is not wrong, but most of the techies will disagree with it. If you are not into the tech, it is good enough to get you by. Besides, Animesh and Bakes-On are coming and likely to change much of this anyway.

The word in the video is there is a Bento Full Body AO coming. As it is now I have an AO for my body, the stands, sits, walks, etc. I have another for my new mesh head. And another for my hands. I am assuming VA is combining body, hands, and head into one AO. Jump to time mark 18:00± to get an idea of what the coming AO will look like in operation.

The video is about the Diana & Lia VA heads. You’ll get a good idea of how the heads and their HUD work.

How does it compare to my GA.EG head? I’m biased. They have the same basic features. I like that the GA.EG HUD has add-ons. I can buy more stuff that then shows up in the HUD. VA has better save slots. Way better. Otherwise, I can’t see any other differences that are technically better or worse. So, whatever else I could say is opinion.

From the 18:00 mark Lildaria explains what she thinks is coming to SL for new AO’s. I’ve been thinking similarly. So, I am happy to see VA coming out with their integrated AO.

The problems users are going to have is in the mix and match arena. Slink Hands, Belleza Body, Catwa Head… who is going to make an integrated HUD for that? Not likely to happen. But, I could be wrong. Animations for Bento parts may be more compatible than I expect them to be.

So, this development will increase pressure for users to buy everything within a brand. The problem is users are very likely to continue mixing and matching. I’ve still got a glob of demo heads in my inventory. I wanted a head that would tweak to the look I WANTED. Brand and features were less important to me than appearance.

Will I consider getting another head to work with an integrated AO? Yeah, but… IS the integrated AO going to be that much nicer? What is it going to do to my script count? Script memory use? Can I achieve the look I want?

We will have to wait to get our hands on the new AO’s to see. Then I’ll have to decide what tradeoffs I am willing to live with.