The Calm in a Storm

Real Life has been rather busy, activity at Burn2 has been picking up, and I've been rushing to finish this year's Haunted House, all while trying to find some time to blog. So today I took a few moments when Second Life wouldn't let me log in my usual avie to spend some time with one of my pixy alts in a favorite spot at Forest Floor (SLurl) and share the view.

So many wonderful places are disappearing from Our World lately (Hamlet Au writing about yet another just today) that I really want to treasure the ones special to me. Some of the few landmarks I keep are for landscapes that celebrate nature and mystical settings and wonderful, lush forests. The people that create these spaces are truly artists, at least as much as those that use their skills for works you'd be more likely to run across in a museum. Do you have a favorite natural environment you like to explore? Feel free to share an SLurl in the Comments.

Unofficial Recommendations: Forest Floor

Like many landscaping shops, Forest Floor is a wonderfully photogenic place (SLurl) with many spots for you to pose your avatar with great results. There are beautfiful fields of flowers, stragecially placed furniture, and a fabulous horizon line.

Zyx Resident loves to sit in the shop's gardens.

But the best picture opportunities are at ground level (SLurl) where you'll find a hyper-realistic landscape dotted with with mystical accents and some of the best natural water features in all Second Life. Whether you use the standard sky settings or fiddle with Windlight as I did for these pictures, you can produce wonderful pictures with minimal effort.

The water features are exceptionally nice and if you trace the stream from bay to source you'll see that the landscaper understands how real life waterways form.

Windlight can enhance the otherwise plain skies of Second Life and really give a picture more feeling.

Every now and then you'll find some mystical elements among the hyper-real. The limited placements make the fantastic more plausible without overwhelming. Of course, almost everything you see at ground level is for sale in the shop.

For some reason my big pixy avie finds her way to Forest Floor nearly every time she is logged in to our world. All my avies have a landmark, of course, and visit now and then, but not with the frequency of Zyx. Often I'll park her in a pretty spot (they are all over) and leave her on the screen like living wallpaper while I do things on my iPad or other non-computer tasks that RL demands. Or anytime I need to relax, Forest Floor is a top choice to simply stroll through, ride one of the available horses, or even just fly about to absorb the beauty.

Still Snippy About Snaps

I'll take the blame.

Following up on yesterday's post about image distortion in Second Life, I did some experimenting to see if other viewers have the same bug. Midway through testing with the Alpha release Phoennix-Firestorm viewer (Web) it occurred to me that I was using a 1920px x 1080px (HD spec) window yet I was setting the snap size to 2048px x 2048px, the size I use whenever I have the viewer set to fill the screen on my 27" iMac. This must have forced the water in the scene to show its tile pattern, remove shaders, and other nasty things that I've seen in other pictures. Trying the same shot with the size set within the window size limits, everything was fine. /me slaps her own wrist ...

That will learn me, I guess. Reminds me of the time I was given a camera by someone and took their word for it that there was film inside. After that fiasco I was hard pressed to ever grab any camera without checking for tension in the rewind knob, even if the the camera back had a film canister ID window. From here on out I'm going to do my best to shoot with the viewer maximized and checking all the snap settings at each setup, even for casual pictures.

Snippy About Snaps

This image makes me a bit angry. Understand, mind you, that photography is one of my loves in Real Life. I spent most of my middle school and high school life with a camera around my neck or in my pocket or both, always as a part of an independent study art class. My preference is reportage-style regardless of the subject, though not for journalism. This means I like to capture a scene with as little manipulation as possible, relying primarily on natural light, composition, timing, exposure, focal length, depth-of-field, and shutter speed, rather than on exotic lighting, filters, or post-processing to express my vision of "truth" in the final image. None of my work has been exhibited since high school, and, admittedly, I don't take many pictures any more. But I'd like to do more in Second Life. The tools are more limited in many senses, but there are some very unique creative opportunities. But at least one technical issue is getting my goat and parading it back and forth, mocking me.

Take this picture, for example (click for a larger view if Blogger lets you). Compare the water in this one to the water in the first shot. What you see here is what I saw on my screen. Yet when I used the Snapshot tool in the Official viewer or in the Phoenix viewer, the water appears as you see it in the first image, each and every time. The nice color and gradation is gone, replaced with a harsh sea below the horizon. In other pictures I've snapped, you can tell the water is a tiled texture because some squares will have different "waves" or reflections or even color.

Here is the real rub: I'd report it, but my experience with Second Life support over the years is spotty, at best. A bug like this won't get fixed. No bug I've ever had like this ... stripes on the landscape, stripes on my skin, patchwork invisibility in water and ground textures, and other examples never got fixed. They went away or became as frequent as rain in the Sahara when new viewers were introduced, but fixes were never made.

I can edit this bug this in post, though I'd rather not. It isn't my style. What I'll probably end up doing is composing differently "in camera." And choosing my settings with more care. Or going through the hassle of cropping screen captures. There is some really spectacular water in Second Life and I'd hate to exclude it.

-------------------

Someone is going to ask: The location is ground level at the Forest Floor store (SLurl), a gorgeous place to visit ... just magical enough. The Windlight preset is [TOR] Wuxia Nights. The outfit is a Bare Rose members-only freebie called "Spades Kang Shirt" (though it comes with the pants you see and I tinted the belt red). No post processing on either of these pictures.

Quick Pic - Machinima Studios

My breath was taken away at Machinama Studios (SLurl). Very impressive. I hope to get more time to explore here and a couple other places I learned about from the Lucky Kitty Crew group today. A guided tour is available at the entrance, but I'm going to need a handy translator as I don't read Japanese. I don't know what the rest of the place is about yet. I'll explore until my wife logs in tonight. From what I saw on the tour and this impressive sculpture I have to automatically recommend a visit.

Busy Busy Busy

I've been spending quality time with my lovely wife, Angela, busy at the Isle of Lesbos where I make signs, stand guard and have started a new "hunt" project. My hard drive is filled with pics backed up from my explorations, but until I get the time, enjoy these:


One of my recent projects at the Isle ... signs for the new area where folks can rez their purchases. This is the Instructional one. Another was a simple arrow. I work mostly in Acorn but often use GIMP for some of the trickier edits where I really wish I had a $700+ program.

I love Japanese sims. My friend Serenkitty is always recommending them for cool freebies. I go for the great architecture or unique builds ... and things like this :)

The Garden of Da Vinci. I don't know, but I keep wandering by the place. This is not my pic. I got it in-world somewhere. Possibly at the Garden.

Some of the the things I do

Semi-unofficially -- mostly because no one has stopped me -- I build things and add activities at the Isle of Lesbos (IOL), often getting approval after the fact. Like the skydiving center. At one time it was an attraction in the IOL Mall sim. When the mall was recently redesigned and rebuilt there was no provision for sky diving so I simply added it to the main Isle. No one said take it out so I left it there with only minor tweaks here and there. Sensing no further objections I beefed it up today. That is a genuine Cubey Terra jump chair in the foreground. The original base jump at 300 meters (250m above target) is still in place and like nearly all activities on the Isle, the facility is free to use. In the background you can see the free ice skating pond I built.

Not free but nonetheless still fun is fishing! After adding the 7Seas Fishing kit to both the mall sim and parts of the main Isle not too long ago and then telling the owner about it, I've been given the go-ahead (and some cash!) to hold fishing contests. This is a picture from one held yesterday. Turnout is usually decent, which is good as the owner hopes this build traffic in the mall sim. I might try increasing the prize and an "all-nakie" tournament is in my mind for the beach on the main Isle. If anyone has suggestions for making the events more fun, drop a note card on me in-world or leave a comment on this post.

I might schedule a nakie fishing tournament before my Nakie Beach Party in June. This party is held the first Saturday of each month from 3-5pm SLT and, of course, it is Ladies-Only. With the nudity and a prize starting at L$3,000 the party is usually popular and sometimes gathers cheaters. The Saturday parties always start with a prize that large, but sometimes they grow. The 17 May party rapidly built up to a L$25,000 prize with over 60 folks attending.

Many of them originally showed up for our big draw, DJ Kuthola Homewood. If you need a music at an event, contact her. She's awesome.

Look for future posts about IOL ... we are always growing and adapting to make our sisters happy.

Isle of Tranquility

A friend of mine nabbed an adorable cupcake costume and I had to have one, too. So I went to the nearest YumYum store and bought it (only L$99!!!). The box had a landmark for a "main store" so I had to go there (SLurl). Boy was that worth the trip! They had some nice freebies but mostly is was a beautiful build .. and I got to dive into a giant plate of cupcakes!

:::giggles::: The display is for sale, but I didn't get it. Instead I went outside and explored the rest of the Isle of Tranquility (SLurl).

Like the store, the rest of the sim is very attractively done. Some skimping on things like wrought iron railings, but most folks won't notice. In the pic above I'm looking westerly from a main square-like area. The water is nicely integrated and trees are everywhere. My biggest smile came from my whole visit came from the generally excellent textures.

The canals are really something and despite the lack of flora and fauna on the sea floor, I was pleased to find that some of the canals run under the buildings. Silly me, I should have checked to see how many prims were available in the sim whenever it occurred to me that the out-of-the-way places should have little details like leaves or animals or other signs of life.

One of the canal areas is a marvelous multi-level complex that made me want to go swimming, fishing, and shopping all at the same time. Many folks I know wouldn't go from shop to shop to shop in a complex as shown above let alone in a non-mall formatted sim like this so I wonder how the merchants fare. Not that I noticed many shops. I was busy playing with sky settings (Windlight) and composition.

There is one area of the sim that is .. well, tacky ... compared to the rest of the build. At one time in the not too distant past I might have called this a nice build but compared to everything else in the Isle of Tranquility, this is ... grr ... I'll say it again ... tacky. The textures are mostly nice but not realistic like the other builders used. The space utilization is also out-of-theme with it's typical retailer layout. And why is prim water used to make a stream about a half meter above Linden water?

"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

Finding "The Land Inbetween: showing Kill All Artist by .danone." (SLurl) was something of an accident. I had a landmark for the Mars sim in the Rezzable chain but like all good things, it passed. A world of colour and light was replaced with by yet another bleak and dark post-Apocolyptic landscape. Being in Rezzable, though, means it is top notch. I haven't explored it much yet as the style is not to my taste, but after crawling out of a crypt I found a wonderful sight and decided it would make a great tableau for messing with the Advanced Sky Editor option inside the Environment Editor. The time of day was not adjusted and I was facing due south at the time.

There is no "unadulterated" shot here, but in order of appearance the pre-sets I used are: Incongruent Truth, Night, Sailor's Delight, Sheer Surrealty, Blue Midday, Desert Sunset, Fine Day, Funky Funky Funky (not Funky Funky), and Gelato.









The sim creator doesn't seem to have forced any specific atmosphere or time setting though it seems to be near midnight most times I have visited. The regular view is pretty impressive bit if any of these views had been forced by the creator I would likely have been even more impressed. The feeling in each is just something else. Try them with your land sometime or a favorite scenic spot and I think you will be rather pleased. And try this link to learn more the presets I used.

Many thanks to Torley Linden for inspiring me to play with this feature.

About this post's title.

Rezzable: Tunnel of Light

Silly me, I didn't grab any shots of the actual entrance for Tunnel of Light, another great Rezzable sim in the Second Life™ world. When you first arrive you are in a pleasant, park-like setting where signs direct you to click a paper boat floating on a small pond. Suddenly you find yourself plummeting down a shaft of lights (a vertical tunnel ... get it?) and you land at this amusement park-style dark ride staging queue. From here you summon a teacup in which you (alone, with friends, or in a special cup with a sweetie) ride through various marvelously lighted tunnels. As you are told in several places, the viewer feature glow (sometimes called renderglow) is the highlight (pun intended) in all it's neon-y glory for the next six or so minutes.

The teacup floats on a ribbon of shifting light from the departure area to a fantasy pond of Lilly pads and dragonflies. Use this interstitial time to try the big red button in the teacup. It lets you pause the ride so you can take a look around. You can cam as you normally do but mostly you'll find yourself enjoying the default view, occasionally using the left and right arrow keys. If you are like me, you'll take several rides to look around in different ways. Next time I visit I plan on using Mouselook for the whole trip.

The pond is very pretty and quite relaxing especially after the anticipation in the first tunnel. You'll find yourself wondering which elements are particles and which are prims with glow. This area is rather tame but it is a nice introduction to the attraction. Unlike the initial fall when you touch the paper boat surface-side, this is not "in your face" spectacular, rather merely spectacular in scope and design. Like all Rezzable sims, art is the clear focus at the Tunnel of Light.

After another tunnel the stream of light takes you into a forest where you will again wonder where glow ends and particles begin. Don't worry about it. Enjoy the view and look for the little froggies on the tree's trunks. If you don't see them, try the teacup's pause button and look around. If you would rather just enjoy the ride there are several ways to come back to this area (or other areas) for longer explorations. I haven't tried leaving the teacup, but I imagine the vehicle would disappear if I did and I'd have to use the room's teleporters to get out.

Each part of the attraction has a set of teleporters (just touch to go) that will take you to the room of your choice or to the ride entrance. As you see in this picture it is easy to tell which room is which, the glowing mini-worlds cleverly representing a location. It is hard to see here, but that is a paper boat on the far right pillar. Second from the left takes you back to the dragonfly pond. Wandering around on foot while others float by in teacups is strange and I worried that I was marring their experience, but no one complained. Actually, most everyone was friendly and at least said "hello." But who doesn't like an adorable lioness?

The stream of light takes a spectacular ride to the stars and if you ever get vertigo in-world, this is a place where you might want to be careful how and where you look. I rather enjoyed it, though, and often paused the ride at this point just to "float" about. When I come across virtual engineering like this I tend to toss my head into my hands crying why can't I be this clever? This is a ton of scripting and planning and my hat is off to the builders.

As you might guess from the motion of the teacup and the background becoming a starry sky, you are headed into space. This is my favorite part of the whole ride. I pause and cam about eagerly and then I use the teleporters to come back and hang out for long periods, usually flying around. The teacup seems to spend more time here than in the other parts of the ride, either in my imagination or by design, but either way I'm very pleased. I liked this room so much I used it for the backdrop of my Iron Man Fan Art Contest entry (seen here).

The next destination, the last part of the ride, is also fun to fly around in but it can be very, very disorienting. A friend went with me on one trip and she couldn't spend much time in this room. The glowing lines spin and sway and seem to pulse all around you. I can see why this was not the the introduction to the ride. The far less intense dragonfly pond is a better start, but this is far more spectacular. Not immediately apparent ... perhaps because of the visual overload ... is that one can pass through the arch marked Haze (shown here).

It takes you through a somewhat disappointing hallway with some neon-like art and eventually into a dance club filled with glow - Club Haze. Look around carefully for a box of free dance attachments. Some are the usual particle sticks that you can get most anywhere, but some are (at least to me) new items and use glow. You will find a paper boat here that takes you to a nice little store and from there you can go back out to the first paper boat and take the ride again.

The store features artwork created to emphasize the glow feature and some really great wings that also use glow. I'm eyeing up a great pair in this picture and looking through my inventory all while asking myself do I need another pair of wings? I still haven't bought them as L$500 seems like a lot of money to me. And with all the face lights, body lights, and poor lighting designs in Second Life it would be hard to enjoy these as much as I think I could. But, you never know. I might get them on my next visit.

From what I found "outside" the planned visitor area, I will need to stop back again and again. The builder area has some really spectacular in-progress items and I hope that they find their way to the store as well as the ride. Explore Explore Explore! You might be surprised (and quite pleased) with what you will find.

My Home

"Silly Poultry," a friend often says to me. That certainly applies here as I should have started my posts with my own home! I live on a fairly large plot of land in my sister Threshin's sim (SLurl to her shop). It has been expanded since I first started renting and has been remodeled several times, but here is what it looked like when I first built. I love my treehouse home. The brownish "deck" you see near mid-picture makes it's appearance in my current home as an ocean dock (see below). Shortly after this I made a waterfall and sloped stream to the bay. No pictures of that, darn it. With as much and as often as I change things I really need to better document my builds.

Here is the same view (more or less) but shot today. The beach encroached upon the land so I could add an oceanscape (shown in my first post here) and extended inland as a pretty little stream but not at a loss for land. I rented the "back 40" since I first established a home so I still have quite a bit of ground space.

Since I love water, though, I flooded the place for a peaceful forest pond. Look out for hungry fishies, though, if you fall off the raft! I have piranha! At night mystical lights come out and my butterflies glow. The tire swing is from PillowTalk as are some of the cushions in the gazebo so this is a very relaxing setting. I put some snuggles in the gazebo and on the raft. Well, some of the raft ones are a bit "intimate."

Zooming in some you'll see another great place to relax ... my tiny waterfall cave and mini-pond. I love the Wynx (SLurl) frog and unicorn. Along with the kitty head boulder they help the setting take on a whimsical feel. Often I'll lay on the back of the unicorn to just watch the stars and the forest lights. I also like to fish here using my 7Seas rod or sitting in my fishing chair from Splash Aquatics (SLurl). There are cuddles and snuggles in the cave and floating in the mini-pond is a joy.

The sunset from my dock is gorgeous. Thanks to recent viewer updates the sky and the water are perfect and I'll often hang out just watching the sky. This is an example of how I continually change things. This dock started as a sky platform when I rented elsewhere. And it was the basis for a tiered platform I used as a deck to showcase a beautiful piano I have from Sue Stonebender and Serendipity Studios (SLurl). From here or the shoreline anyone with a 7Seas rod can fish and a vendor is nearby for bait or other goodies.

A recent addition is a skybox. Well, a steampunk airship that is also a skybox. I often wonder why people have homes in Second Life™ but I suppose that building a mansion when your real life home is just a flat somewhere is just as much fantasy as living in an airship. Eventually I'd like to have a home under the sea, too. I might have to rent the empty parcel next to mine and expand the oceanscape.

Who knows what changes will come next to my home. I certainly don't. Like me, it is a work in progress, but for now I'm very happy with it and I hope you enjoyed your tour.

The Isle of Lesbos: Part I

In Second Life, I work at a wonderful place called the Isle of Lesbos (SLurl). Well, work is not entirely correct. Really I play there and the results usually appear that I had actually worked.

This first picture, for example, shows me working. I'm fine-tuning the 7Seas fishing setup for the mall. It took over an hour of hard relaxing to make sure everything was just right.

In the next picture, Janeforyou Barbara, the sim owner (and Miss Jane to all us who love her) is reviewing my work right around sunrise. She, too, was tireless in her quest for perfection.

Sunrise is the key to the Isle's dance club, hence the name Sunrise Dock and Club. Events are held here almost every day, often a couple times each day, and everyone has a chance to walk away with at least L$500. On Saturdays the prize is L$3000!

Another view of The Dock with the sun position changed. That is me on the left. I'm not hosting this event, but I do host the Saturday events. This is the only "job" I have at the Isle that has regular pay. Bouncing in the air there is DJ Kuthola Homewood. She rawks!


Another 7Seas fishin' spot has been put on the beach. If you look in the water you'll see some fishies! I hope to hold tournaments here and build the traffic to the Isle. Well, that and build traffic to other parts of the Isle, too. Many girls (yes, it's an all-female resort) visit The Dock and nowhere else. Yet there is so much more to see.

Like the Jungle! When the Isle was remodeled last year I was honored to be asked to help. This waterfall and the basic landscaping for the Jungle was one of my first projects. Recently I was asked by "Chief Architect" Threshin Barnett to enhance the waterfall. If you get a chance to visit, try walking through the falls. Near the Jungle is a bath house with some nice animations for those inclined to be intimate. Mostly, though, this area is designed to be romantic and relaxing. And you can even fish here.

Above the falls is my pride and joy. Really, it isn't much if you are looking for spectacular, jaw-dropping, or an engineering marvel. But it is (IMHO) a really nice Winter skating pond. I was given free reign to terraform (so long as I added the waterfall to the Jungle) and even encouraged to expand. What I really love is the ice. Again, not a difficult build but so few people make seamless semi-transparent ice when they make frozen water. Look around for the hidden wolf's head. And the sunken boat for a tribute to an Isle friend. Eventually I'm going to upgrade the trees, if I'm permitted, but I rather like the look right now as I skate around or make snow angels.

The beach (Sappho's Point, but I'm the only one that calls it that) was not my creation but I hold a monthly "Nakie Beach Party" there. At other times it is simply a great place to relax. A steam house and a spa are nearby and it is just a short climb to the forest or castle.


On part of the beach is Tikachu's! This is a little bar I made for a previous remodeling of the Isle. It is fully stocked and has a great sunrise view. In the pic here you can see one of the many signs/posters I make for the Isle.

The forest above the beach is filled with wondrous things and leads you to the dark castle. Like the rest of the Isle of Lesbos, if you explore the forest you will find places to cuddle and "play" with someone special. Heck, if you wander the skies you'll find similar places ... we have airborne gazebos!

Miss Jane would have my buns on a grill if I forgot to mention the mall. It is one of the largest and certainly one of the best in all of Second Life. Threshin is the chief architect here, too, though I was asked to make all the domes (the one in the back is complete, but it doesn't show in this pic), the center hub, the teleportation system (for both sims), landscaping, the fashion show area, and little things. I'm really proud of the work I did on the mall.

You will probably read more about the Isle of Lesbos (provided you come back) as I spend a lot of time there and things are always changing.