Eating Up The Sims

Something I totally forgot about until I helped someone get to the Beta Grid to test Display Names is the bonus space bux one gets there. On the Main Grid I had just under L$2000 and when I logged into the Beta Grid I had some L$13,000 in my account. No, you don't get to keep it, most stores are not accessible on the Beta Grid, and anything you buy is more of a rental since you can't keep it. So here I am in my L$1000 flying suit from Cubey Terra, hanging over a sandbox and wondering why a region doesn't seem very big at times.

A well-landscaped region can seem endless, like Misty Mountain (SLurl). A flat sandbox seems like a postage stamp, especially when you have a flight-speed boosted rig like I bought. Just about the time I hit a good speed I had to cross a sim border or I hit the sim wall. Since even the best sim crossings are still full of hiccups (though they have greatly improved, for the most part, lately), what we need are double-sized sims. Or maybe The Lab can market a single region the size of four sims at a special price. For folks like me who love flying that would be heaven. Or motor sports enthusiasts could go for a nice long drive without having that strange "flying in limbo" effect when taking a crossing in a physical vehicle. Look at the vehicle sandboxes sometime and you'll see that nearly all the courses require a sim crossing. I suppose that is good for testing purposes, but certainly not for pleasure trips.

Misty Mountains: What is Reality?

Here are a couple quick, un-retouched pictures from Misty Mountains (SLurl), one of several gorgeous regions in the Calas Galadhorn Park chain. I spend a lot of time there, slightly breaking the "no role play" rule by appearing in a fantasy form that I feel suits the environment. My reaction when I first visited was "I'm Home!" The ambiance is lush and natural. I was in my beloved White Mountains of New Hampshire. But then I turned the corner and felt like I was in the Pacific Northwest. Another section reminded me of the Allegheny foothills of Western Pennsylvania. Some regions try for hyper-realisim (like the also gorgeous Rustica; SLurl) while others take a more fantasy-oriented approach (like what you would find at Happy Mood; SLurl).

Misty and her sister regions (yes, sims are female, like ships and cars) strike me as a blend of the two approaches with a heavy lean toward the former. Let's call it Enhanced Reality, as when a nature photographer grooms a scene by bending aside a stray branch or setting some hidden food to attract wildlife, creating a best possible "reality" that better communicates the intended message than the previously extant scene. Thusly the best elements of different biomes are skillfully blended on Misty to make an ideal forest environment. You really need to see this place.

Bugged a Blue Streak

As you can see from the pictures, something is amiss on the Grid^©®™. Not entirely sure when the sim first went blue. I had started landscaping using the Imprudence viewer (Totally fabulous so check it out; Web) but quickly logged out then back in with the standard viewer for reasons that are not important to the issue. I had been using a sim-sized megaprim textured with the land contours I wanted to help me sculpt the terrain and at one point when I moved the template away and turned off water rendering I noticed that the happy little sand was not so happy.


When I found a convenient stop point I took that first picture then teleported home and all was right as rain. Until something blinked, that is, and my home took on the same sickly hue. So I took another picture and logged out entirely, being sure to clear my Web and Network caches and logged back in to the service. Interestingly, the "Last Location" snap that greeted me was fine. And my home was once again a lush green (my friend/sister/landlord made an awesome grass texture for her sim). I went back to the first sim and all was fine once again. But now I have an interesting bug. I wonder if all my de-rendering/re-rendering of the water was the cause.

FYI, I'm working on that first sim because of what you might have caught in an earlier post (Web) about my new store location (Web). I'll post a new SLurl when I can. Someone's greed has put my schedule at least a week behind and has cost my Partner real world money.