Dangerous experiment continues

(What happend before: Cristopher Lefavre found a strange triangle outside his sim, where a new TP menu was available. After doing some research, he clicked on the RL item, and suddenly found himselves in a very strange environment)

I recognize this grid! I am sure I have been here before! Strange....


The sunset is very high resolution, but somehow even an estate manager can't set the sun position. And there is no environment menu...

I found myselves in a small boat outside a large island, comprised by at least a 100 sims. I started to explore, and lo and behold: I was right! Not only have I been here before but the 1024 sqm parcel I bought that summer was still there, with all my builds intact. I think I'll just lie down in the sun for a while....

Week 2:

I have started to build again, and is constantly reminded of the strange ways of this grid:

• All prims are physical.
• There are no phantom prims.
• I can't script the prims!
• There are no prim limits, but prims have to be bought at a builders shop and can be expensive.
• No megaprims available in this grid either.
• When a prim is reduced in size, it can not be made larger again.
• Prims detoriate with time.
• Retexturing takes a long time as each layer of texture need to dry.
• Flexible prims to cover windows are normally bought by woman and is even more expensive.
• All clothing are flexi prims attachments, and womans clothes can be ridiculously expensive (ah ok, same as SL....)

After a trip to a builders shop I got back with 29 prims that I intend to use to extend an outdoor floor. That set me back a full month tier for an island. LOL! But I expect these 29 prims to last for 50 years, which is more than can be said about anything buildt in SL.

Emerald asks on her latest blog post "Are you in Second Life to stay, meaning, now that you're here do you think it'll always be a part of your life?"

The answer to this is Yes, I think, IF I manage to finish the process of making SL a part of my one life, like blogs and facebook and internet banking is now. Really living a full Second Life is like burning your candle in both ends. And end up feeling discontented with both lives, not really being present in either but allways worrying about things happening in the one you temporarily disconnect from.

After checking my profile I find that my rez day in this grid is getting close, and the event calendar says I will have some visitors then. I better finish my build......

Dolls and Dangerous Experiments

The Drama Doll bandwagon is rolling, today Joonie posts about her experience with the dolls. Its so nice to read about people who like what we made.

But as hard as it is to believe, there are people in SL not reading blogs. Sigh, the fun they miss! So I thought it would be cool to put up an ad, especially since I had this 16sqm roadfront parcel in Dauphin lying completely dormant. I tried to make the sign non-obtrusive; its almost transparent from the back so as not to take too much view from the store behind. And if you click it, a Fuginista is temp-rezzed and she shows a few animations.

After putting up the sign I tried to TP home, only to find my region not accessible. And true enough, the rolling restart had reached the City of Paris, and now I'm on server 1.27 too! Pity I have some RL work to do today or I would have experimented with HTTP-in.... But there are other news in 1.27:


A year ago, Linden Lab announced the possibility to teleport from Second Life to an OpenSim based grid. Since then, it's been all quiet. No words was ever heard from the Gridnauts again.

But inside the development unit at LL, it has been anything but quiet.

Second Life Server 1.27, being rolled out this week, contains a set of top secret new features, on a highly experimental stage. Outside every SIM bordering the empty sea there is now a triangle (it shows up red in the map, as you can se above), and when an avatar gets there a new pie menu opens, allowing him or her to teleport to a number of grids, including (gulp) one named "RL".

Now, to reach this triangle, you have to do some megaprim tweeks to transport an island outside of the sim. This island must be linked with some form of poseball and a coconut tree. Sitting on the poseball, waiting for a coconut to fall on your head, you may suddenly be TP'ed to OSGrid, OpenLife, and even the internal LL grid!)

The real tricky one is the RL choice. Because while TP-ed to the other grid, Ctrl-H will still take you home to SL. That was very useful when I explored the CIA grid and got some matrix-style agents shooting at me:

(Picture location courtesy of Rezzable, go see this SIM while you can)

BUT the RL link depends on time- and map-wormholes in cyberspace that opens and closes depending on solar flares caught in the fibre optic cables at SL's service providor. So the return journey becomes much more unsecure!

Some time later today I will dare the RL TP link anyway. Research has made me quite sure of the existence of a return window no later than mid-august, so if you don't hear from me until then I am out exploring the biggest grid of them all. Hopefully I will catch the bus home and come back unharmed.

Until then: Play safe, have fun, be happy!

Heritage Key - New home of Rezzable

After walking through the Black Swan I just had to peek into the new grid that Rezzable will move to. Downloading software and registration went nicely, Heritage Key uses a 1.21 - based viewer, and feels a little bit old-fashioned, but it works. I get to name the av after me, and after walking through a room with vendors giving out a few skins and clothing articles, I look like this:


Not really "me", but....

First stop is a room with a few web links:


Then I get to fly a balloon over a barren landscape (actually a map!), before landing on an excavation site:






The most interesting objects in this grid are the teleporters. They work the way they should, that is you walk right into them and suddenly you are TP-ed to another location.


Yeah, I know, in SL they would be badly abused, griefers would send you through an infinite loop of interconnected TP-s, but it feels much better to walk through a gateway than having to click and sit on it.


I ended up at the front of some virtual museum. A rather boring build with old-fashioned and simple textures.

Inside there are a few 3D objects you can look at, just like a museum. Note the gray fields of non-loaded textures on the right coffin: The whole grid was really kind of slow, making the experience less than ideal.


I found that a lot of the "fancy" interior made it hard to see the actual objects: It's like someone just HAD to use all those NPIRL features when decorating the interior.



This beautiful thing was hidden behind a lot of strange lines running around the room.


One thing strikes me:

The Heritage Key platform is several generations behind SL. The only reason to move to that grid is cost. Low cost - low capabilities. Simple as that. The Black Swan could just not give the same experience here due to server-based texture loading problems.

So, Prokofy Neva may be right when he states that Rezzables business model just doesn't work. I'd say that if you cant make money on SL, you definitely can't make them easier on any OpenSimulator powered grid right now.

Laptop Struggles - updated: No struggles anymore!

A little while ago I got this new laptop at work, and while I thought it was kind of godsend to get a powerful computer for SL (too lol), and it really helped finishing the dolls, it does have a serious side effect.

I really cant get out of my workroom!

As long as I stay within 4 walls I get a nice 25fps framerate. But as soon as I walk out of the door and the screen starts to show a few more objects, its like someone inside decides to hit the breaks. The whole things slows down to a lower frame rate than my mini PC, and walking by the Seine I more often than not fall into the water.

The ""¤%¤# thing is powered by an AMD CPU and graphics card. There is a ton of Jira complaints about problems with SL and AMD Radeon graphics card. I have added my own to the weight, lets hope LL actually do something with it soon!

In the mean time, if you plan to fork out money for a computer to run SL, stay away from AMD. Get an NVidia/Intel powered thing instead.

UPDATE: After a reinstall of the ATI drivers that did not help the official viewer or Snowglobe, I tried the Cool Viewer with the special ATI installer. Lo and behold, now I have 20-25 fps all over my place! Hope LL grabs those patches, it means that they can no longer blame it all on ATI.

Kajira - The movie

I love this move that Honour made - it shows off a lot of the anims in one of the dolls. Go get one for yourselves!