49 of 52 - Stacking Prims

 

Victorian outfit for a Victorian Castle Builder

SL's model of payment for server space is the use of Prims.  The price of a Prim vary, as do the amount of land you get for each prim.  In a normal SIM, prims and land are tied together with the constant of 2,295 sqm/Prim.  This is actually a fairly high value compared to the real world, and it limits the level of 3D detail that can be recreated virtually.  As I am writing this, I am looking at the bookshelf in my living room (a home-made 28 prim piece LOL) that contains at least 400 prims worth of books and CD's. And there are lots of other stuff in here that would require lots of prims to recreate truly.  Even being a bit conservative, this 32 sqm room contains at least 1000 prims, requiring the constant of just 0,032 sqm/prim.  Thats two orders of magnitude better resolution than SL, and if it where to be matched would require each sim to hold 2 million prims instead of 15.000....  Virtual worlds still have a long way to go!

To cover up this loss of details, builders commonly paints what should have been individual prims onto a surface; that is a complete bookshelf with books is just 1 prim with 2 different textures: Front and sides.

The same things happens with prefab houses.  Builders draws windows and other details on textures.  This looks nice from a distance, but close by you notice the lack of true 3D windowposts and the like.  Also, most prefabs I have seen using this technique has a kind of "blurry" feel. 

Anyway, building my own homes I prefer to build using discrete prims.  So, in my castle-in-spe, the thin glass window prims are truly recessed into the thick stone walls.  And since all the windows uses the same texture, and all the walls are using the same texture, the viewer can render the outside walls of the castle loading just 2 different textures, even if the layout of the walls vary.  This leads to faster rezzing.  

Meshes might change all this, allowing us to create true 3D details without using prims.  However, it seems that the lab will still count "equivalent prims" - that is one mesh object will count as several prims.  Noone knows these rules yet, but I do hope they do not "punish" detailed 3D design too much.  If they do, we will still get prefabs with painted windows, and that would really be a vaste of this new technolog.

But I think stacking prims will still be the most engaging way to  build!

32 of 52 - On the move

Lately, I have felt a little lost, living alone in a skybox above some crappy mainland. Some new neighboor at the place where I kept my shop and skybox home also started to pollute the area with tasteless particle effects LOL. So, I decided it was time to move again. Somehow, I keep dropping by the Winterfell estate, so when a search showed a free parcel there, I took the leap and started to move. Rezzing the skybox was rather painless, but moving all the artwork took a bit of time, jumping back and forth to get a few and putting them up on the wall at the same place. Cat and Fuschia in particular have made works that are not grouped, so moving them took a little careful prim manipulation.

Down on the ground it is beautiful green, with a wood and a seafront. My closest neighboor, Princess Ivory, has a cute little castle on the ground, and even has a nice blog! Hope to get to meet her some day:-)

For now, this means tirering down a bit in in SL, but since it's summer and lots of other stuff to do anyway that's OK. Not sure what to make on the ground yet, but I guess some idea will pop up soon enough!

30 of 52 - Living in the shadows

A transparent dome in the roof lets the sun through

Eners nice post made me want to try the shadows effect in the new Imprudence viewer. Somehow it sounded rather like a gimmick to me, but when I saw it in action it was actually kind of jaw-dropping. In the picture above, the shadow of the flags actually moves in sync with how the flag flows in the wind!

Sun shining on opposite wall through a slit window

It works dynamically when you build too; the shadow changes when you twist prims around.

The shadow in the middle of the picture is that of my low-hanging skybox!

In this pic, even my avatar has a shadow, and that too follows the movements of the limbs, and behave correctly when you fly. (It does disappear after a minute or two, but hey, this is experimental software, remember? :-)

Best thing is; it seems this requires very little GPU overhead. But it's adding a whole new level of realism to scenes; I'm really looking forward to a stable version of this feature!

Talking about shadows; today (June 30th) is opening day of Eclipse - the third Twilight novel. Yeah, I know, it's all teenager love and romantism, I should be too old for that kind of stuff, but I have to admit that I loved the books, and the first 2 movies have been a thrill.

So, what we all want now, is not just any shadow, but an actual eclipse. That will not happen until the rather over-simpliefied pattern of the moon allways rising when the sun sets is made more realistic. Will this be another first of OpenSim?

18 of 52 - Building in ReactionGrid

Sunset in my offshore sim Vaiya. Stars and Stripes raised to greet an unexpected visitor.

This is not a "Linden Lab sucks and I'm leaving Second Life" kind of post. Not at all. Not that I don't see why lots of people, not least estate owners, have reasons to feel less than well treated as large customers of the lab. But as it is today, Second Life is 100 times bigger in area and population that any other comparable grid. It does have features no other grid have. And I've got friends there (including my lost friend who is finally back!).

But the thing I really miss in SL is the opportunity to have a sim of my own, for a price that is sensible for my usage. (Hey, US 1000 to get it, and US 300/month? Sorry, forget it.)

Check out my cool red sneakers (yes, I seem to twist my legs all the time)

I have tried various grids based upon OpenSimulator several times. But it just have been too many bugs, to unstable. Until now, it seems. Tempted by the successful builds by Ener in Enclave Harbour, I decided to give ReactionGrid a go. The team not only set up the sim in a couple of hours, it also worked flawlessly from the first login. Now I've got what would compare to an SL OpenSpace SIM, just double the prims (8000, all mine!) for a price I can afford, even as an amateur builder with ambition of becoming pro.

And they do know how to treat a customer right! The first evening Felix Techie came to visit, wondering if everything was OK. And later on, I've got an eMail from the CEO, wanting to hear my ideas for my sim. He came over yesterday, we had a nice talk, and he offered me various assistant. (I pay LL double what I pay him, but they won't even answer my support tickets... sigh. I guess they're too busy making pencils for M...)..

Got my flags and my Domino rezzer

After a week, whats the good, the bad and the ugly with Reaction Grid?

Good:
- Faster than SL when building
- Logins seems as stable as SL
- Sensible technical architecture means stability and low cost
- Scalable megaprims (no, not megaprims, ANY prim can be scaled to 256 meter!)
- You can fly as high as you want
- They actually got customer support!
- Professional and knowledgeable people come here
- Second Inventory transfer my objects fast and easily

Bad:
- Landscaping is laggy in OpenSimulator (not specific to ReactionGrid).
- 590 unique logins last month

Ugly:
- Physics sucks. Watching my dominos falling is like watching grass growing. Ah well, cant have everything I guess:-)

I have not done much more than making an offshore team for my sim, and just started on a project 1000 meters above ground. I do look forward to do more though!

Happy easter, everyone!

17 of 52 - Exploring ReactionGrid

You have to be a virtual world enthusiast to hang a building on a chain like that:-)

A while ago I stubled over the ILiveISL blog written by Ener Hax. I liked it so well that I had to take a look at her estate, Enerville, and liked that so much too, I actually considered moving there. Then the very next day, Ener announced the closedown of her estate.

Just sad.

But then she started to write a lot about the OpenSim based ReactionGrid. Pictures on her blog suggested interesting things. So, when she announced the opening of Enclave Harbour I took the first interstellar taxi to reactiongrid.com to register myselves there. Registration certainly was easier than LL's, and for sheer luck the Rainbow viewer that I mostly run had an entry for ReactionGrid, so before you know it I landed on a welcome plaza, like a handsome noob again:-)

One of the core administrators sat napping in his chair... hmm wonder how this grid runs when they sleep at work?

Yes, this seems to be the entire grid!

A short Map TP later (it's REALLY NOT a big world you know) landed me on a beach full of junk. Hmm.. and I thought Ener was so environmentally aware, running her estate on solar power...


I stumbled around a bit, found a road, and then the first signs of a civilization.

Admiring the view at the top of the lighthouse

I did a bit more exploration of the 16-sim estate.

What will be in here, I wonder?


Where are the martians that landed here?


They are not warming themselves by the fire...

Some rough scripting still; steering this boat seems a bit different when lying with my head beneath the seat LOL

Ener has done some great builds, like this sun-deck-on-a-gigantic-flower thing:


And the start of a commercial center:

Still a rather empty world, 590 unique logins last month; seems too much to hope for a waiter to bring my icecream

The entire estate has 1 - one - shop, but it's a nice one:-)

No wondering where you are!


There are wind power...

...and solar power plants

But somehow, the place is not as peaceful as I imagined. Seems the estate is under siege, could it perhaps be some L***** **b agents flying around in that UFO, eagerly awaiting for a moment to crash the party? Anyway, the gun is constantly following it, so I guess they are serious with security around here:-)

Solar-driven gun? What happened to "make SLove, not waReaction"?

Finally I ran into Ener. Not just a great builder, she was also a most welcoming and nice person.

A really cool avatar lady!

She TP-ed us over to where Nickola was building a learning path. We ended up talking and having fun (well, the two ladies was the most fun I have to admit, making fun of my counties fjords and some very unhealthy canadian food I promply forgot the name of LOL), but it was a great time!

One noob and two pioneer gridnauts

Nickola had made a nice ride, which I had to admit already had tested.

I am glad the default avatar had such strong arms:-)

It was a great evening even if there hangs a shadow above me: my best friend in SL has suddenly vanished from the grid. I so hope she is fine. Please come back.

Experience Italy

Jayn called me over to the Experience Italy estate. It is a kind of a tour through various exhibits in interconnected skyboxes. Start here. (There is an italian web site).


The various chambers are lovely decorated, and makes me stop to wonder how beautiful SL can be! The photos really do not do the experience justice.


The walls of the chambers are half transparent from the outside, solid from the inside.



Gorgeous light effects in the corridors.


Particle effects and floating text are used througout.


Be careful when you walk around; if you miss the portals with the bridges, you fall down to the mall on the ground, and that is not as grand:-)


Micalita Writer (beware, italian blog!) has done a great job with this one!

Mirrors

Notice anything strange in this pic? As you may or may not have thought about, there are no mirrors in SL. This mirrored floor is actually created artificially, by building mirrored duplicates of the posters (including mirrored textures!) beneath a transparent floor. The idea is just so good, and it's done so incredibly well, that the illusion works perfectly. This ground floor alone is a must-see if you are at all interested in SL building techniques and what is possible to do.

But the rest of the current exhibition in her main gallery is also just as great:

Oops, think I annoyed this guy! Maybe he does like to be fed anyway?

Watch out for these scary Matrix-inspired creations....

Fuschia Nightfire (aka Nina Camplin) has become my all-time favourite artist in SL with her ability to create works that blows away the boundaries of her RL art (murals) and show what an incredible medium a virtual world can be.

If you have not seen her art yet, get off that dance ball and take this tour!

4 of 52 - Merry Christmas!

Inspired by the RL snow we got this weekend, I took the trip to the Norge sim to find a motive for this years Christmas Greeting card (no, I'm not as politically correct as some of my friends, for me its still Christmas!). Anyway, even with a knitted wool sweater it was kind of cold, so it was nice to warm my selves by the fire.

While GIMP'ing the card I sat down inside the church and contemplated about lives. Thinking of people I met this year; some have became close, some have faded away to the stage where the only communication left is the holiday card. But that's kind of nice also; most of us don't have the capacity to be close to a large number of people, but it is nice to know that a number of people knows about you, and you know about them. To all of you: I am steadily thinking about you, and hope you are well.

And then there are all those SL'ers I have never met but just enjoyed reading their blogs - it's like I know them also! Thanks to all of you for enriching my life the way you do.

Also a bit close on my mind these days is my new build: I started setting up a shop for a new product that hopefully will be finished soon (LOL I have only been working on it for some months; somehow I am never quite satisfied with it).

In these days, when the slogan "Politicians Speaks, Leaders Act" from the demonstrations in Copenhagen actually came true, I found it important to make an environmentally friendly and carbon neutral build. So, in the best Norwegian tradition, I decided to make a dam and power the place using water power:

The pipe from the dam goes below the building and out on a plaza where I am going to put up the power plant. The water then flows down through some additional dams, just for the fun of it:-)


While I worked the snow started to fall and the water froze, so I lit a fire to warm my hands...

But now it's the holidays, and I guess this avatar needs some rest. Thankfully, some of my fellow Norwegians put out a sleeping bag to keep the cold out while waiting for Santa.


Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

3 of 52 - Exploring Linden Homes

I spent my first 2 weeks in SL on Orientation Island - somehow I had read in a blog an advice of not going to the mainland too soon, because there was a lot to learn and pick up first, and once gone you could never return.

I did soon tire of rezzing at the landing point on top of some ones head, so I found a spot in the woods where I would normally go to before logging of, so I could come online again a bit by myselves. That was actually my first home in SL:-)

Once I did the crossing I was shocked at how empty mainland was. Compared to the buzz of OI, with lots of fun talk and old residents showing off their blings and fancy costumes, it was actually a real downturn.

Later I rented a house to get my first place, and that place really meant the world to me. There, I could learn to move prims around, and had a place to invite friends to. I guess the real attraction of SL did not start until then.

Looking back on my first hours experience, I can certainly understand why lots of new people just drop out. I do wonder how SL would have seemed to me if I had been placed directly into a house of my own, with lots of other people living close by? I can't help but think that this would help a lot more people trying out SL to actually become residents.

And that leads us to the Beta continent of Nascara. The Linden Homes. What they will offer those signing up for premium subscriptions. I have done some exploring:-)

These modern "park" is not exactly my style; and there don't seem to be a frigging single real city around! How come they ALLWAYS use that dull green kind of grassy texture on the ground? Where is the concrete and the asphalt? Those square houses would have fitted much more nicely besides square stone-paved walls. But they do promise more themes:-)


The Moles have created several themed villages in Nascara. As they previously showed when making Nautilus, the Lindens are not afraid of putting in a lot of empty public spaces when they make flagship continents. If you walk away from the rather cold modernistic style you find yourselves crossing a stone wall, and suddenly the all-green trees gives way to more colourful plants:


Moving forward for a while I find my selves in the outskirts of a Japanese village:

Actually, this is my favourite spot so far; unusual trees, stone pavements, peaceful houses, back alleys:

One really interesting question is how residents with different cultural background will populate these areas: Will all the Japanese gather in these kinds of village? Will there be US or European "subcultures" in eastern style areas? Are there fairies in Japan?


I really could imagine having a good time in here! And that's good, because they don't even allow skyboxes in this continent LOL.

Then there is Hobbiton, also quite a cozy place:



My fairy alt would love this place, maybe she should have a premium subscription for Christmas?

Root and branches, where is Radagast the brown when you need him? The lindens have cut down Fangorn forest, and the Ents are mighty angry!

One of the coolest things about these "homes" is that they are all mostly autorezzed. LL claimes the whole continent of 64 sims was rezzed in 13 minutes; they will certainly need that kind of capability to scale if tens of thousands residents wants a place here:-) I do hope they will keep up this "small village" kind of setup, mixing different themes like they do now.

All in all, I think the Linden Home offer will be a great enhancement of the premium subscription. The Lab and their moles have done some nice work; its mostly aesthetically nice and will give new people a taste of what SL can be. Really looking forward to see how it will work out!