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?

29 of 52 - Life in a thread

I have often thought of Second Life as life hanging by a thin thread. It takes so little to disrupt it, to feel that the thread is almost breaking.

Lately, it seems that the gods of network and computing has conspired upon me to cut the connection. I wonder if I am somewhat cursed - every computer I try to connect to SL (or ReactionGrid for that part, poor Chris have had a hard time at the support desk LOL) seems to wither and die - and yesterday, when I was happy and finally had a screen giving me 30fps inworld, I managed to forget the modem at home... sigh...

Anyway, I guess that since the sun is shining and the day is a nice warm summer day, I should be outside building with real heavy wooden prims instead. I just miss some people....

The parts for a new VPN server has finally arrived; next week I will hopefully have a more stable network solution at work, and a more updated PC at home LOL. In the mean time, I'll go enjoy the sun.

Much have been said about our departed CEO, M. Much of what he tried to do with SL was not what a lot of us "hard-core" SL-er would like to see. But in his first year, he did manage to improve stability on the server side a lot - and for that at least I am thankful. Now, if Philip can just initiate a Viewer 3.0 with some stability and performance tricks up the sleave, like running 30fps on a modest laptop, HTML texture download, working through firewalls at port 80, facebook login (no, just kidding!), the combinded effect would be great!

RenderFarClip and BBBC6 - How has it been?

Ener gave a nice tip on her blog a while ago: If you set Debug->RenderFarClip to a high value, you can see farther than the 512 meters that is max in Graphics Options.

I discovered today that in OpenSim sometimes you can see through non-existing regions too! If you look closely between the two windmills on the right, you can see some other mills near the horizon far behind: That's actually Ener's builds in Enclave Passage, 3 empty sims away:-)

BBBC, final topic:
Did you find this year to be harder or easier than previous years? Did you have fun? What did you get out of it this time around? Do you think you'd do it again?

I found some of the themes not harder perhaps, but a bit more thought-provoking. It's been fun, as it was last year, and I'd definitely do it again! Blogging a post each and every day is not something that I will manage (I just know that my enthusiasm for all things goes in waves, virtual worlds and blogs no exception). But it was nice to have a sort of "pressure" on me this week - even though it kind of broke apart at the end. It's also fun to read what other bloggers write about the same theme - I guess Zippora's post regarding crossing the SL-RL relationship border is the one I will remember best.

BBBC5: What't on my mind?

I wanted to give you the reasons for the L$ fluctations, the secret of forever youth and tell you how to be rich and famous in Second Life. But right now I feel too tired:-) Some other time perhaps!

BBBC4: Forever Young?

Today's challenge: Is your avatar more or less your current biological age? Do you portray a younger avatar, or older? Why is this?

Who is he trying to impress?

When I shaped my av, I wanted to avoid looking too much like a testosterone-filled body-builder. That said, I guess my avatar do work out a bit more than I do :-) But I don't consciously try to appear a certain age. I'm clearly an adult, and I think I look like one in SL as well. I guess it feels more comfortable, not having to play a part of some sort. Cristopher is in most ways quite like me IRL.

And yes, I do have more formal wear, both in SL and RL:-)

While getting rid of the noob look inWorldz however, I clearly ended up looking much younger than I really am. And that actually felt good:-) I do think I will keep that look there, to find out if visual avatar age do make a difference.

The inWorldz me

Somehow I wonder if looking young is more important for the female avatars. Joonie summed it up quite nice: "Is this what you want to see?"

Does it matter as much for a male? Well, look at the guy to the left. Michael Douglas is 66, and he kind of look like it. Even so, Catherine Zeta-Jones, 40 but not looking quite like that, had a rather nice comment about her husband the other night: At the Tony Awards, she said:

"See that man there? He's a movie star and I get to sleep with him every night."

(Do take a look at the video clip, it certainly made me smile:-)

It's kind of sad that she felt the need to apologize for that in the aftermath. Undignified, she said. I think it must be the nicest compliment a man could get, LOL.

It seems to me that being old has been less of a turn-off for a man than for a woman. But that is changing, luckily; Sex and the City 2 is just one sign of it. The fact is, people of both gender is getting more and more conscious about keeping their bodies fit and looking attractive, even at 60+. So, the old rock-and-roll saying "Die Yong, stay pretty" is maybe about to die.

Pretty is also so much dependent on your attitude and expectations; and virtual worlds teaches us to love a soul rather than the physical expressions of it. Our avatars are the virtual expressions of our souls, so if any of us are looking younger than our physical age it does not matter I think, as long as we match the age of our mind. Because in SL, its the mind that counts, really!