Bringing out the good stuff in Second Life®: fashion, hot spots, freebies, etc.

On January 19th, the Wastelands turned three, and yesterday they celebrated with a round of events customary of a Saturday in the community, plus a couple that were held regularly when I used to live there. I had thought to capture some photos during the week, but then realised that shadows don’t work for me anymore and was too disheartened to take any in the end. So, I made a machinima !

I remember having been around for their first anniversary, but missing the second one after I moved out, and I’m really quite happy that I have gone for the third. Only missing from this footage is “Game Show”, once a weekly feature hosted by the extraordinary entertainment provider that is Giuseppe Spicoli. Damn that because, though I personally much preferred the “Match Game” that Giuseppe introduced later (see real life version here), this in general was always my favourite part of Saturdays in the Wastelands (along with watching really hilariously dumb movies at Burnt Oak). They’re basically both TV-based games, with a host, a stage, a couple of participants on a podium, and rowdy people bantering from an arena. Invariably, lots of fun. But I’m recounting souvenirs mostly from 2008 here, because after that I left in August of that year, I don’t think I can have set foot in The Wastelands more than ten times since. But then yesterday was pretty terrific and just like the old times, and once in a while, a blast from the past can’t hurt.

Just let me make this clear, though, before you go and get the wrong idea: I was never ever a warrior, I never fought once or role-played anything. But, as once an owner of one of the first homesteads offered to the residents, what I chose to put out on my land, had a leeeettle bit of impact, I imagine, on the general landscape of the area, so I always toed the line between what made me comfortable, what I liked, and what would be acceptable to the rest of the community within a certain context of destruction, survival and, yeah, let’s say the word, post-apocalypse. What (partly) amused me all along, I guess, was to wonder how long it would be before someone came up and told me to go take a hike. But that never really happened. All in all, good times. ❤

A few teleports: the court of skulls, the fighting arena, the Junkyard stage, the swamp, and the drive-in.

PS. Particularly in The Wastelands, sepia windlight settings make a lot of things look better, like “Dusty”, “London2026″, “Verdigris”…

Continuing my rediscovery of SL’s true potential for extreme realism combining the power of shadows with windlight, the next landmark on my list had to be Amiryu Hosoi’s cluster of four sims where you can immerse yourself in the lifestyle of Edo Japan (well, mostly).

My first glimpse was of a fisherman’s boat, nearby the rice fields. Beyond, the pagoda, seen from within the walls of the marketplace.

Inside Matsumoto Castle, you can attend lectures and events organised by Akiko, one of the community members, or find the Magic Lantern to view some amazing hand-painted slides showing glimpses of Japanese society in the 19th century, while listening to the music on the land. There is also a group you can join to keep up with other events, which include theater and the celebration of Japanese holidays and festivals.

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In my ongoing effort to showcase some of the best looking places on SL, old and new, I give you Kowloon ! It has been around, I believe, for about two years and recreates the now defunct Hong-Kong district as it was represented in a once popular Japanese video game. It is still a fairly busy locale here on SL, especially frequented by photographers, though it should not be forgotten that one can also rent apartments there, something which I found myself seriously considering while snooping around each building. But I will have to resist !

I am being told Kowloon was originally a military fort in the 1800’s, which then went on to become this completely walled in-city, standing by itself, that fell under triad control in the 1950-70’s, and is now completely abandonned, and largely gone, save for a few buildings and squatters. Thanks, Gomi!

Taken from the net:

“The Kowloon Walled City was located just outside Hong Kong, China during British rule. A former watchpost to protect the area against pirates, it was occupied by Japan during World War II and subsequently taken over by squatters after Japan’s surrender. Neither Britain nor China wanted responsibility for it, so it became its own lawless city.”

“Its population flourished for decades, with residents building labyrinthine corridors above the street level, which was clogged with trash. The buildings grew so tall that sunlight couldn’t reach the bottom levels and the entire city had to be illuminated with fluorescent lights. It was a place where brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlors, food courts serving dog meat and secret factories ran unmolested by authorities. It was finally torn down in 1993 after a mutual decision was made by British and Chinese authorities, who had finally grown wary of the unsanitary, anarchic city and its out-of-control population.”

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Again a great location seen on the Mademoi’SL blog: Soup Magoo by soror Nishi.

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There has been a new addition to sick ! It looks to be about two months old and has some kind of hunt going on there. mk Curtis has a blog for his sims, and you can check it out for more info, that is, if you speak Japanese, or else pick up the notecard at the landing point ! I wish I had interesting things to say about these places, but I seriously can’t be bothered to do any research. Walking around and looking at things that look pretty seems to be enough to make me content. ❤

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I am braindead from taking and uploading these pictures which was a true ordeal today (slow connection, being logged out of SL every 10mn and my mouse cursor playing #&?%@! peek-a-boo with me). So let me feast on chocolate bonbons while I copy-paste the following from the pick description of this location.

“This installation opened on Sunday November 1st.

mushROOM is a graphic, 3-dimensional art installation, by Scottius Polke who created special artwork for the exhibit, and hand-illustrated all the textures. Althought the setting is a simple bedroom with typical furnishings, the room is inhabited by the artist’s subconscious – which manifests itself in life forms such as mushrooms, molds, amoebas, and other unclassifiable organisms.

Dance with amoebas, jump on the bed, kick the crumpled paper around, and discover the surprises this room holds.”

Another great build here, by Rogan Eberlain, made to ressemble the loft of a character on “Heroes”. I can’t say much for its accuracy as I’ve never watched the show, but suffice it to say that this looks good !

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Just spotted this recently opened sim, Innsmouth, on a blog today. Set in 1920’s Europe, this dark but moodily lit coastal town is sparsely spotted with fantastical creatures, and was built to be a backdrop for the Lovecraft fans.

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… for your upcoming Halloween needs. Brought to you by Lauren Bentham and Andrek Lowell, at Wasted Night.

Pictures taken with AM Radio’s Nostalgia and Mescaline Tammas’ Verdigris Windlight settings.

So, I was in the mood to go around some place on the grid and experience again how the look of things could be enhanced by shadows. I didn’t want to think too hard so I just visited some of AM Radio’s installations. The difference it makes there is very subtle as he already provides most of his builds with shadows and shadings, but it is there, perceptible, and, as shown here, the difference in mood can be even further enhanced by the use of Mescaline Tammas’ windlight settings.

I doubt that anyone who reads my blog hasn’t been to at least one of AM Radio’s builds before but I showed them to someone there yesterday who had never heard of him, so, heck. Incidentally, he’s the one who was telling me about the introduction of screen space ambiant occlusion in the SL client, for more realistic shadows, which is what got me to post some pics here.

Surface is the most recent installation that was uncovered maybe a week or two ago, which I liked very well, and I think benefitted hugely from the live shadows. The build I’ve always liked the most, though, is The Radio, and being there today, seeing everything like this, like in the pictures… well, it beat everything!

Shadows can now be enabled in the latest stable Second Life viewer (1.23.4.123908). The feature is not perfect, it bugs out on transparent textures (they tend to flicker or just not render well at all), but well, we can only hope it’ll get better someday. But here’s how to get them working if you want to try out yourself.

Go to your preferences, and set your graphic settings to ultra (or as high as you can), then click on the ‘Hardware Options’ button and check the Anisotropic filtering button, and then set the antialiasing to at least 2x.

Then press CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + D, go to ‘Advanced’ in the top menu, and click on ‘Debug settings’ at the bottom of the pull-down.

Write ‘renderdeferred’ in the field and set to FALSE.
Then ‘renderusefbo’ and set to TRUE.
Then ‘renderdeferred’ and TRUE again.
Finally, type in ‘renderssaoeffect’ and change the first value to -1.

And… enjoy. It makes a hell of a difference !

No post-treatment here at all, other than adding the shadowed white edges.