Safari Goes Boldly

          The word maze means to be confused or bewildered, and may be related to Scandinavian words like mas - 'exhausting labor' and masa, a Swedish word meaning 'to be slow or sluggish'. Clearly a natural fit for any Safari.

         
The Maze on 3rdRock Grid was our first destination this week,  HG Addresses as usual at the end of the post, and if you are inworld, you can also pick them up at the Clubhouse on Teravus Paza OSrid or on our sim, hgsafari, on Francogrid. 

Isolde flys.

Zinnia Frenzy: it's a no fly zone, no cheating! lol
Isolde Caron: i fly when i want to cause its my party.....
Sunbeam Magic: Zinnia, can you tell us something about the maze ?
Zinnia Frenzy: This is a terrain maze made by Jennifer Steele  and its going to have paintballing and huts and things added... it's a multi purpose Maze!

Art Blue gets his feet wet at the start of the Maze

Thirza Ember: Zinnia has been working hard, she has also re-vamped the 3rd Rock Grid Welcome area
Zinnia Frenzy:  Yes it was a bit dated and more for a closed grid
         That's not all, she and Kered Owl are also working on this year's ROBstock music festival, which will be in March. But we were here to be amazed by the maze, and though some of us chose to drink beer and hang out at the entrance, camming, a good few brave souls took the plunge...
George Equus: Going to get lost now....never to be seen again
Billy Bradshaw: I am not claustrophobic.. I am not claustrophobic

Zinnia Frenzy and Kered Owl

There have been some other big changes on 3rd Rock recently...
Zinnia Frenzy: Yes, we are now a Not for Profit Foundation registered in the Netherlands  And are in the process of designing a new website and reinstating the community run side of the grid.
The goal of the foundation is firstly to "enhance human dignity in an international cultural, educational, and social exchange, modelled in an immersive virtual environment. An exchange based on  equality, empathy, respect, and compassion, and through a process of sharing, participation, and cooperation."  Sounds like a pretty good basis for a community!

James Atlloud not cheating, honest

Thirza Ember: JAMES you made it out alive!
James Atlloud: egad Yes - I only jumped a wall or two - lol
 Lucy Afarensis: The Dragon did not get you ?
James Atlloud: No, I don't think so.
Thirza Ember: omgosh there is another maze inside the castle!   ...this place needs at least a day to visit it would seem... no cheese, just a lot of maze
Sunbeam Magic: and Halloween stuff too
Lucy Afarensis: There is an underground maze to the east of here
Sunbeam Magic: and an very cool organ
Dolfke Barbosa: yes the Castle hides many secrets
Sunbeam Magic: and horses but they won't let you ride them ;(
Thirza Ember: a cool organ is something we all want to see
Isolde Caron: bah, you and your organs sunbeam....

          Definitely worth multiple visits, the fantasy regions on 3rd Rock Grid are an ideal place to pass time either alone or in company. And when you've had enough adventuring, you can always attend one of the regular concerts held throughout the week on 3rd Rock. Notices are regularly posted both inworld, at the Welcome area and on G+... so get involved!
          Speaking of music, it was Truelie week...

          Our second stop was to Spellscape Grid for a shortened Truelie Telling concert, fun as ever, she looked spectacular in her Princess dress, standing on the roof of  Pendle Castle.

The delightful Pendle Castle, no witches or tattletale children as far as I could see.

We were present as guests of Xander Bing, the grid owner, who wanted to share with us some interesting news about a brand new kind of virtual world he is working on with some friends. 

Truelie (right) serenades Princesses and Poe on the Spellscape stop of  our Safari

Xander and his co-creators have been very busy on a fascinating adventure in 3d code. Provisionally called the Galaxy Project, it will require a different viewer from the one we use, and that's only one of the many departures from vws as we know them...

Xander Bing: haven't got the final name, and its very early stages still but i will tell u about the basic idea, and I have some screen shots of the latest alpha release of the Galaxy viewer.    

Xander Bing: Before I get started with what it's all about, I just want to point out, its a new viewer and server, and has no connection to opensim, different server software and viewer completely. The basic idea is to create virtual worlds on a larger scale than is possible with opensim, and no borders! It should be very similar where possible to opensim, but different when it has to be for new features and such. 
Xander Bing: We have some mesh loaded... one picture you can see shows a tree we exported from opensim, it was a sculpty. Because it was sculpty it didn't export that well, but we are working on it. As you can see from the last two images, the worlds will be round, we plan on simulating planets and star systems with space travel.
Sunbeam Magic: and they said the world was flat ...
Xander Bing: the viewer will have building tools yes, at the moment its limited to just placing a model, and right now its only a tree lol, but it is very early in development, as I said

Thirza Ember: We took a trip to Galaxy a few days ago, and I planted a tree, but I missed the ground... it was an air tree
Xander Bing: hehe yep, and can't move the tree after planting yet lol. The planet you see in the picture is the same size as earth, the terrain is generated procedurally and gets more detailed the closer to the surface you get.
James Atlloud: Oh wow, that's big.
Mal Burns: so now we really can send griefers into orbit
Sunbeam Magic: lol Mal
Xander Bing: yep, with or without a shuttle pod Mal lol
Carlos Loff: and can you have to planets near by and just leave one to dive into another ?
Lucy Afarensis: has a way to go then ?
Xander Bing: yes, wont be ready for awhile, still working hard and there are only 3 of us
Mal Burns: wants mega planet with lots of moons! lol

 Xander Bing: i did some math (which maybe wrong) but i think that planet has the same area as 7,775,878,906 standard SL Regions, but of course we can only run that large world at such a low cost because its empty... when you are on the surface it seems flat, but as you go higher you start to see the round sphere
Carlos Loff : so the ground is actually round but so big you won't notice.
Sunbeam Magic: incredible!
Truelie Telling: are planets shared or does each person have their own?
Lucy Afarensis: Can we take our stuff with us from opensim ?

Xander Bing: opensim models will be exportable as dae files and then can be imported to Galaxy
Mal Burns: sounds like a complex physics engine
Xander Bing: physics will not be possible server side at this scale mal, so we are going to have to use some viewer side tricks to sink things up
Thirza Ember: it surely does present some unique challenges, but also some really cool. I'm thnking every planet sill have a lot of no build ocean space....
Xander Bing: yes, any area that isn't rented and therefore is giving no income will be empty and just have the default procedural terrain with procedural trees and plants
Carlos Loff: is it possible to have 6 smaller planets instead of one mega one ?
Xander Bing: yes, planets will be any size, we also have a moon now in orbit of the main planet. The moon is new so I didn't have chance to get s screen shot. Right now all we have is a very complicated terrain system, we are just starting to get down to mesh and getting content in the worlds
Lucy Afarensis: will we be able to import OARs and IARs ? OARs could be a serious drawback
Xander Bing: not sure about that, i haven't thought about them, probably not OARs but IARs would be a great idea.. i think OAR would open a can of worms trying to get loaded
Carlos Loff: so the round planet=mainland, if I can call it that, will have gravity on every side ?

Selfie: Galaxy Thirza

Xander Bing: yes, no matter where you are on the planet, down is always in the direction of the planet center... the avatar is still a pink cube so good luck getting your pants to fit at this point lol...

           Onwards and upwards to our final stop for this week....

 Last stop was the tiny grid Relliketh home to some Bajoran roleplayers, refugees... from Second Life. 

Unadecal Masala

          Our host was Unadecal Masala, and the lovely LadyJo Martin was the DJane for a dance inside a surreal wormhole, providing a spectacular light show. We got into the groove right away as you can see! 

There is, however much more than dancing in the solar winds on Relliketh. Of note are the fantastic Star Trek-inspired crew rooms, shuttlecraft, the holodeck and more. It is really nice to wander around and soak up the atmosphere.
Role play is predicated on the team all being online at the same time, and the guys here seem to be for the most part based in Europe, so if that time zone is convenient for you and you want to get involved with trekkie activities, then why not sign up and get involved?

Unadecal Masala: USC Relliketh was a Bajoran centred Trek RP in SL. A few years ago we became homeless and stagnant, but 2 years ago we found out about OSGrid, so I signed up for Fibre Optic broadband, bought a bunch of second hand PCs and set up some regions in OSGrid

Hladson Kappler: it was quite a challenge to start up from scratch again, but we love it.
Unadecal Masala: When the Great Crash of 2014 happened, I simply moved forward with a full minigrid. Virtual environments are ideal for Sci-Fi fans to explore their fandoms and let loose, and Trek is a prevalent one, along with LOTr and other fantasy genres. Hladson here is the RP chief Engineer and a very good builder too.
Hladson Kappler: I try my best!

Arrival point on Relliketh

Unadecal Masala: This is all home hosted, all 87 regions. Of course, traffic is minimal. Until today. This is what I really love about OS. We had become hobos in SL because we didn't have the big bucks, but with a minimal investment and a little ingenuity, we have a place to call home where we can let our imaginations soar, build, create or simply chill out after a shit day. 

           SO true.

HG Addresses:

The Maze on 3rdRock Grid      grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002:gaul

Pendle Castle on Spellscape    grid.spellscape.co.uk:80:honeywood 

                                            the castle is at coordinates 600:400

Relliketh arrival point             rellikethgrid.ddns.net:8002