Love and the Lake, on Ignis

We are halfway through the current Safari season, so of course, it's already time to start thinking about the next one! If you're interested in showing the HG Safari tour group,  get in touch with Thirza Ember ono OSGrid, but first, read this page for Safari Hosts, it explains in excruciating detail how the trips work, what to expect from the group, and will help you avoid common pitfalls. That said, we have plenty still to see on this season, and our tour of Borderlands on Ignis Fatuus Grid was a treat! The HG Address is, as always, at the end of the post.

Nadir Rae

Best sellers in the 21st century are often fantasy and romance novels, adventures, and life hack books - and ever more frequently audiobooks, as people like to be read to, rather than read. The Middle Ages were pretty much the same! The legends around Viviane, Merlin, Arthur and all the gang of the Round Table are a mixture of magic, love stories and battles, with a lot of contemplative allegories mixed in. Nadir has perfectly captured this on her build, which is as large as it is full of detail. As always, we only had an hour to see it, and so of course there's more to go back and revisit.

We arrived at the church by a great waterfall.

Max Well [fr→en]: good evening to all of you, thank you for coming

Dings Digital: I can see myself live on TV, hooray

Arriving by torchlight on Borderlands

You too can see yourself on live TV if you come on Safari, as Lifted Pixel aka Jessica Pixel often livestreams our events on Youtube - here is yesterday's visit, as seen through her eyes.  The arrival point is an old church, it's the place where Nadir and Max had their big wedding ceremony, so it holds many memories for the virtual as well as representing the departure point in the journey around the region's story. Nadir gave everyone a torch on arrival.

James Atlloud: Thank you for the torch

Venus Love [fr→en]: watch out for the wigs lol

Tosha Tyran: yeah, I already tried to set Mal on fire... but he seems to be of stone

Forest.Azure: i'm very naked... and no face

Venus Love: lol yes forest 

Tosha Tyran: I thought that was your costume

Picturing the Paradox

 The state of mind between sleeping and waking is always fraught with paradoxes. Not just the orthodox opposition between the two states, but also all the language - in any language- between the two. Sleepwalking and dreamwalkers, for example, are definitely not the same. A daydream and a waking dream, too, are quite separate states. Or are they? 

Paradoxical Sleep is a collaboration between Nico Kailani, who provided the musical soundtrack to the sim, and Cherry Manga, the builder of the environment. Stream was supplied courtesy Suzi Avonside, and of course the region is part of the gallery complex belonging to Star Ravenhurst, Le Beau Retrouve.

Today was the grand opening of the exhibit, along with the rest of the show in the Gallery building (You may have read this post about Star's project)  and so lots of people jumped over to see what it was all about.

Nico Kailani 

The region comes alive if you turn on the stream, and go out walking on the otherworldly sea, with its many mirrorings. Golden showers (not, not that kind, promise) spring to life as you pass, and there are leaves of exquisite pattern. The gold colored torii, that liminal landmark between the sacred and profane. Don't forget, you always walk just a little to the right or left when you step through a Torii - it shows respect for the spirits.

Sights and Sore Eyes

In virtual worlds, here's an experience that most of us can relate to. Well, it's a bunch of experiences but they all boil down to the same thing. 

You're at a party and you realize that, although you like the company, you're not enjoying the music. You go to a freebie sim, and the radio is awful. Or someone's in Voice, and it's annoying. Or the sim has ambient sounds that are getting on your nerves.  

What can you do? Well it's quite easy. The Viewer gives you a subjective, personalized experience.

You can mute your Viewer (top right) or open the Volume controls and mute the specific source of sound that is bothering you. The beauty of this is that, chances are, nobody will know you did it. You can even throw a few Applauses into Local Chat when everyone else does, and you'll seem to be in synch with the set. 

What, though, can you do if the thing that bothers you is visible, not audible? 

That's a bit more tricky, but yes! It may be possible for you to resolve the problem without you having to leave the party, and without you having to ask other people to modify what they're doing, thus interfering with their enjoyment of an event. Because nobody wants to be that person. 

Weekend at Winx 2

 Bloom Peters: I created a special viewer for serious creators, its a custom Firestorm that allows you to upload insanity mesh haha

Thirza Ember: is there a link to it? or maybe there will be in the future?

Bloom Peters: not yet but i can show u the city, it demonstrates that.

"swishing tp sound... to a region called Whiterun"

Whiterun

Bloom Peters: We can and should have better limits in place. What your about to see was uploaded all in one go in less than 4 mins on my viewer - full textures. With the custom viewer you have no limits to what you can upload. Super super complex mesh, like this town, and it doesnt lag us. I believe Opensim should not have the same limits as Second Life.

Thirza Ember: I have almost 80 frame rate and the build rezzed in about 2 seconds - all of it. Admittedly, there are only the two of us here, but still...

Weekend at Winx 1

 At the end of a long week, what better way to relax than visiting a nice resort in good company.

Off to visit with Bloom Peters, famed throughout Opensim for her funfairs, scripts, castles. mesh, and of course her grid Winxtropia.

Bloom wanted to show me a sim she has been working on. She's a creature of passion when it comes to creating. SHe has several different projects going, but has put much of the planned work on hold to focus on this fun place, the Frutti Music Bar. it's a region and a resort, all in low lag mesh, and just adorable.

Bloom Peters: Welcome to Frutti Music Bar

Thirza Ember: wow love the look

Bloom Peters:  It's designed to push animesh and dining experience, every NPC does their job. Use shared environment, you should see an orange like night

Thirza Ember: the menu is making me hungry!

HIE Times, High Tunes!

 It's still a long way off, the next Hypergrid International Expo, but we have a new region on a new grid for the next event so we are already making sure the bones of the place are nice and healthy.

This week, for our second destination, we jumped over to the region - still a work in progress - to see if we could crash the sim. Our Load Test only got up to about 26 at any one time, which was a good start... and it was a hugely fun event, thanks to everyone who showed up for a little or a long time!

Thirza Ember: This is the region where we will be holding the Hypergrid International Expo in the spring, so we are just beginning to test this 3x3 for performance

Sunshine Szavanna: hope everyone can hear well - I have tunes for you on stream

Tosha Tyran: yes, pretty nice music

James Atlloud: no lag for me

Tosha Tyran: no lag

Sunshine Szavanna: Taarna has the best moves

Jupiter Rowland: Okay, I'm putting some load on the server with a ridiculously over-equipped dance HUD.

Tosha Tyran: Hi Uta,  what a nice surprise!... waving to Dings

Sunshine Szavanna: welcome to the Crash test party :)

Thirza Ember: The HIE event in April will have 4 bit Art performances. One by Sunshine Szavanna, featuring Ubuntu and  African language also... the amazing Bink Draconia will be doing an Art performance, plus, Cherry Manga, and our lovely Tina Bey for the Spanish part... plus talks in German, French, Spanish and Italian  (with the usual subtitles, of course!)

Dings Digital: oh great

Star Ravenhurst: Love the music!!

Tosha Tyran: yes, the music is really great

James Atlloud: yes - it finally started!

Dings Digital: the sim is performing wonderful

Forest Azure: oh, my eyes!

Thirza Ember: do everything you can to crash it, people

Sunshine Szavanna: /me tries her best

lifted pixel: loading QUICK for me

Taarna Welles: O_oooooo

Sunshine Szavanna in the red top was our music maven!

Boldly Going with Prince of Amor

 This week's trip took us to visit the Prince of Amor on his megaregion on OSGrid, Maze Space. 

It was quite a daring exercise, because this was our first Safari visit to Prince's regions (he has a lot!) on OSGrid, and this particular region is a challenge for any visitor, due to the dimensions and the darkness of space. On top of all that, Hurricane Helene was knocking on Florida's doors, and so Prince warned us before we got going that anything might happen RL-wise, and if he disappeared that'd be why. Luckily our timing went well, nothing got unnecessarily damp, and we had an out-of-this-world tour of the sim.

The start point for Maze Space (full HG Address at the end of the post, as always) is at over 8000m just about the position of Pluto . It's really essential that you come up here to begin, because at ground level you'll be in the sun, not a lot to see and a little to close to the heat for comfort. 

Prince Amor, today dressed as a Borg, welcomes the tourists

Instead, at the Space Station, you will find a collection of freebies, some info about the ideal Graphics settings for this build (spoiler alert, set everything to the max possible for your computer) and the main means of transport, the flying saucer.