Day Ten: Shengri La Spirit Spreads Its Wings…15,006 prims

We did it.  Tonight we broke the 15,000 prim limit that is artificially imposed on Second Life sims, and we did it, if I may say so, with quite a degree of aplomb and more than a bit of beauty and only a few screams & cries on my part.  

Since I left off with only a few prims left in my ‘limit’, I promised I’d creep carefully closer till we fell or flew.  And tonight, building out some little water birds, we flew as I fell over the 15,000 prim limit and into the future.

I am happy to report that altho Spirit is still running on a dainty little installation, she performed as well as she ever has.  There were no more additional pains than usual, and the process of falling over the edge went beautifully.  I am now well into uncharted areas and looking forward to seeing what my more robust build on the IBM Blade servers can really do.  Now we drive towards the next goal, of adding new sims around Spirit and putting her into Grid mode on an industrial strength backend. 

Of course, as the ability to add attachments, more scripting capabilities, and the like are added, I’ll gradually build up a store of avatar customization parts for my collaborators who have access to Spirit. 

Spirit may well end up being rebuilt from scratch.  Her current build was a “add as you go” experiences, using textures I had in one of my Photoshop directories.  But it may be time to build unique textures just for Spirit and her sister sims, that I don’t use in my Second Life builds, and create a more impressive trail to ‘going first’ in Open Sim.  My profound thanks, as ever, to my IBM team, who are an amazing group of wickedly intelligent (and often totally whack) people. 

Thanks folks. You rock.

Day Nine on Shengri La Spirit: Creeping Closer to the Edge

I don’t know what it is about building in Open Sim. I go in with the very best of intentions to build a new X, Y or even a Z, and before you know it, QWERTY appears. It’s like a thousand monkeys banging on typewriters.

I went in today in direct response to Script Wizard Dale enticing me with new treats.  A rotator script, and a leaping flame had been left for me on a tower, and altho the rotator script denied all efforts to pry it out of its prim case, the flame was gratefully snagged and promptly applied throughout the build.  Flames add such a special touch, altho I don’t think I was at best pleased to receive the label “Homo erectus”. I’m a sapiens, darn it! Or if we must, a Primcess.  A Primcess and a Pea.

Back on Spirit, the pegasids seemed to have bred in response to the sudden influx of flames all over the place.  At least, there’s a few more of them soaring about.

The flames seemed to have escaped, too, as now there are flames in all of the fire pits and the lily fire holders.  Some people just know what to do with flames when they’ve been given such a great gift from the Script Wizard Ghods, in marked contrast to other people who think fire should be put in, say, a campfire, as if that were at all artistic, even if they did get fire first before those of us who would use it to infinitely better effect.  Luckily this sore lack was remedied and all is well in Shengri La.

The particles made it out, too, to quite charming effect.  I still can’t yank the particle script out of its original prim, nor can I open it to twiddle its parameters.  Still, blue is a very pretty color and perfectly lovely with the lilies. 

By the end of the manic spree with the flames, particles and pegasids, the day’s tally of prims came to 14,363 on Spirit.  I am informed that Spirit is running on a somewhat dainty installation and that I will soon get a great hulking monstrosity of an installation, which will support not one but FOUR whole sims.  I admit I am really quite spoiled, as I am accustomed to my wide open sim lands in Second Life, and cannot wait for a new demesne to rise above the waves.  

Four Open Sims is quite exciting and will force me to think of how to extend the current build.  The goal, of course, is to push beyond the 15,000 prim limit per sim (and to do it attractively), and to see how much further we can go before things get entirely too wonky for words. I am limited, of course, in some respects, as a lot of the finer twiddly prim work that I’d normally do is rendered difficult to impossible in Open Sim, because prims often shift ever so slightly off their original position. 

I think we’ll go beyond 15,000 prims in our next build session. I’ve sketched out some interesting botanicals and I may lay a cobble stone path….a prim at a time.  And of course, those pegasids will end up on rotators, bless their silvery little hearts.  And perhaps, just perhaps, Team Leader Zha will put a nice fern in the inventory.  And maybe a nice kelp (I prefer green but brown is ok too), and a nice eel grass (a seagrass is less exciting but I’d live).  O, and maybe even one of those cool fractal tree thingies that Jo Grant has.   That would be cool.  No hurry, Saturday is soon enough…

Shengri La Second Life: Five sims, no waiting…

We are almost done with the renovations of the five-island Shengri La complex in Second Life.  We’ve created a central waterway that starts in Hope and sweeps through Shengri La into Joy, where it opens up into a deep, wide bay protected by Mt. Joy.  Love is still largely marine but Peace has become largely montaine.  The best way to view Shengri La is with one of the automated boat tours, one of which departs the Small Gallery in Shengri La, the other of which departs from Hope. 

Visit Shengri La Hope Daybreak

If you prefer to walk the sims, start at our Welcome Area, where we still maintain our Departure line of Ruth to Ruthless new avatar kits.  Walk over the Bridge of Dreams and set your environment to sunset. The view is stunning.  Look over the edge at the gargoyles and watch carefully for a bat!

Visit the Bridge of Dreams on Shengri La

In the above picture, you can see the monument to one of our collaborator’s cat, Edison, which passed away earlier in the year.  Send off a firework in Edison’s honor.  We like cats on Shengri La, as you will see from the lions, tigers and just plain house cats you’ll meet in Shengri La.

Visit Edison’s Memorial on Shengri La

Visitors can still sail or boat all around the complex with either their own vehicles, or they can use one of the open source swan-shaped boats (romantical!) or a paddle boat from the rezzer in Hope.  There are interesting things tucked away in the ruins and wrecks under water, perfect for any sort of aquatic visitors.  We also have quite a few marine animals, ranging from sharks to whales and all sorts of fishes.  Scuba divers and mer people alike will enjoy exploring the underwater landscape.

Visit the Ruined Seagate on Love

Visit the ship wreck on Love

On the terrain, there are trails that run all around the edges of four of the sims, where people can ride their horses.  We’re still waiting for the open source horses that visitors can ride (if they can catch them!)  Most of the horses live on Love and Joy.

Shengri La itself hosts a regular Saturday marketplace where new designers can showcase their products.  Anyone is welcome to show up, and place up to 20 prims of their product (NO! scripted vendors, at all, period, paragraph, end of story) in one of the twenty tents provided.  Obviously, space is limited, and we require that there be no adult content.  There’s no charge, and the marketplace is open from 9 am to 5 pm SLT.  At 5:15, prims get returned if you don’t.

Visit the Boardwalk on Shengri La

Visitors can also view Pumpkin Tripsa’s amazing gargoyle sculptures, as well as purchasing them directly from the gargoyles on the boardwalk.  While on the boardwalk, feed the swans or the koi – the koi are particularly amusing as they positively mob the fish food.  There is also a cutting garden located in the large golden glass house.  The rose bushes are available to purchase for $OL. 

Birders will find the renovated Shengri La a delight. There are 20 varieties of birds and 3 varieties of bat swooping around Shengri La. The ducks may be fed, as can both the black and mute swans.  Just watch for the small wooden feeding boxes.  There are also a wide range of insects, including dragon flies and a large range of butterfly species. 

The Ruined Zoo offers some interesting surprises. Given the infestation of rats in the Zoo, it’s no surprise that Shengri La is a cat’s paradise.  Look for the sleeping cats and the free-roaming ones. 

Visit the Ruined Zoo on Shengri La

Visit the galleries in Shengri La – we feature the artwork of Callipygian Christensen in the main gallery, and we have rotating exhibits in the Small Gallery. 

Visit the Small Gallery and the Gallery at Shengri La

We still have the flagship store for Silver Rose Designs in Shengri La.  Stop by the keep and check out Yuri’s designs. 

Of course, we also have the corporate offices of the Fashion Research Institute located in Peace, in the Palace Queen Pea.

Shengri La is our replacement for a standard web site, our corporate pitch deck, and the space we maintain to support our training program directed at apparel industry personnel, fashion design educators, fashion design students, and fashion designers. 

In looking at Shengri La as a web site replacement, my experience is that any company that is presenting itself as virtual world savvy needs to have a strong entry to showcase their skills.  As a corporate pitch deck, our islands are far stronger than any web site.  People love stories, and they respond to stories.  A virtual world corporate pitch deck enables the telling of a company’s story in the rich, immersive context of a 3-dimensional space. 

 And Shengri La, despite not even having been relaunched yet, captures a pretty reasonable traffic number with an amazing degree of stickiness. That’s not bad for a complex that exists primarily as a training site.  Please feel free to visit us in Shengri La.  Bring your horses, go for a ride.  Surf the waters, sail, swim, or just meditate amongst the many peaceful resting places, and enjoy the sunrises or sunsets.  We look forward to your visit.

Day 8: Showing Signs of Life

Day 8….like the way time flows in an OpenSim island, in fits and starts.  Day 8 actually bifurcated.  At one point, I looked at the build and while it was totally cool (to my crazed fashion designer eyes), I realized it might not play in Peoria….so I ripped out the day’s efforts and went in a different direction and added…Pegasids.  Great, big, shiny silver ones soaring over Shengri La Spirit. 

And a spirit place on the top of the mountain…

 And I twiddled the inside of a new guard keep…note the sunset through the inside keyholes. 

But the pegasids are the coolest….o, for a rotator script (nudges Script Wizard Dale) to make them swoop.

 Details of the bridge:

I have to repeat again, that the chronicle of THIS build on Shengri La Spirit is not being conducted on any of our sims in Second Life.  We (the Fashion Research Institute) does maintain a five-island complex there, all with Shengri La nomenclature.  Anyone can visit our islands in Second Life.  Those islands are maintained as open, natural land as our corporate pitch deck, and as our half-way house for apparel industry residents.  Others can visit too, we’re pretty egalitarian.  Just remember to pick up your trash there. If you don’t, your welcome mat will get yanked.  Trust me on this one.

But Spirit is our IBM OpenSim on IBM’s Yellow Zone.  The Yellow Zone is not open to the public; we’re using it to stress and test OpenSim in various ways.  I report my day’s findings back to our Team Leader, Zha Ewry, who goes off and ‘does something to the box’ (kicks it? drops it out a window? feeds it a double espresso?) at which point, usually, things improve.  Sometimes, given the end-of-time nature of a very tender bud of a program, they don’t. But that’s what it means to Go First.  Pioneering in a new space, with a build like Spirit means you get the locusts as well as the lilies. 

Or, as in Day 8….pegasids and lilies: