Giant Prims - 2nd anniversary of "The Big Prim Problem"

Two years ago today, the Not Possible IRL group read Michael Linden's post, The Big Prim Problem, in dismay. Be sure to read that post if you have no idea what I am talking about.

A great deal has happened in two years, including a tiny window during which a number of creators were able to take advantage of a wee exploit and make many huge prims in different sizes, but none of them scalable.

While we would still like to have scalable megas with which to create, our priorities have moved to other areas, with the top one being better IP protection of virtual creations.

In any event, since that fateful day, October 12, 2007, this blog has kept a vigil of sorts. We published many posts about great content that would not exist were it not for megas, and we still care. And we still want scalable megas. In fact, I cannot imagine most of my favorite content in Second Life without them. What creations never existed because we don't have scalable prims? I suppose we will never know.

In the meantime, scalable huge prims are not a problem on OpenSims, and hardly an issue on Blue Mars were prims don't even exist. Why hasn't Linden Lab allowed them? Why?

I thought you might enjoy reading an old post that Douglas Story prepared for you, many many moons ago, and below you'll find links to just some of our old posts. This blogpost was published long before we'd figured out how to resize pics on Blogger. Sadly, ignore the slurls for the Man Angel at Black Swan and DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism, as this content is no longer on the grid.

Also, Juria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light is currently located at the "new" Chakryn Forest, the old Chakryn Forest is still there, Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point was returned to her one day by mistake and she has since had to rebuild or recreate it, prim by prim, and the FlowerBall has been relocated to Cetus Island. I'll post slurls to these things shortly.

How time flies!

~*~

Without Megaprims...

Originally published October 20, 2007

this post by Douglas Story

Without megaprims...Light Waves' Man Angel would have disappeared.
photo by Finny Yates. slurl

Ah, the power of them three little dots! I refer to the ellipse... Useful in this case because we were all ready to write a scorching propaganda piece with the theme, "Without Megaprims... All This Great Shit Will Go Away!" But now with things looking up on that front (latest word is that the all-powerful Lindens are leaning toward keeping megaprims) I only have to change the part after the ellipse to "...All This Great Shit WOULD Have Gone Away! And What A Damned Shame That Would Have Been!!!" Hmmmm...the first title was snappier though, you have to admit.

Without megaprims...DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism would have disappeared.
slurl


Without megaprims...Rezzable's Greenies' Home would have disappeared.
slurl

Without megaprims...the irritatingly prolific Juria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light would have disappeared.

I make something new about every seven months. With Juria, it's about every two minutes. I find this annoying. slurl

Without megaprims... Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point would have disappeared. slurl

You'll find a lot of shots here that include Bettina's booty in them. The author wishes to point out that most of the pictures here were taken by Bettina herself. Any booty issues should be taken up with the management.

Without megaprims... The International Spaceflight Museum would have disappeared.
slurl

The thing is...the artists and builders who use megaprims tend to be the most creative, charming, and well-dressed avatars who bring us joy in SL. How lucky we are to have them!

Without megaprims... Douglas Story, Aldomanutio Abruzzo & Desdemona Enfield's FlowerBall would have disappeared.
slurl

Without megaprims...Artoo Magneto's anyMOTION would have disappeared.
slurl


Without megaprims...Gazira Babeli's 'Gaz of the Desert' would not have been possible.

I don't like most of the machinima I've seen. This is 23 minutes of spell-binding, slow-cut magic. See it. slurl

Without megaprims... Cube Inada's Alien Flying Circus would have disappeared.
slurl

Without megaprims...Earth Primbee's Inspire Space Park would have disappeared.
slurl

Yes, it's true that I took this shot myself. But you'll notice - there's no booty. My pictures are entirely booty-free.

(photo by Wellington Bahram) slurl
Without megaprims we would not have Bettina's forest home - Chakryn - by Andrek Lowell,

nor this,








nor this (spanning three effing sims!)
slurl








nor this.
slurl



I'm sure we've missed many wonderful items (I'm sure you'll point them out, gentle readers) but I think we made our point here. The loss of megaprims would be a cheapening, deadening blow to the fields of imagination and creativity that Second Life opens up to people. We hope that this wonderful creative tool remains open to us, for both our creative impulses and for those who appreciate same.

Yoo hoo! Linden Labs? Paging Mr. Michael Linden... Please give the waiting (second) world a favorable answer, and soon!



See also:

• The Big Prim that wouldn't leave
• This just in! The future of huge prims is looking good
• Megaprims for science
• Not Possible in Second Life? Without huge prims...
• Not Possible in Second Life? Without huge prims... (yes, another post by the same name)
• Not Possible in Second Life? Without huge prims... And another!

Floating buildings - In Real Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

My colleague Alpha Auer and I have this ongoing discussion regarding what, in virtual worlds, is actually Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL). One concession she makes is the concept of floating islands and buildings in metaversal skies.


soror Nishi's newest landscaping shop,"lifstean," as photographed by Lem Skall. Teleport directly from here

Still, I was surprised yesterday when Alpha mentioned that folks are already making "floating" buildings. It seems that a company in the Netherlands, Dutch Docklands, designs water-based solutions that make “land from water” by providing large scale "floating" constructions.



As far as I can tell, plans for the construction of a string of floating islands containing hotels, restaurants and a heliport off the shores of Dubai have been shelved due to the economic crisis. It seems that each island was to have been in the shape of a letter, with all of them spelling out a verse that reads in part, "Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey."

National Public Radio (NPR) did a great piece on the project in April, 2008, and here's another from DE51GN.

It could be argued that space stations, already in use, are in fact, floating buildings.


Boeing's International Space Station (ISS), slated for completion in 2010, will be about the size of an American football field

All the same, I'll wager that the only floating buildings most of us will ever experience in our lifetimes will be pixelated and very virtual.

Prim Abuses: Gore Suntzu at Chakryn Forest

C-beams

Gore Suntzu says: "... My abuses are unreal prim sculptures made with sculpties (mostly) , and with a lil scripting to make them alive. The best word I can use to describe them is "pulsating." Do they have a meaning? Boh! I dont know, but if the music is nice and the moon is full, sometimes it can happen that they catch the mood of the people that are looking at them ;) ..."


Metaverse Pulse.


Tornado of Souls


Phoenix Rising

I do not know if Gore Suntzu's kinetic light sculptures were made with Chakryn Forest in mind, however since they were placed there I think it has to follow that they should be taken in within that context. Unlike art work displayed in a neutral gallery setting, site specific art needs to strongly take into account the setting within which it is placed.

The less bright the more powerful, the more secluded the more revealing, Suntzu did succeed in integrating a good portion of his work with the challengingly beautiful eco-system that is Chakryn. The more that these works blend into the forest the more powerfully they revealed themselves to me. Thus I found myself drawn to pieces such as Phoenix Rising and Fall Away, while some few others sadly did not achieve quite the same effect, I felt. A good example to the latter would be E Pluribus Unum. Far too bright and beyond the brightness there also seems to be a problem of the shape of the structure not really belonging to that environment, as indeed is also the case with Fluxus Kinetikos. However, back to the ones that worked for me I would have to mention C-Beams for one and Tornado of Souls for another. And then, oddly enough, "Spiralidoso", which although highly luminescent does indeed manage to integrate itself into the environment through the usage of sheer contrast, implemented by a shape alien enough to keep me wondering; whereas the spherical/solar forms of E Pluribus and Fluxus have fallen into an ambiguous twilight zone of neither attaining full integration nor sufficient contrast.


Fall Away: When you throw a pebble in the water... This quiet one was by far my favorite.


Spiralidoso

But in the end, Gore Suntzu gets my full respect: The sculptures that do work, that do integrate themselves into the environment, and indeed add to a place which is already so vastly endowed with magic as Chakryn Forest undoubtedly is, far exceed the pieces which fall short of the considerable task at hand. And in my book that most certainly qualifies as success!

Gore Suntzu says: "I have never considered myself an "artistic" kind of guy. Second Life made me discover that part of myself." Amen to that...

To view the sculptures of Gore Suntzu at Chakryn Forest teleport directly from here. You can also see larger sizes of the photos I took here.

Openlife: Is it ready for most Second Lifers? No. But that day doesn't seem so far off

Is one-year old Openlife ready for the mostly social user of virtual worlds? The fashionistas? The Universities? The VIP dOOds and the bling-ettes? Absolutely not. Yet.

You cannot teleport a friend. Instead, you have to give them a landmark, and they may not even receive it. A teleport may very likely end with a crash. Poseballs are mostly hilarious. Click to sit and you may find yourself upside down or doing an odd dance in mid-air. You can't spend a dime, there is nothing for sale (except land) and... well, you get the picture. Openlife is still in Beta.

Can you create cool content?



Most of the builds I saw during my short visit to Openlife were crap. I need further explorations to understand the limitations there, but a visit to Exodus (teleport directly from here) - created by Gino and Linda McCallister with help by Grimly Graves - was a clear demonstration of its potential.







At this point, you can't terraform beyond 15m-/+, but tier for mainland regions costs $59 a month, and each region supports 45,000 prims, and regular prims are scalable to 100m. And per my conversation with Openlife's founder and president, Steve Sima, features coming before the end of the year include:

- Support for OGRE.MESH 3D Objects (Import 3D Modelled objects)
- Avatar 2.0 (advanced next generation Avatar System, including 'real' face texture mapping)
- Python Scripting
- Avatar-to-Avatar Private Skype Calling
- In-world Spatial Audio Voice support

Importantly, Openlife also expects to have a working economy by the end of this year.



A real Community

Openlife enjoys a strong sense of community and neighborliness. Everyone I met there has a Second Life account, but most spend the bulk of their time in Openlife building this new world. They've rolled up their sleeves and are working steadily and together to make their dreams a reality here, together with their leader, Steve Sima (aka Sakai Openlife), with whom they meet once a week!

I'm thinking that NPIRL and Impossible IRL should begin to establish a presence there and welcome any thoughts on this topic from our members.

3D doodling with Vlad

NPIRL florist, sculpty master, and video artist Vlad Bjornson is hosting an interactive 3D doodling session and is inviting content creators to come build together on a chosen theme. He's calling it Collabricate. This could become a weekly event, folks!

You'll certainly be in good company. Here's a great vid he created in October of last year: his Top Ten Second Life® building tips.



Vlad's spreading the event over the course of two days to give more people a chance to get in-world and participate: this Saturday, August 30th between 11am and 1pm SLT and Sunday, August 31st between 5 and 7pm SLT.

Got any brainstorms, suggestions or questions? Visit his Shiny Life blog and let him know.

Show and Tell - Get thee some input, some laughs, and some new people to admire

Update! The Show and Tell show is still going on every Sunday at 2pm, but it has moved to Avaria, which you can reach by teleporting from here.

I'm racing to get my chores done right now so that I can attend an innovative and fun event that many had told me about but that I only just last week experienced. Doh! I can only wonder how much I've missed!

For over a year, and today and every Sunday at 2:00pm SLT, dozens of avatars gather together at North Lummerland for one hour to share, review and discuss newly created content. That content can be anything at all that you made in-world (no 2D items, though) and all levels of experience are invited.

Up to nine people (first come, first served, but none after 2:30pm) may submit and unveil their work to a growing crowd of mostly supportive and entertaining audience members. Quips, questions, zany remarks and lots of encouragement are generously doled out to each of the presenters who rez, demonstrate and explain their creations.

And then there is a vote...

And all the participants win! The audience kicks in tips and these monies are distributed amongst the presenters, with higher amounts going to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places.

Among the many builders and artists who have presented at this Show and Tell are Pandora Wrigglesworth, four Yip, Bryn Oh, and Crap Mariner.

Founders and hosts Barney Boomslang and florenze Kerensky keep the event on its toes and moving at a good clip.

"It is a fun event, especially since you get to watch builders grow. We have had a few builders who have stuck around, repeatedly showing, and so you get to see the works getting better with every piece," said Barney Boomslang when I spoke with him earlier this week. "It's tremendous fun to see what kind of things people come up with building. We once had someone who made a toothbrush and toothpaste complete with a tooth brushing animation. Totally useless in Second Life®,, but still - great idea just to _do_ :)"

Teleport directly from here, but do keep in mind that sometimes the sheer number of attendees makes it necessary for the entire assembly to move to another location for a smoother performance.

Please remember to remove face lamps, high prim clothing, high prim hair, and all those nifty attachments so that everyone can have a pleasant time. Last week, Pandora gave away many items from her Curio Obscura store to the individual with the lowest Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) rating. I didn't qualify, of course, but I am learning! I think I will go bald today.

Lumiere Noir - The best teacher you never knew you had

If Second Life® has an aristocracy... meaning an elite group of people who act behind the scenes with an interest in benefiting the entire population, then Lumiere Noir is a true aristocrat. Yes, there are people who are perhaps better known... limelight-happy, if you will... but I've come to think that many of them reflect rather than generate light.

He didn't invent the tools, but Lumiere (who's name means "light" in French) has single-handedly taught thousands upon thousands of Second Life's residents (and probably you, dear Reader) how to build via his Ivory Tower of Prims (teleport directly from here).



A model of the first Ivory Tower of Prims above; and below, the actual Tower
The trouble with interviewing Lumiere Noir is that he is too good a conversationalist, and so our talks, which spread out over a number of days, strayed off to many unrelated and engrossing topics. To give you some idea, I have over 50 pages of logged conversations and notes! He is - at once - fascinating and fascinated with all worlds, both virtual and real, and well read, and curious as all get out.



Tell us about the man behind your avatar.
Lumiere Noir: I'm Vince Frost, I live in Plano, Texas, which is close to Dallas. I'm an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher at a high school in Plano. I teach 12th graders world literature, and I've done that for about 11 years now. My background is in art, but I discovered teaching after I graduated. I love teaching.

What is your favorite book to share with them?
Lumiere Noir: Pygmalion... I see them all as Eliza Doolittle! Their story is a little similar and language is what holds them back in this country, just as Eliza's accent holds her back, but I don't see myself as Henry Higgins! They are mostly Spanish speakers, from Central and South America, as well as a lot of Chinese. I specialize in the Chinese, and Mandarin is my second language. I mastered in art, and when I was about to graduate, I fell in with the Chinese community at my university. Through them, I got some connections, and went to Taiwan. I had planned to go for a year and learn the language and culture, and wound up staying almost four. I taught English to support myself and studied Chinese, and traveled a lot in Asia. This was between 1988 and 1991.

How did a man with this background end up in Second Life, on… Christmas eve! (Rez: 12/24/2003)
Lumiere Noir: I came here via The Sims Online, which I liked but it was so limited, and later There.com. What I loved about that world is that there was so much to explore, but most of it was made by the creators of There. One could create things but it was expensive. I hated being nickel-and-dimed to death... How do you say that in the U.K.? I made several things in There, mostly clothes… very eccentric things. Then I started hearing about this place. I tried Second Life in early Beta but I'm afraid to say I hated it. It was just so awkward, so I stayed in There until late 2003.

You were in Second Life earlier then?
Lumiere Noir: That was as a different avatar. SwenKong Wu I think... I can't remember the password :-) Probably no longer exists. (Note: It doesn’t). I was Swen_Wu_Kong in There, and Wu was available here at that time.


The Ivory Tower of Primitives today

How did the Ivory Tower of Prims come about?
Lumiere Noir: I love to make things, and I love to teach. Making the Tower was a natural thing for me as a teacher. I taught myself to build, and my first impulse was to turn around and teach it to others, but I quickly found that I didn't like teaching in-world very much.

So you created the tutorials instead! Have you held anniversary parties at the Tower?
Lumiere Noir: I have....I used to do a lot of things here. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I'm on to other projects at the moment. I tend to work on the Tower in the summers. It sort of lies fallow, except for maintenance work until the summer, and then I go through and add new things, and revise.

In an interview with Hamlet Au, back in June 2004, Lumiere described the Ivory Tower by saying, "[T]his is a user interface about a user interface. I like it when there are layers of reality and simulated reality that go in layers like this... I've interviewed a lot of master builders to get tips and tricks and experience and building methods that go beyond my own."

Lumiere Noir: It’s now pretty current, except it doesn't cover sculpties. That's okay with me on the whole because you have to learn about sculpties in conjunction with the 3D modeler you use and there's no way for me to cover all of them. Sculpties are a lot like scripting. It's best learned on the web. I can't cover Blender, Maya, Studio 3D Max and all the others :-)

Featuring a series of self-taught, self-paced lessons on how to build with prims, the Tower, is a lively place filled with newbies, doing what newbies do. Some are lost in concentration, while others are discovering gestures or editing their appearance.



It must take incredible patience to be Lumiere Noir. While standing at the Ivory Tower for about 20 minutes the other day, I was offered unsolicited, undiscussed friendship twice, and asked for help another three.



Earlier this month, Torley Linden made another one of his terrific videos, this time featuring a tour of the Ivory Tower of Prims and its sandbox.



Lumiere Noir: I got hooked on Second Life when I rezzed my first prim. Up until then I thought the world was interesting, but chaotic and a bit trashy. Then one day I accidentally rezzed a prim and I was amazed.

Accidentally?
Lumiere Noir: Yes! I was trying to ride a motorcycle away, missed hitting “ride,” and hit “create” instead. Newbie me! I became so fascinated with that prim. I learned everything you can do with it. I think I still have it somewhere, but I did so many things with it, and began learning about scripting with it.

That same prim???
Lumiere Noir: Yes, for two weeks it was me and my prim! Not long after that I met Starax. We started about the same time, and we both worked in Morris, the greeting area at that time. We were friends and friendly rivals. We took very different directions over time, and don't talk as much as I'd like to, but he's one of my dearest friends here. He'll hate me for saying this, but under all that crust beats a heart of gold. The crust is there to protect it.

So you and Starax were working at Morris, and you were with this one poor prim…
Lumiere Noir: Yes, I saw all these crazy things he was doing, and I was learning and experimenting. He'd build something, and sometimes I'd build my own and he'd get mad because at that time mine was better. Except maybe he did his in an hour and I'd spend a couple of weeks on mine. But he's really the genius of this place!

I was playing with architecture, virtual of course. My style was always pretty weird. The thing that always distresses me about this place is that we have so much available to us to create with, but most people seem to make the same everyday airplanes, cars and buildings. I realize that a lot of that has to do with comfort level. We like what's familiar, but we can do so much more.


The first dome for the Tower


The second dome

Lumiere Noir: Back then land was very cheap and I got all the land I could in one of the last landgrabs. The Lindens used to release land for a $1L per m2. I don't think there were more than 20 or 30 sims when I first arrived and, oddly enough, that seemed large. (I) got most of Natoma over time, and started getting land in Noyo. Noyo was a busy sim because it had a telehub - back when we had to travel telehub to telehub - so I first built the library there.

Do you pay tier for this land that the Tower sits on?
Lumiere Noir: No, but I had the pleasure of paying a lot of money for a couple of years. The Lindens now sponsor it, and I'm very thankful for that.

As well they should! It would be a scandal otherwise.
Lumiere Noir: I've never asked for contributions. Most of the people that use the place are newbies. Word got out that I'd only ever had two supporters in the history of the Tower, about the time I put up the new Tower, maybe two years ago. They posted that on forums, and people started contributing a lot. A while after that the Lindens became sponsors. I gave over all my land here in Natoma and they left me in control of it.



How closely do you work with the Lindens? An official FIC, huh?
Lumiere Noir: Lol....screw the FIC and the anti FIC! I just do my work... hang out with close friends; I really don't care about the rest. Truthfully, (the Lindens) are like silent partners. I almost never hear a thing from them. I know they keep an eye on the place. I've got to tell you about my partner in crime here, Avi Arrow. She helps a ton with this place.

She never said a word about it! What is her role?
Lumiere Noir: I don't see how I could do what I do without her. Avi heads up the group Ivory Tower Dwellers, which she keeps running smoothly, and they help us keep watch over it. I mostly keep my nose down and make things. I have my own way of looking (after) them, but Avi keeps it together.

“Lumiere is a dear and trusted friend - my best friend in here, really. I've known Lumi for 23 months, yet much of what I know about him, I've been told by others (usually in the form of how much Lumi had influenced them). Lumi is a very innovative builder, primarily through his modular building exercises at the Ivory Tower. He has helped many residents who have gone on to do great things in here... from architectural building to making avatar attachments. His legacy in-world is one of being generous and tirelessly fun.” – Avi Arrow

The Ivory Tower is just one of the many projects that Lumiere has up his sleeve. There are his mostly extra-terrestial vehicles, which you can read about here and here, and his Planet Mongo, a Flash Gordon-inspired sim which we'll be talking about again soon... and his avatars...

The Big Prim That Wouldn’t Leave

It happened right smack in the middle of the holidays. I myself was traveling with family and thinking about Christmas Day menus and last minute shopping. The point is, most of us had our radars fixed on other topics. Nevertheless, on December 22, 2007, Tateru Nino, an Aussie and long-time reporter on the state of the grid and other important matters as they relate to Second Life®, blogged on Massively that Andrew Linden had attended a Volunteer Island meeting that day to talk about Havok 4, and had ended up disclosing what he calls the "Megaprim Liberation Plan," which he outlined (and Tateru wrote up) as follows:

* Allow parcel owners/managers to move (or maybe just return) objects that overlap their parcels
* Provide some UI feedback to the resident when moving their objects, indicating whether they overlap neighboring parcels
* Maybe... provide real-time enforcement of parcel permissions. That is, allow parcel owners to set a paranoid bit "I don't want anyone, or these specific people, from putting stuff on my parcel"
* Once that is done... then perhaps we will allow you to make prims/objects as large as you want... as long as they fit on your parcel.

That's all well and good (I'm serious and really not trying to be derisive here). I do feel a wee bit like Oliver Twist asking for "more"... but we would appreciate some new features, please Sir:






(It will suffice to watch the first 30 seconds of this trailer to get my point)

That said, I turned to my good friend and one of the most entertaining, clever and talented builders I know, Douglas Story, to share his thoughts (and those of most NPIRLers) on this topic. Thank you, Douglas.


by Douglas Story
all photography by Douglas Story except as noted

Exactly 200 days ago today, Michael Linden posted “The Big Prim” problem on the oh-fish-all Second Life® blog in which he invited residents' comments on the idea of doing away with megaprims. “Megaprims” are particular varieties of Second Life’s basic building blocks that are… well… they’re big. Huge. Mega. Gigantic.

They were created by virtue of an exploit in the Second Life code, and although megaprims were never banned outright, they have been frowned upon generally by the Linden Lab gods. Despite that, these king-size building blocks have been widely used all over the grid, and have been especially effective in art builds. Michael Linden’s original blog post stirred up a huge storm of protest and comment, including a piece on this blog that Evil Slavedriver Bettina (that’s her official title, you know) forced me to write. I listed a number of the great builds that would disappear if megaprims were to vanish from our virtual world.

At that time we begged the Powers That Be to preserve megaprims, but now we’ll add another non-negotiable demand… er, I mean, request: please give us megaprims that are resizable and fully editable. You see, currently if one attempts to change the size of a megaprim by even 1 centimeter, the prim will snap back to the normal maximum size of ten meters. Most annoying. Making megaprims resizable will produce a new wave of wonderful creativity, says I.

One of the chief concerns that Linden Lab had with the use of megaprims was the fear that they would not work well with the new Havok 4 physics engine that had yet to be rolled out. But, as AM Radio commented earlier today, it’s a very good sign that Havok 4 is now active over much of the grid and that the Lindens have not banned megaprims outright. So, we repeat our call for Linden Labs to 1) make megaprims officially sanctioned, and 2) make them fully editable.

What follows is a series of pictures of just some of the splendid builds using megaprims that have risen up since the original controversy arose 200 days ago. This list is by no means complete or authoritative, but is rather meant as an indication of the richness that would be lost without these now-essential building elements.

DynaFleur - Teleport directly from here.

Photograph by Harper Beresford
Because my ego is the size of any artist’s (that is, roughly as big as All Outdoors) we’ll start with one of the pieces I created together with a motley crew of all-stars. If you visit, use the damned dance balls!

Syncretia by Alpha Auer - Teleport directly from here.

As you can see, I muffed the landing. Again.

Tunnel of Light by Spiral Walcher - Teleport directly from here.

Spiral also makes top hats with stuff in ‘em. Stuff besides your head, that is. I’d show you a picture of one, but the hats don’t involve megaprims – which is amazing considering the fact that a lot of artists wear them.

David Rumsey Maps by Nathan Babcock - Teleport directly from here.

This remarkable place is a tour-de-force of megaprim usage. Although I elected to photograph something else for this piece, the four sim complex features scores and scores of sculpted megaprims with real world terrain data mapped into them; all this forms the shape of Yosemite Valley. Remarkable.

Space Colony Necronom by Oni Horan - Teleport directly from here.

If you visit here, you really, really want to make sure you’re wearing underwear. Get me drunk enough and I’ll tell you how I know.

Zero Point by Sabine Stonebender - Teleport directly from here.


Planet Mongo by Lumiere Noir - Teleport directly from here.


Privateer Island by Aley Arai - Teleport directly from here.


Kaleidoscope by Juria Yoshikawa - Teleport directly from here.

I wanted to include one of Juria’s pieces here. The poor woman is painfully shy, and is so reluctant to get her name out there that I wanted to help her along a bit. 0.0

Chouchou by Juliet Heberle and Yuki Aabye - Teleport directly from here.


The Far Away by AM Radio - Teleport directly from here.

And lastly…..this much-loved, much-photographed and much-visited marvel of spare beauty. One of the few places in Second Life I return to again and again.

Aley's Privateer Island - Part II

I welcome this two part story by guest author Lauren Weyland because it sheds new light on both the work and its creator, Aley Arai. In Part I, (see the previous blogpost) Lauren has not yet met Aley, and provides an interesting rationale for all that she sees and learns... Now, in Part II, Lauren has spoken extensively with Aley, which both confirms and dramatically alters her initial speculations. Since this was an entirely different take on Privateer, I thought the photography should be, too, so I appealed to Flickr-fave Stephen Venkman who produced these exceptional captures of the sim. Altogether, I think we have one helluva story. - Bettina

By Lauren Weyland
all photography by Stephen Venkman

"i developed this sim like a sci-fi disneyland. Everything must serve a usable purpose to visitors. Every prim has to earn the right to be here.”

Soon after drafting Aley's Privateer Island - Part I, I spent nearly three and a half hours talking with Aley Arai. The first of the two conversations started out of the blue with Aley stating, “Planet Bob is developing nicely.”

Although she had accomplished so much with the build - a work of art in progress - she was still dreaming of the challenges that lay ahead with completing this sim. She had determined that Privateer would be leveled “if i discover a new way to create a deep vast space; the whole sim will be ripped out and redeveloped from scratch.” (sic) Aley used the term ‘procrastinate’ in regards to her building out some of the unfinished parts of the sim, as well as her lack of knowledge in how to make a future industrialized city based on New Detroit.


“I live for sillies,” said Aley, referring to her idea of making the truck stop floor phantom (at 600m altitude)

I showed her my draft for the first blogpost and she laughed saying she has dozens of close friends at NCI. She felt that her leaving the sim open to the public during all stages of development indicated that she was hardly reclusive. However, “I'm old, slow and cautious with people… with building I'm faster than a whole army.” “Should I change the blogpiece?” I asked. She replied in the negative, because, “stories must evolve!’

“So what is Privateer about?” I asked. The sim gets its name from “Wing Commander: Privateer.” She enlightened me on some old game genre called, ‘Space Traders,’ which apparently started with Elite and moved on to BBS’s, Tradewars 2000, and finally became Privateer. Privateer got a big boost with freelancers leading to the “behemoth of Eve Online.”



“The sim exists as a kind of a honorarium to the old space trader games,” which she plans to fully script in time. “This sim is to *moon* other SL developers who just make crap to get payed and don’t care about the art” (sic), something she compared to static content on the Internet being death.



I think many of us in Second Life realize that SL is probably the browser of the future, which will both do away with static content and also produce some of the horrid builds. We talked about the corporate sims which Aley finds have done something right in hiring experienced in-world developers. But, “unfortunately those developers got greedy and gave them mostly crap product knowing they wouldn't know crap from good.”

Many times during our conversations I found myself laughing at her Aley-isms, such as ‘bling=stupid,” and, “i have a psychiatrist, but really go to my house-cat for meaningful life advice.” She dislikes the default plywood even more the bling.



I wish I could paraphrase what comes next so I will just recant what Aley said:

"What happens when you set the material definitions is the prim, or root prim in a connected object, takes on some properties of it, like sound on collision, and minor ways it behaves in physics. If you bump into any object and it's textured to NOT be wood, if it sounds like wood it means the builder is a lazy poohead :).

Yes I'm mean, but only about professional builders. When you create in a virtual world you control every aspect, every last atom, to a degree that will show you why God is now on a long vacation. You control the sounds and physics of all objects, you control the ambiance and energies that fill the virtual air. Lights and shadows, colors and motion, if you ignore any one of the details you have a kind of half finished feel. When you find a sim where all the details have carefully been catered too, you will have a strange instinctual reaction. The *something is missing* feeling will vanish."

She is also dismayed with the Lindens, saying they have now gone against all they once stood for. She said, “I openly challenged them several times over the fact that the whole entire reason for creating mainland sims was public access and transport, yet they don’t even make the gesture now of setting aside areas for roadways when earlier they actually did public works.” (sic)



According to Aley, a town is ‘official’ with a population of about 10,000 people (see my blog on civilization and society), and you need one civil employee for every 50 people, but SL has only 9 Lindens for 50,000 people on line. She feels the system itself can only really handle 30,000 regular users and that all the original developers of SL are now gone.

Aley further believes that “evolution only works when the animal needs to fit its environment. Mankind changes its environment to fit its need. This is a big reason why animals are inherently saner then any human.” It seems her cat is always happy, always cheerful and that anyone seeking true happiness must learn from her cat. I concur. In my opinion, humanity could gain a lot from napping-a-lot therapy, and chasing plastic bags around really can give you an adrenaline high.





Getting back to Privateer, I mentioned that the cave tunnels remind me of Myst and Star Wars and Doom... all games Aley has played. She cited Pot Healers Adventures as another source of inspiration. Mars on Privateer is Aley’s rendition of Robinson Crusoe, and she challenged me to look around and explain to her where the food, water, oxygen came from on such a planet as Mars.



Although I didn’t get the soap - Borax can be found on Mars - she did posit for me my idea that the earth had been destroyed and the spaceship was first marooned in space and then had crashed below. The oxygen came from the rusted iron ore… Mars being red because of the vast amounts of iron ore, and looking pink from earth because of the CO2 in the upper atmosphere which reflects back the ground colors. So, to get oxygen you select the most rust and heat it in the electric oven (see windmill generating electricity). This releases 02 and you bottle it. There’s plenty of wind on Mars to turn the windmill, and the water is in the air but you need to condense it out. “Mars is about survival and what happens if a civilization can’t make it,” said Aley.

Apparently Aley watched a half season of ‘Survivors’ and threw her TV out saying, “those guys are total morons.” We talked about global warming and the environment and she echoed the same beliefs I have on the subject saying, “global warming is big time scape goat. And forest fires and/or a single active volcano puts out many many many more times the Co2 then human industry does. It’s just more of the human need to sound like there bigger then the earth,” Aley quipped. Aley also stated that she has given up on the real world and makes her world in Second Life. Speaking for myself, I’ve often said that if Descartes were alive today, he would say, “I think, therefore I digitize.”

You may have noticed the green outlined box in several locations. One of these is in the racetrack area. This box is three dimensional showing where each person in the sim is. Aley watches the movement of the visitors and notes that so many never descend but instead congregate on about 10% of the overall sim, high up at the truck stop. Many leave never knowing, “there is a whole universe here.”


Another Aley-ism: “If you live and breathe only for the art, you’re happy and nothing else matters.”

If you have visited Privateer, in-depth, you know the upper part (the landing zone) is a “Truck Stop.” Below is the ‘Hotel California’ playing the Eagles song. There are Spaceships. There are the planets (Planet Bob, New Detroit, DaMoooon). The Borg station. An empty city, a satire on SL. Mars, the tunnels, the command center where the Jellyfish lives and so much more.



Aley reduces lag in the sim by using ‘distance and occlusion.’ Auto return has been set to 256 seconds since she ‘likes binary numbers.’ I mention this because in my prior piece I said I believed Aley doesn’t do or build without a purpose. This one act I can hang my hat on.



Some may have discovered another feature of Privateer, the SL Kessel Run. (See Millennium Falcon and Hans Solo). Aley has made the SL Kessel about 50 times in a ship she has built. Her fastest time was nineteen minutes. It’s the longest straight away (before the two new mainlands were connected) that you can possibly fly in a physics vehicle.

Per Aley, “It's fraught with terrible dangers and if your a stubborn pilot it's the biggest challenge you can get in SL. This sort of challenge is like walking along a fence post over a sewer, you will fall in and have to restart dozens of times. It's boring and frustrating. The challenge is in your self belief and self reliance that it has been done before and you can do now. People complain that there are no challenges in SL to make it give the fun interests of a game. But thats because they’re to lazy to try and make the games themselves in SL. And SL is what the users make of it. Sadly that means miles and miles of garbage and mediocrity.” (sic)