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| Waiting for the Rez |
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| Moon Lander and Full-Bright Marker Flags Spotted |
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| Selenaut Chey |
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| Historic Moon Walk Patterns. The Astronauts Didn't Vernture Far from the Lander. |
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| Fugly Lander. Is That Some Sort of Gold-Plated Camouflage Paint Job? |
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| We Encountered This Alien Life Form |
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| Chey Wanted to Buy These Moon Rocks, But They Were Not Set To Sell |
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| A Touch of Second-Life Fabulousness (If You Can See It): A Mysterious Monolith |
A Trip to Daden Space
I've learned to take the Lindens' sim recommendations with a grain of salt. More often than not I find myself in a space where I can't rez a prim, can't fly, and my HUDs won't work properly-- all because of illeberal use of the YOU CANNOT DO THIS tools. That, and I'm almost certain to run smack into the red fence of friendship somewhere in my explorations. That, and the place is almost certainly going to be ugly and boring and without a hint of Second Life fabulousness.
But I still go on occasion. Yesterday Sweetie and I, on the Lindens' recommendation, explored the Daden Space sim, where, ta da! I couldn't take a landmark and couldn't fly and couldn't build and couldn't script.
F***ers.
Usually just landing in such a permissions hell causes me teleport somewhere else, and fast, but because of the historic importance of the event to which the sim was dedicated, I stuck.
You see, the sim commemorates Apollo 11, the first manned moon landing,.
The build is meant to be immersive. One of the requirements was one must have a spacesuit-- which was silly, since no one else was on the sim (which pretty much speaks to how much the Lindens' recommendations impresses other people, huh?).
A sign directed me to XStreet, where I expected to find a freebie space suit. No luck-- the suits were $595L. No way!
So Sweetie and I donned our (much better) freebie Privateer Space spacesuits and teleported to the surface.
Admist all the grayness, I was happy to see a blue-green Earth just above the horizon. I waited for it to rez.
And waited.
Finally, I went to inspect. I used my super secret powers to disrespect the hell out of the Apollo astronauts. I flew in the no-fly zone.
"Hey, Sweetie!" I yelled. "Did you know the Earth was flat?"
Indeed it was, as it was merely an image pasted on a flat prim.
"And blurry!" I cried. Indeed, the texture was of unforgivably low resolution.
The Apollo lander looked just like the real lander, as if it had been hastily constructed out of parts from a beginner's edition Erector set. I marveled at its fragility-- and lack of sophistication. It had, after all, been powered by a computer with less processing power than a 1981 Commodore VIC-20.
Sweetie and I had picked up Daden Space HUDS that obscured almost half of my wide screen and more than two thirds of Sweetie's smaller screen. There was no button to minimize it.
Buttons on the HUD turned on and off prims denoting the paths of the astronauts' moon walks and showed or hid spots that triggered photos and short videos in a built-in screen.
The HUD played a video of Neil Armstrong's first moonwalk and displayed historic photos taken in the same position and direction relative to the landers as the spot where we were standing when they were triggered.
The small size of the trigger spots made it easy to blunder in and out of them, causing a lot of jerkiness, so I took off the HUD and threw it away.
I found Daden Space good in concept, but poor in execution. The textures, with the exception of the moon itself, were poorly done, and the prims inexpertly creative. So A for effort and C-minus for results. I hope whoever actually created the build did it out of love and not for money.
Hey, Daden Space, your motives are noble! But let me put up a better Earth for you!
3 comments:
Yey, sorry about the Earth, it went up early in the build and never got upgraded.
Yes it was done for love not money and had to be done fast to hit the Apollo wave, we'd be more than happy to spend more time on it if someone paid us! This is really a proof of concept to show the sort of thing that can be done in SL for education - and to celebrate Apollo.
There is no landmark/TP as we want people to go through the Arrival station to get the briefing and pick up a suit. The suit link is just to SLX - we get no kickback, and if you know a good free suit give me a SLURL and we'll link to that. Even on your own I think you get a better immersive experience in a suit (I'd recommend the Gemini one that has great breathing audio and bunny-hop motion).
HUD point taken. It only occupies about 1/5 screen on my display, but we should have tried it on others. We did think about a minimise button but just timed out - we might add it back.
Media transitions do appear to be a lot more jerky than they used to be. We only put some of the Apollo photos in as otherwise the touch points would have been even smaller.
There is no build as this is meant to be an experience, not a building area - and we did create a build space at the arrival point so you could rez your SLX purchase.
No fly is because astronauts didn't fly, they bunny-hopped (see suit comments above).
Thanks for visiting anyway
David
Would you like a pretty good earth? It turns and has cloud cover and could be scaled down? I'll send it to you with full perms or scale it to whatever size you would like.
I understand the desire to create an immersive experience, but there are better ways to achieve it than by restricting peoples' permissions. Especially fly. It makes me want to spray paint the place.
Yes if you've got an earth to hand then please do - Corro Moseley
I agree about fly, I hate the fact you cant fly in Twinity, but in this case I think its valid as a) it makes you walk the tracks rather than fly them so you get a better sense of space and b) by keepign you on the ground you can't see over the sim boundary walls and out to sea!
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