The Weather on Whimsy

The Weather on Whimsy

Written 29 October, 2012

The weather on Whimsy and Whimsy Kaboom is set to mirror that of my real-life location, a little town about thirty miles from New York City.

It's gray here, and for the past hour or so it's been drizzling. Winds are light.

That's how it is on Whimsy, too.

Hurricane Sandy is set to come ashore in southern New Jersey, and winds are picking up there. We're expecting the heavy rains and high winds to start late this morning or early evening and continue for a couple of days.

Whimsy's weather is generated by the great Weather System I bought at Damani for a reasonable price-- especially since it's copyable.

The weather machine can make it snow, rain, or sleet, and can generate impressive lightning storms and tornadoes. It can even rain fire.

Turning on the weather generates temporary prims that rez clouds and rain. It can generate weather effects on the ground-- puddles and snowdrifts, which works great on flat lands and somewhat less well on more-or-less vertical Whimsy. It can also generate ground fog and sunbeams which break through the cloud cover.

Weather can be limited to an area as small as 20 x 20 meters or can be set to cover an entire sim. Due to the Second Life viewer's limitations on particles, rain and clouds are of course more intense in smaller areas, but the system is impressive even when set on a larger area.

The weather system uses only two prims (and lots of temp-on-rez prims), and can be set to show or become inisible.

The system works better on Whimsy Kaboom than on Whimsy; that's because Whimsy has lots of competing sources for particles-- the volcano Pele, assorted waterfalls, and spray from surf, while we have fewer particles set on Kaboom.

A great feature of the Damani weather machine is its ability to mimic the weather at any spot on earth.