Parrots at the Volcano (Sweetie's Photos)

More About Parrots in the Next Post!

Playing at the Volcano (Sweetie's Photos)

This evening Sweetie and I found ourselves in the lower gardens on Whimsy. Here are some of her photos.

Note the shadow of a parrot (not the one in the background, another) on the wing of her dragon avatar. Coolness!

We Heart Interactivity!

Sweetie Rides a Manta Ray on Whimsy Kaboom

Entirely too much of Second Life is static. It's often beautiful, but lacks sound, lacks interactivity, lacks changes of elevation, Sometimes it seems to be entirely about mood.

I loved the trashy trailer park SLeezywood for its delicious funkiness, but aside from an interactive shopping cart I found on my last visit, it was entirely static. The only fun to be had was looking.

Sometimes looking is enough, but sometimes one just wants more.

Sadly, SLeezywood now seems to be gone.

Sweetie and I have worked hard to make Whimsy and environs interactive. There are rockets and jet skis and canoes and hang gliders to ride, pose balls that allow you to swim through several hundreds of meters of ocean, train rides, creepy tip bots that turn to face you as you try to sneak past them before they notice you, a squid that squirts ink at you, Intan singles and couples dance balls, dozens of games ranging from Greedy Greedy to bowling to mahjong, a soap box that makes you rant like a mad person in the Boston Commons, a volcano that periodically launches great hot steaming semi-molten boulders (and which can be coerced into erupting), musical instruments to play, a cannon that fires upon touch, and a wide assortment of poseballs. There's a robot bartender which (literally) falls apart when he moves to make a drink for you, robot-operated elevators, and a robot sanatorium with a thousand interactive features.

Whimsy's skies are filled with parrots and gulls and albatrosses and builds all the way up to 4100 meters. On the ground an assortment of animals interact with and occasionally (I'm thinking of the Splash Aquatics piranha here) attack visitors. Our seas are filled with plants and wandering creatures and railroad tracks. The land is covered with paths and swinging bridges.

Sound is everywhere-- from waves crashing onto rocks to dozens of bird calls to the chirping of crickets to croaking frogs to whale song. If you wander about at night you'll find all sorts of subtle lighting effects.

There are a thousand things one can do on Whimsy. You can teleport from one beautiful-- or dangerous-- place to another; separate doors lead you to serene or risky places. You can wade in the lava pool of the volcano Pele and, if you're lucky, fall through to beautiful pools underneath the fire and chaos. You can climb a rope to the top of Mr. Tiki or ride on Bob, our giant granite Paleolithic slightly-deified drinking bird. You can explore an underwater lava tube while wearing interactive boots. You can sit by a tranquil pool, meditating. You can squish your puny bioform flat and transform into a robot or chase a comet at our earth orbit build.

Visitors have a good time on Whimsy-- and Sweetie and I have a good time when we leave our interactive home to go exploring. We just wish more of the beautiful places weren't quite so unchanging.

Water Feature

This little water feature can be found on the side of the hill at the upper gardens on Whimsy.

It began one day about six years ago when Sweetie threw up some hollow blocks. I added moving water and sound, creating a small stream that gurgles down the hill for 12 meters or so before disappearing into the ground.

We had been looking for a place for a hand-washing animation we had picked up at Bits N Bobs, so I made a bamboo pipe with a stream of water issuing from it and positioned the animation appropriately.

For years a galvanized zinc bucket sat beside the spring. Yesterday, at Sweetie's behest, I replaced it with a wooden bucket of my own construction.

Wouldn't you know it, a family of birds immediately moved in!

Treet TV

I don't spend a lot of time watching the in-world Second Life television network Treet TV, but I continue to be utterly amazed at the production values and the immense amount of work Saffia Widdershins and her crew put into the wide variety of shows they air. Since 2007 they have produced a wide variety of programs-- dramas, talk shows, fashion shows, sports events, tutorials, business-- and they've been doing it for seven years now.

Saffia

Let's Break It!

Up in the sky, high above Whimsy, is a huge captured asteroid. We call it the Sub-Orbital Asteroid Retreat.

I mean, it strayed into our space, so we had a right to it, yes? Under digital salvage law.

We sawed on it a bit so it looks rather like the lower half of a 100-meter wide bagel-- if bagels were made of black rock.

On the bagel there's a docking tower for balloons, blimps, dirigibles, and assorted lighter-than-air craft.

A handy robot lift whisks you to the top. That's not to say he doesn't complain a bit, but whisk he does.

At the top, walkways lead to a railway which climbs high into the sky, ending at a a giant blimp that houses an assortment of high-class games-- if you think bowling is high class, that is.

The little tram that rides the rails has been performing flawlessly for years now...

... but that doesn't mean it can't be made to malfunction-- does it? We weren't sure, so we set out to trash it.

More Prims, Please!

The economy of Second Life is based upon the prim-- or land impact unit, as it were. Ever region comes with an allowance of 15,000-- which is a lot, and yet isn't a lot. That's how many prims you get; you can use them or not, but you can never have even 15,001.

Sim owners often "sell" parcels of land which carry their own prim limits, or rent land and prims. They use the income this generates to help pay their fees to Linden Lab, which charges them $295 USD monthly tier per private sim (the purchase itself costs $1000 USD). They hope sales of their items and donations from visitors will get them closer to that $295 nut.

Many sim owners hope they can bring in more money than they spend-- and some do. Estate owners have found ways to make this work and buy many regions, but most sim owners hemmorhage money every month.

Owners of full regions-- and only owners of full regions-- can purchase homestead regions, which come with 3750 prims, and openspace regions, which come with 750 prims; both, like full regions, are 66,536 square meters in size. Homesteads support enough prims to allow beautiful builds and are great for private living space; many estate owners rent them for that purpose. Openspaces are used mostly to create open ocean. They have prims enough for a few boats and some land mass with trees, but it would be difficult to live on one. Homesteads cost $125 USD per month and openspaces cost $75 USD.

At about two cents per month per prim or 1/2 cent per square meter per month, Linden Lab's pricing for full regions is high indeed-- but short of leaving Second Life and going to one of the Opensim grids, there's no other recourse. The price has been stable for quite a while now-- since at least 2006, when I came to Second Life.

Over the years server software has become less expensive and immensely more powerful. Every server now supports many regions, and with style. Nothing I've thrown at my sim Whimsy or my homestead Whimsy Kaboom have caused even a hiccup.In the past overloaded sims ran slowly; now they just keep humming along even when abused.

No, I'm not saying you can't grind a sim to a halt. I'm saying it's difficult to do so without actively trying.

Linden Lab hasn't passed on its lower prices to its customers. Regions still cost the same. And surprise-- the grid, which was growing rapidly back in 2006, is slowly getting smaller as sim owners give up and abandon their regions.

If the Lab were to drop the monthly tier for sims, I'm convinced there would once again be runaway growth in Second Life. I do, however, understand how doing so might be a scary proposition for a company whose primary source of income is rental of virtual land.

So here's a thought, Linden Lab: why not give us more prims? Why not go from 15,000 per full region to 25,000 or even 30,000? After all, thre's no 15k prim limit in some Openspace regions? Sim owners would be able to cut rental prices and still  make their sims more intricate and more lavish and thereby more attractive. They would be able to accommodate more tenants and give those tenants more prims than they can now.

In many cases this would change the equation from a monthly loss to a monthly profit. Estate owners would be motivated to buy more regions, which would, happy surprise, make more money for Second Life. Renters would be happy, sim owners would be happy, and Linden Lab would be happy.

Upping the prim allowance might make the servers work a little harder, but there seems to be power to spare. There would be little risk for the Lab, and, potentially, much to gain.

It's a mystery to me why Linden Lab hasn't already done this.

Kaboom Cabana

Awhile back I reworked this space on Whimsy Kaboom.

Now it looks like this:

The original cabana was some stupid low number of prims-- four, perhaps. It looked okay, but seating was strange.

Now a  little mesh (?) tent sits in the same space.

Access is via canoe or flying.

The seating is much better, and there are snacks!

Snacks!

Cheyenne Palisades Contemplates Having a Snack and Gains Two Virtual Pounds

House on a Rock

First House on the Rock

Long ago Sweetie placed a ridiculously huge prim (in the form of a giant rock) on the border of Whimsy Kaboom and Mischief.

When the deed was done she pronounced it good, but then said, "No, wait!" and tilted it a bit. "Now it's finished," she said.

Awhile back I perched a little Japanese structure at the summit, which is on Mischief. It didn't matter that there was no discernible way up there. It's Second Life, after all. We can fly.

I took the house down after a while, but my sim neighbor Leaf Shermer must have liked it. The other day I noticed she had placed a Japanese tea house of her own in the same spot. Of course, I just had to tweak it.