Today is Mesh Day at SL9B. If you have any interest in mesh at all – be it as a builder, a designer a wearer or consumer – there’s a whole lot going on at the SL9B auditorium area for you, with things kicking-off at 11:00am SLT:

• 11:00 – Builders Brewery will be giving a presentation on Making Mesh
• 12:00 – Qarl Fizz (formerly Qarl Linden) will be discussing the resident-funded mesh parametric deformer project, designed to make mesh clothing more readily available to different-sized avatars
• 14:00  – A Panel Discussion with Maxwell Graf (Rustica) Froukje Hoorenbeek (Dutchie), Loz Hyde (Meshworx) and Cain Maven (Maven Homes) will be discussing their mesh creations – and possibly showing some examples of their work!

A Note to SL9B Exhibitors

Do you have an exhibit at SL9B that is all or partially mesh? If so, please let us know today! Drop a comment over at the SL9B Blog, and we’ll try to spotlight your work.

SL9B has five main stages for entertainment spread across the regions, all of which are in some way unique. Two in particular have caught my imagination: the Main and Lake stages, both of which I find totally captivating.

I’ve been gathering photos of each of them – and the other stages – for several days, and am rather pleased with some of the results, which are uploaded to my SL9B Flickr set and slideshow.

While my hardware prevents me from creating full in-world machinima, I did put some of the results together in a short video, which I hope captures the spirit of the stages.

Thank you to Donpatchy Dagostino for the beautiful Main Stage and SL9B steam express, to Kazuhiro Aridian for the amazing mesh Lake Stage, to Mikati Slade for the almost edible Cake Stage, and to KT Syakumi and the team for  the DJ Egypt Stage and for the imaginative (and completely 11th hour!) Sunken Stage.

Gala: Celebrating SL’s Water-focused Communities

Gala is one of two water-themed regions at SL9B (the other being Frolic, the home of the Lake Stage, although Iwa and Dziewic are also technically water regions, being the home of the Main stage and its surroundings). Gala also featuresa live performance stage, the Sunken Stage, and is the place where you’ll find exhibits celebrating SL’s diverse water-focused communities.

Located towards the middle of the Boardwalk area of Gala sits Botanica’s Community Centre Tower, which is a good landmark from which to start your explorations. Here you can go both up and down, exploring the various floors and levels of the tower.

Merfolk are well-represented here with Two Moon Paradise and Safe Waters Foundation providing mer-themed displays. – the former with a full week of performances going on under water. Bohemian Underground also provides information of interest to merfolk, which can be found at their pearl diving exhibit. Also taking the plunge underwater is Siren Song, with a Verne-inspired submersible on display…

Women in Society remains above the waves, as does the SL Coast Guard, which provides information on US Coast Guard services. The Blake Sea Battle Group provides an impressive display, including information on sailing in SL and on the navies and pirates of Blakes Sea. Come Sail With us also provides a wealth of information on sailing in SL, and the SL9B Sailing Community offers-up additional information. Not to be outdone, surfing in SL has a pavilion in Gala, again packed with info and where and how to try your hand. Ocean Realms steers you back to the ways of the pirate – and an opportunity to dance on Davy Jones’ Locker if you take a look below…. Nearby, Pirate Realms offers more insight into piratical roleplay in SL.

The Boomer Esiason Foundation demonstrates how the global community of Second Life can come together to fight sickness and disease – in this case, cystic fibrosis, one of the most common life-threatening genetic disorders in the world today.

Climb the ramp at Nivana Island exhibit to see the surrounding displays and look across Frolic to the Lake Stage. Rox Arten, Grogo Tungsten and Corvi Ashdene remind us that with Second Life, we’re all in this together – and they take us back underwater in the process. At the north end of Gala you can discover more about fishing in SL, with a pair of neighbouring exhibits, while RFL reminds us it is Time For a Cure. Exhibits from Armito Rentals and Rue and art installations by Lemonodo Oh and Artistide Despres round-out Gala’s pavilions.

Birthday Bash is one of the two regions sponsored by Kitty CatS and sits in the south-east corner of the SL9B sims, alongside of Party Time, where you’ll find the DJ Egypt stage. Birthday Bash is one of the regions given over completely to exhibits, with 36 parcels to explore. As such, there are far too many to cover in-depth here, so I’m going to try to give you a flavour of things.

The North side teleport option on your SL9B HUD will drop you between a celebration of American Football in SL and Pallina60 Loon’s Virtual Marble Machine. You’ll have to walk around the latter to reach the entrance, where you can jump into a giant marble and take a wild ride.

Travelling east from the teleport point, following the water’s edge, you’ll come to the glorious Colossus of Rod’s, a tongue-in-cheek piece from Crap Mariner celebrating … the prim? Further down from this is Yooma Mayo’s Spider of Connection, an interactive piece that brings life to the idea of the six degrees of separation in a spherical kind-of way.

Interaction is very much a feature of Birthday Bash, with the TARDIS ride, interactive art and sculpture such as the Smile Monument and I Am. You can also pay a very tongue-in-cheek visit to “945 Battery Street“, brought to us by Loki Eliot, and learning the inner goings-on of a certain company! Or you can witness the power behind the sim – Qwark Allen’s Water Mill Power Plant.

Those seeking quieter pursuits may enjoy Celestine Ghiardie’s tribute to H.C. Andersen & Danish folksongs or a wander through the maze built by Château de Versailles in SL, one of several period role-play groups within SL. Another exhibit is Expand Your World, which helps demonstrate the benefits of a more refined camera placement relative to your avatar for a more immersive (something I’m quite keen on).

Other SL communities with a presence in Birthday Bash include Zindra Expo Group, BBW Haven, and London City, and groups like the famous Flying Tigers can also be found here, Project Hope should give us all a moment of quiet contemplation.

Event sponsors Kitty CatS have a very celebratory display on the north side of the sim, with dancing cats and much more!

There’s a lot more to see in Birthday Bash – art, design, social groups. There are places that encourage interaction and places that allow you it sit and reflect and catch your breath amidst all the rushing around. Again, I’ve deliberately not covered everything here, but hopefully have encouraged you to have a look round – remember that the SLurls supplied for the named exhibits will also allow you to see those around them!

The Treasure Hunt

Running through the week of celebration on and on the deserts sims of Shindig and Party Time is a treasure hunt, with a prize to be had each day. The hunt is based on David Abbot’s explorations of the two sims. He’ll be keeping a diary of his discoveries on the SL9B blog, and within it you’ll find clues to each day’s prize  – which can be found within Shindig or Party Time.

Here’s a video y our own intrepid explorers, Saffia and Elrik, to explain things a little more:

THE DOORS ARE OPEN!

After a great opening ceremony, complete with fireworks, flying dragons and river dancing tinies (led by a full-sized Saffia) – SL9B is now OPEN!

There is a lot to see – and do – at SL9B. There are exhibits galore to take-in and live entertainment to enjoy, so much so that packing everything in to the week may seem a little hard. To assist you, here’s my personal whirlwind tours of two sims a day – starting with Nove and Devet.

These two sims are home to the The Community Hub, where you can collect your SL9B HUD and a special gift from Kitty CatS. Flanking this are the Time Capsule area and the main Dream Seeker pavilion.

On Devet – you can find out about giant snail racing, or try your hand at playing a Roncadora harp. Misha Flanagan offers the chance to learn about Children’s Charities of America All Children are Our Future, while Sydney Camille, Oplontis Pavillion and My Creatures of Dream offer examples of the incredible diversity of art in Second Life.

Doctor Who fans in SL and the Commune Utopia present exhibits covering just two extremes of the richly diverse community and culture that exist in Second Life. Here, too, is Fluke shapes and poses, just across the roadway from the Texas State University’s Virtual Field School Project, described as being, “Designed as a cross-disciplined educational environment, filled with tools to allow educators to create an immersive 3-D learning experience for students”. The project is based on three different models of the village of El Cerrito in northern New Mexico, one of which resides in Second Life. It’s a fascinating project and the exhibit is worth a visit to find out more.

Next door to the TSU exhibit sits Rolling’ Rollin’ by sayaca.unplugged and from which you can enjoy panoramic views of the nearby exhibits while climbing to the top, with an exhibit celebrating the SL AIDS quilt alongside of it, bordering the crossing into Nove.

Nove is where the SL9B time capsule will be revealed, in the middle of a water-themed trove of SL memorabilia which includes time capsules from past SLB events, famous SL freebies and a one or two fun items (look for Philip Linden and his amazing swelling / shrinking head…).

In Nove, you can visit the Kama Tea House and you can learn about the fun of speed building – and where in SL you can participate in competitions. SL’s LGBT community invite you to visit their tribute to Fabrice Snook and learn about the community itself. Right across the road from them sits DK T-shirts, with a host of memorabilia produced for the last few SLBs.

Nove also plays host to Dark Eden roleplay (although the entrance faces Neun, so be wary of the region boundary!), with information givers on a range of RP options and careers within their realm. One of my favourite exhibits from SL8B can be found here as well, nestled between Kangaroo Diesel (for which you’ll need full media enabled), and Noke Yuitza’s sculpture. This is Inside Art – an exhibit in which you become a part of the paintings on display.

The Foundry offer you the opportunity to have some fun at their Summer Camp, while just behind this you can participate in a certain famous tea party (no, not the political one – the one involving large hats and a dormouse).

Rounding things off for Nove is a charming little artists corner by Tah Craziboi and a MOAP-enabled exhibit (which I confess to being unable to get going due to lag) by DeeJay Steele.

Tour Pods rove through both Devet and Nove (as they do throughout all of the SL9B sims, and you can pick on up directly outside The Community Hub, or you can hop into any unoccupied one that is passing.

One of the hardest things for people attending an event as big as SL9B is finding out what is going on where and when. Schedules have to be drawn up, spreadsheets made, information sorted and promoted to blog pages –  and that’s even before we get to people finding the information and making use of it.

For SL9B, Crap Mariner has made things a breeze for all, by pulling everything together into a single data table which he has fed into Google Calendar.

The result? A totally spiffy and browsable day-by-day Performance Schedule, which is also being relayed in-world to Codie’s Superboards for the event, which are placed at strategic points around the SL9B regions – and with the organiser’s permission, will be appearing in my (hopefully daily) coverage of the festivities. Here’s what it looks like:

Stage SLurls: Main Stage; Lake Stage; Sunken Stage; Cake Stage; DJ Egypt; Auditorium hub

What’s more, if you click on the Google Calendar icon at the bottom right, you can import the schedule into your own Google Calendar, which allows you to do two things:

• Display all events times in your local times (rather than SLT) if you wish
• Easily search for a specific performer by name

A further advantage to this approach is that changes can be made centrally, and then instantly be seen in-world and on blog pages using the calendar feed.

Thanks, Crap for putting this together and furnishing it to the team and to those of us covering the event!

A further word on lag

In my preview on SL9B, I briefly mentioned the issue of lag; I didn’t go into inordinate amounts of detail, as a preview is hardly the place. Lag can result from many different things and there are many myths that have sprung up around the subject over the years – many of which have resulted in people being quick to point the finger at others when they encounter lag (particularly on heavily used sims). However, the inescapable fact is that the biggest portion of lag resides at the user’s end of things. I had intended to cover the subject in more depth with a focus on SL9B. However, Harper Beresford has done so with a very excellent and worthwhile post on the subject on the SL9B blog – and if you are intending on visiting the regions during the course of this week, I thoroughly recommend you give it a read-through in advance.