Category: Second Life

Tilheyra (the name being Icelandic for “belong”) is a Full region utilising the private region land capacity bonus to offer a mixed public / residential environment. Designed by T Lefevre (Teagan Lefevre) to showcase her TL Designs brand, it was brought to my attention by Shawn Shakespeare.

Whilst it may well have an Icelandic word for its name, it shouldn’t be inferred that this is in any way an Icelandic themed setting. Quite simply put, it isn’t; rather, it drawing on influences from across northern Europe to produce an engaging, picturesque environment – albeit one with the potential to give some a few viewer issues when visiting.

Given the public / private nature of the setting, effort has wisely been put into keeping the two somewhat separated: the major public elements of the region sit to the north on an island of their own, a broad channel separating them from the larger part of the region, wherein can be found the rental properties – together with some further, more rural public spaces -, with the two connected via a stone bridge.

The landing point sits at the western end of the public island, sitting alongside a small pond shaded by trees. A walled path passing under a glass roof points the way to where steps climb up to a paved terrace, the home of a garden café. Two sets of steps run down from this, one into the main street running the length of a small business district, the other down to a promenade running eastwards and directly above the channel separating the two islands.

There’s a lot to take in along this little township, with various businesses (including the local rental office) among the building façades. Most of the businesses are built around the three sides of a little square within its own pond. Meanwhile, the promenade offers a pleasant walk along the waterfront, complete with steps down to a small wharf and views across to the southern island.

The eastern end of the island is dominated by a café bar with a walled outdoor seating area sitting beyond the bar building (the café part fronts the promenade). This seating area in turn gives way to a rugged headland guarded by a pergola that makes for a cosy retreat for couples at one end, and a deck running down to the water on the other.

Across the bridge, the southern island is far more rural; grass bridleways replace paved roads. As noted, this island is home to the region’s rental homes (and what may be a couple of other private residences – these are without rental signs but sit inside their own parcels, so without actually trespassing, I was unable to tell), so exploring should be tempered by the need to avoid intruding on people’s privacy. However, there are some public spaces here as well.

Chief among the latter is a stone walk leading down to an over-the-water deck and, somewhat opposite it along one of the bridleways, the ruins of a old house, perhaps once a manor home for the local land-owner, but which now remains only as a few broken walls within which sits a gorgeous wild garden and retreat.

The problems I referred to at the top of this piece come down to the fact that this is a region that is texture heavy – and many of those textures appear to be high resolution. This can make rendering scenes somewhat painful for those on mid-to-low end systems; even with DD reduced from my usual 256 to 128m and with shadows disabled, I had both issues with slow texture loading and texture thrashing (textures swapping from sharp to blurred and back – the first time I’ve had this on a persistent basis for a while) on my 4Gb GTX 970 (hardly the most modern GPU, I know – but pretty middle-of-the road for SL). So, if you are on a less-capable system, do be prepared to make some viewer adjustments.

Nevertheless, Tilheyra offers an engaging visit, and plenty of opportunities for photography.

SLurl Details

• Tilheyra (rated Moderate)

 Hello Inara.

We have opened our newest version of Frogmore 5.0, L’étang du Moulin. We have many new areas and we have also saved some of the most popular parts of Frogmore that people love. We have maintained the sim design and integrity with designer Terry Fotherington and we have added a new village with lots of details, as well as new trails, French salons, a tiny gallery which will have regular guest artistes, and our unique to Frogmore Mill Pond. I hope you will visit soon.

Merci! Tolla

This was the invitation I received from Tolla Crisp at the end of April to make a return to Frogmore and tour the latest update to this ever-popular setting – my apologies to her for taking a while to actually take up her offer.

As Tolla notes in her invitation, there are elements within this latest design for the region that have been carried over from Frogmore 4.0 (see: Frogmore’s fourth in Second Life) – perhaps most notably the channel of water cutting into the land from the east and the waterfront cottages on the southern bank, nestled below a hilltop villa and with little café tucked behind them

These elements and part of the sandy spread to the north side of the channel retain something of Frogmore’s Cornish influences – an aspect that has helped to maintain the setting’s sense of continuity from one iteration to the next. However, as Tolla also notes, there are some French influences mixed into Frogmore 5.0; these give a sense that perhaps it has paddled its way across the English Channel to a little nook in the French coast.

On the north side of the setting, overlooking the middle channel is a broad, roughly-cobbled terrace backed by a glass-and-metal pavilion, which I believe is to be the gallery space. It also sits as the new landing point for the region, and a couple of the easels set out on it offer direct teleports to both the village area and the new watermill.

The latter is an utterly charming element sitting in the region north-east corner as a small island of shingle surrounding an L-shaped block of hard granite that has stood against the tides and time.

Aged walls suggest that this island may once have been the site of a fortification; now, however, it is the home of not one mill, as the name might suggest, but two: one at the water’s edge, where the land appears to have been fashioned around it and which gives the area its name, and the other a windmill up on top of the rocky bluff, sitting alongside and open-sided barn now converted into a little café. It forms, for me, the most delightful part of the new setting.

This being a Dandy Warhlol (Terry Fotherington) build, I will confess that the mesh / texture load can be heavy-going for some systems; so keeping shadows disabled may help when exploring and to help with texture loading ahead of taking photos.

That said, with it soundscape, views and detailed touches, this iteration of Frogmore retains the charm of its previous versions whilst offer more than enough that is new to encourage a re-visit.

SLurl Details

• Frogmore (rated Moderate)