Category: Exploring Second Life

I stumbled over nostos deer entirely by chance recently – it was literally a case of paging through the Destination Guide and then clicking on something that set a small bell ringing. It wasn’t until I arrived and started exploring that I realised why: Honour McMillan had posted on the region last year (I swear I’m going to have to superglue her shoes to the floor and hide her teleport button one day 🙂 ).

The region is home to Dora Nacht’s Little Hopper store (located inside a rock floating high in the sky), with the sim itself landscaped into a delightful park rich in whimsy and with just a touch of eye-catching surrealism, both of which make it an ideal destination for the foot-wary Second Life explorer who is looking for a place to rest and recuperate, and which offers to bring a smile to the well-travelled face. Indeed, given “nostos” is the Greek word for “homecoming” and the idea of returning home from a long journey, perhaps it is the ideal destination for those wanting a break in their SL meanderings …

nostos deer is one of those places which is full of things to do in a not-really-doing-things kind-of way, something which greatly adds to its charm, as even doing nothing will leave you smiling and wondering. You can, for example, sit on the beach and relax, look out to the sea, and watch the fish serenely swim above the waves (which should not be taken as a sign they’ve been incorrectly placed – nothing within nostos deer is the result of wrongful placement).

You can roam wherever you will on the island – old sleepers mark what appears to have once been a busy tram service. Only one set of tracks now remains, running from a little station overlooking a river valley and out towards the sea – literally!

If you tire of the beach, there’s a little kitchen serving sushi, or there’s a walk up the hill to a small church where you can sit in quite contemplation with other members of the rather unusual congregation…

Take a walk over the bridge spanning the river valley (gorge?), and you’ll find more to see and maybe do. Dara’s own swan boats sit against a waterfront pier on the west side of the island, waiting for you to take a ride, while further south is an inviting campfire and chairs offering warmth and a chance to sit and chat – although not entirely without a further measure of the surreal! Down at the river itself you can grab a canoe and go a-paddling or, if you’re up for a little surrealism on your own part, you can sit in the middle of the river and enjoy some time in a rocking chair, hovering serenely above the water…

Teleports up to the Little Hopper store can be found around the island, notably as pictures hanging on walls, although I much prefer the mineshaft teleport. The store shares a similar sense of the whimsical, with Dora’s swan boat displayed atop a forklift truck, and the entrance to the “underground” store is guarded by a LandRover and a tricycle.

nostos deer is, in every sense of the word, a delight and more than worth visiting. Should you decide to go and have a little wander, make sure you give yourself a little time – while the region is open and apparently lightly built-out, there are a lot of little details which can be so easily overlooked but the hurrying traveller.

And besides, to hurry through would be to miss the point; nostos deer is about unwinding from the need to hurry, and giving oneself a chance to breathe, smile, and linger …

Related Links

• nostos deer SLurl (Rated: Moderate)
• SL Destinations in this blog

(view slideshow full-screen)

I recently had the opportunity to return to into Aero Pines Park, Cindy Bolero’s multi-region recreational / residential / training estate.

For those unfamiliar with the estate, Cindy offers a rich environment where visitors can partake of a range of activities  – horse riding, flying, canoeing, motorbike riding, show jumping, balloon flights, rodeo bull riding, etc., as well a providing open spaces and some fabulous homes which people can lease from her through her region sponsorship system.

Currently comprising six regions, Aero Pines is, rather interestingly, modelled on the area in which Cindy grew-up in RL: the Aero Pines Air Park in the Northern California Sierra Foothills. The impact of these childhood environs is very clear as one explores the SL parklands – all of the pursuits Cindy enjoyed growing up are reflected in the park’s activity options, and there is much that goes on which is related to the larger community surrounding the RL Aero Pines Air Park.

It is the sheer range of activities available at Aero Pines which can serve to make them very attractive – and well worth a visit for those seeking “something to do”. Exploring the regions of the park present all of the activities mentioned above, plus a range of other options, all of which are landmarked through a notecard “brochure” delivered to you on your arrival in the park (if it doesn’t arrive automatically, click the green sign).

Where you go from the arrival point is up to you – just pick a road / path and follow it; the scenery is more than inviting, and there is a lot to see around the place. Or if you want to try your hand at something specific, use one of the landmarks contained in the notecard.

Aero Pines Park is designed to be low-lag, so it is appreciated if you keep your script load low, and most of the region crossings are relatively stable – I’ve only ever encountered the odd problem of sinking into a road surface on crossing between regions, other than a lone occasion of being thrown into the sim boundary on the edge of the estate and ending up stuck until I relogged.

One of the attractive elements of the estate is that, while there are some vendors on public display – the ones alongside the jeep rezzer, for example, and others at the airstrip and around the centre of the equestrian activities, most of them are indoors, or completely hidden from view  – such as inside hills – which helps maintain the rural feel of the regions.

As you explore, keep in mind this is also a residential park, and while the stores, etc., are all regarded as public places, the homes which can be found scattered across the regions are not. These are pretty easy to identify, although some have helpful “Private” signs on the fences surrounding them, and it is asked that residents’ privacy is respected,

In terms of residency at Aero Pines Park, Cindy offers a rather interesting approach: rather than renting out properties per se, people become sponsors. On the surface, this might sound little different to renting – at the end of the day, you have a parcel of land, a home and pay a monthly fee.However, by promoting the idea of sponsorship, Cindy is also promoting the idea and ideals of the Aero Pines community as a whole, and that someone is effectively investing in the community itself.

Parcels come complete with themed houses – although sponsors are free to replace them with one of their own, so long as it fits with the theme of the estate – all houses cost towards the prim allowance in the parcel. Prospective sponsors will also go through an interview process prior to taking up residence, again to help ensure the look and feel of the park will not be adversely affected. It’s also worth pointing out that parcels come at cost; Aero Pines Park is a non-profit park, and there is no additional mark-up on land above covering tier costs.

As well as offering visitors the opportunity to partake of a range of activities, the park also holds events throughout the year, some of which are themed to the season (there has recently been a Valentine’s Ball for example, and the pond at the centre of the estate is still frozen over for ice-skating).These events also help foster a sense of community and encourage visitors to spend time in the park exploring and enjoying themselves.

For those wishing to use their own form of transport rather than those provided through rezzing systems, visitors can join the Aero Pines Park group and obtain object entry rights within the park. However, whether taking to the road or the water – please keep in mind that this is a park, not a racing circuit. Visitors are expressly asked not to rez road vehicles (especially not emergency services vehicles or military vehicles) but are welcome to rez their own horses, traps, etc. No such restrictions apply to using the waterways or the Aero Pines airstrip.

If you’re into caves an caverns, Aero Pines Park also offers you a treat with the chance to go underground – just make sure you set your viewer to midnight when you do.

There is much on offer here for role-play groups, photographers and even machinima makers. Role-play groups should refer to the park’s brochure notecard, and machinima makers would be best served contacting either Cindy or one of the park rangers about filming. For photographers, the park offers some beautiful scenery and works well with a wide range of windlight settings.

All-in-all, Aero Pines Park is a great place to visit and explore. At six regions (currently), it offers plenty of room to make exploring interesting while avoiding tripping over other visitors  / explorers, but it is not so big as to be overwhelming.

Why not go see for yourself?

Related Links

• Aero Pines Park primary SLurl (Rated: General)
  • Balloon rides, motorcycle rezzer and store (Rated: General)
  • Jeep rezzer (Rated: Moderate)
  • Horse riding (Rated Moderate)
  • Caverns (Rated: Moderate)
  • Rodeo bull riding (Rated: General)
  • Horse-drawn buggy rides (Rated: General)
• SL Destinations in this blog

A year ago, I visited Hazardous, an evocative build by Wendy Xeno and Mandingo Quan on Mandigo’s Homestead region on Misali.

After an extended period of being under construction, the region has just re-opened (and my thanks to Ziki Questi for the nudge that it had through her blog) and, while I’m often given to superlatives when exploring SL, it really is stunningly spectacular.

The fact that you’re in for a treat is evident from the start. The arrival point, hovering in the sky over the region, offers show very unique “teleport” stones. I’m not going to spill the beans on what happens – suffice it to say it is a very novel means of arriving in a region!

When you arrive at ground level, you could easily be in the rural county of Anywhere – all around you is grassland and tress, a few buildings and other bits. In fact, on my arrival, I couldn’t help but think of the grasslands of East Africa. Around you are several wooden signs welcoming you and warning you of several point of importance: that unattended child avatars will be sold to the circus, for example, and that the region has sharp edges…

It is this last sign which hints at why the new rendition of Hazardous is so spectacular: when you reach ground level, you are actually standing atop the most magnificent plateau rising over 30 metres above the surrounding sea, and which is cut through from one side to the middle by a deep gorge.

At the top of the plateau the grassland offer much to see and do, and is a veritable delight for anyone with a photographic bent, whether the default windlight setting is used, or one opts to experiment. Here you can wander through the grass, explore the old buildings scattered around, sit and pass the time with friends or dance away the hours, playing records on a portable record player (remember those?).

The attention to detail is, as ever, wonderful: the edges of the plateau blend perfectly with the uplifted terrain, the fences, telegraph poles, buildings and seating are all ideally located and speak of considerable time being taken in framing the entire region such that it presents a truly natural feel while offering scores of opportunities in which photographs can be framed.

Nor is the detail constrained to the plateau. There is also much to see down in the gorge and at sea level. The former, in contrast to the grassland above, is a lush, watery setting in which sits a show home reached by a boarded walk. Overhead, but below the lip of the plateau, birds wheel in tight flocks, as if seeking a resting place among the scattered tree-top before the sun sets…

Sea level can be reached via a set of steps, which also lead to a walk and a piano and places to simply sit and look out over the sea and … think …

Words really do not do justice to the way Mandingo has developed and landscaped Hazardous – it is something which has to be explored and experienced, and I really cannot recommend it highly enough as a destination really well worth visiting. When you do, keep an eye for clickable items – one of them will take you to the hidden pond.

Highly recommended.

Related Links

• Hazardous SLurl (Rated: Moderate)
• A Hazardous journey brings it’s own reward – February 2012
• SL Destinations in this blog

(view slideshow full-screen)

Had it not been for Miro Collas, I’d probably not have discovered The Sand Hills Country, Sei Ixtar’s powerfully evocative creation, for some considerable time. And I’d all the less for not having done so.

I often wax lyrical about the places I explore in Second Life, but The Sand Hills Country, covering the Homestead region of Lust, is deserving of everything I can say about it – and far more. It is not only a wonderfully immersive place to explore it is also one which I found – whether Sei (Sey to his friends) intended it to be or not – to be rich in metaphors, which adds enormously to its appeal.

On arriving at The Sand Hill Country, the first thing you notice is the custom environment Sey has created. I’m one for frequently using the viewer’s depth-of-field to create some atmospheric (or as other might fairly put it, “blurred” :)) images. With The Sand Hills Country, Sey has added horizon haze, together with a “skydome” for the sky, both of which create incredible atmosphere and feel to the region, giving it a rich depth (although the skydome colour might also be somewhat reproducible using windlight) All of the snaps in this article and on my Flickr stream accompanying this post have been taken using the defaults applied to the region.

A sign near to the arrival point (literally just across the road, at the bottom of the steps leading to a derelict house) is a notecard giver. This provides background information on the region, including the fact that autoreturn is OFF – so visitors are free to rez items when visiting, but are also asked to please clean things up before they leave.The description of the region is straightforward, yet also opens the door to allowing one’s thoughts to wander free:

A rural landscape overwhelmed by desert, but not only… Suspended between time and space, take a breath, explore, and enjoy this unique scene.

Looking around, it is hard not to imagine one has been transported back to Steinbeck’s dust bowl era and The Grapes of Wrath, although potentially with a bit more water here.  To one side of the region lay sand hills, ever-encroaching and washing against the edges of a lone farm. While wheat is still growing in the fields and sheep and cows do still graze, things are not going well; it would appear that people are up and leaving, as the shell of a house overlooking the wheat field testifies.

The poignancy of the imagery is evident elsewhere, be it in the nesting box with eggs within and a mother bird guarding the entrance or the old, silent, “nodding donkey” pumpjack. Such is the power of this imagery that it is hard not to view it as a metaphor for the whole of Second Life and our varying attitudes toward it. Many do see the platform as slowly dying, perhaps a victim of its own initial rapid growth as a result of premature exploitation; and this is perhaps mirrored by the encroaching sand in the region, and the broken pumpjack and shattered warehouse with the deserted house beyond. Everything is washed out, dull, empty. People have moved on, leaving vacant spaces in their wake. Certainly, I couldn’t help but find strong symbolism in the fact that the only real colour in this part of the region comes from a couple of lifebouys floating in the water…

Yet here is also hope for the future, crops are still being gown; sheep and cattle still graze, ducks swim and feed – and new life is still entering the world, as shown by a nest box filled with eggs and watched over by a mother bird; it’s almost as if nature is whispering, “There is still hope.”

I’ve no idea if any of this is intentional on Sey’s part, or simply the wanderings of my over-active imagination. And it doesn’t really matter. The Sand Hills Country is a beautiful and creative study, whether you are simply looking for a new place to visit and share, or if you are seeking a place which offers a rich vein of photographic opportunities or if you’ll feeling somewhat philosophical about (Second) Life, the universe or everything – or whether you feel a combination of all three.

Why not go see for yourself? I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Related Links

• Lust / The Sand Hills Country SLurl (Rated: Moderate)

With thanks to Miro Collas.

I’ve been thinking rather a lot lately. That’s not always a good sign. There is a lot going on around SL right now, not that there isn’t generally anyway; it’s just that these things are the things I want to blog about – but the words really aren’t coming together in anything like the right order.

It generally takes me a while to order thoughts at the best of times – hence why thinking isn’t always a good sign. Thoughts must percolate, and ideas form. And it has to be said, that the prospect of me thinking deeply has in the past had members of the family hiding behind sofas and the like, fearing the potential for my head to implode …

Recently, however, it has been different; almost akin to a bout of writer’s block. Blogger’s block, perhaps? More articles have been started and then tossed aside than I care to mention.

I’m not sure why this is; perhaps it’s just the fact that the year has had something of a bumpy start for me. Perhaps it’s just the weather. God knows the rest of the country goes to pieces so fast at the first fall of snow it’s a wonder the rest of Europe doesn’t get hit by the shrapnel; so perhaps this slight blogging malaise is simply me joining with the rest of the country’s panic over the recent snow in my own peculiar way – which would be a trifle odd, as I’m generally a snow-lover.

I decided that if it is simply the over-reaction to recent weather that is affecting me (“unseasonal weather”? Really, BBC? Have you forgotten we’re in the northern hemisphere and it’s mid-winter?) – then a change of scenery and season might do me some good. So I set out to seek out something warm in SL.

Just Visiting, on the Homestead Region of Annwn Willows, proved to be just the ticket. Here is a region seemingly gripped in a perpetual spring – or perhaps the first blushing of autumn – with flowers turning their faces to a westering sun in a rich, blue sky.

My love of water-themed regions is a matter of record, and Just Visiting easily sits in the category, comprising a series of ground-level scenes visitors are free to wander between and through. Each might be considered a little vignette in its own right, given the care with they have each been put together; however, such is the scrambled state of my little brain that I decided to forego any thoughts of stories  – or anything else, really, and simply enjoy.

For those not into walking, there is a cunning teleport system for getting around the various vignettes – as a little birdie may well tell you when you visit. However, I much preferred wading through the water and letting each scene unfold before me. Although that said, if you want to see all the region has to offer, then you’ll have to make use of the teleporters at some point, as not everything is on the ground. Indeed, not to take a trip aloft would be to miss out.

Escapism is something we all need for time-to-time. Indeed, it sometimes strikes me as interesting as to how something like Second Life, which for many is a form of positive escapism in that it allows us to break out of the confines of real life, and more really touch and mix with others of similar mindsets or who enjoy similar pursuits, and engage with them, or which allow us to experience a myriad of activities which might otherwise pass us by, itself sometimes needs escaping from. We pour so much of ourselves into it, it becomes as intense or burdensome as other aspects of our lives, and we simply need to take a break.

Perhaps this is why I like regions which have a number of common themes running through them – they are my “escape from SL within SL” …

… Or maybe part of my brain is trying that “thinking” mullarky again …

Whatever the reasons for my mental meanderings, the best way for you to enjoy Just Visiting is to … just visit. It’s unlikely you’ll be disappointed.

Related Links

• Just Visiting SLurl (Rated: Moderate)
• SL Destinations in this blog

(view slideshow full-screen)