Category: Exploring Second Life

JimGarand is back with a new iteration of Grauland, and it is one that was bound to grab my attention sooner or later given it presents a sci-fi / Mars vibe in which a realm of potential touches might be found if the eye and the imagination are willing to have a little fun.

A visit commences on the ground level, a setting presenting what appears to be the surface of a Mars-like planet. It’s a place where a small human base has been established within – given the surrounding hills and central peak – what appears to be a complex crater somewhere on the planet. Whether it is Mars or somewhere else in up to you to decide (although I’m opting for the former, even if the clouds aren’t very Mars-like in their hue; but then with my interests, I would, wouldn’t I?!).

Whether you want to place it, this is a lonely, dry place, devoid of vegetation, the sky a colour suggestive that it is heavy in fine dust. The squat, utilitarian modules of the base sit on one side of the crater’s peak, what looks like a landing platform to one side one them – although this hasn’t prevented someone landing a small shuttle a little further from the entrance to the hab modules.

Across the crater floor from this, and hidden from view but the carter’s peak, two surface excursion vehicles appear to have found something interesting to examine (although admittedly, going by the barbecue and a couple Adirondack chairs set out alongside one of them, they might have just stopped off for a little home-cooked lunch!).

It’s is simple setting, offering a sense of magnificent desolation (if I might so quote, even if this is clearly not our Moon!), and ideal for sci-fi photography. However, the planetary surface is not the only point of interest in this setting. Sitting on the landing platform at the base camp is a teleport disk; it offers a choice of two destinations served by five options: a platform that is home to Jim’s M1 Poses store and an art gallery (each with its own teleport disk), and three options to deliver people to a space station.

The latter is a large, multi-level complex that clearly has its own gravity generators; it’s also a place where the imagination might have a little fun. The transporter platform sits over what might be the main control centre, a place with a strange mix of tech: in the centre are plasma-like information screens with touch keyboards; however, against the outer hull bulkheads are chunky stations with a distinct industrial edge to them, covered in solid coloured buttons you feel will give a very satisfying click when pressed – and might even stay depressed until again pressed, just so you know they are active.

Looking at these outer consoles, it’s not hard to imagine Lorne Green’s Commander Adama standing within this space. One the walls over them are image displays, one of which appears to be a one of the conceptual vehicles produced as a means of illustrating the (equally conceptual and speculative) Alcubierre Drive.

Beyond this, visitors find themselves in a medical bay where – if not Leonard McCoy in residence – one might not be surprised to find Dr. Phlox asking, “Now, What seems to be the problem?” Elsewhere, and after travelling by the internal elevators, it is possible to pass through a couple of biodomes which, whilst their growth might not be as luxuriant or their placement as exotic, might nevertheless result in mental images of Bruce Dern’s Freeman Lowell trying to teach Huey, Dewey and Louie the basics of how to care for the plants and animals within the domes of the Valley Forge.

Laid out along obviously vertical and horizontal lines (ah, the limitations of SL’s physics!) and in place looking like parts of it warehouse or hotel’s leisure facilities had been beamed wholesale into space, the station offers a lot to explore and some artistic oddities (take the, umm, bathroom, for example!). Some of these might bright to mind thoughts of other film franchises and their doom-laden theme by Jerry Goldsmith due to their dark corners and narrow confines, or the disappointment that the green lights of the machinery aren’t “moving back and forth without any purpose” (yes, I’m still playing spot-the-reference…).

And while this might sound like I’m taking the Michael out of the station, I’m not; it is an interesting place to explore whether or not you have a hidden sci-fi nerd lurking inside your head.

More to the point – at least for some – are the opportunities the station presents for playing with EEP settings to offer different outlooks and views. This is something I ended up doing – as seen in some of the images above, notably in the case of Saturn (and an intentional nod to the Silent Running vibe of the station’s biodomes) – courtesy of Stevie Davros’ EEP packs available via his Marketplace store (and which I reviewed back in December 2020).

Once the ground level and station have been visited, there remains the opportunity to visit the gallery / store level. Both can be reached via either the Gallery or Store options displayed by the ground level teleport disk or the three “transporter beams” active on the level above the space station’s control room. At the time of my visit, the gallery was featuring the avatar photography of Wiona (dx61005).

All told, another fascinating and engaging build from Jim.

SLurl Details

• Grauland (Liberia Isle, rated Adult)

Even before it was selected for highlight in the Destination Guide Editor’s picks, I’d heard that Bo Zano (BoZanoNL) had opened a new iteration of Elvion, and I’d added it to my list of regions to visit ASAP in 2023. I’ve always admired Bo’s work, and over the last several years he has brought us a range of visions for Elvion, and all of them have been utterly captivating and photogenic – and this latest version, once again a Homestead build – is no exception.

An island setting, Elvion emerges from the surrounding waters as a pair of low isles, the larger of the two running east from the landing point, initially as a narrow finger, then broadening out to the north and south, a shallow channel of water separating it from the smaller isle.

Reached via a simple bridge, the latter sits a the home of an ivy-draped cottage, a place that looks at first to be a little homestead, courtesy of the geese (both on the ground and circling overhead) and horses sharing the island with it. However, caught within the same EEP settings as the rest of the region – and which I recommend viewing it under -, this smaller island carries that same sense of mystery and age as its larger neighbour.

A path points eastwards from the landing point, and presents the best means by which to become immersed in that sense of mysticism and mystery. Along the way it passes under great broken columns which have tumbled to form gigantic arches pointing the way towards the ruins of an abbey-like building. Between the first and second of the giant “arches”, the bases of which are marked by exotic puffball plants also of large proportions, is a huge mushroom tree standing at the water’s edge.

Overlooked by a bench, this otherworldly tree marks the start of a way across the shallows – also marked by plants and reeds rising from the water – to where a stone tower rises from the thumb-tip of rock, standing like a guardian – or watcher – over the setting. From this lofty perch (reached by touching the door to teleport up to the single room), visitors can gain an eagle’s view of the main islands and their watery surrounds.

Lit by trees rich in autumnal colours and strung with lights, the abbey-like ruins offer a sense of timelessness; a place where peace holds sway and dreams come easy. Beyond it, a path leads onwards to a shrine caught within the branches of another tree whilst a second leads to the bridge and the second island beyond.

Within the broader part of the main island lay more ruins, suggestive of an outlying element of the abbey – perhaps what was once a small church. These sit at the edge of a stream issuing from rocks which oddly intrude into the ruins, as if the rocks arrive after the building had been built and collapsed.

The steam itself only flows a short distance before it enters the surrounding waters. In doing so, it indirectly points the way to where a swings sits off-shore under the branches of another tree. Close by sits a wooden pier marching across the water, yet itself separated from land by that same water. It offers a further retreat and place for reflection in solitude.

Through the setting there is a uniqueness that sets it apart from previous builds – notably, again, the EEP settings, which offer so much to the immersiveness that other Elvion builds perhaps haven’t quiet reached, as captivating as they have been. At the same time, there is enough within the region that offer links to past iterations – such as the shrine noted above, the two-wheeled cart on the edge of the smaller island and the presence of wildlife and animals throughout the setting.

Some of these – in the form of white stags – both offer a hark-back to past builds and add to the mystic / fantasy feel of this iteration. In this, they are joined by glowing chrysalis butterflies flying offshore and the magical rings of fish circling a Moon chair sitting part-way to the stone tower, the puffballs and mushroom trees and other exotic flora awaiting discovery. When combined, these move Elvion into a realm of the imagination, brought to life by the presence of the animals and wildlife.

Wandering Elvion is, for me, like coming home; there is a comforting sense of familiarity within each iteration of this region I find engaging. And I don’t mean a familiarity borne of similarities of design or the inclusion of familiar elements from one version to the next; rather there is a sense that Bo has an imagination and a flair for region designs I know are always going to be attractive to me; places I can appreciate and spend time within, wrapped in a since of freedom and exploratory delight.

Definitely not a location to be missed.

SLurl Details

• Elvion (Forevermore, rated Moderate)

Funky Banana is a region designer with a keen eye for detail and an imagination capable of presenting settings which can attract and enthral. I’ve covered his work a number of times in these pages, going all the way back to 2016. However, it has been a while since I’ve made any visits, so when Cloud Edge popped up on my radar screen, I decided to set things to rights once more and hop over to take a look.

The last couple of times I did write about Funky’s work was in covering Wild Edge (in 2018) and Summer Edge (in 2019); designs which clearly share a common element in their naming with Cloud Edge. Both of these designs offered much for visitors to appreciate – and so does this one, but in a very different way; in fact, I’d go so far to say that in its disarmingly simple design, Cloud Edge is one of the most imaginative region builds I’ve seen of late.

It is a setting more than adequately explained through its About Land description:

Welcome to Cloud Edge.

A high ground environment based above the clouds, surrounded by mountains. A place to escape, relax and enjoy the views.

And so it is that arrivals find themselves in the mountains, surrounded by high, snowy peaks and lower, snow-free ridges not so far above or below the tree-line that whilst the majority of their vegetation is moss on the rocks and hardy shrubs and bushes, a few stunted trees deformed by wind and cold into krummholz manage to survive. Between these ridges and peaks and the much higher surrounding mountains is a sea of white, the tops of clouds obscuring everything below from view and giving the impression that the peaks, ridges and mountain tops are islands sitting within an ocean of fluffy white.

The landing point is set on a broad wooden deck, also rising above the cloud tops (which are formed using Fluff Clouds by Satomi XOXO), and moored to a slender ridge of rock by a single wood-and-rope bridge. Watched over by a single crow seemingly unaffected by the altitude, the bridge provides access to a rocky path as it skirts around a small peak to run along the spine of the ridge to a second peak, passing the krummholz tenaciously clinging to its flanks.

A further bridge stretches out over the hidden abyss at the end of this path, guarded by a young eagle that periodically takes the air before settling back on a rocky perch. The bridge itself extends out over and into the clouds, vanishing before connecting to land once more. This it does by way of a finger of rock of a semi-regular shape suggestive of interesting wind patterns flowing around these peaks, and which is in turn connected to a further pinnacle of rock via a second bridge.

This bridge is allowed passage through the rock by means of a natural-looking tunnel burrowing its way through the flat top of this peak, which rises higher than the rocky finger to which it is linked, but not as high as the peak at the southern end of the ridge with its footpath. Beyond the tunnel lies a shoulder of rock on which a further deck has been built, offering superb views of the remaining peaks within the region’s boundaries, both of which are isolated from access by foot, and the largest of which features a powerful waterfall facing the deck like a shimmer curtain as it drops into the clouds below.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated with Funky’s region designs is the degree of minimalism he employs. Where others would be tempted to add life to a setting with – say – the addition of birds or animals or further flora, Funk keeps things such that there is know to give life to his settings and no more.

Thus, while it might have been easy it add trees hither and thither, or add mountain goats to “enhance” the sense of elevation, Funky resists, offering only those trees and birds required to underscore the sense that we are indeed at some altitude, allowing the surrounding clouds to speak for themselves. Similarly, the soundscape for the region is kept to the perfect minimum of the lonely moan of wind over exposed rock, the occasional cry of a crow and the slow growth of water falling over rocks as you approach the deck overlooking the falls.

Beautifully conceived and executed, Cloud Edge is visually impressive and offers plenty of scope for art and photography. Those who do so are invited to add their images to the Cloud Edge Flickr stream, whilst visitors are invited to claim a small gift from Funky’s Marketplace store.

SLurl Details

• Cloud Edge (Echo Mountain – rated Moderate)

It was off back to Lam Erin’s Cherishville for my first blog on places to explore in 2023. A locale that changes with the seasons, this Full region was, at the time I dropped in, dressed for winter, although things started to change as this article was being finished (the Christmas village mentioned below poofed, for example), so things may well have changed some more by the time you read this!

As a photographer, Lam has an eye for detail and this is often reflected in his region designs, something which is very much the case here – albeit at a potential cost for some visitors, as the region is very heavily loaded with mesh and – particularly – animated mesh snow; something which prompted me to spend a few minutes de-rendering in order to give my FPS a boost whilst physically exploring the region on foot, rather than camming.

Unlike other changes in iteration, the winter 2023 version of Cherishville actually reflects the autumn 2022 version, which I wrote about in October 2022; the overall design remains largely unchanged, except for the seasonal details replacing the more autumnal – trees denuded of leaves but hung with lanterns, the gently lapping waters of the inlet now frozen and a thick blanket of snow replacing the grass and leaves on the ground – and the likes of snowmen, polar bears and (inevitably), penguins and giant Christmas toy soldiers replacing the horses and cattle.

The fact that Lam has retained the look and feel of the Autumnal 2022 version of Cherishville allows us to witness a very realistic changing of the seasons in a familiar landscape (and indeed, as I missed it, the overall design might hark back as far as summer 2022). Perhaps the most identifiable changes between the autumn and winter settings was the presence of a little Christmas Village tucked into the north-east corner of the region and watched over by the aforementioned giant toy soldiers.

The best way to appreciate the new design is to follow the snowy road as it loops and winds around the region, offering views by turn of the main hamlet, the Christmas village and the frozen inlet where, for reasons best known to himself, Santa has opted to go … skiing.

The road also passes by the other major change from the autumn design, located down in the south-west corner, where a large barn appears to be a place where fir trees were being sold for home decorating through the season (and to which the trucks carrying  fir trees might be related). A little hot drinks stall sits alongside the barn and, just beyond it a skating rink with one of those little errors of detail Lam tends to include in his builds: a floating floating serenely a couple of metres above the rink!

With the inlet and the roadside hamlet above it, and the train line and station to the north, there are plenty of opportunities of photography which can be used to contrast the winter design with that of autumn for those who previously visited the latter and wish to make a re-visit.

For my part, however, given I’ve previously described the setting at some length just a few months ago, I’ll shut up here, and instead finished with a couple more images and the suggestion that whether or not you dropped into Cherishville during the autumn, now might be a good time to hop over and catch it in its winter dressing before more changes!

SLurl Details

• Cherishvile Winter (Photos, rated Moderate)

I first came across the work of Kaja Ashland and Marcus Bremser when, in 2014 I visited the AERO Golf Club and, whilst not a fan of golf in the physical world, found myself enjoying the game. This led to several returns over the next few years and prompted me to write about the club again in 2017, after it had undergone an extensive redesign.

Since then, both Kaja and Marcus have launched individual projects, and in 2020 and again in 2021, I visited and wrote about Kaja’s Noweeta Homestead region. As such, a write-up of Marcus’ latest project, Moruya, is long overdue.

At the time of my visit, this roughly 12,000 sq m parcel of land sitting on the east coast of Sansara’s Islandia North, lay presented as Moruya Sanctum, which Marcus describes as a tropical beach fronting high cliffs, the landscape transitioning to something more temperate in nature as visitors climb up to its high table top.

I’ve no idea if Marcus has drawn on the name Moruya from Australia’s New South Wales and the Moruya River (the name drawn from an Aboriginal word, mherroyah, said to mean “home of the black swan”). Given his Profile states he spends “extended periods abroad”, it’s tempting to think so even if his Profile also states his current time zone is only 12 hours ahead of SLT, rather than the 19 one might expect for far New South Wales. Not that there is any similarity between Moruya Sanctum and the Aussie river of which I’m aware (other than having its own stream flowing eastwards to reach the sea, doing so via a high waterfall rather than a broad estuary); it’s just an idle direction my little imagination wandered off towards during my visits.

The landing point for Moruya Sanctum is presented as a little dinghy tied up to a small, T-shaped wooden dock reaching out a short distance from the beach. Bracketed to the north and south by shoulders of rock extending from the main cliffs, the beach is split by the aforementioned falls and the water which flows out from them in a short, shallow channel. The south part of the beach, on the far side of the water from the dock, offers a little place to enjoy the Sun, complete with palm tress for a degree of shade.

The path up to the highlands switchbacks up the cliff above the north side of the beach as a mix of sloping rock, steps and ladders. Getting up this path takes a little care (I noted several people have some issues, mainly because they were trying to take shortcuts up very tall rocks – just follow the obvious steps and take care at the narrow pass at the top of the ladders, and you’ll be fine.

A stone arch greets visitors at the top of the climb, a final climb of steps running up to the main path between the head of the waterfalls and a stone-built gazebo. The arch and a stone wall bridging the waters of the stream offer the first suggestion that these highlands may have once been home to a structure constructed of cut stone blocks, some of the stone from which may have been used to create the tile-roofed gazebo.

The gravel path immediately offers a choice of routes. To one side, it curves neatly around the gazebo to reach a grassy little faerie round for sitting in the shade of trees, nicely secluded from the rest of the plateau. The second route takes you across a wooden bridge over the stream to a further fork in the path, both of which again hint to a structure of great age having once stood here, thanks to the presence of moss-covered stone steps along both arms of the path.

To the left, curved steps rise to a small grassy meadow cut through by the continuing arc of the footpath as it passes between mature pine trees to reach further steps leading up to more extensive ruins overlooking the upper reaches of the stream and the waterfalls feeding it from the cliffs at the western end of the setting. Meanwhile, the second arm of the path reaches back over the water via a great slab of rock to where steps lead up to another secluded seating area set out in the grass and facing the ruins from across the channel of the steam.

But these aren’t the only routes across this upper reach of land; at the base of the curved steps pointing the way to the ruins is a ribbon of grass in seed. Take this and you’ll find yourself with a choice of natural trails reaching to pools of water isolated from the stream and offering their own outlooks and places to sit. Travel onwards along the upper of these trails as it runs through the grass and under the shade of more mature trees, and you’ll find a nicely hidden camp site, complete with its own back route up to the ruins above the stream.

Secluded seating and sitting spots aren’t the only secrets awaiting discovery here, however. Tucked away within Moruya Sanctum is a gently winding throat of a cave, its sandy tongue reaching deep under the high cliffs to lap at an emerald pool of water.

You’ll have to find the entrance for yourself – part of the fun of exploring Second Life is finding such hidden spaces, so I’m not going to give everything away here (not that the cave entrance is that hard to find). Suffice it to say, find your way into the cave and you’ll find bats, places to sit, cats, and the opportunity to bathe in the waters of the pool. All of this is overlooked by two figures, one carved in stone, the other cast in bronze, and one of which, together with the banners hanging from the rock walls, offers a hint of Arthurian legend.

Cosy yet with a rich sense of space, easy on the eye (and the viewer), with plenty of opportunities to relax and / or take photographs, Moruya Sanctum makes for a highly engaging and picturesque visit.

SLurl Details

• Moruya Sanctum (Barbados, rated Moderate)