The blog has taken something of a back seat over the weekend as I’ve continued to twiddle with the new house & grounds. I think I now have everything as I want it, although I’ll likely continue to tweak here and there over time.
The house is sorted and furnished, and thanks to the wonders of convex hull, is a grand total of 38 prims (including the fire and stone deck, although excluding furnishings), which I think isn’t bad, considering the dock is 29 prims…
The dock…in case you were curious 🙂
It was the dock which caused me the most problems, as I couldn’t make up my mind as to how I wanted it to look – so I started with a simple affair until I had sorted things out in my head. I’m now pretty pleased with the result, and just about have room for a couple of boats to moor (as long as one of them is little!). I may have to ask Nber to drop by and alter a small part of the land (or allow me the rights to do so) in order to be completely satisfied (and give a bit more room), but things seem to work as they are for the present.
I’ve added moderate lighting to the place – a couple of lights in the house, two on the dock and a couple of exterior lights as well, which will hopefully give some life to the place after dark :).
A little light at night
So that’s now me settled :). Back to blogging it is!
For the almost a year now, I’ve been living entirely in my Linden Home – and enjoying it. As regulars know, I shopped around for the house I wanted in terms of theme (Tahoe) and layout, and while you can’t pick your location, you can at least move regularly in order to find a nice spot. I was fortunate: I lucked out and gained the house style I wanted and in an area I liked, with a river nearby, first time. It’s been more than enough for me, and I didn’t think I’d move back to a private estate – not so long as I had a Premium account, at least.
New home…
Then I discovered the joys of sailing, boating and flying, and in doing so gradually fell in love with the regions in and around Blake Sea – the Honah Lee islands, Second Norway, the Nautilus coast and canals, and so on. So much so, that I’ve ducked and dived from time to time looking at land in the greater Blake Sea area and trying to determine if I really wanted to make a move.
Well, long story short, I have.
The house set in its new locale, looking across the rock “patio” to the house proper, with the lounge visible. “Lady of Calas” sits at the dock.
Thanks to Nber Medici, I’ve acquired a nice parcel of land which is ideally suited to my needs. Located in the north-east corner of a themed island, it gives me complete access to the waterways around it, and also to Blake Sea, together with more than enough room to put up a house, have a dock and moor my E-Tech Sparrow Lady of Calas. I’ve only just moved in, and am still working on bits (hence why no major blog articles so far today!), but I think things are coming together nicely.
The “Lady of Calas” from the lounge
House-wise, I’ve opted to use the rock-top house which I talked about back in January 2012, and which was featured as a setting for advertising some of Ample Clarity’s PrimPossible range of furnishings. I chose the house as it fits the broad theme of the estate, it’s a build I like (if I say so myself), and the textures I used in it are perfect for materials (and once again, a huge hug to Max Graf for putting me right on specular maps :)). I’ve only just started fiddling with adding materials, so it is liable to be a while before the place looks respectable in that regard.
And the house from “Lady of Calas”
The great thing about the location, besides being a corner plot, on a themed estate, with access to Blake Sea … OK, one of the great things 🙂 … is that I’m only a hop and skip from Hollywood Airport, so it’s fine and dandy for me flying-wise as well. I’d actually like to have the (non-flying) display model of my Spitfire out on the land – but the covenant requests aircraft aren’t permanently rezzed; so I’ll be foregoing that. Not that I’m complaining; as much as I enjoyed my Linden Home, I’m already appreciating having a garden and space outdoors to wander around in again, so have planted some trees to give the place extra character and which compensate for the lack of flying machine display :).
I’m quite fond of this open-plan design, and it seems to fit the theme of the estate
Hmm…. I wonder if I fiddle around a bit more, whether I could create a little space to moor my sailboat as well :).
Berry offered another Monday Meme on … umm… Monday (September 2nd). I didn’t take a look then, as I thought she’d be off enjoying Labor Day (even if it is spelt “l-a-b-o-U-r” ;-)). But, she did. And while it is rare for me to respond (this is only the third), I thought I’d give it a go – if only to win the most boring response in the world award :).
She asks six questions on the theme of windlight settings and photography. So here’s my replies.
Do you use windlight while taking pictures? If not, why not? Yes, and usually most of the ALM bells and whistles – occlusion, shadows, etc. Admittedly, this pretty much killed my old GPU stone dead at times, but I like to at least think there’s an element of realism in my shots as a result.
When taking a closeup snapshot for a profile picture, which windlight preset do you use most often? The only profile pictures I ever took were pre-WL (seriously). Since around 2008, I’ve only ever had someone who knows what they’re doing take my profile pictures and I certainly wouldn’t try to take a shot for someone else’s profile; not if I want to keep them as a contact / friend …
Which windlight presets do you use for full body portraits? See above.
If you do landscape photography, which windlights do you use for that most often? Hmmm. I like the late afternoon, so windlights built around that get used a lot; I also like ambient lighting so anything which gives that kind of feel gets used and tweaked. Jackson Redstar, Chic Aeon, William Weaver all see a fair amount of use. There are a couple of Bryn Oh’s which I particularly like and enjoy tweaking quite extensively to get some results (I like her Mayfly as I can twiddle around with the sun position, sky colours, etc., and get some nice “night-time” effects); I’ve also recently started juggling with some of Torley’s windlights.
As I’ve recently (the last 3 or so months) started into post-processing some images, I look for WL settings which help set a more dramatic tone to a piece and work with simulating something like an oil painting.
Do you have any tricks or tips that you could share for using Windlight effectively? I’m not sure I’m in any position to offer practical advice. My rule of thumb is actually “suck it and see”; I tend to cycle through the windlights according to what I think might work, depending on where I am. This usually involves taking up to 6 or 8 shots from the same angle and seeing what looks “right” (I find what’s on the screen doesn’t always faithfully transfer to a still image – but that could simply be my eyes). I have a notepad I keep where I will jot down what works and what tweaks I make at times, but most of it really is finger-in-the-air.
Taking multiple shots from the same angle and different WLs probably sounds like a, “well, duh!”, statement (I mean, film is free in SL, so who wouldn’t? :)). However, I find it useful as I tend not to blog immediately about a place all the time, so the snaps can lie dormant for several days (or weeks), so having multiple shot allows me a greater spread of ideas when I do finally start writing-up a review; particularly if I suddenly get the idea for a set of “vignette”-style image captions. It also means I have a fair library of images should I need something to go with a future piece. At the very least, I hope that by having a range of “looks” in snaps I’ve taken, I can present a region under different lighting, “weather” and time of day and so hopefully add depth or interest to a write-up that way.
I often take multiple shots of the same angleunder multiple WL to play with later
I think a lot also comes down to not just windlight, but use of other tools – the camera controls, etc. In this, I find Will Weaver’s phototools invaluable (as I avoid faffing with debug settings: he’s gathered them all up and presented them in a series of excellent tabs on a floater), as are the additional floaters in Exodus. Also, I’ve started getting into post-processing images (in a basic way), so I look for windlights which lend themselves to this. I also make use of Firestorm / Vincent Nacon’s clouds – if you don’t have these installed in your viewer for landscape / outdoors work, you should. They add a lot of depth to the sky without always having to dial-up the cloud coverage excessively.
Have you created any windlights that you would be willing to share with us? No! They’re mine, I tell you, mine! Mine!
No, seriously, I tweak and play, and because what I do is all a variation on someone else’s work, rather than anything original from me, I don’t often to save anything, and those that I have, I wouldn’t dream of sharing for the reason above – they are purely derivative. When I have the skills to create something worthwhile, then I’ll share :).
I had some genuinely “free” time to myself today; no RL worries, nothing to rush to or get done in-world (well, nothing that couldn’t wait…), so I gave myself an hour of pure indulgence. It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to take to the air in SL, but this is September, and while there are still a few days still to go before the 15th, I decided that heading over to Santa Catalina’s Hollywood Airport and putting my Spitfire IX through its paces sounded like a good idea.
I’ve reviewed the aircraft – a quite generous gift from the creator, Eric Gregan – in the past, so am not going to do so again here. Suffice it to say, I think it is once of the best aircraft I’ve flown in SL, and I’m totally in love with it.
Post start-up checks, getting ready to taxi, Hollywood Airport
Having run through pre-start-up checks, I hit the ignition and waited as the big Merlin coughed, paused, coughed, and then with a snort of flame from the exhausts, roared into life. Confirming all my switches were set, I ordered the chocks away and opened the throttle a touch more and eased the plane around for taxiing.
Heading over Crows Nest
I was admittedly a little leery about taking off; coming out from the other side of the airport was a humongous great US air force bomber (which, given the little avatar running frantically along side of it as it turned out onto the runway, may have forgotten / lost someone…). As I didn’t fancy impersonating a leaf in autumn and back flipping in the jet wash from the beast, I gave it plenty of room before turning out myself and pushing the throttle all the way to the stop and giving the engine a little bit of boost.
Flying out of Hollywood airport can at time be a little ugly. The end of the runway is the region boundary, which can make things a tad interesting when the grid is in a mood. Not this time, however. Letting the tail come up, I eased back and to the right on the stick and started a climbing turn to the west, wheels coming up tidily.
Somebody call for a low-level pass?
Continuing west, I passed over Crows Nest and the Fastnet light house, one of the great landmarks of Blake Sea, then dipped the nose for a fast pass over Half-Hitch. This took me over Barbarossa as well, And I spent some time flying around the two before heading back east towards Santa Catalina, before finally turning south and then west to put down at Honah Lee Surf.
Happy to oblige!
The last couple of times I took to the air things were not that pleasant when it came to region crossings. This time, while I encountered three rough moments (one of which I actually recovered from by editing the plane and dragging it back to the middle of a region after getting snagged on the Blake Sea Arabian / Blake Coast regions), things were very smooth, and even rapid and repeated region crossings while flying in a tight circle caused few problems. About the only major issue I did have was in trying to fly the plane and position the camera for a decent snapshot …
All-in-all it was a good trip and fun to be back in the air – although I need to brush up on my landings. A couple were decidedly rough; there’s an art to alanding atail-dragger I’ve not quite mastered – but plenty of time to get better! I can say that I certainly didn’t miss finding myself sitting at 0,0,0 sans ‘plane and thinking”?!?” this time around :). I think I even pleased someone with a couple of low fly overs!
Climbing sunward …
September 15th is approaching, so I’ll be airborne again to mark the day; hope I can do something a little special.
I’ve made mention a few times that my PC has not been in the best of health. I’ve had a range of issues with SL and other applications which have been steadily increasing over the last couple of months and which finally pushed me into taking the plunge and getting a new machine after finding a rather spiffy-looking UK on-line supplier.
Even so, I confess I dithered over actually buying a machine – so much so that between first finding the box I wanted and actually placing an order, the price went up (a whole £12.00! Eeep!). Part of the dithering was because I really didn’t want to get a new computer purely for SL (which was having the greatest number of issues with the old machine); part of it was also because if I was going to get one, I wanted to make sure I got the right balance of performance / price / degree of “future-proofing” (if such a thing exists in computing) without spending silly money. This latter point also involved me in going out and doing a fair bit of reading to make sure my choices were reasonably well-informed.
WizardHat Studios (Rati dAlliez, complete with sim surround), captured using my new PC.
Given the budget I’d set, and the fact I really don’t play games on the computer (Patterns and backgammon is about as far as it goes for me), I wasn’t looking to go all bleeding-edge ultra-high spec. In the end I opted for a what I think is a really nice set-up – particularly when compared to my old beast (A Q6600 2.4 GHz CPU locked to a 4 GB (max) motherboard with 3GB installed, Windows 7 32-bit, and a 1 GB Ge9800 GT).
Obligatory shot of new PC. Glowly fans!
The new machine is built around an i5 3570K on an Asus P8Z77-V LX motherboard (which was recommended to me), and with a 2GB GTX660 GPU (the new spec is in the column on the right). I wasn’t actually sure what kind of performance boost this might give to my SL experience, and the pessimist in me kept saying, “not a lot”. If I’m honest, I was half-expecting it to perhaps double frame rates in ALM + shadows on compared to the old machine (so getting into the high 20s / low 30s at ground level).
Was I ever wrong on that.
While my tests have so far been limited to a handful of regions split between mainland and private islands, I’m still bowled over. My average fps with ALM + shadows and 2-3 other avatars in the same region hass been somewhere between 60-70. Disable shadows, but keep ALM on, and fps tends to jump to between 110-120 fps. I’ll be interested to see how it performs at the Simulator User Group meeting…
What’s more I can take snaps at a resolution of 3500 pixels across without issue (and possibly higher – I have yet to check, not that I need to go massively high). Compared with the fact that the old machine had reached a point where it wouldn’t keep ALM on with the snapshot floater open when saving to disk (reducing me to screen caps), I’ve had a fair few jaw-drops in the last few hours!
Resting a while at Calas Galadhon, after almost going snap-happy …
I’m not entirely sure what this means for my in-world times, but just being able to walk around SL and know I once again have all the viewer’s bells and whistles available, and to be able to turn them on and not immediately see textures being discarded due to lack-of-memory, or have ALM getting thumped by the snapshot floater or end up crashing after the 4th or 5th snapshotwhen I can actually use the floater & have shadows available… Well, it’s a revelation.
Suffice it to say I think my SL hiking boots are going to get a lot more use!
Strawberry is at it again with her Monday memes and challenges. This week the challenge is to do with movies. The instructions are seemingly easy, as Strawberry explains:
Monday Meme Instructions: The challenge for this week is to create a movie poster for your SL Avatar or SLife. You can base it off an original movie poster or think of a completely new idea of your own! Get creative and have some fun with it!
I love movies so this one grabbed my attention, and although I’m the first to admit that my graphics / photo manipulation skills are not the greatest, I decided to have a go…
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 