Better Skies Are Here

Skies – Hamlet has been following Stevie Davros’ development of improved sky textures for Second Life’s Windlight™. Today Hamlet is writing about their release. Seems they are now available in the SL Marketplace. Below is the installation tutorial for Mac and the Linden viewer. I highly recommend using the package with Firestorm. But, while tedious … Read more

New Skies for Firestorm

Hamlet has an article about Stevie Davros’ enhanced skies. In 2011 Firestorm added a feature that allows replacement of Second Life™ clouds. Thank you for the computer code, Cinder Roxley. Back then Vincent Nacon was creating new cloud images for this feature.

Stevie Davros Dramatic Skies

So, this feature is not new nor limited to Firestorm. JuicyBomb wrote a tutorial NEW CLOUDS FOR SECOND LIFE, May 2013, for those using the Linden Viewer. The instructions are good for any viewer.

Not much has changed since then. I just checked in the Linden Viewer 5.1.0 and there is still no provision for selecting a different cloud texture. So, it is still a manual change.

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Second Life – Hot, Amazing, Gorgeous…

I like playing with photography in Second Life… second to dressing up and teasing others… well, maybe dressing up and shopping more than teasing. But, I’m often snapping pictures in SL, whatever I’m doing. Those pictures which I think are good enough, just fun, or show off a new thing I’ve learned, make to Flickr.

Dee Dee Deepdene – April 2017

On Flickr, I look around to see what others are doing. This is where the hot, amazing, and gorgeous comes in. Here I’ll show you some of the photographer-artists I’ve come across. Of course, these are ones I like. I use no objective standard. It’s just what touches, thrills, or wow’s me.

I do in a small measure consider the number of fav’s an image gets when deciding if it is great or I just my really liking it. But, I’ve seen some awesome images with almost no views or fav’s. So, the number of fav’s represents a mix of popularity and marketing. How many people see the image? Is the artist talented and understands social media well enough to promote an image?

The following images are not completely safe for work, no XXX, but some are definitely erotic

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Second Life Photography Tutorials

Flickr has a ton of Second Life™ images. Today: 2,901,249 images. Some are pretty bad, others REALLY kinky, and some amazingly gorgeous. For the people interested in SL Photography William Weaver has made 12 video tutorials. They are about using the Firestorm Viewer’s Photo and Camera Tools and controlling Windlight. There is a well thought … Read more

Second Life – The 360 Viewer – Add Image Metadata

Taking 360 images is way easier with the new RC viewer. But, figuring out what to do with the image so you can see it is a serious PITA. I’ll give you HOW TO using Photoshop, which is pretty painless, and several other easy ways to make the image usable as a 360-image. The process works in most of the Adobe tools that allow you to access File Info.

First here is my first snapshot with the new viewer.

sl360 Picture - RAW Image
sl360 Picture – RAW Image

It kinda subtle (not), but you might notice this isn’t displaying as a 360-image. The problem is the metadata Flickr needs to know this is a 360 image. It is missing. The Lab is adding that part of the viewer code now. So, the latest version of the Linden 360-Viewer as I write this is version 5.1.0.506743. It stiches the image together for us. But, does not yet add the needed metadata. 

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Second Life at Flickr

I’m in my ninth year of exploring and playing in Second Life™. There are some things I think are still difficult to accomplish within the Second Life framework. One of those is finding interesting and beautiful places to visit, very much like real life. Another is meeting interesting people and being able to see them… not just look at them or see their ‘hello’ face, but seeing them in moments of their life. iRL that is usually only possible with close friends.

There is the Lab’s Destination Guide, web and in-viewer, and now Places Pages. Plus, a number of ‘travel’ blogs. They show us various places in Second Life. But, they still don’t do Second Life justice and it can be tedious going through those sources.

smoke.
smoke

People… meeting interesting people is not really hard, there just isn’t any simple… fast… easy… ok, lazy way to do it. Well, like real life you can go to clubs and parties and join groups. Like iRL you can participate and meet participating people with similar interests. My point is you have to put out some energy and spend some time iRL or SL.

Flickr provides a bowl of vignettes of places and people. There the challenge is finding people that can see those places and moments and capture them. These are moments from SL. They are only clues to where you may find people or places in SL. But, Flickr is a rich source of people and places hidden by the nature of life and the virtual world 

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