Yay, Maps!

So Inara Pey writes about this very nice Maps of SL exhibit.

Here I am at it, in the distance:

It’s a lovely little gallery build, very subtly steampunk-feeling, on a pleasant sim that I didn’t have time to wander around as much as I’d have liked. The exhibit itself has sections (as you can see in the pitcher) on Magellan Linden, the early grid, the Steamlands, Nautilus and the Blake Sea, and so on. The other wall has things about transport, the railroad lines, the Zindra monorail, and all like that.

Well worth a visit if your at all a fan of maps, as I certainly am. :)

(And for good measure here’s a reminder about the Continent Detector, so you can tell where you yourself are!)

Limited Time Only: Dale 60% Off!

So the other month there was an upgrade to SL that allowed people to rig meshes to the AV’s virtual (and invisible) “bones” so that they would move as the AV moves, just like the mesh of the AV itself does. This theoretically allows clothing that moves better with the wearer, and would also allow replacing the normal AV entirely, if only there were some way to make the normal AV invisible.

It turns out that another upgrade somewhat before or after that one allowed making arbitrary parts of the AV invisible, including the whole thing.

So one or more geniuses put two and two together, and now we have entirely replacement AVs! And since even us neophilic Residents tend to stick with the familiar alot of the time, we have entirely replacement AVs that are just like our normal AVs, except they are much bigger than usual!

And, because it’s hard to get through doors and things when you’re gigantic, even more ones that are just like our normal AVs, except for being cute and tiny!

That is me in the free 0.4 “minikin” AV from Caverna Obscura, wearing a nice white dress (specially for 0.4 minikins) from Carriage Trade Miniatures, and some ancient ETD hair that I sized down myself, and hoping no one steps on me.

There are 0.4 minikins (about 40% the size of the usual AV, it says here), and 0.3 minikins, and also “petites”, which I gather are also about 40%, but in some way that isn’t compatible with the 0.4 minikins. Or whatever. :)

Here is proof of smallness:

That is a to-scale meter-prim, so I am a little under 1m tall.

The free CO minikins come with a very modern and realistic skin:

and are flexible in various ways, the most obvious being skin color:

Note the background being the bottom shelf of the bookshelves in my skybox; very Borrowers.

Note also that I don’t look all that much like Dale. (A bit more like Chestnut Rau, really, now that I think of it.) Unlike with the normal AV, there are no sliders to change details of face and body shape or anything.

(I don’t know if anyone’s started a business of selling customized minikins with faces based on a set of SL face slider settings provided by the buyer, but I would pay some nonzero number of Lindens for such a service!)

On the other hand there are lots of different clothing sets to wear, and jewelry, and Carriage Trade even has minikin-sized ridable (rideable?) horses.

Many copy-mod hairs for normal AVs can be relatively easily shrunk down to 40%, like that ETD one above, and this nice pink mohawk:

and some stores sell their own minikin hairs, and hair-including outfits:

(Those from Carriage Trade again.)

And then of course there’s these. :)

Sexy little 0.3 minikins called “Lil Demonia”, also from Caverna Obscura. Wear them to your local danceclub and raise some eyebrows! :)

4 July 2012

Happy fire an’ explosions an’ general celebrating to all!