Monthly Archives: April 2008

Machines should work, Women should design

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Shenlei | Comments Off

Zha’s been tuning Spirit’s database and code, and it is really starting to show. I pushed Spirit pretty hard – we now have 8500 prims in various configurations, and a couple of scripts running (I got my flame, thank you to Script Wizard Dale). I only managed to slap Spirit to its knees a couple of times, which considering that OpenSim is very alpha code, I thought showed a remarkable amount of resilience.

I’m increasingly finding that other than missing things like my HUD, AO, hair, and oddly enough, my gorgeous sculpted and scripted riding horse, I really do prefer to spend my time in Spirit. To all intents and purposes, I have no prim limits, the Blade server that Spirit is hosted on is increasingly showing how robust it is, and I can get things in and out of inventory far more easily than I’m used to. There are still issues with the alpha code, of course, but overall, the performance Spirit is turning in is just getting better and better. I want Shengri La proper hosted on a Blade server!

My sense, based on nothing more than building hard in both platforms, is that OpenSim is growing up. The technology is really digging in and starting to work, so I can get on about my business of designing. I’m really looking forward to seeing what the new week brings. I have hopes of a mist script, and some foxfire scripts, and of course, one mustn’t forget, some texture animation scripts and my fondest hope: a butterfly movement script…

This weekend, I spent planting the main build with all sorts of plants and flowers. I got the initial trusses in place on the nascent roof – I’m still not entirely certain how I want to finish the pitches yet, and I have only a dim idea of the direction I’m heading with the corner turn, but building is always a process for me anyway, so this doesn’t disturb me (too much).

I did get the planters full of plants – a bed of gentians, some conifers plantings, palms underplanted with a lush bed of grasses waving gently in the breeze.

I also started adding seating, against the day I get sit poses and the like. Eventually, I’ll be adding all sorts of little touches to the seating arrangements – tables, floor lighting and the like. Right now, I’m pretty content with my candle (note the flame) with the actual prim wax drips. Not to mention the prim ice cubes in the glasses of lemonade…

A nice touch was adding the suspension chains to the chandeliers. They are no longer merely suspended in midair, but attached to the new support trusses.

I also started building out a large community center. The foundation is laid and I have a clear direction I want to take for terraforming. The rest will evolve, just like OpenSim is.

Spirit is becoming heart-stoppingly beautiful. In some respects, it’s a pity that it truly is a ‘walled garden’, in that only people on the A++++ list can visit me there. For now, that is.

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Posted in Blogroll, Fashion Research Institute, OpenSim, secondlife, Shengri La

Tagged Blade, Fashion Research Institute, IBM Open Sim, OpenSim, Shengri La, Shenlei, Spirit

On Going First – Day Two.OOOOHHHH in Shengri La Spirit

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Shenlei | Comments Off

The one really, really nasty thing about alpha testing is, you really do need to have the patience of a saint. No, not me, my TEAM. We’re tuning Spirit, and I think I crashed it 15 times today. Hard. Sometimes within seconds of logging in. Zha came and hung out with me for awhile and watched things progress, so I could feed bug reports on the spot. This made things go quicker from my point of view….no less exhausting, but quicker.

An OMG moment, as I log in from what felt like my 92-millionth crash, to discover that I had lost most of an entire wall of trelli…and what was there had partially reverted to original parameters, the deadly “plywood box” unit.

What’s really interesting is how you can FEEL the box start to respond to the tuning as changes get made to

it. By the end of the day, I was mostly running into known bugs (linking and texturing issues, mostly) and Spirit performed admirably through a stint that brought us to 6,000 prims. I did note something about the lack of an RGB slider when you go into the edit window – you have to use your existing palette. (this is a bug, in case my earlier comment to Zha went unnoticed)

The theme of Spirit has changed – as these things so often do – it’s moving more in the direction of a community center nestled in a large trellised glasshouse. Today I fought with the technology all day and built trellii. I must have rebuilt one section five times, because it just wasn’t persistent. But, we got it worked out, and by the time I was tired of trellii, I had the walls in place.

Then I turned my attention to plants – flowering vines, some system plants potted up, and a few other odds and ends.

A whole squadron of butterflies awaiting their flight scripts (um, guys? please?)

Script Wizard Dale made some mutterings (imprecations?) about the flame script. A flame script would be really nice. Also a particle script or two. And some texture animation scripts. And, oh yes, attachments? I miss my hair. No pressure, next week will be fine.

In one of my interims waiting for Spirit to get kicked, our liaison found me in SL. Thanks for coming with me to the networking event, Kurt, that was fun. I actually had far more company today in working on Spirit than I usually do. Zha popped in and out and at one point, retextured the terrain. Not that this build is going to have a lot of terrain, but what there is will be lush and lovely.

Anyway, after a hard day of wrestling technology, we have a really quite lovely build. I am particularly fond of the chandeliers, even they do just sort of prestidigitate. They make me want to hold a Rave….

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Posted in fashion, Fashion Research Institute, OpenSim, science, secondlife, Shengri La

Tagged Fashion Research Institute, OpenSim, Shengri La, Shenlei, virtual worlds

Yay! Up and Running ….Hoo Boy Are We….

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Shenlei | Comments Off

Zha tapped me on Friday and told me Spirit was ready to go again. I, of course, immediately managed to crash the poor thing so hard it still has bruises, but Zha got it up and running again, and left me a little surprise upon log-in….a giant green prim (reminiscent of the Monolith in 2001) letting me know which sim I’m actually in (we have two. The log-in urls get a little murky for me).

Ever the curious one, I wanted to change textures and generally twiddle the land, add media…and lookie the great surprise I found in the objects tab! 45,000 prims!

The mind immediately boggled. I can make….grape arbors, with every grape a prim! Fuhgeddaboud texture flowers, I can have the real thing – all 400 prims worth (why settle for small when you can have grandiose?)

So I set to with great vigor. In the middle of it all, Zha popped in to check on things. She arrived just in time for a face-to-face collaboration about a linking bug. Perfect! Now that we have avatar persistence, I of course promptly uploaded some of my skins/eyes/clothing textures in and made a couple of skins. I carefully copied all the details from my usual shape and brought those over, so I could be me in Spirit.

Attachments are still buggy – I made and attached a belt and it seems to have been one of those rare anti-gravity belts, as it dragged me off to the sky. Ugh.

Meantime, I managed to build out a boardwalk with arbors. Lots of arbors. In preparation of those 300-prim-each grapes. I have a clear vision of what I want the new build to look like, sort of palatial mediterranean with lots of soaring towers and so on.

Next I am going to work on the harbor. The terrain is a real mess under the water – a lot of polygons poking up everywhere. I’m going to smooth out the floor enough, though, that I can start creating marine life, maybe a wreck, lots of bivalves and starfish and so forth.

I’m still quite agog. 45,000 prims! Whoa. That should be interesting.