Jupiter Rowland @JupiterRowland

Does anyone have all the loose items from the Christmas firepit set from Clutterfly?

I'm not looking for the sales box. The sales box as available on all instances of Clutterfly itself is broken. It only contains one tree stump.

So now I'm particularly looking for these items:
Christmas stump with blanket #1
Christmas stump with blanket #12
Christmas Cuddle/Sex Log with blanket #1
Christmas Cuddle/Sex Log with blanket #2

The Tree Stump and the Fire Pit are the same in all firepit sets, so I don't need them.

I've already mentioned that OpenSim has entered the Fediverse several months ago, and that there are even two dedicated Mastodon instances for OpenSim users. One is opensimulator.social (https://opensimulator.social/), run by Buzzy Cnayl of VivoSim (formerly Quintonia, see news below). The other one is opensimsocial.com (https://opensimsocial.com/explore), run by Lone Wolf.

But the Fediverse has more to offer than "Twitter clones" like Mastodon. With Reddit messing up big time currently, the time has come for the "Reddit clones" Lemmy and /kbin to grow.

And just a few days ago, Hyacinth Jean has started a Lemmy community (= subreddit) for OpenSim: https://sh.itjust.works/c/opensim/

If you already have an account somewhere in the Fediverse, e.g. on Mastodon, you can use it to join Lemmy communities. If not, or if you find that too inconvenient, feel free to join Lemmy instead.

For those who don't know: AviTron has essentially closed off its Hypergrid access. See here: https://avitron.net/avitron-hg-access

Technically speaking, the grid is still Hypergrid-enabled, but it only allows selected grids to connect. These grids, in turn, must not have Hypergrid access otherwise.

This means that none of us can access sims on AviTron unless they have an avatar on AviTron.

Now, one could argue that "AviTron is still Hypergrid-enabled" and therefore doesn't break OSW rules. If the rules are taken literally.

But from a practical point of view, AviTron no longer belongs here. Sacrarium had even easier Hypergrid access when it was banned. And since grids normally go all-or-nothing when it comes to Hypergrid access, I suspect that closed grids such as the TAG Grid don't activate Hypergrid access just to connect only to AviTron, not to mention that such grids aren't allowed here either.

Many don't know yet that AviTron has basically cut off Hypergrid access, also because many AviTron sims are still listed on OSW. They try to visit these sims, can't get in and blame it on the sim owners.

I'd say it's time to do something about this.

How come I barely ever see furniture, especially OpenSim-made furniture, with SFposer? It's always either PMAC or, if people don't even know PMAC or dislike its shortcomings, AVsitter.

Maybe it's because nobody knows that SFposer even exists. But it does: (https://opensimworld.com/library?view=44). A starter pack with a copy of the manual can be found on Satyr's sim OpenSimWorld (https://opensimworld.com/hop/74730).

For those who don't know it, and I guess it's most of you: SFposer is an animation controller. Much like AVsitter which can be found in just about all furniture copybotted from SL, probably also because it uses AVsitter in SL already which you can simply replace after the scripts got lost in transition. Very similar to PMAC which is often used in furniture made in and for OpenSim. And somewhat like poseball-based MLP which was state-of-the-art about a decade ago.

In other words, it makes those blue menus that pop up when you sit down on a chair or a bed, and that let you choose your sitting animation. This is what an animation controller does. This is what AVsitter and PMAC do. And this is what SFposer does.

Like PMAC which was created by the same person as the Clubmaster dance ball and those line dance floors, SFposer was made in OpenSim and for OpenSim. Its creator and maintainer is Satyr Aeon, the same person who runs OpenSimWorld and who also gave us the Satyr Farm and SFsail. And it's open-source, but that's what PMAC, AVsitter and MLP are, too.

Now, what's so great about SFposer? In which way shall it be better than PMAC and omnipresent AVsitter?

In general, SFposer combines all advantages of PMAC with almost all advantages of AVsitter. And it adds being the least resource-heavy animation controller on top. SFposer furniture only needs one single script, no matter what. And this one script safely shuts down after use.

If you compare it with PMAC, it's extremely similar. In fact, SFposer is backwards-compatible with PMAC. You can easily convert PMAC furniture to SFposer without even touching the config, just by replacing a few bits and pieces.

Its major advantage over PMAC is that everyone can adjust their position. This has always been AVsitter's killer feature over PMAC. With PMAC, only the owner can adjust positions and even this only by editing the piece of furniture and moving the position markers around. With SFposer, everyone can does that. SFposer is the ultimate animation controller for romantic and especially sex furniture.

Also, while PMAC is already easy on resources, SFposer is even easier. As I've already mentioned, SFposer only uses one script, and this script can do everything. PMAC's main script doesn't offer much beyond basic functionality. Extra functions require plug-ins, i.e. more scripts. SFposer doesn't need plugins.

This advantage is even bigger over AVsitter which is still widely considered the be-all, end-all, ultimate animation controller. AVsitter always needs two scripts per avatar. For absolute bare-bone functionality. A park bench for two needs four scripts at the very least. Any extra feature is an extra script. You want to make an orgy bed for four avatars with some extra bells and whistles? That's a dozen scripts at least. SFposer can do the same with one single script. The same and more.

This also means that SFposer can do stuff out-of-the-box for which AVsitter add-ons are very hard to find, if there are any in the first place. For example, NPCs. Or rezzing props on the furniture. Or rezzing props on avatars, e.g. in their hands. SFposer can put a mug in your hand if you're sitting on a café chair. All with that one script. Okay, the mug itself needs an internal script, but that isn't any different from PMAC.

Besides, SFposer makes it fairly easy for creators to adjust initial avatar positions when making furniture or scripting unscripted furniture. Just like PMAC, you can put it into edit mode, and then you get position marker prims which you can push around. No manually entering coordinates into notecards or something. Speaking of which: If you copy the SFposer settings from another similar but differently-sized piece of furniture, you don't have to re-adjust everything. You can instead enter a general offset for all animation positions. This also makes slapping an invisible prim onto furniture just for animations unnecessary.

AVsitter has only got one major advantage over both SFposer and PMAC: Since it comes from Second Life (don't worry, it's still legal), it's written in LSL, and it works on sims where pretty much all OSSL has been disabled by the sim or grid owner. Exceptions apply whenever an AVsitter-scripted piece of furniture can do something that doesn't exist in Second Life: Since Second Life doesn't have NPCs, you can't control them with LSL; it takes OSSL to control them. Thus, the rare NPC plug-in for AVsitter is written in OSSL.

Some minor advantages include a camera control plug-in and being able to specify different default starter animations for male and female avatars. Mimics control isn't AVsitter-exclusive; it's built into SFposer, too.

Those long-time OpenSim users amongst you who are several years behind in OpenSim technology may still see MLP as state-of-the-art because it was just that in their days. But PMAC already rendered MLP obsolete, and PMAC came before AVsitter.

So here are the advantages over MLP:

You don't have to click the furniture first before using it, nor do you have to wait for SFposer to initialise itself first. You can sit down right on the furniture instead of having to wait for poseballs to rez. There are no poseballs. Again, you can adjust your position even if you aren't the owner of the furniture. You can have NPCs. And it only takes one lightweight script to do what often requires over a dozen CPU-hogging scripts in MLP. MLP is easily the most resource-heavy animation controller out there; SFposer is the most lightweight one.

Fortunately, you can convert furniture from MLP to SFposer. You can also convert it from PMAC or AVsitter to SFposer.

PMAC to SFposer is easy: You throw out all scripts, you drop three items from the SFposer starter pack in, you reset the script, and you're done. Even tinkering with the config is optional. If you have plug-ins, convert their configs with this: https://opensimworld.com/tools/pmac

MLP and AVsitter to SFposer requires a bit more of an effort because you need new notecards. The notecard converter for MLP is here: https://opensimworld.com/tools/mlp2pmac The one for AVsitter's AVpos is here: https://opensimworld.com/tools/avpos2pmac

As we all should know, OSW doesn't allow entries of sims that are closed to the Hypergrid.

IMHO, this should be expanded to sims which are technically connected to the Hypergrid, but only accessible to members of the grid they're on, thereby excluding Hypergrid visitors. For the effect is the same: Nobody from outside the grid gets in.

I'd also include sims which are technically accessible to Hypergrid visitors, but only open for members of a certain closed circle. Nothing wrong with sims only accepting members of a group, but I'd draw a line where even asking the sim owner won't get you an invitation to the group because that group is only for close friends of the sim owner.

I have a suggestion for OpenSimWorld which will also involve the beacon, namely to sort avatars on sims into three categories.


One, staff and residents. These are the avatars that represent the sim owners, residents on homesteads and everyone else who lives and/or works on a sim. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a notecard. The UUID of the owner of the beacon should automatically count as staff.

Staff and residents should count as activity so that you know that someone is on the sim, but not influence the popularity.


Two, bots and decorational avatars. These are the avatars that are mere decoration and that serve similar purposes as NPCs, but that aren't NPCs for whichever reasons. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a separate notecard.

Bots and decorational avatars should be treated the same as NPCs. They should neither count as activity nor influence the popularity. (Downside, admittedly: They could be used as flies on the wall to monitor sims.)


Three, visitors. These are the avatars that aren't on any notecard.

Only they will influence the popularity.


This will require new beacons. But this could be done in such a way that OSW will treat all avatars detected by old beacons like staff and residents. Activity will be shown, but it won't have any impact on your sim's popularity unless you replace your beacon. You want your popularity ranked, then get a new beacon. You can't be bothered to replace your beacon, then say buh-bye to your popularity.

The sim entries on OSW would require another change: The avatars graph would have to be split into two colours, one for staff and residents, one for visitors. This would show if staff is present (not whether it's AFK, though) if a sim isn't a homestead, and it'd also show whether staff and residents are correctly listed as such.

In order to enforce the correct use of the new beacon, each sim that's caught not listing staff, residents or bots as such will have its visitor count set to Inaccurate until it has proven to have fixed the issue.

Anyone on Mastodon already? Or elsewhere in the Fediverse? I know some of you are, I've already got almost two dozen contacts from OpenSim. Mal Burns is already there, the maker of Inworld Review, as are Austin Tate a.k.a. Ai Austin, the maintainer of Ruth2 and Roth2 with a separate account for his avatar, and vrsimility who rebuilds Liverpool's Old Dock in OpenSim (in case you've seen it at OSCC21), just to name a few.

If you consider the switch from the Birdsite to the Fediverse, or if you generally want to dive into free and decentral social networking, I've got good news for you:

There is now a Mastodon instance for OpenSim users: https://opensim.world/

In spite of its name, I don't think it's that affiliated with OSW, maybe not yet. It comes from Quintonia, you know, who brought you the Satyr Farm enhancements.

So this may be a better place for you to go than the big and overloaded instances if you're an OpenSim user.

Anyway, whether you're already there or interested in joining, see you soon!

https://mashable.com/article/tuvalu-metaverse-country-clim...

Anyone else thinking this could be a use case for OpenSim? A Tuvalu Grid?

Tuvalu is 9 islands with 10 square kilometres altogether. In raw land mass, that'd be 10 4x4 varsims which is almost laughable. Even if you remap this to Tuvalu's actual topography, that'd be not only still considerably smaller than Wolf Territories, but mostly sailable water.

In fact, this begs for SFsail. Also, lots of tropical beaches = potential surf spots. Nothing that hasn't been done before.

Not to mention that OpenSim has vastly better graphics than everything else that labels itself "metaverse" nowadays.

I guess most other in-world assets such as buildings would be scratch-made, although creators like Bibiana Bombinante could provide some decoration.

Crazy day today. Two full fashion shows in five hours.

Greetings from Juno, she has been one of the models at the first fashion show at Artdestiny. Her first time as a model, and that was in front of more than 40 spectators. Six times out on the catwalk, four scheduled, another two spontaneously taken over from a model who had fallen ill as she told me.

So now we've recently had quite some drama about a crossplayer. Someone who uses at least one avatar whose gender isn't his own.

Being tricked into virtual sex and then ghosted if you were hoping for something permanent is one thing. The sudden discovery of avatars who are NOT the virtual representations of real-life people but completely unrelated to their users is another thing.

The biggest issue seems to be avatars with genders different from their users'. Or rather, people not knowing that this smouldering hot lady is a GIRL (Guy In Real Life). From this, demands arose that all cross-playing avatars shall inform people that they're cross-playing avatars. Some may even demand a total ban on cross-playing.

On the other hand, there are users whose avatars aren't them, and who want to keep their real lives as secret as possible. They also don't want to know anything about the users behind other avatars, especially not without asking first. OpenSim is a role-play to them, and real life breaks immersion.

Now, the question is: What'd be the best practice then?

Keeping it secret may end up in awkward situations with avatars that are virtual representations of their real-life users instead of fictional role-play characters. Blurting it out without being asked (female avatar arriving at a party: "Hi, I'm a cishet guy in real life!") leaves a lot of people with TMI (Too Much Information).

But there actually is a standard place for real-life information. And your real-life gender is exactly that, real-life information. That place is in your avatar profile.

No, not the "2nd life" page, the first page you see when you open your profile or someone else's. That page is exclusively for in-world information about your avatar.

The place for real-life information about you is on the "1st life" page. That and only that is also where a real-life photograph of you should go if you absolutely have to have one in our avatar profile. And that's the right place to tell people about your real-life gender.

A big advantage of this is that people who check your profile because they're interested in your avatar but not in your real life won't have real-life information about you slapped into their faces. The "1st life" page is not the first thing you see when looking at someone's profile.

Granted, this practice isn't perfect. There are people who find it inconvenient to have to navigate through a profile, and who demand all information they want to know be served to them on a silver platter, i.e. on the very first profile page. Others don't want to read profiles at all (or anything, in fact), they want male crossplayers with female avatars to tell them right away that they're guys in real life without themselves asking for it. The real-life information they want to know would be readily available to them, they just can't be bothered to look it up.

But I guess there are also people who don't want to see any real-life information in avatar profiles, who don't even want to accidentally stumble upon it by clicking on the wrong tab, because they don't want to know anything about the real-life people behind avatars, at least not more than necessary.

Stil, going this "official" way should be good enough for most people.

There are two general ways of acting in virtual worlds like Second Life or those running on OpenSim. One is the "it's just pixels" way of seeing OpenSim as a chat platform, barely caring for the virtual world around them and putting convenience above everything else.

The other one is immersive playing. It means seeing these virtual worlds as such, as wide-open role-playing sandboxes, and their avatars as characters in these worlds, and putting realism and immersion above everything else. It is not, however, as extreme as hard roleplay that involves character sheets with character stats (strength, stamina, dexterity etc.) on them, going on pre-scripted quests or throwing dice much like in Dungeons & Dragons.

I'd like to explain these two concepts here.


"It's just pixels":

Your avatar is nothing but a profile picture that more or less represents your real-life self in a 3-D chat app. Same goes for all other avatars: You assume they only represent their real-life users.

Your avatar never interacts with other avatars. It's always you interacting with the real-life people behind other avatars. Always.

Never act in-character because your avatar isn't a character. It's just a profile picture that represents real-life you. So there is no in-character or out-of-character.

Put real-life info about yourself on the "2nd life" page of your profile. Don't use a picture of your avatar as your profile pic because your avatar IS your profile pic. Disregard the "1st life" page, it's useless, and navigating to it is more inconvenient than simply throwing everything on the "2nd life" page.

Keep your viewer always set to midday. You couldn't see anything otherwise. (Side-effect: You'll never notice that you've got lots of glow-in-the-dark things on your own sims that shouldn't glow in the dark like plants or entire buildings. You'll never see your own sims in the dark.)

Wear the brightest facelight you can find because the sun throws ugly shadows on your face when it's constantly standing vertically above your head. Or switch your body and all your clothes and attachments to full-bright.

Never walk. Never use vehicles either, they're too slow. Prefer teleports directly to your destination because that's maximum convenience. If you can't teleport, but you can fly, then fly. Fuck realism. Or land on a sim, keep standing at the landing point (even if you're standing on someone's head with someone else on yours) and cam around. Hate teleporters that only work by walking into them with a passion. Demand all teleporters be clickable.

If you go to a party, prefer teleporting or being teleported next to the dance floor and automatically oriented so that you face the dance floor. Or right onto the dance floor.

Leave parties by teleporting away or logging out while still dancing. It's the most convenient way because it requires the fewest mouse-clicks and the fewest steps to take.

Take landmarks of sims either right where the action is or, if there's no action, right at the landing-point.

The only in-world objects that matter are sales boxes/vendors, whatever you can copy that's interesting for you, scripted dance floors, dance pads, dance machines, teleporters and maybe sex furniture. Disregard everything else.

Beaches are only there for beach parties, as a justification to be naked or for public sex. Own beachwear only to flaunt your body while staying within the G-rating.

Wear what you always wear, regardless of where you go. If your avatar is male, wear a black leather jacket, long jeans and black leather shoes (or even black biker leather from neck to toe) on a tropical beach. If your avatar is female, wear a thin, sleeveless micro-minidress, ultra-high-heeled platform sandals and no hosiery whatsoever on snow-covered Christmas-themed sims. Pixels never get hot or cold. And it's your right to look as badass or sexy as you want wherever and whenever you want. If someone kicks you out of a formal event with a mandatory dress code for breaking the latter or even bans you for doing that repeatedly, rate the sim where it happened zero stars on OSW and insult the sim owner.

Finally, insult immersive players for being idiots who do dumb and weird shit and try to explain to them how to use OpenSim the "correct" way.


Immersive playing:

Your avatar is a character in a virtual world, one that interacts with that virtual world. Other avatars are characters, too.

Your avatar interacts with other avatars like video game characters would interact with other video game characters, or like role-play characters would interact with other role-play characters.

Always act in-character because your avatar is one, even if it represents you. If you have to act out-of-character, put it in ((double brackets)). Bonus points for making your differently-named alts characters of their own with no connection to your real self whatsoever and their own fictional background. More bonus points for even giving your main avatar some in-world lore, thereby confusing the "just pixels" faction that takes it for your own real-life background.

Use the "2nd life" page of your profile only for in-world/in-character info. If you absolutely have to give real-life info away, use the "1st life" page for that.

Keep your viewer on "shared environment" unless you need different lighting for photography or for immersive purposes. Or even build your own more realistic EEP day cycles. It's just a pity that only you can see them.

Don't wear facelights or bodylights. Are there facelights or bodylights in real life? No. See?

Walk or use moving/steerable vehicles whenever possible. Only teleport as a last result, and even then, try not to be seen. Hate buildings that substitute stairs with teleport pads (maybe unless the teleporters are disguised as a lift). Don't fly unless absolutely necessary due to how badly the sim is designed where you are (e.g. no other way to get out of the water). Don't cam. You can't teleport or fly or cam in real life either, right?

If you go to a party, prefer teleporting or being teleported to somewhere that can't be seen from the party venue and then walking to the party. Ignore any and all teleport offers because they'll land you right in the middle of the crowd which is exactly what you try to avoid.

Leave parties by walking outside to where nobody can see you teleport away. If you have to teleport, that is. If you don't, then walk or use a vehicle. If you can't go outside because the venue doesn't have doors, try hiding somewhere.

Take landmarks of sims in places where you'd realistically arrive, e.g. harbour quays, marina piers, bus stops, railway stations, airports or the like. Go back to there to teleport back out. If nothing like that is available, take it where it's unlikely that you're being seen teleporting in.

Everything in-world matters, everything in-world can be interesting. Complain about furniture that looks like you could sit on it, but that you can't sit on. Play with your surroundings. For example, if you come by a supermarket, pretend you've yet to get some groceries.

When you're on a beach, take a sunbath. Or go swimming. If you can't go swimming because the beach isn't designed for that, the beach sucks; find a better one.

Dress appropriately for the location and the occasion. Wear summer clothes in summer. Wear beachwear on beaches (or nothing at all on nudist beaches that ban clothes). Pack yourself up well in winter. (Yes, even female avatars can do that. Yes, that'll take some searching around and/or asking others. If it's possible and has been done with a Ruth2 v4, why should it be impossible for Athenas?) Wear something in-between in spring or autumn. Generally, wear something comfy in your spare time instead of always dressing up like you're on your way to a club party. Wear a tuxedo or a gown to formal events; take that opportunity to dress up to the nines. Wear sturdy shoes when wandering.

Finally, complain about the "just pixels" side for breaking any resemblance to immersion all the time.


It's fair to mention, though, that there aren't only these two extremes, and you can always be somewhere in-between.

This may just be my opinion, but I believe that OpenSim should be represented in the Metaverse Standards Forum (https://metaverse-standards.org/) in some way.

If you're wondering what the MSF is: They try to develop and design from scratch what we've already had for 15 years as OpenSim and for 14 years as the Hypergrid.

For one, I guess nobody there even knows that OpenSim exists, not as a platform, not as several thousand virtual worlds. Even Intel may have forgotten their early engagement in OpenSim.

Besides, they could learn from OpenSim what they're bound to learn from the mistakes they'll make. And they could see what OpenSim has done right that they should do, too.

It's just a pity, I guess, that there's nobody who's able and willing to represent the OpenSim ecosystem as a whole.

(By the way, Linden Lab isn't a member either.)

We're all used to OpenSim's standard rear camera angle. A camera that floats more than three and a half metres above the ground. But seriously, this camera angle has got a whole lot of issues.

Sure, it can be practical when building. But first of all, it requires buildings which are even more ridiculously out-of-scale than the avatars created by fresh Second Life converts. Otherwise, the camera would constantly bump into the ceiling or even clip through it.

Besides, it suggests that this is your eye level. You don't see the world from your avatar's point of view. 3.60m (12') doors with handles on actual eye level or even higher don't seem strange to you at all, nor do living-rooms with ceiling heights akin to cathedrals or chin-high handrails.

Last but not least, high-hovering cameras are so 2000s. Nowadays, "shoulder cams" at the same height as the character's eyes are all the rage in video games. And you can have them in OpenSim as well.

Here are two settings I've found to work well.

"Standard" shoulder view, right of centre:

Camera Offset:
X -0.700
Y -0.400
Z -0.300

Focus Offset:
X 1.000
Y -0.400
Z 0.700

Scale:
1.000

Alternative shoulder view, left of centre:

Camera Offset:
X -0.700
Y 0.400
Z -0.300

Focus Offset:
X 1.000
Y 0.400
Z 0.700

Scale:
1.000

(German beaches in a nutshell)

Since Nico has already mentioned it in her comment on part 1 (https://opensimworld.com/post/85841), and since this has been my plan from the very beginning, here's the other part of my "beach talk". What about beaches that aren't in the tropics?

Way too many beaches are a) tropical with lots of naturally-grown palm trees and b) flat. It's a trope that's commonly known in Second Life as Tropical Beach Paradise (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Tropical_Beach_Paradise). The reason for the abundance of these may be that most beaches are built by people who only know beaches from TV and have never seen one in real life.

But there are so many other ways to build a beach, at least in theory, sometimes actually carried out. Beaches that may be more relatable to especially those of us who know beaches.

Something that has been done, for example, is the kind of beach you often find in Mediterranean coastal towns in southern France. A seawall with a more or less wide beach in front of it and something that could qualify as a promenade on top of it. Destination Fécamp (https://opensimworld.com/hop/86967) has quite a good one, realistic to the point of only one lounger on the entire beach being free and so much surf that you start asking yourself if you should actually go into the water (which you can because Fecamp does that right). Les pieds de sable (https://opensimworld.com/hop/79417) used to have a somewhat different one with less sand and more seawall.

The North American boardwalk beach has been done more often than you may think. For one, there are the many iterations of Linda Kellie's Boardwalk Amusement Park; Lucia Island (https://opensimworld.com/hop/83640) and AMSmediterrania (https://opensimworld.com/hop/87777) both make use of it. One of the best examples, however, has to be scratch-made Coney Island (https://opensimworld.com/hop/87886) where the rides alone can keep you busy for quite a while.

Most of TexLand (https://opensimworld.com/dir/?grid=texland.no-ip.biz:8002) is somewhere in-between because it mimicks islands on the South Texan Gulf coast. There are palms, yes, but there are also seawalls, there are no traces of Tiki style, and it still feels very close to the U.S. mainland.

What I'd like to see done on a somewhat larger scale than at Gridtalk (https://opensimworld.com/hop/78056) are the various styles of northern German beaches. Gridtalk mimicks what formerly West German Baltic Sea beaches often look like, and that's an interesting style, but it could be taken further. In this style, the dunes behind the beach are a given, but they need grass on top and maybe the occasional seagull nest. Speaking of fauna: seagulls, seagulls, jellyfish (which fortunately aren't available on the Hypergrid; I hope it stays that way) and more seagulls (notice how I didn't mention mosquitos).

Unless it's a natural beach, have a promenade behind the dunes with fences between the promenade and the dunes and all kinds of amenities from small shops to hotels (I recommend at least one big hotel tower, even if it's just a few textured prims) on the land side of the promenade. If you're daring enough, build an indoor pool right behind the promenade as well. Just because it's a beach, doesn't mean it's perpetual summer. Instead of lifeguard chairs, install one DLRG station for the entire beach. Also, LOTS of beach baskets. If you want to take the German-ness to the logical extreme, make tiny parcels for the beach baskets which can be rented.

The formerly East German variant would combine this with a long wooden structure between a pier and a boardwalk that extends from the raised promenade across the beach into the water. We call it a "sea bridge". These things were built in times when the wealthy tourists who came there didn't dare to step into the water yet. Somewhere on top of it should be a white-walled wooden building with at least a café/restaurant and an event location in it.

The North Sea variant usually doesn't have beach baskets and a promenade because it isn't part of a town (unless you want to mimic places like St. Peter-Ording or Westerland which would be beach themes of their own). No trees because the area has probably been treeless for centuries (chances are, part of it was sea until a few decades ago). Replace the dunes with a dyke. Optionally, fence the dyke in and add sheep on the dyke to the fauna. (Only sheep because cattle would ruin the dyke.) Add vast mudflats on the seaside which may or may not be under water (set the mud to phantom for extra fun so your feet sink in up to your ankles). Any and all architecture on the sim must be Frisian. Dress code: barefoot (or Wellingtons), rolled-up jeans, windbreaker.

You could make it eerier by building it as a varsim with even vaster mudflats from which sometimes a church bell rings even though there isn't a single church on the sim, much less out on the mudflats.

Also, the North Sea allows for small islands, only that they're called "holms" instead of "islands". Surround the whole thing with mudflats. Don't skimp on sheep. And instead of having dykes, every last building has to be built on a mound no less than four or five metres high.

But let's go back to the Baltic Sea. Natural beach variants should have cliffs. Not rocks, clay. Or white chalk (works both in former East Germany and Denmark). But preferably clay. If it's clay, boulders on the beach are a given. This is the kind of beach where campfires are the most likely.

Something in-between (not quite natural, no beach baskets, no promenade, but the occasional shop and the DLRG station) exists, too. It often comes with a camping site behind it which is a requirement for surf spots. This kind of beach is also the typical German nudist beach. Don't forget "FKK" signs. However, keep the rating Moderate and sex furniture inside the campers or tents. If you really want to go full cliché, fill the camping site behind your FKK beach with Trabants, Wartburgs and QEK campers.

Danish beaches would be similar to German ones, but even less urban, more likely with wooden summer cottages behind the dykes/dunes (per-week rent boxes, anyone?) and always clothing-optional. Oh, and think twice before you put up Linda Kellie's hot dog cart: In Denmark, hot dogs are sold at least from a trailer, if not a snack bar. But one of these is pretty much mandatory. Also, røde pølser (red sausages).

(Picture with my sister on it because I didn't have anything else at hand...)

Yes, I know it isn't really beach season (unless you're on the Southern hemisphere or in some subtropic or tropic area). But on the other hand, if it's too cold to go to a real beach, there are plenty of virtual beaches where it isn't too cold.

Now, what I'd like to talk with you, the community, about is: What makes a good beach? What does a good beach need in your opinion?

Generally, from my point of view, a beach should be more than just eyecandy on a sim that serves another purpose (freebie shops, event location, welcome landing, whatever). A beach should serve its own purpose, namely the same purpose real-life beaches serve. And that purpose shouldn't only be sex either.

So there are certain things I expect from a beach. Fair warning ahead: I'm biased because I grew up between a whole lot of nice beaches, and I've been to quite a number.


First of all: It should be possible to go into the water. Possible, credibly so and not hazardous. The sand should slope into the water gently so you can actually walk out into the sea (or lake or whatever) just like you usually can in real life. This is such a basic demand that you may wonder why I mention it.

Well, in many cases, this isn't possible at all. Either you have textured ground which drops off steeply from one metre above the water surface to way below. Sand can't do that, and it renders the number one key element of a beach useless.

Or you have a beach made of mesh sections. But these pieces of mesh either only barely lead into the water, or the water-side edge lies on top of the water surface, and all that washes over them are the waves. You can't even walk into ankle-deep water without falling off the edge and seeing the large hollow underneath the mesh beach pieces. I guess this is often a case of a beach built by someone who spends so much time flying above their own sim that they've literally never set a single foot on their own beach.

So, either way, whether or not you build your beach out of mesh: Please let the sea ground slope away from the beach gently.

This, by the way, is also why springboards on beaches are non-sense. Unless you place them on piers where the water is deep enough.


Speaking of swimming: Swim rezzers.

They come either as a single white-and-blue life-saver (where you have to explain how a life-saver floating in the surf stays in place) or as two life-savers on a wooden pole (the more elegant solution). In case you don't know them: What they do when you click on them is rez another life-saver. You sit on it, it disappears, and you assume a swimming position, complete with swimming animations. You can steer yourself while swimming. You can swim like you walk, only that you swim. If you stand back up, the life-saver reappears. If you wait for long enough, it deletes itself. One swim rezzer can rez multiple of these life-savers.

Why do I deem them important? Because you may want to actually swim. And not stand in the water. Because that's what you do on beaches (in case you don't know because you've never been to one).

Some of you may confuse them with those old-style swim balls. They're basically poseballs for swimming: You sit on them, and you swim back and forth, back and forth, and you can't control where you swim. But seriously, 2011 called, it wants its OpenSim 0.7.3 tech level back. Poseballs may still have their places, but this isn't one anymore.


Now comes something that may not be interesting unless you "play it real" like me: What do you do after you've been in the water? Lay down on a lounger or a towel?

Nope.

When I was a kid, we were taught by the adults to take off our wet swimwear and slip into something dry ASAP. Real life isn't Hollywood where your swim trunks or your swimsuit is dry the instance you come out of the water (or after the next cut). Nope, it's wet and clingy and getting cold, no matter how hot the weather is. So I'd like to have a chance to do that on a virtual beach as well.

Now, either the sim is Adult-rated which usually (but sadly not all of the time) means that nudity is allowed. Or it's Moderate-rated, and nudity is allowed (but sex isn't), whether or not it's mentioned. Or you don't really "play it real" (layer clothes: replace your swimwear directly with something new; mesh: put on your new swimwear, wear two sets clipping through each other for a few seconds, then take off your old swimwear, or replace one full swimwear outfit with another one in one go).

Or you do "play it real", but you can't be naked in public, so you have to hide. The same goes for when you arrive on a beach in street clothes with no swimwear underneath, by the way.

Ideally, the beach provides changing cabins (with scripted doors, not just static decorational dummies!). If not, there should be something that you can go behind to change. This something should be a) placed in such a way and large enough that it's hard to look behind it (camming or intentionally walking in notwithstanding), b) large and opaque enough that it actually covers you up (knee-high shrubbery isn't) and c) arranged in such a way that you can easily walk behind it and back out (a 100-metre-long hedge isn't; a long dune is if it's tall enough because you can walk over it).


As for other things, there should be a difference between "natural" beaches and other beaches.

If a beach is "natural", there shouldn't be any more facilities. Maybe a few beach towels for convenience (and plants to change behind unless you're allowed to be naked), or rezzing should be allowed so that people can place their own towels.

Everything else should be left to beaches which are officially run by someone, but then it should be there. Loungers. Beach showers or even full facilities. Changing cabins if necessary (see above). A bar or two (a halfway credible beach would have more swim rezzers than beach bars, though). Ideally a place to get something to eat. Lifeguard chairs. (The latter three work even better with appropriately-dressed NPCs giving life to them.) Shops and a party area with a dance floor and a permanently installed DJ set don't belong on "natural" beaches either.

On the one hand, a fully stocked beach bar one some remote secluded beach island that doesn't even have a landing pier doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, a beach that's otherwise so fully equipped as though it's right in front of a resort hotel is kind of incomplete if you can't get anything to drink.


A few more things concerning the above: Please, dear beach builders, if you place down furniture such as loungers or towels, sit on them. Can you sit on them properly? If you can't, do away with them because they're just a waste of space and prim capacity. It doesn't matter if you have never sat down on furniture, and you never will. Other people do, believe it or not, they do.

As an extra precaution: If the sim isn't Adult-rated, and the furniture has a menu, look at it. If there's anything sex-related, either replace the furniture with something without sex animations or edit them out.

Also, inflatable, floating items only make sense in pools. If you place a pool floater or a bouncy island in the surf in real life, it will be carried away unless you anchor it very thoroughly. And none of the floating items on the Hypergrid looks like it's anchored at all. So no floaties in the ocean surf.


Last but not least: The "dress code" on the beach (and in the surrounding areas) should be clear, and visitors should be informed about it both in-world and on OSW if the sim is entered there. Textile? Clothing optional? Nude? It's nigh-impossible to safely assume from the rating (or from the culture wherever the builder lives). Adult may mean a full-blown nudist "piggy beach" of which there are dozens just as well as a textile beach on a sim that allows nudity only in one small and well-concealed nook with one piece of sex furniture. And even Moderate may or may not allow for nudity.

I don't usually support mesh bodies that have got nothing to do with Ruth2 or Roth2. But I've come across an improvement trick for Athena 6 with BoM that nobody seems to know.

The major problem is that the skin on Athena 6's limbs may look weird under certain viewer settings, much like a lighting bug. Some skin areas look brighter or darker than they should.

A minor problem is that alpha masks don't work on Athena 6 although they technically should with BoM.

The reason is because Athena 6 has a chaotic hodge-podge of alpha settings all over it. Parts are set to alpha masking, more parts are set to alpha blending (it's them which may look weird to you or to others), most have alpha off (this is why alpha masks don't work on Athena 6 out of the box).

The solution:

Step 1: Edit your Athena 6 body. All of it, not just any piece. Select it in your inventory while wearing it.

Step 2: Go to the Texture tab.

Step 3: Set the alpha mode to alpha masking.

Now the different shades of skin colour are gone, but your hands and feet may turn partially white. Don't panic, this is supposed to happen and will be fixed in the next steps.

Step 4: Set the mask cutoff to 128. If it is already 128, set it to 127 and back to 128.

The white should disappear, and your body should look normal again. Or better than what you saw previously.

Step 5: Take the body off and put it back on to save the new settings.

Also, you can now wear alpha masks like you can on the system body which might save you from the hassles that come with the alpha cuts on the HUD, and which you can save with outfits. The only limitation is that the alpha masks still don't work on fingernails and toenails.

Should alpha masks stop wearing, just edit the body and set the mask cutoff to 127 and back to 128.

The same method should work on Adonis 4 if you want to use alpha masks with BoM.

Oh, and before anyone tries this on Ruth2 v4 or Roth2 v2: You don't have to, at least not with the "BoM" bodies and Ruth2 v4 "Business". They've got alpha mode controls on the HUD. The "0.8.2.1" versions, on the other hand, are de-scripted and have no HUD, so they require this trick, too, if alpha masks don't work.

Yes, it's an inconvenient extra step.

Yes, it's more convenient to leave it as-is.

Yes, you may pride yourself in enabling your visitors to copy every last thing from your sim.

Yes, it does work as desired even if it can be copied...

...until someone actually copies the beacon and then puts it on their own sim, not even knowing what it is. And as they don't know what it is, and as the beacon did not come with instructions (they copied the bare beacon and not the box with the beacon and the instructions), they leave it as-is. They do NOT change or remove the beacon key. Why should they? Nothing tells them to do that.

All of a sudden, the entry for your own precious sim here on OSW will switch between your actual sim and that other sim run by the person who took your beacon with your beacon key and dropped it on their own sim. And half the time, the people who want to visit your sim will instead land on that other sim.

Now you may wonder if there are OpenSim users who don't know that the website OpenSimWorld exists. Yes, there are such people. It's mostly newbies, but there seem to be enough people who start building sims of their own while still counting as newbies. And I dare say there are enough seasoned OpenSim users who still don't know that OpenSimWorld exists.

And those who don't know that OpenSimWorld exists don't know either what this beacon is and what it's good for. Actually, just a few weeks ago, I had to explain to someone who has been in OpenSim for much much longer than myself what the beacon is and what it does.

I myself didn't know right away what the OSW beacon is and does when I started last year. For me, the OSW beacon was nothing more than a nifty Hypergrid teleporter that some sim owners were kind enough to install on their sims. In fact, apart from catching the occasional landmark, the OSW beacon was the only way for me to travel the Hypergrid.

I did NOT know about the website behind the beacon. Nor did I know that the primary task for the beacon is to connect in-world locations to the website.

Had I started to build my own sim about a month into my OpenSim usership, and had I found an OSW beacon that I could (and still shouldn't be able to) copy, I would have taken it and put it on my own sim as it was, someone else's beacon key in it and all. I wouldn't even have known that beacon keys exist.

To cut a long story short: If you let people copy your beacon, people WILL copy your beacon. With no instructions. They WILL NOT know what it really is. They WILL NOT know there's also a box with it inside plus instructions, much less where to get it. And they WILL misuse the beacon. And the entry for your sim here on OpenSimWorld WILL malfunction.

And if you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO make the beacon available to everyone, then at least put the original box next to it. Not somewhere else on the sim, but right next to the actual beacon so that every last dummy will find it. And if you think the box looks terrible where the beacon is, then put the beacon itself somewhere where the box would look better.