Chandra’s Page

I’m almost beginning to see Second Life’s tendency to blow up while operating vehicles as a blessing rather than a curse. After buying some lovely aircraft at Boyoma Field, I planned to fly one of my purchases home to Drawbridge. I only got two sims from Fundama when I was violently hurled from the plane, face-first into the dirt of Georgiana.

I looked up and my jaw dropped. Rezzing in front of me was an insanely detailed starship, docked and hooked up to fueling tanks in front of an entire spaceport complex. I had just discovered the R.S.S. Impulsive and the port of Breaker’s Folly, a labor of love assembled by a team of roleplayers and artists.

As most of my discoveries of new places in SL happen, this one was the result of crash landing a vehicle. I caught air in my car, flew for three sims, and landed in the midst of a delightfully run-down waterfront called Broken Cove. This little area is marvelously detailed, with all the look and feel of a small rural business whose customers have long since moved on.

I started playing around with OGLE (OpenGL Extractor) the other day, and it’s so far proven to be a marvelous tool. The basic idea behind OGLE is that it grabs geometry from inside Second Life (or most other OpenGL-based 3D applications, for that matter) and spits it out as a Wavefront .OBJ file, a format understood by many 3D modeling programs.

Setup was fairly simple. OGLE relies on another tool, GLIntercept, an OpenGL extraction and debugging tool, to do most of the heavy lifting, so that needs to be installed first, but the whole installation process was all of five minute’s work. OGLE comes with a default configuration file that works quite well for capture in SL, so after coping a couple of files to the Second Life directory, it was all ready to go.

The Forest of Kahruvel covers much of the sims of Stinson, Rodeo, and Cowell, deep in the heart of the oldest portion of the SL mainland. Its primary caretaker, Salazar Jack, has led a team in replanting trees and discovering ancient ruins in the area, making it one of the most beautiful and interesting regions of Second Life.

I found myself returning to Kahruvel the other day after a long motorcycle ride, and it was obvious that Salazar and his crew had been busy. Since my last visit months ago, Kahruvel has sprouted newly unearthed ruins, a lovely meadow area facing the lake on the north border of the woods, and even weather; a furious thunderstorm was brewing when I arrived, making me glad I’d parked the bike back in Noyo and set out on foot.

A few days ago, I made a motorcycle trip from Drawbridge to the start of the Linden road system on the main continent. I like to make this trek now and then to see how things have changed on the mainland. It’s a pilgrimage of sorts, a journey back to the origin, a struggle against lag and common sense that culminates in a little parking lot in Noyo.

Due to an accident of slow rezzing, I spotted some graffiti beneath the major intersection in Gama. Governor Linden himself has been tagging the causeway supports, expressing opinions both favorable and derogatory to Linden Lab.

I’m sure this bit of scenery has lain here for ages, and I’ve just missed it in the many times I’ve driven through the sim. It’s always nice to see bits of tongue-in-cheek humor from the Lindens now and then.