Nearing Final Review

It has been a long haul, but Wolverine Island is nearly complete, except for a few sculptures I need to build yet and a few really tiny things. Please take a tour of the island if you get the chance before the design review on Thursday at 1pm. We think it may take some time to discover all the in's and out's.

Things to try:
-Got to the "World" menu and select the last item on the list which enables you to "Force Sun". THis way, you can see the island under different lighting conditions. Enable local lights in your preferences (under Graphics Detail) to see something similar to the image above.
-The buildings with multiple floors have elevator buttons and devices
-The seats in the Amphitheaters, Bouquet, and Gathering Spaces are scripted to optimize your point-of-view.
-Can you land on top of the tower?
-You get extra-stunning views if you extend your view distance. I wouldn't ever go above 256, though. And not above 128 if you have a slow computer.
-Take a walk in the Arb. :)

Well, we hope everyone has fun, and are looking forward to showing you around on Thursday.

Final Push

Many of the major structures are in place on Wolverine Island. We are mostly focused now in textures, details, and simple scripts. A few small changes seem to be presenting themselves as we move forward. One is lights; I don't think we will want to use as many lights as appeared in the original plan. this would use up prims and I have found another way to solve the problem. If we use key lights that are brighter, we can illuminate particular areas just as well as if we had a number of small lights. I've already put some of these lights in place, but am still tweaking the intensity and the fall-off.

The image above is of Clement Greenberg working on the the Sky Tower's Bells. In the background appears the Simulation Building. As you can see, we made some changes. We added observation decks around each of the floors. The walls are also thicker to make it less likely for avatar names to pop through. And I think we found just the right height for each floor (8m) in our little powwows the other day with Ted, Memetic, and Dale. There may still need to be a set of suggestions for the use of the building, but I think we have created quite a unique space for medical simulations in Second Life.

Hank Rau has been amazing with making the structures of the Library, Private Auditorium, and the Admissions Building look easy. We can call him "Ars Geometrica" from now on.

Over the hump

I think that we can safely say that things are moving along on Wolverine Island. Personally, it's very nice to see all of it coming together. There are a few small changes we are making due to in-world revelations, but other than sore fingers everything is coming together smoothly.
Up next: Simulation Building Tests, Small Structures, Architectural details, Textures, Script Examples, Tweaking