It's still there

Logged in to check up on stuff... See if SL Sailing is still there, and it is. First I met these two sailorgirls. One had a Nacra 17 covered with Oracle stickers. The other one had a Flying Catfish 33. I highly recommended the Nacra 17, but the Catfish was kinda new to them, so they went for it...

Fair winds

Then I rezzed my Laser and sat down to enjoy the sunrise for a while. The sunrise at Tradewinds is still spectacular. The sunrise in SL generally is. Some say the red colour is really caused by polution. Dunno if that's true in RL, but it can't be in SL :-D Anyway, here's another couple of sunrises from SL. Here's a couple of shots from a beautiful early morning sail. Oh and I won't forget the Viking ship either.

Sunrise at Tradewinds

Not much happened for a few minutes, but then I smiled as the sweet Samlara said hi. We talked a about about this and that and kids and stuff. Always nice to hear what's going on inworld. Sadly she had to run to RL. We all have to do that on occassions.

Sailing

So there I was. Laser, water, sunset, me... perfect sailing conditions... I cruised around for a while, and then I popped into RL again. Nice to know it's still there... the sailing, Tradewinds, the people. I kinda miss it all. Got to find more time for playing... maybe even do a cup once in a while. A virtual one. There's one running right now... "Second Sol". It seems there's no Tradewinds team in the game, and the qualifications just closed. Read all about it on Janes site, here. Also, check the scores: "Grumpy Old Mens Yacht Club". I wonder how Ronin qualified for that, hehe.

Coup d'cup failure

Finally someone comes clean and states the obvious. Now it is not just Dean Barker and Vincenzo Onorato; A sports columnist over at Bloombergs is doing it too. Wondering WTF is going on with the Americas Cup.

That auld mug

Here's the link to that Bloomberg column by a Jonathan Mahler. The title is "How Larry Ellison Is Destroying the America's Cup". Talk about disruptive innovation. Gaaaaah. I'll just add: Lets put the sailing back into sailing.

New sailing blogs

While I've been busy in RL, - get back to that, SL is still there, still running. Check out this guy, Aeran Stipe. He's chosen to paddle around the waters of SL. There's a few good shots there, and there's charts and the paddlestories of an explorer.

A chart full of familiar names

It is not so much the kayaking, though I'd love to do that in the early morning before going to the office; It's the locations. Aeran seem to have a nose for good locations. I'll pop over there from time to time, and check out, if there's a location that needs to be sailed. With sails ;-)

Then there's Jaspars log. It's here. It kinda looks like a logbook of a happy sailor experiencing the happiness and the opposite of virtual sailing in SL. Good shots and descriptions of places and boats.

Singlehanded

Me, - I need to sail too, but right now, the weather is way too good for virtual sailing. Sea ya ;-)

My Three SL Wishes Meme

I'm a little late in the game, but here goes... It's not like I found a magic lamp in the sand, but I do have wishes for SL. Ofcourse there's the usual suspects like more stability, easier sim border crossings and less lag. Everybody wants that. Then there's the wishes of Strawberry Singh. Better reputation for SL, more building talent and, - oh the stability-thing. I can so relate to those wishes.

Thinking hard

Still, there's other things and other angles... Lets start with building...

1) Easier building.
I know Strawberry wished for more building talent. I'd turn that upside down. I think building should be easier. Think about Minecraft for a minute! It's dead easy to build in there. Perfection is not within reach, because everything is build from cubes; Mountains, clouds, trees; Even the Avatars look "cubistic". The entire world has an appearance kinda like a lego world on steroids. There will never be sailing there, because there's no wind, no way to make several cubes act like an item,  - and there's no scripting language either. The building process, however, it is extremely simple. After five minutes in creative mode I had a house with doors, windows, roof and a terrace overlooking the lake. It all looked like lego, so I won't be staying in Minecraft, but... I hate that I need to go outside SL to build. Make the tools better, and put them inside SL.

2) Better physics.
This one is probably impossible. It relates to sailing. Make the water, the waves, the wind, the physics of moving though - or on - water better. Advanced physics would probably be a selling point, because SL would be a much better gaming ending, - and a much better engine for flight, sailing and driving simulators. What if SL had waves? What if moving stuff through the water caused ripples? What if the wind caused ripples on the ocean surface? It doesn't have to be all about mesh clothing for teenagers does it?

3) Lower tier.
Everyone talks about that. Lower tier would be nice. Talk about product loyalty. What's keeping ppl in SL? The sailing, the people, the parties... lotsa stuff actually. However, if we all had a bit of land, an island or just a piece of dirt in the dessert with our stuff on, - wouldn't that be the single best creator of loyalty? I'd wanna build and rebuild a marina a million times. Hold parties. Test new stuff. Sadly the tier is way to high for that; Much higher than with any budget cloud host. SL must make money, but maybe it could be done differently. How about lowering the tier to get ppl to build houses and stay in the game. Then maybe put a VAT on the markeplace instead. This would boost ppls ability to build their own stuff and put it on the market, and who cares if they take say 10% of each sale? I mean, they are providing the system, are they not?

Hmm... What else?? Better boats ofcourse, but that's entirely up to us; The ppl of SL. Maybe put it on my iPad??

A record broken

Here's a little update on the RL sailing, which is just beginning up here in the cold Scandinavia. It's been a record breaking long winter with loads of snow and frost throughout march and april. Usually the sailing season starts mid april at the latest. This year it was different. This first little photo-mix is from the very last days of april.

Winter still

Hundreds and hundreds of boats on land; Most boat owners haven't even thought about starting the yearly wax on wax off sessions; Even on a cloudy sunday, the marina is completely silent; Like a video on hold. No action at all. No humming from sanders; No trucks moving boats around. Nothing. Only a few landlubbers queuing up at the icecream shoppe. How strange to wander around these sleeping boats...

Summer soon

It's like ten days ago, when everything was in total hibernation. By now we've had a couple of good races; The wind is no more than 12 degrees. The water is around 4. Celsius that is. That's 54 and 39 degrees Fahrenheit. No bikinis. Call me crazy, but still... it was worth the wait. So why haven't I been virtual sailing as much as I usually do? Been sneaking around and, - well that's another story...

SL never sleeps

One of the fun things about SL is that time never stops. Some games stop, while you're AFK; Others stop completely the minute you press ESC and click quit. That goes for most sailing simulators too. This one is very different, so one month of AFK and all kinds of interesting stuff has happened.

Not just a zodiac

On rare occasions stuff disappears; I still remember that beautiful little island called Tranquility Island. Not really a sailing area; More of a relaxation area... well, there was a rowboat, but other than that it was butterflies, waterfalls, flowers and tall trees. All spiced up with a raft, a swing, fireworks, treehuts, fishing, and a treasure hunt... However, on most occasions there's been new and wonderfull stuff created.

Speeding

This time was no exception, and I am sailing one of the new things here with Ana. The really cool thing about this zodiac wasn't quite finished at the time. It was operational, but I promised not to tell, so I won't; It's probably been released by now, but a promise is a promise. One of these days I'll have to login and try it again. But right now, - wooohoooo... the snow is gone in RL, and the sailing season is just about to begin... It's time to tack hard and eat hard tacks; Ocean sprayed.

Tallship on display

I've seen quite a few virtual classic tallships a la Pirates of the Caribbean. They usually suffer from the technical limitations of the virtual world. Putting so many details into a moving, sailable object is simply not possible. This one is a bit different.

Ahab and me talking about spring and blizzards

There are at least three differences. It can't sail. At least not yet. It's quite detailed, while still being work in progress. It is more of a modern ship than the typical romantic pirate ship. It looks like a somewhat modernized tallship with an iron hull and wooden decks. Technically speaking it's a Barque.

Through the window

Details, details, details... here's a picture taken through the window of the boatshop at Tradewinds. You can hardly see it, but the hull is definately not made of oak like those oldtimers we used to have, back when my country was a superpower at sea. Crazy thought btw.

Obviously a modern ship

What you can see is that there are no canons. This next shot here shows the deck house and low parts of the mast. Lots of details, and obviously it is a modern ship. Those round things in the windows, "wipers", dunno what they're called. Does anyone know? Anyway, they clearly need electrical power to function.

Interior

The interior wasn't quite finished, but here's a glimpse of it. There's a lot of tricks applied in virtual boat building. This one works quite well; Until you try to walk through the door. It's sort of a bonk-auch- wtf-experience.

Size is big

There's room enough though. The size of this thing is... It's not like the aircraft carrier, but it is comparable to this oiler. The word is BIG, and I wonder if it will ever sail. Perhaps it will be able to sail by engine, but by sail? I seriously doubt it. Hope to be surprised though.

It's tallship day at Tradewinds

Here's another shot that indicates the size. In the back left side there's a tiny Nacra sitting in the sand. Back center the Tradewinds lighthouse sticks out. Back right side there's - lo and behold - another tallship heading north it seems. I have no idea what kind of sandspeeder is hovering beside the tallship in the back, but that's the virtual world. You never know what you're gonna get.

Full view

Here's a full view picture of the ship in all it's glory. It is - of course - built by master builders over at Kiku Craft. Check the details on the Kiku site here. It appears as if Kiku Craft expect this to sail eventually. Whoa! Talk about a liveaboard. Better keep an eye on this one.

PS: You can catch a glimpse of a true classic, wooden tallship over at Timo's. Oh, and I also posted a few pics of them when I sailed the Nautilus submarine.