insert ‘ball’ joke here

I spent a few hours last night on the Second Life Beta grid testing the new Havok4 Physics engine. Super fun! I meant to do some  sort of serious testing, but I ended up just rolling a bunch of balls down a big hill. :) The spheres especially are much improved and the performance of the physics engine is quite impressive. I hope that LL can get rid of the .01 meter gap that is still present on most of the prims, it really does add to the realism.

Holy Havok, Batman!

LL has been promising to upgrade the Havok physics engine in SL for so long that it’s gone from being a sort of running joke into the realm of myth and half-remembered legends. Well, as Gwyneth Llewelyn says - Hell has Frozen Over! Havok 4 is live on the Beta Grid.

I’m downloading the new Beta client now and logging on to see what’s up with the new system. I’ll report back here if I find anything interesting.

WEEE! I am so easily amused. :)  I am having so much fun just rezzing physical spheres and watching them roll around the landscape. hehe This new physics system is definitely quicker ad more stable. I’ve rezzed hundreds of physical objects at once with barely a hiccup from the server. Even 1500 physical boxes at once and the server just twitched a bit and continued on at full speed.

Another nice thing is that the sphere prims can actually touch each other - no gap between them as with the current system. Doesn’t seem to work like that for all the prims - but the box can do the same thing if you start it as a sphere and then change the object type. odd, but that gives me hope for the final version. It’s amazing how much of a difference just that one change makes. The spheres really look as if they are rolling along the ground now - seems much more realistic to me.

I’ll be posting a video of my experiments later tonight.

Water falling on virtual rocks

I may have to rename my SL business to Vlad’s WaterWorks :) I’ve been getting some wonderful feedback about my sculpted prim water and my animated waterfalls. Here’s a quick video of my most recent watery creation. You can find it in Port Caledon on ambiant Kukulcan’s land, near his Capt. Nemo style underwater hideaway.

Video interview with the artist

Here’s another great interview conducted by Magellen Egoyan. This time he’s talking with sculptor Rezago Kokorin who explains how he uses some simple SL tools to create surprisingly complex works. Rezago also talks about the feelings and meanings behind his creations.

MultiBloom

1-800-Flowers has a presence in Second Life and they’ve been running a contest to design the ultimate Second Life bouquet. I entered the contest with a vase that switches between 8 totally different, custom arrangements.

Today they announced the winners of the contest - and I won 1st place!

I thought when I entered the contest that I had a good chance, but after seeing a few of the entries I wasn’t as sure. There were several lovely entries including some very delicate and well textures sculpted prim blooms. Thanks to anyone who happened to vote for my entry, and congratulations to the other winners. Kaltusaran Moonsoo took 2nd place, and Lazaro Nakamichi placed 3rd.I’m so happy to win - both for the $L100,000 prize and the exposure that this should generate for my FloraPrims flowers.

1-800-Flowers is already hosting another Second Life contest that involves SL photos and RL exposure in Times Square. So get those virtual shutters snappin’ and participate.