This is the second part in my Gimme Six list:
- Role Play in Time
- A World of Nature & Beauty
- A New Englander at Heart
- A Bluesy Kinda Luv
- Shopping, Shopping… Shopping!
- Somewhere Beyond the Sea
2) A World of Nature & Beauty – Calas Galadhon
I want to take you on a trip to a place of nature and beauty unlike any other place in Second Life. It is a group of eleven sims, but the landing point is Calas Galadhon sim (a named derived from Tolkien). The sims are a gift to all of us in Second Life by their creators, Truck Meredith and Tymus Tenk.
It is a place you go to spend hours strolling, walking, ballooning, boating and hiking; there’s even scuba diving. Yesterday I returned to this place with my camera and a couple of hours of time. I’ve chosen only four photos from the hundred I shot and even if I were to post the hundred it wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface off all you’ll find, all you’ll discover and delight in.
I began my trip in a place that had great significance to me in the past, a place you can easily find peace and serenity. This is a place where I once fell in love and while I’ll talk about that more in another series, I think you’ll see how vulnerable you’d be to falling in love in these surroundings.
past the little hamlet and up the hill to the residences,
you’ll find beauty like this and much, much more.
If you keep headed north you’ll come to the entrance to Miromere
and find yourself headed toward the Misty Mountain.
(Don’t cheat and tp, don’t try to fly because you can’t.)
and you’ll behold one of the greatest views in all of Second Life.
Be sure to set your draw distance to at least 512 (a must).
I’m sure you’ll want to visit there and I encourage you to.
But be sure to also find your way to this landmark, because
nearby you can suit up in scuba gear and find
The Lost Gardens of Thera.
This little tour I’ve given you is just a glimpse of this unique world. Tymus is a landscaper in real life and with his partner, Truck, the two have built regions so realistic I assure you, you’ll be enchanted.
I want to encourage you to make the leap across space and time to your second life, and visit this world. And by the way, there is more to this region than exploring, there are three nightclubs with regular entertainment schedules. So, checkout their website.
If you can’t make it to Second Life, then I have a few more photos posted in one of my Flickr sets. And if you’d like to peek into my personal life experiences at Calas (I’m pretty sure I sanitized it… heh), checkout posts in the orignal Being Yordie Sands blog.
Coming Soon, Part 3 – I Luv the Nightlife
Agnes Sharple
Botgirl Questi
Bumblebee (Wendz Tempest)
Canary Beck
Carissa Arthurine Somerset
Eva Marie
Fuschia Nightfire
George Coghill
Ironyca Lee
Jeremy Owen Turner
Joseph DeLappe
Kathleen Cool
Katie Vizenor
Krista Hoefle
Kristine Schomaker
Lizzie Gudkov
Aero Bigboots
RMarie Beedit
Marmaduke Arado
Isabella Medici
Nadya Tolokonnikova
Nathan Shafer
Pixel Reanimator
Ravanel Griffon
Scarlett Luv
Strawberry Singh
Tabitha Raincloud
Toni Tyldesley
Trilby Minotaur
Vanessa Blaylock
Xue Faith
Yordie Sands
Wow Yordie, incredible! The generosity of peeps in creating and sharing virtual environments is just humbling. Thanks so much for finding this!
hahaha – set your Draw Distance to 512m… one of the (many) things I love about Firestorm is that unlike the standard LL V3 which maxes out at 512, on FS you can set DD up to 1024m, which, of course, is where mine is permanently set — ha — I didn’t spend a bazillion euros on this rockin GeForce card to live my virtual life at “Standard Resolution” now did I!?
Silliness aside, and I have written in the past how both NicoleX and I have hidden away in skyboxes because of debilitating lag… but when you are lucky enough to be able to have a large DD and still a decent frame rate, DD is so important to that “immersive” experience we talk about.
Yes, yes, it’s true, peeps with great minds had powerfully immersive experiences in text-only MUDs, but if a picture is worth 1024 words, then a km of DD is worth… uh… a lot!
Calas Galadhon is amazing. TY Yordie!
I know you’ve mentioned going scuba diving before… we should do a scuba day or scuba flashmob or something… sometime this summer! 🙂
Hiya Vanessa… I’m about to head into SL for blue & pink.
Yeah, for some shots I go to 1024 but if i’m walking around Frame rate drops after 512. I have GeForce too but it gives me some good shots.
I’m totally with you on having both good vid and also a good enough broadband connection. I have DSL 3/.7 but my location seems to be pretty clear of Internet weather conditions. So with a mid-range computer (intel i5 quadcore, 4GB memory, Nvidia Geforce GTS240) and broadband I get along pretty well.
There is so much to experience in SL and when sim crossings opened up, it was like a new world opened up.
YES, a scuba day would be fantastic. There’s a surprising interest in SL scuba. Even real life scuba instructors do SL scuba. A couple even sought me out. very cool.
Checkout some of my scuba adventures…
http://yordiesands.blogspot.com/search/label/Scuba
Let’s make that happen!
meant to say, Geforce (mid-range) … gives good shots.
Whoa, that looks beautiful. I’m noting this one down for the next time I log into Second Life!
HAHAHAHAHA — Like that’s ever gonna happen! 😛
🙁
aww… just kidding!
You do spend more time in SL than I spend in WoW
(meep)
Even for me, my time in SL ebbs and flows. When romance is in the air, it flows. haha
Or, of course, in the summer, when ticket sales for speedboat rides are at a seasonal high! 😀
Have you thought about adding a parasailing option?
It would be great to get one of those parasails hooked up to a speedboat. Gotta check how the “Hell Week” server changes have impacted sim crossing first. btw, part of the problems we had with roughness on the ride i gave your was because the rocks I had purchased have waves that aren’t Phantom. So as i crossed the waves it was like hitting land. And the darned builder (a very promient name) won’t fix them.
what’s that? We struck a darned BOULDER!? Haha, no wonder I had to bail so much water from the back of the speedboat!
Bet that musta’ been an expensive coupla days in dry dock!
Yess’m… we hit a fricken boulder. See you inworld shortly. I’m wearing blue denim dress, is that ok?
fabulous!
Lovely pictures, Yordie! Carad Galadhon doesn’t really remind me of the place in the books, but it looks very beautiful anyway. I love the last shot, with the water and… what’s that, a mermaid? Can you look like a mermaid in SL?;-)
Hi Ravanel… I know what you mean about not really reminding ou of the books.
There are a couple places reminescent of scenes from the book, but mostly the region has become a journey into Ty & Truck sense of things beautiful and wonderful. I think their original inspiration expanded and became something much more than they imagined at the start.
And yes, there are mermaids and every other thing you can imagine in Second Life. And wonderful places to put on your Mer outfits and zoom through the undersea world. In fact, Scottie Menges’ Pillars of Hercules has all of it’s water regions dedicated to the world of the Mer people.
I’m go glad you enjoyed the pics.
I’m not really an avatar designer, so many peeps know way more than me, but in addition to the 80 “shape sliders” that let you make yourself thin or wide, tall or short, some of the “tricks” peeps use are
Make all the shape values small, and then use a pose animation to “fold up” body parts, like your hand is touching your shoulder and your elbow is the new, “tiny” end of your arm, then attach hand etc to these new points.
Use an alpha mask to erase some or even all of your “real” or base avatar, and then again, attach whatever Prim, Flexi, Sculpty, or Mesh things you want instead.
The SL avatar has 19 animatable joints, and I forget how many attachment points, but at least that many, and you can attach multiple things (prim shirt sleeve, sword, mermaid tail, spinning apple, whatever) to each point.
So in the case of Tiny’s where you basically bury your actual body and attach tiny parts, AND, your elbows are your hands and you walk on your knees (so to speak) then you’d just use Poser or QAvimator to make new animations that articulate those joints in the appropriate way (or get them from someone who already did)
That all probably sounds harder than it is, for the ill-fated VB22 – The House with the Ocean View I made some simple Tiny “Potty Time” poses:
http://irez.uk/2010/10/05/previz-vb22/#potty-time
Anyway, there are actually Mermaid groups, where peeps hang out and I think they do performances! 🙂
Hmm… wonder if Yordie’s ever been a mermaid in her many adventures…
http://youtu.be/MGPuMWBTT-U
A beautiful article, Yordie! As usual, you capture and more importantly …. understand … what our work at Calas Galadhon Park is all about. Thanks so much. Hugz
Hi Ty! Thanks so much for dropping by iRez! I must confess I’ve not yet dropped by Calas Galadhon Park (must do soon! 🙂 But Yordie has seen A LOT of places in the virtual world and it’s awesome that she values your work so greatly.
Congratulations & Thank You!! 🙂
Thank you Ty! That means so much to me coming from you. I need to get by there more often, the only reason I refrain is I want to keep some of the magic and mystery secret from myself for those times when I need it most. I hope to see you again soon. Hugs to Truck and you.