Monday, January 24, 2011

Whimsy Lies on a Virtual Fault Line


Written 24 January, 2011

Whimsy Lies on a Virtual Fault Line

Awhile back I solved one of Second Life's mysteries-- at least it was a mystery to me.

I couldn't figure out why I could see some particles at a distance while others would disappear.

One day I realized that the distance at which particles could be seen was related to the size of the prim that made them. Big prims made particles visible at a longer distance than did small prims.

To check my hypothesis, I flew up to the volcano Pele and enlarged the scripted prims that create her smoke and lava particles. Ever since then, her eruptions are visible over most of the Whimsy sim.

Here are some shots I took today when a visitor provoked Pele and put her into erupt mode.




3 comments:

AlexHayden Junibalya said...

Wow...Pele's mighty miffed!!

Great pictures and interesting theory...must drag my sorry carcass over to Whimsy to have a look round....

Brinda said...

Wow...Thank you. I thought it was just me heheehe

Cheyenne Palisades said...

In the near future I'll be reworking Pele's eruption. Bigger smoke particles, and more of them, from bigger emitters, and lasting longer so they'll rise higher. I'm going to use megaprims for the lava so the present junctions will disappear, and I'll be rescripting the eruption so the temple falls apart and tumbles into the lava.Whee! Fun!