The theme this time is some like “Atlantis”, partially a Mediterranean culture, partially a fantasy. The place has some public areas and spots by LDPW and plots for auction where residents can build their businesses or homes. About this auctions system Linden Lab is using there and in Bay City, well, i don’t like it much. Prices there are way higher than in any other place in Mainland and that sale system impulse the speculation on Land value, anyway that keeps the average value of Mainland a bit higher and that’s good for Linden Lab business plans, but is a false avarage, becuase it concentrates the high value on some areas and the rest is simply cheap. Maybe the right thing would be having LDPW working more, and they are doing it with the road system in Mainland, but possibly more people working there will increase the value of Mainland and will give more beauty to it. Let’s hope they keep working and working. Anyway, the objective of this blogpost is to talk a bit about nice spots in Nautilus… so let’s do it.

One of the coolest place in Nautilus for me is The Market (SLurl), a place where LDPW placed lots of quality freebies to help residents in Nautilus to keep the theme in the area and to have nice homes. I think is good anyone visits The Market if you are building something in Mediterranean style, the textures and objects are nicely done and can be really useful. The Market is in a public garden area what is nice also as a place to stay and meet people of the community in Nautilus.

Free textures and objects to customize the buildings in LPDW areas is one of the best ideas they are having, because helps a lot residents who may not be skilled on texturing or complex building.

Other places to visit in Nautilus are (in the same order as the pictures) The Gates of the Citadel (SLurl), the Eastern Sea Temple (SLurl) and The main Temple of Nautilus (SLurl). As you can see the details on this public buildings are quite good and inmersive in the “Atlantis” style of Nautilus. The influence in this buildings is mainly Mediterranean in Classic times, specially about the Minoan Civilization in some areas, but, of course, a fantasy view of those cultures.

Nautilus is full of nice spots to visit and explore, i gave you here some clues but is better you go and try to find all the places to visit, including the place where Magellan Linden arrived the first time to Nautilus.

They also opened a couple of months ago Vain Inc Gallery.

Ravenelle published this great video about the gallery:

Video by Ravenelle, published under a Creative Commons license.

As the Vain Inc Gallery book says:

From real life works through to photographic work and three dimensional pieces, the Vain Inc. Gallery gathers together a diverse and eclectic mix of artists working within Second Life into a Dynamic and evolving space.

Established in July 2008, the Vain Inc. gallery breaks down the borders between the different genres of art emerging within Second Life, highlighting and celebrating its rich culture of creativity.

Vain Inc Gallery is really a place to visit, the place is great, the works are great! And the selection of creators! Take a look at the Vain Inc Gallery Guidebook to see some information about them (yeah, i’m one of the creators there, hehehe).

Is nice to see a gallery like this one, not conventional, not dedicated to sell stuff, just as a meeting point of people telling stories with creation.

Visit Vain Inc Gallery!

Long time no posting in this series, but after a visit at this place i wanted to follow posting about places to visit.

Last Saturday Menno Ophelia told me about the opening party of a new sim he was working on. He works for Metaversatility, an in-world development company, actually the name of the region where Emvee Cuba is located is Metaversatility. When i arrived i was totally dazzled by the beauty and the awesome work on textures on the buildings.

The “theme” of the buildings is some like Havana, as i said the texture work and detail is amazing. A central plaza with cats, dogs and chickens around, some alleys, some water channels with hanging clothes between the buildings. Some tables to sit with friends and chat, even nice beaches.

The full place is a pleasure for the view. I’d like to remark the beautiful work on shadows that gives a strong sensation of reality. In one area of the place there are some stores and a beautiful Café. Also i found very cute a detail, a painted sign in some walls saying “Viva la Rezzolution!”, in a dreamy and virtual Cuba is actually kinda funny.

A part of the beauty of the building itself there are some interesting things you should know: In the central plaza there is an Ice-cream shop (“Tienda de Helados” in Spanish), there, at the end, you will find some Freebies, a disposable photo cam, some cabs and some T-Shirts. About the T-shirts, the texture is designed for ladies, so if you are a man and you wear them it may seem you have big boobs (but well, are free and that’s the point).

There are some “PhotoSpots” with poses made by Torrid Midnight to take nice pictures, this are marked with a disposable cam where you should sit to play the animation. And talking about photography… there is something you should know too: Metaversatility organized a photo contest in Emvee Cuba, look here to see the rules and how you can participate.

Visit Emvee Cuba!

The Cannery I, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

The Cannery is a nice work of building, the textures, distribution, are just great.

Right now there you will find the exhibition “SLart at The Cannery”. Shoshana Epsilon and Vint Falken are the curators of the exhibition

6 featured artists and 40 photographs more from other SLartists, this last 40 photos are grouped in 8 themes (yes, some of my photos are there ). Remember the exhibition will run until November.

Find more info at the “SLart at The Cannery” webpage.

Visit The Cannery

UPDATE 05NOV08: Sadly “The Cannery” will be “deleted” in some days, take a look at this post to have more information.

Hey man!, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

I was thinking in how would i start this post, and one sentence came to my mind: “If you like Midian City you will love Kowloon”, at least in the sense of the style, atmosphere, etc.

Kowloon is a RPG sim for japanese people, most of the texts and notecards are in japanese (although the big signs are in Chinese, Kowloon is in Hong Kong) and just a few in english, so if you don’t speak japanese go and enjoy the place.

The architecture, the textures work, the lightning, the sounds… all this is really great. When you arrive there remember to push “Play” in the sound button of your client, there are a lot of ambient sounds that are played through the “music” system of Second Life, this sounds change depending the area, and sometimes are… spooky.

After crossing the entrance of Kowloon you will find a “commercial” area (in the image), avatars and other objects for sale, from here you arrive too to the “Free Market”, interesting objects for sale there too. After that, feel free to explore the maze of alleys, but be careful, is really a maze, and is easy to get lost, walk in circles or arrive to a dead end. There are a lot of places to explore or discover, bars, restaurants, temples, …
In the hotel near the entrance there are some “challeges” to follow, notecards with instructions in japanese and english.

There are some apartments for rent there, but just for japanese spoken people, the “rental system” takes you to a webpage in japanese.

The sim creators have for sale most of the textures, furniture and poseballs of Kowloon for a really good price (from 10 to 40L$).

Thanks to Khamudy Mannonen for showing me this place.

Visit Kowloon (SLurl)

A path in the forest, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

A really wonderful place, full of magic.

Kriss Lehmann is the creator of Straylight, the new Sculpted Trees store, Botanical, is there. The store is really nice, but just the path through the forest from the Teleport area to the store’s entrance worths the visit.

The forest is full of light effects, walking there you just hope to see a fairy jumping around (I swear it happened to me, while i was there i saw two fairies!).

The best thing you can do there is to explore the wonderful hidden places. And is a really good place to take really good snapshots, so have your camera ready .

Visit Straylight (SLurl)

Godzilla is really dangerous, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

This image is taken in one of the Relay For Life 2007 sims. As every year, Relay for Life opens some sims to celebrate the fight against cancer, a fight some people wins. Some Relay for Life friends has built there nice areas, in the image is “The Block” one. Is a nice place to visit, explore and get surprised with the sets and the corners of every sim. Concert areas, shops, vendors, auctions, friendly people, … all is there.

Normally this sims remain opened 1 month so go quickly, before they close

Search in Map for Relayforlife Start, is the sim where the path begins, but there are more than 10 sims to visit (maybe more than 20, but i didn’t visited all them and was trying to count them but were too much, lol)

The Ivory Tower of Prims, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

The temple of knowledge!!! Here is where i learned to build, well, at least at basic level.

The tower has information moduls explaining how to use the SL building tools in an easy and funny way. I think this place must be a “compulsory-to-visit” place for all new residents (aka n00bs) after Orientation Island, and normally there are no people caging around .

The building is nicely done, the moduls are really easy to understand, useful notecards are given in each modul. After this place i think is a good idea to take a look at Idea City, another building course, but in “intermediate level”.

Fighting in the Dojo (Voice Beta Version), originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

Some days ago Kham and me were exploring Ave Maria sim. I don’t know what are they building there, maybe a future urban RPG sim, Midian City style. Anyway, is a good place to explore, with some interesting pose balls. The textures are quite good, as the distribution of the streets.

One big bad thing, some buildings have a small space between them, really small but enough to fall in. The problem is that normally are deep enough to be impossible to jump off and the sim is NO FLY, so you need to pan camera looking for an animation to sit or teleport to go out of this pits.

Nice places to visit there:

• The church: quite dark, i presume is catholic because there is a confession cabin there.
• The police station: say hello to Martha when you go in. Nice suspects room.
• Office building: Nice textures, but in some floors the ceiling is too low, so the camera angle can have some problems.
• Chinatown: Specially nice the Dojo (in the image) and the street market.

As you can see we were trying First Look Voice .

Visit Ave Maria

Vega Bridge at Azure Islands, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.

Following the “bridge” line of images here you are one of the better ones in Second Life… Vega Bridge in Azure Islands continent.
This sim is almost empty, just the bridge and some coastal lines. In fact the bridge is meant as a link between residential areas at north and commercial areas at south.
Is BIG!!! Really big, i love to cross it on my freebie Nissan Sentra at maximum speed and always i crash over a house in the curve at the end of the bridge, just after the sim crossing. (Don’t worry, i’m good and always delete the car )

Visit Vega