Darb Dabney’s OpenSim Blog

Tonight the ramps that serve as placeholders for the main entrance and exit escalators are in place under a provisionally textured cupola. Pudgy Darb fits down the ramps with a ~20% boost in width relative to RL escalators.

I’ve started to get the notion of how Darb now maps into full scale RL. He’s somewhere around 183 cm (6 ft) tall and likely would scale up to a weight of 135 kilograms (298 lbs). Because of this, and the lack of flexibility in his arms, some of the 1/3.048 scaled dimensions may need minor expansions.

Also, it’s not clear to me precisely at what level does Darb hit his head and can’t walk under an object, because the blockage is occurring somewhere above his hair in what looks to be vacant space. When ducking through the mezzanine which is now under trusses and jumping down to the platform (because there aren’t yet stairs or escalators in place) it is a lot easier to use Mouselook. Pulling back to the typical view where I see the av’s back as the SL client normally does, the view point is about where Darb’s head would be if he weren’t a Tiny avatar. That is to say, POV is about 1.8 meters above his feet, although his Tiny makes him only about 60 cm tall.

In open space having a full-height POV on a Tiny av is not a problem. Inside a tightly scaled structure, however, it can be very disorienting–and sometimes just doesn’t work if the POV tracks an av walking underneath the floor the POV is floating over at nose-length.
All the same, it’s pretty cool to see Darb walk down the escalator turn around and walk back up the other escalator, walk around the gates and hop down to the platform. I’m just getting the first flashes of what a Mouselook machinima might look like.

Next up will be placing the four-foot-high divider properly to separate the paid and unpaid areas of the station, visit the RL station with a laser tape measure to get real ceiling heights and floating escalator lengths, and nail down structure dimensions.

After the structures are in place, I expect to rent a dual-head strobe unit at Adolph Gasser, buy a fistful of Ektapress for my venerable Canon A-1, and put my vintage FD-14L rectilinear lens to some serious texture acquisition. I’ve spoken about this lens’ great suitability for this purpose for many years—and finally I seem to be a couple of weeks away from actually putting textures usefully into place!

When actually taking measurements with a foot-denominated wheel and transcribing to about 1/3 scale, it became clear earlier this week that what we really want to build at (to save L$ in purchased land and $ in tier fees) is to build at 1:3.048 scale, because that way our field notes taken in feet can be translated directly to decimeters. Practical value from experience.

Also, following directions found on forums.secondlife.com, I was able to get the last 16 m2 plot of formerly abandoned land sold to me by a Linden. That leaves only a 32 m2 peninsula of an advertiser’s plot that I hope to work out a deal for. The goal is most worthy: to build the Jupiter beer garden in glorious 1/3.048 scale…

I joined the three SLGIS parcels together tonight as well, to simplify the settings for permissions after getting a complaint of exclusion. Also, I improved the music (on-parcel streaming audio) to motivate me as I build. The mezzanine’s scaled openings to the platform are now in place, although textures are placeholders. Also, my 60 cm-tall avatar can walk around on the platform and also under the trusses of the mezzanine without getting stuck. This has been a worry!

I’ve sketched out some starter six-car trains, begun a platform, and put a few prims in place for the station’s mezzanine level, above the platform and about two floors below street level. I found that I could use the aerial orthoimage as a guide, but certain variables make it a guess to dimension objects below ground like a) depth below ground of the mezzanine, b) actual angle and length of the stairs and escalators, and c) actual dimensions and alignment of the island platform relative to the rotunda.

The past couple of weeks have seen the growth of some large adjacent building, new advertising prong, and the departure of another. I’ve been flamed in a forum here regarding some oversize prims on which I’ve plotted site plans and a globe. All in all, I hope that the underground construction work on the BART station is not too disturbing to neighbors. All the same, there seem to be remarkable parallels with the sorts of disruption that RL underground construction often provides: unsightly mess at the excavation site, and lengthy delays in the construction!