January Road Trip: Better But Not Great

Location: Wellington Road, Jeogeot Continent

Mostly quiet on the road. I do give a hat-tip to Linden Lab for trying to fix a long-standing problem.

Despite the improvements in sim-crossings that Tateru reported, she's also correct that it remains far too slow for what I've always craved: a road rally with a dozen vehicles. While the solitary motorist can put up with the lag of hand-offs between sims, it's not something anyone who wanted to compete online would tolerate. I managed about eight sim crossings, and six of them worked well. Keep in mind that I was in first gear and doing no more than 25 miles per hour.

The crossing speed is good enough for my purposes: seeing what other SL residents have been doing. I met only a few residents, one of whom I spotted just before I nearly ran her down. A Chinese SLer, she was out looking for freebie skins and clothing.

My landmarks were  old, from the days when I sent students to freebie stores or took them myself (students not wanting to spend a single "real dollar" in SL). So were hers, and she reported it harder to find decent freebies in world. I don't know what the downturn in in-world commerce has done to this once-thriving market.

On the other hand, resident humor continues. Here's the profile for the creator of the 1903 Oldsmobile I spotted in Tieut sim:

Omicron Llewellyn has taken a vow of silence until he can import the sculpts on the screen into the SL.  Sorry for the inconvenience. Let him build, let him destroy, leave him to struggle with his own hubris, and for goodness sake, buy him a pint.  Do not try to save him, he is what he is, unrepentantly. The common denominator in all his failed relationships is him.

I think this perhaps the best profile I've seen in a bit. I IMed him, telling him that I wanted a copy of the car. Given the sim performance, even with the improvements in speed, an '03 Olds may be my next SL ride. I've got the Steampunk clothes to look good in a horseless carriage.


In addition to oodles of for-sale mainland plots, I found one of the Bot-cars that the Alphaville Herald reported some time back terrorizing SL's roadways. This 70s pimpmobile Cadillac, owned by AnnMarie Oleander, was stranded in a ditch by the roadside. Here's her profile info:

I am running self navigating vehicles on roads, railroads and waterways.  Sometimes they get caught in no-script land off the road.



This is an interesting technology, fun to dodge if I run across them, but I'd rather see more avatar-driven rides in SL.

More soon about what I find down the ever-more lonesome roads of SL.