Wednesday, May 20, 2009

May Road-Trip: Performance Lag vs. Good Pix

mayroadtrip: Hitting the Road ...
Location: Mowry Sim

I am finding that my "old" laptop is lagging more and more. On this trip (on the bike--the car is a prim-hog) that meant that I'd either get good shots or ride: doing both was difficult. I stopped for snaps, then moved the graphics sliders down before roaring off again.

Lag or not, I love this idea of a monthly trip on SL's roads. Sitings:

  • a wistful-looking couple on a bench, in a playground, watching a bunch of bugs and animals on springs, the sorts of rides you see for children in real life. But there were no children and the animals moved slightly of their own accord. This scene struck me as almost tearful, something right out of P. D. James' amazing novel The Children of Men. I rode on.
  • an unpleasant surprise. I could not resist, and I came back to discover that the "playground" was not so innocent or sad. The animals had little sex-balls embedded. It's in the open, so I guess it will vanish with the new adult-zoning restrictions.
mayroadtrip: Creepy playground...
  • only a few billboards, and they are smaller than those from the old days. I hate billboards so this change is fine with me.
  • odd physics. I kept my cruising speed under 50 kph and looked around when I could. At sim-lines I found that creeping up was a bad idea. I'd "bounce back" as if the bike had struck a giant and invisible marshmallow. Blasting across the lines worked better as long as the bike was not going too fast. Then things got non-linear, fast.
  • my horn. It plays "Dixie." I'll tell Pappy Enoch.
  • a sim simply refused to load, even though it was a valid location on my map.
mayroadtrip: End of the road.....
I got this effect of "the end of the road."

I'll be back in June with another road-trip! I put a few more shots on my Koinup account. Have a look and...happy motoring!

mayroadtrip: Sign says it all

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