Thursday, May 15, 2008

Isle of Tranquility

A friend of mine nabbed an adorable cupcake costume and I had to have one, too. So I went to the nearest YumYum store and bought it (only L$99!!!). The box had a landmark for a "main store" so I had to go there (SLurl). Boy was that worth the trip! They had some nice freebies but mostly is was a beautiful build .. and I got to dive into a giant plate of cupcakes!

:::giggles::: The display is for sale, but I didn't get it. Instead I went outside and explored the rest of the Isle of Tranquility (SLurl).

Like the store, the rest of the sim is very attractively done. Some skimping on things like wrought iron railings, but most folks won't notice. In the pic above I'm looking westerly from a main square-like area. The water is nicely integrated and trees are everywhere. My biggest smile came from my whole visit came from the generally excellent textures.

The canals are really something and despite the lack of flora and fauna on the sea floor, I was pleased to find that some of the canals run under the buildings. Silly me, I should have checked to see how many prims were available in the sim whenever it occurred to me that the out-of-the-way places should have little details like leaves or animals or other signs of life.

One of the canal areas is a marvelous multi-level complex that made me want to go swimming, fishing, and shopping all at the same time. Many folks I know wouldn't go from shop to shop to shop in a complex as shown above let alone in a non-mall formatted sim like this so I wonder how the merchants fare. Not that I noticed many shops. I was busy playing with sky settings (Windlight) and composition.

There is one area of the sim that is .. well, tacky ... compared to the rest of the build. At one time in the not too distant past I might have called this a nice build but compared to everything else in the Isle of Tranquility, this is ... grr ... I'll say it again ... tacky. The textures are mostly nice but not realistic like the other builders used. The space utilization is also out-of-theme with it's typical retailer layout. And why is prim water used to make a stream about a half meter above Linden water?

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