I've been visiting some old haunts recently. One place I used to love to visit in my early SL days is the Cloud Chateau at the Particle Laboratory in Teal, so I thought I'd TP over and see if it still existed. I held my breath during the TP process expecting to get the 'This place is unavailable' message you get when a region no longer exists. So I admit I was a bit surprised when it went through and wasn't now owned by someone else, or no longer in existence, but still contained the Particle Laboratory, which Cloud Chateau is part of!
If you are interested in exploring old builds in SL the Particle Laboratory in Teal is one of them. Teal is located in what is called the colour regions in SL, which form a subcontinent and are some of the oldest regions on the grid.
You won't find any mesh here...(well none that I could see). Everything is built with prims, and not having seen it for a while I would say yes it does look a little bit dated, but if you can get past that then it makes for a pretty interesting afternoon exploration destination.
The whole place consists of a number of different sections to visit, not just the Particle Lab, and I thoroughly recommend taking the balloon rider to visit them (because it's fun!), but there is a lift option too if you prefer that. Once seated on the ballon you can choose your destination from the included teleporter.
Although most of the photos I took are at Midday the experience would probably be better if Midnight for the particle areas.
My first stop was the Particle Laboratory itself. This is actually a really, really good learning resource. There are interactive examples, notecards and other information you can access to learn all about using particles in Second Life
It is definately worth a visit if you would like to use particles in your own builds.At one of the balloon points there are landmarks to other good learning resources such as Ivory Tower Library of Prims and the College of Scripting, Music and Science.
Nearby is The Porgan (Josey Pendragon's Particle Organ):
It's an interactive prim built machine which you can use to see the effect of different particle settings such as pattern, age, rate. Simply enter some values, push some buttons, and see the result. It's a nice aid to learning about particles.
I think you might be able to buy it in the shop, but I'll have to check again.
My next stop was the Vehicle Laboratory...
Near the entrance is a syllabus of what you can learn here plus a scale model showing what to find in the relevant buildings.
There are notecards, sample scripts, link to SL resources, and testing areas for learning all about vehicle building and movement.You can even rez a variety of vehicles (including a flying carpet on the level above) and test drive them around the complex.
Of course, it's all prim built again, but I still had fun with it.
My favourite location however, is the Cloud Chateau. This little place has an ongoing wonderful particle show, which you can sit and watch, or as I used to like to do, dance among them. Just outside the door is a radio where you can choose some music. The ambient and chill out ones like Groove Salad are perfect and really enhance the experience. Make sure also to set your sun settings and particle count as advised at the Chateaux (and according to what your PC can cope with - mine crashed a few times), and then relax and enjoyed the show...
This place holds a lot of memories for me, so it was wonderful to be able to return to it after so long and enjoy it once again.
Other places to visit here include a railway, a shop (not much in it though), a big funky slide ride, caverns and more.As I said earlier, as long as you are not hung up on everything looking like mesh or more 'polished' than the old days it's a fun place to spend some free time looking around, and I'm so glad it's still there.
Landmarks
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Teal/190/50/22
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Teal/188/37/301
No comments:
Post a Comment