Cartoon of The Day: Horse Water Walking

 

 Taken at the Relay Weekend. Some of the time, I went on horseback. And well, when I did the "walk of lag" into past the sim border and into the unrezzed area, it looked like the horsie was walking over water. 

 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Cartoon of The Day: Robo Rider

 

 Taken at the Fantasy Faire. At one point, I saw a small robot on horseback. I imagine the player thought it was simply fun. But what a real robot be thinking?

 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

 

Cartoon of The Day: Fox Hunt

 

 

 From the Relay Weekend. My friend Noc is another kind of canine, but as we were on horseback, and behind this running hunan avatar, you can guess what my sense of humor came up with. 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Cartoon of The Day

 

 

 Taken at the SL Living Expo. Thanks to some horse rezzers, a number of people there were going about on horseback. This led to my mind coming up with a certain pun.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

SL Video: "Second Life Christmas 2017"

 

(Click here if the video does not play)

From InWorld Films on Dec 2017, "filmed in Lakeside and Erebor with awful snow lag and a bento horse that a few problems in the snow ! and a camera man frozen stiff ! MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM INWORLD FILMS"
 

A Glance At Two Starter "Bento Enabled" Avatars

After the new starter avatars were announced a few days ago, I'd heard a few complaints about them, and finally someone asked me if I'd given them a try. Not seeing them available in my viewer, I went ahead and created an alt and started out with one, the male "angel."

In my up to date Firestorm viewer, which is designed to see Bento avatars and attachments for, the avatar looked pretty detailed, and the wings gently flapped. But there was one small flaw, at least in my opinion. The avatar was shown sword in hand. It would have probably be better for the sword to have been in a scabbard on his belt as presumably it would be mostly in social situations chatting with others, and a newcomer would take a while to learn how to remove it.

Two of the avatars, a female and a male (shown here), were horseback riders. Not only did the avatar come with a horse, when switching over to it the rider was on the horse. The horse was quite detailed, and moved around a little at rest, and when walking or running, the animation kept up. It would be good for someone heading straight to a horseback riding sim or a fantasy roleplaying area that was mostly forest land. That is, if the newcomer knew where to get to such places. The problem with the newcomer arriving on horseback is he's not going to know how to remove his horse for a while, which may make interaction with others indoors a little awkward at times.

Gentle Heron mentioned one other complication with the horseback riding starting avatars, one that in my opinion Linden Lab couldn't be blamed for not anticipating. It seems at least one resident was staying clear of these avatars due to a phobia caused by a traumatic experience with one of these huge animals with powerful legs. And since a newcomer couldn't be expected to know how to remove the critter, he wouldn't know how to remove the source of fear of someone with a similar phobia.

As many weapons in Second Life are designed to be sheathed or drawn with either a code word, or a gesture that can be made with the press of a button, perhaps something similar could be done in the case of the weapon and the horse. But how to make it simple for newcomers, and getting this information to them?

And of course if a newcomer in  Bento avatar comes across people in older viewers, the features that were improved on new viewers are going to come out a mess. Since you don't know what viewers others have, when arriving at an event in a shinny new Bento avatar, you may need to ask everyone of they can see it okay.

After playing around for a while, I sent the alt to Curious to get the freebie furry Felis avatar there before calling it a night.

Addition:  here's a more cheerful review by Alicia Chenaux.

Bixyl Shuftan

Thanksgiving at Areo Pines Park (Full Article)

This Thanksgiving season, Areo Pines Park has been having some fun with it's annual Pow Wow. Starting on November 16th, the sims have been the scene of parties and dancing around, in addition to some canoeing and the horseback riding the sim has every day.

Read more in Places.