Free horse rides on Fort Serenity Ranch

We have two gorgeous horses on Fort Serenity Ranch that anyone can ride. And a beautiful landscape to ride in. You can ride them anywhere on our sims. They are clever enough to TP home when they are abandoned.

It's just the two on the picture that guests can ride. They are waiting inside the barn so you should have no problem finding them.

This is the SLURL for the barn.

DOF in Kirstens Viewer or Focus on me!

I made this short clip today to test the Depth of Field in Kirstens Viewer S 21.

There is a lot of info about what it is and how to enable it in the official SL viewer here along with a great tutorial by Torley. It was pretty much the same in Kirstens Viewer even if I couldn't find all the Debug settings. I used CameraFocalLenght 200 for this clip. If you have a lower number the effect is less obvious.

It was real easy to shift the focus point. I just had to move the mouse around.

My FPS was terrible as I say in the video. But it really didn't feel all that bad and the video clip came out ok.

I filmed in the Chapel Park on Wiladma Island, where this lovely little mallard family lives.

Fort Serenity Waterfalls Store has a website

Now Fort Serenity Waterfalls Store has a website of it's own,where you can read about all the waterfalls, ponds, streams and bridges we have. The site is still being filled with content but you can already find info about and pictures of some of the most popular falls.

Found a beautiful new free dress!

A customer in the store tipped me off about this beautiful dress from House of Dashwood. It was soo pretty it called for instant dancing in Wiladma Island where we are setting up a new home in Annashire Village.

Not only did I find this dress all for free, I found a new place full of neat clothes to buy too :o)

How to use shadows in Phoenix Viewer in Second Life™

I managed to get shadows to work in Phoenix! It looks great, but it does slow down the FPS. I had no problems recording this video with PlayClaw tho.

Here's how to enable shadows:

• Advanced menu (if you don't see it bring it up with Ctrl + Alt + D)
• Debug
• set RenderDeferred to FALSE  (default)
• set RenderUseFBO to TRUE
• set RenderDeferred to TRUE
• set PhoenixShadowsToggle to TRUE

Graphics have to be set to Ultra to see the shadows. (Once I saw them I could lower to High, but that still gave me the same low FPS.)

When I disabled them I crashed first time, but the next time I started by setting RenderDeferred to FALSE before disabling the other two. That worked. I have no idea what those settings really do.

My own shadow didn't seem to be visible except where I had prim clothes. My boots cast a shadow. I'll have to experiment with that some other day.

I recorded the video on our porch in Fort Serenity where the Mayan Adventure begins. The Macaw parrots come from Animania.

Alicia Waterfalls on her way to the store!

I managed to sneak this preview video of the Alicia Waterfalls before it even got boxed and delivered to the Fort Serenity Waterfalls Store!

The Alicia is resizable. It's 10x15 meters at full size, but can be stretched down to anything between that and the tiny little fall you see in the video.

I am soo totally spoiled with beautiful waterfalls but I never stop enjoying - and be amazed - by the waterfalls Major builds :o)

It's on it's way to the store as I write here!

The Teodor Cave Waterfalls on Wiladma Island

I hope I can get some of the gorgeousness of The Teodor Cave Waterfalls through in this video.

It's a medium size fall. It has two caves, one open and one that is covered. It's very romantic :o)

 Like in all items in the Fort Serenity Waterfalls Store you can change the texture by clicking and selecting textures from a menu. The Teodor  also comes in a basic version that is a bit cheaper and with less prims than the one you see here that has the add on falls on both sides. Those can be bought separately and added later if you want.

I'm still struggling with getting things the way I want them when I record video. I still don't move smooth enough, and find it hard to plan how I'm gonna get everything into the clip without it being too long. And I find the videos are very much alike. But since it's the waterfalls I want to portray maybe that is inevitable.

Also if anyone reads this blog and knows of a way to make the video larger here in the blog I'd be ever so grateful if you told me. I'll have to visit the forum for this place I suppose.

Denny Waterfalls - another magic waterfall in Second Life™

This is Denny Waterfalls in the Mayan Jungle on Fort Serenity. I so love waterfalls and this is one of my favorites. I hope I can convey some of the magic feeling of standing next to it.

I know I still have a lot to learn about recording videos in Second Life. The camera movements are very jerky. Waiting for SpaceNavigator that I ordered two days ago. Hope that will help me move the camera smoother.

I did manage to merge two sounds - the music and waterfall sounds - in Audacity. 

I made a video on YouTube!

 

Not my first video from Second Life really, but I feel I'm getting a little better at making them and this waterfall is soo lovely.I recorded this on Wiladma Island on Fort Serenity Estate. If you wonder who builds wonderful falls like this it's Major McCaw.

A Coati on Fort Serenity

The landscape on Fort Serenity is a Mayan jungle. It's fun to find animals that aren't too out of place in the landscape. The latest additions are these little coatis. Never heard of a coati? I hadn't, so I looked them up,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati, says they are about the size of a large house cat, have sharp teeth and eat all kinds of icky things.

The Forest Park from the japanese bridge

There is a dance pavillion with lots of cool dances there across the lake.

The awesome landscape, almost all the buildings and definitely all the waterfalls on the island are created by Major McCaw. If you want a wonderful waterfall of your own there are lots of them for sale at Fort Serenity.