Devoran Comet

Nice write-up, I'm glad you had a good time! What I saw was something very tall and very stringy. It was almost as if the corona was waving at me, long almost tendrils flying off of the sun a very far distance. It can't be captured on film, I guess. I haven't seen one photo yet that approximates the detail and beauty that was seen. Your pic on the left though is close, though!

Here's a pic I snapped during the eclipse. I didn't spend more than 10-15 seconds doing it though, it was too amazing to look at.

From Oregon, got to see totality. It was breathtaking. I seriously suggest if anybody is interested in seeing something that makes them feel like something isn't 'quite right', go see a total eclipse. They're awesome!

Hugsy Penguin wrote: When I was looking for a cigar, I ended up going with Nikotin. They have cigarettes too. What I liked is that the cigars/cigarettes themselves look good plus the smoke effect is they way I wanted it. It's subtle but noticeable and the particles don't follow the source (i.e., if I move away from where I'm standing, the smoke is left behind). The only downside I noticed is that when I turn the smoke off with the HUD, I can't get it to come back on. I noticed this in the demo so when I bought it, I made sure to keep a backup copy of the original (it's, copy, no modify, no transfer). It does have 11 scripts which seems a bit much, but Firestorm reports: [11/11] running scripts. 464Kb consumed for 0.008607ms of cpu time. That doesn't seem too bad but I will remove it in heavily lagged areas. Nikotin Tabacco? Lol, they should probably proof-read all their material...

Yeah. Be yourself. Everyone is different and there are people out there that will view your quirks as features and embrace them

It's Ralph. Like "ralph pls go" Google it, you may laugh ; p

And then my friend and I went around showing it off in select adult and moderate sims. ;] ARE WE NOT STYLIN' OR WHAT

Hey man, if I was being rude, I apologize. But I appreciate the help and direction!

Just want to be clear to some of the past replies here. It's always been sort of fun for me to come here and kick it. I make plenty in real life, the issue is --so much free time.-- Up until recently I was having fun streaming games, as I have a passion for it. But since the website (own3d.tv) is now down, I lost that avenue of entertainment. I'm an entertainer at heart, as I'm in the business. I came to give SL another shot. I was a part of SL a while ago, but work took over my life and being on the computer fell by the wayside. Now I've got time again and I'm back. I was even a mentor back when the mentoring program existed (I still have my pies!) Don't look at the numbers I posted as a reference, just theorycrafting. $75 is probably unrealistic you will get no disagreement from me. But it was also in reply to somebody who threw out numbers for me to start working with. I'm just thinking out loud. Help me to craft this idea into something workable. Please don't just shoot me down based on one post.

madman626 Fall wrote: There 2 things wrong here.. 1. Your dreaming you thinking of RL not SL , 2 . NO one will ever pay to see a show ever no,, not even for a few 100L$ they be like what oh hell no I going to the free shows,, why could they pay anyone anything for show wise when anyone can claim to be any thing they want ,,,heck you can't even pay me to go to some of the place for a show * lag* . 1. I've fulfilled my dream in real life, I just want to see what things are like in SL. Realize people pay RL money for all sorts of entertainment on the internet. Like games, Netflix or other streaming movie providers and even live broadcasts of HD special presentations. Even some high definition radio stations are on a pay-basis. SL is just another medium to deliver it. 2. That is a really broad brush you've got there. You want to try again?

Thanks for the posts so far guys. NOTE: This post will be discussed in USD. AND THESE NUMBERS ARE NOT FINAL, JUST THINKING OUT LOUD! Amethyst thanks for the dose of reality. How much would I have to charge for a once every weekend 8 hour show? From say, 8-4? I do have some scratch to start up a serious business, originally I was going to start an online service but I'm starting to wonder if this may have more allure. I'm thinking if a person wanted to pay $75 a ticket, that would be able to cover quite a bit if I could manage to get 200 people to show up. Also I will be considering corner-simming it, and putting the club on a corner to break down the load on a single server. Or I could just get a private server (?) and go that way? At any rate, that'd be $15,000 for one weekend. In real life I personally make anywhere between $300 and $1500 per gig, so if we had 4 DJs on one stage that alone is eh, probably we'll just say $7000 and that's shooting on the high side. Also not counting any standby for now. Then after all the choreography and animations, if I can get one full week of work at $100 an hour that's 8 hours a day at 100 an hour so 800 x 5 = 4,000 for animations, then whatever the light scripts would cost (we could just say another 4k tacked on.) Buildings would be a one time thing, then updates and flyers and what not would be small potatotes. So yeah, hmm. Looking at around $6-8000 absolute minimum for one night's expenses perhaps for a serious night if the hours work out to be like that. Not counting monthly overhead. A realistic estimate would probably shoot somewhere in the range of $15000-20000 per show and that's leaning towards paying the scripters a premium. As for the people not wanting to pay to visit a club, a lot of these clubs are playing tracks on iTunes. The ones that do live music (I'm in one right now, cheers to DJ jessicahkrolll) do an alright job. Now keep in mind that if the attitude is in SL it should be free and there's a sense of entitlement, what happens when somebody says pay $50-100 to come see a show for hours? That's a real life replacement to a real life party. Huge events in my area all go upwards of $70 (if you get way advance tickets you can grab them for maybe 55-70) and are almost all sold through ticketmaster locations or something of the like. I don't want another club, Amethyst. I want a serious club with a REAL LIFE REPLACEMENT experience. And yeah, I take what you say to heart, help me make this a reality, please! Let's really flesh this out. I am fairly new to SL but if we can tap the people who want to show up to listen to live music that'd open us to a more lucrative Second Life world. Sorry for so many edits, thinking out loud.

Ah yeah I got this too. Will LL reimburse us for this?

Hey everyone. I was a part of SL a few years ago and am now returning to the scene. I'm a professional DJ in real life and have a good chunk of spare time in which to do what I want. Well I just got back to SL and now I've got some ideas, and I want to run this by some of you more experienced people to see how feasible my idea is. Let's start with what I see. I have visited various clubs in SL and though they offer the feeling of being at a club, it feels more like a four walls and a floor with somebody dancing and talking while playing through their iTunes playlist. Now I know that there are those that offer professional DJs playing full length sets on wax, but even those clubs are often wide wide open, and with only 50-60 people there you don't get that feeling that you're packed in on a dance floor. There are lots of balls and dance props and things to interact with but they seem to detract a bit from the real club experience. People sometimes dance in lines with shared animations or dance in a way that often doesn't even match the style of venue. Got a techno-style dance ball in your club that plays reggae? Yeah, not going to look good. It destroys the illusion of being in a reggae club, for example. Another thing I note as being out of place are lights. LIGHTS. Oh my gosh lights. Notwithstanding the fact one person with a facelight can show up at a venue and bring the fusion power of the sun to your location, most of the lights at venues seem sub-par. Even in midnight lighting setting, things are generally fully lit, a lot of objects have full brightness on and look out of place and the entire location begins to look like this thing that was thrown together by 30 different creative minds. Each piece individually may look great on its own but when put into a single location with lots of other props it looks clunky and creates a disheveled mess. And there are no intelligent lights! We've got shoutcast streaming live to the land but the lights either don't move or just flash a bit. Let me share my vision with you. My vision is that I offer a club experience unlike any other that exists. I will break down in a list format what I've got for ideas and then I'll detail each one. Live mixing DJs with "live" animationsA venue that is a completely self-contained atmosphereReal-time Intelligent lights and sound via VJsReal-time choreographed dance animationsPay-to-enter with auto-kick or pay-to-stay scriptingActive crowd retentionReal world scope in an in-world situationLet's hash that out a bit. For beginners, understand that each DJ will have a pre-recorded set that they will re-perform at the venue in front of a live audience. It is the pre-recording (or practice set) that allows most of the following to be done. Live mixing DJs This is probably the most obvious, but there will be talent that plays a set, practiced ahead of time and prepared like professional real-world DJs. This allows for a variety of things, which will be detailed below. The most important feature of this though is that, unlike many clubs where the DJ is just another person taking up space talking and dancing, the DJ at my venue will have a pre-scripted animation set made for acting to the live music. The animation scripters will have made a full length animation ahead of time, or will have a set of animations that the DJ can act to in real-time via somebody else controlling his animation set (this would be an assistant to the DJ, whether at the DJ's location or through SL. Completely self-contained atmosphere The first step to breaking the barrier between reality and SL is simulating realism. Kill the lights at the venue and it should be pitch black inside. You can't see anything. Flip on a flash light and you have the traditional cone of light that a real life light may show. Throw in a little atmospheric lighting and you have the closest thing you can to a dimly lit venue. Step outside into the patio and you'll have overhead lights which offer a place for people to lounge, smoke and get some fresh air -- all of this being completely isolated from the inside location. No light leaks! Real-time Intelligent lights and sound This is probably the most exciting prospect to my venture, along with the live scripted dance animations below. When the DJ pre-records his set he'd send a copy of it to the light and animation scripters who would be the Video Jockeys (or VJs). They would create a live audio/video experience which creates seemingly intelligent lights and sound. Lasers, search lights, PAR cans, LEDs, strips... you name it. These intelligent lights would be designed in mind for both first and third person perspective so they offer a pleasurable viewing experience no matter what angle you're viewing the scene from. Another thing that may be added is a real-life video of the DJ mixing live, or just a video wall that the VJs work on to enhance the set and experience of the party. Similarly to the lights, the audio equipment has to be reactive to the music as well. If you've ever been at a club and stood near a 21" woofer you know that you can see the cone oscillate to the music. Well in SL we should be able to see this too, but when the music hits a break or silent segment and the oscillating is still pulsing strong it's going to look silly and out of place. So we have an interactive system designed specially for the venue that is able to be scripted to the mix. Again this would all be time-keyed and put down so it works just perfect. Real-time choreographed dance animations Another exciting aspect of what I'm looking to do is extend the option to be able to dance to the music live. This won't just be clicking on some dance ball, but this will be actually something that is given to you as a part of the entry fee. What this is is a dozen or more choreographed dances that are all to the step of the music being played. There will be a variety available to eliminate avatar dance patterning (which looks hideous in most clubs) and also to allow the person to have their own style. The best part is since each dance is timed, there can be a way for somebody to show up to the party late and have it "seek" the time in the dance that the current DJ is at. That way if you show up 20 minutes after the show starts and you click start dancing it will seek in the animation to the time and then it'll start dancing at the proper time. This is great because lulls in the music as well as high energy moments where the DJ may want everyone to start bouncing and putting their hands in the air will elicit a real response from the dance animations. How cool is that? Pay-to-enter with auto-kick or pay-to-stay scripting Making a club with this much realism means that in real life there is a lot of work going on. People need to be compensated for their time and as such you need a price that can accomodate paying everyone involved. My thought is because there's no way to allow people to experience the scene without trying it and as such become self-destructive, a trial period must be offered on arrival. So I would say that new visitors get a 5-10 trial period where they can fully interact with the venue like they can any where else. At the beginning of the trial they are alerted that in order to stay for the full show they must pay. They have the option to pay at any time (offered through a notecard link when they arrive,) or when the trial ends a prompt box comes up giving them 60 seconds to either pay or leave with no way to return unless they pay the person through the notecard, and they are removed from the venue. Active crowd retention I want to have some ways for the crowd to be able to be involved with the venue itself to keep them entertained. This would be established through the various choreographed dance sequences, but can also be something like having places to chill and relax such as places with bean bags, chairs and tables and an outside patio. That way if people need to "get away" from the packed indoors they can find an area to keep them happy and still be engaged with the venue. This'd be a good way to increase both immediate retention from having them leave, and also a great way to get them to come back next time. These events don't necessarily need to be nightly or even weekly... but there needs to be enough revenue generated and the sim needs to be able to accomodate enough people to make the work worthwhile. As such keeping people coming when the events happen is extremely important to the sucess of the venue and has to be kept at a top priority. Real world scope in an in-world situation I want to make the building as large as it needs to be without tons of extra space. The thing I hate most about visiting clubs is how much open space there is. It kills the illusion of being at a club for me. Though it's sort of a standard SL experience, I know that it can be so packed you feel slightly claustrophobic, like you would in a real club. I am sure people all view being packed in differently, but I want there to be the feeling that the place is bursting at the seams capacity-wise. I do want there to be some open areas people can go to to relieve, as said in the last segment, but I don't want people coming in seeing more floor than people. Another aspect to this is the advertising and marketing. In the real world when you hear about your favorite DJ playing somewhere, you can generally find them on a flyer. A great way to spread around the buzz that perhaps your favorite DJ is playing in SL is to pass around flyers. Some clubs have this (they look great!) and I think that it would do a great deal to make the experience something that more closely simulates going to see a real concert. Which is what I'm sort of hoping for, after all. A concert in your own home. In SL. Business Plan To get such an endeavor off the ground, first I'm working on sort of a basic looking venue on paper and then am going to translate hopefully as nice a design as I can to in-world. I suck at modeling though so I'd want somebody skilled to finalize the design and in-world model. This would probably involve some pro-bono work that could certainly be used in a future portfolio. At any rate if we can get the club model going then we'd need to explore people who are able to do the scripting. Once we have the scripters then we can start approaching talent. And then we're ready to go. The business plan will be much more fleshed out but this is certainly the tl;dr version. So just to recap what would be needed: A buildingModelersScriptersTalentLandAnyway everyone, is this feasible and realistic or am I dreaming? I'd love to hear what you have to say, and if you guys think this sounds like something you'd love to see, I'd love to hear what you have to say. Scriptors, modelers and artists please contact me if you would like to have involvement in this! My thought is the only way it can work is to try, so any ideas you have on helping this get off the ground are greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time, and thanks for reading! -Devoran Comet