Flight of Canadian Geese

What an extraordinary place Second Life is! It would be easy to write a blog that revolved solely around photographing amazing landscapes here.

Gazebo at The Trace Too

Today, I’m bringing you images from The Trace Too, a sim build by Kylie Jaxxon. Kylie closed her sim for a couple of weeks to complete this autumn wonderland you see below.

My mother, Betsy, has talked about the challenges of locating “just the right thing” when one is designing a space in Second Life. It is one of the creative delights when making a sim — the hunt for just the right tree, the exact grass that will evoke a fall meadow, a perfect piece of architecture to complete your vision.

Kylie Jaxxon’s attention to detail is masterful. When one designs big landscapes, what is really happening is that one is creating individual, outside “rooms.” Each of these outdoor rooms must have a focal point. Each room must have a set of details that add to — that build towards the idea of that room, that support the selected focal point. And then each of the individual rooms integrate to form a successful whole, so as visitors transition from one room to another — from one part of the landscape to another — there is a sense of a cohesive vision.

Around each turn in the Trace Too, I was delighted by aspects of Jaxxon’s world. In each of the outdoor scenes — or rooms, as I referred to them above, there are ways for avatars to interact with the landscape. The human detail in each of the architectural components are so natural, one has the sense the the owner has left the space one step ahead of your entrance.

As I look at the set of images for this post, I can’t help but smile about people who call Second Life a game. As I’ve written before, it’s fairly usual for people who have never visited a virtual world to feel a little smug as they dismiss this as a game, a waste of time, and to add on top of it that “they don’t need a Second Life, because they have a first one.”

Well, well. And let’s see — two weeks ago, I was camping solo and hiking in Big Bend . . . last weekend I was in rural Texas working on my novel, and this morning, I’m having coffee and taking photographs in Second Life. I like what Jo Yardley has to say on the topic. “One life may be enough for you, but I want more.”