HUDs are fun, but they can quickly become clutter. To cut down on the clutter, combining a tracker, flight booster, landmark history, etc. into a single tool has been the goal of many SL product designers. There are a lot of good ones out there, but so far I’ve settled on Mystitool by Mystical Cookie.
Why?
Well, for starters it has a great kit. It includes:
- a tracker
- flight assistance
- landmark management
- object rezzer
- stationary camera (helpful in those large builds)
- a builders work area and elevator when you need to get away from it all
- instant table and chairs
- URL catcher
- and other handy tricks and devices (3 menus worth!)
Next it has a backup and restore system which makes keeping those setting and easy upgrades. And by easy upgrades, I mean easy! The server automatically hands you a fresh copy when an update is available. At your convenience swap tools, load settings again, and away you go.
This basic tool is a handy kit and I wear mine all the time. It’s available for $423 lindens (less than USD $2) through the usual places including SL Exchange.
Spring is almost here and time for more plantings in and around Lovecraft Forest. Outy Banjo has put out a nice system for flowers and grass called “Ground Cover Flowers V2.4“. The big news is that its now available in a copy/no-transfer version for L$1350 (a little more than $5 USD). Like all of Outy’s particle wonders, this one is well built and easy to set up. Here’s Kerwin with some of the flowers now at the south forest gate:
Shore waves really add to the look of a seaside sim. Lovecraft Forest has been employing a nice little kit from Ante Flan, aptly named Waves V2. The kit is pretty much is dummy proof, just place and drop along your shore. It comes with both simple “washing” waves and well as classic rolling waves. Different spray particle generators can touch up piers and docks for a realistic splashing action against solid in-water objects. Well worth the L$700, available both at SLExchange and Ante’s in-world store. Ante includes complete instructions as well as sound files.
Another of my favorite gadgets in SL is the Skywalk HUD from aubreTEC Labs. It let’s you work up high by automatically rezzing round plates under your feet as you go. It sits quietly in your HUD, and when it detects that you might fall, it instantly puts a plate under your feet. It works in mouselook too, making it easy to move about as you work without even thinking about it. Up and down are handled easily, so its like having a magic carpet for your personal use on demand. Even more clever, if you find you’ve locked yourself inside our outside a large build, just “sit” on one of the plates–”poof” it’s like sitting inside a non-physical vehicle, enabling you to quickly pass through solid objects!
I’ve used this little gem ever since I started on SL, and I can heartily recommend it for sky builders. It looks cool, it’s automatic, it’s pretty, and highly configurable to your tastes.
Here’s Harold at 530 meters above Lovecraft Forest using his Skywalk to keep aloft:
The Skywalk HUD is available from aubreTEC Labs for L$450, or about $2 USD.
I’ve been doing a lot of building in SL as part of the Lovecraft Forest project. One of my my favorite tools is Skidz Prims, a great little gadget by Skidz Tweak. Skidz prims supercharges your prims by adding introducing some clever scripts into the default building blocks of SL (such the cube and cylinder) which allow you to perfectly snap prims into place like magic Legos. But there’s much more! The tools allow you to copy scales and rotations of one prim to another, even switching axises as you go, with just point and click simplicity. There is even a very clever gap-mode that allows you to fill the space between two prims with a third prim by simple point-and-click. Also cool, Skid Prims wraps prims in an informative wrapper, making tweaking easier and visual alignment a snap, such as this example from a cube face:
Skidz prims is packaged as a HUD and a toolbelt which you wear. It takes a little bit of setup, and Skidz offers regular classes (usually at least two times a week) which are well worth the hour. Support is top notch and even when there is a problem, he or his assistants are quick to help. There is even a friendly in-world group you can subscribe to if you need to talk with other Skidz Prims Users.
Available from Skidz’s in-world store and from SL Exchange for L$1450 (a little more than six dollars USD.) A video of Skidz Prims in action is available here.
If you do a lot of building, do yourself a favor and pick one of these up. It will easily pay for itself on your first build.
