Rindermarkt Brunnen fertig!

Ein großer, lang gehegter Wunsch ist endlich erfüllt worden. Dank Soschos Ehrgeiz ist nun auch der Rindermarkt Brunnen fertig gestellt. Jetzt kann das Brunnenfest kommen.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Muenchen/222/42/41

Ein neuer Brunnen: Rotkäppchen mit Wolf

Ralfi hat mal wieder eine Lücke gefüllt und den Rotkäppchenbrunnen am Kostor gebaut. Danke!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Munich%20City/223/245/41

Das Ende der Welt - der Simrand

Dank der unermüdlichen Bemühungen von Ralfi Beaumont, müssen die Münchner nun nicht mehr befürchten über den Simrand ins Meer zu stürzen und in den Weiten des Grids verloren zu gehen. Nach und nach bekommen wir die "Simrand-Tapete", die wir uns schon so lange gewünscht haben.
Und mit einem kleinem Trick haben wir diese Tapete ein wenig über den Sinrand hinaus geschoben und machen MünchenSL auf diese Weise sogar noch ein Stückchen größer.

München in SL ist fertig!

Vor 15 Monaten wurde das letzte Gebäude noch als grauer Kasten aufgestellt und dann ist lange nichts mehr passiert. Zwei großartigen Mitgliedern unserer Community ist es nun zu verdanken, dass in nur weniger Wochen München fertig gestellt worden ist. Danke an Ralfi und Soscho!

Die Geschichte des Baus auf dem MünchenSL Blog
>> 15.02.2007: Die Sim wird geliefert
>> 21.03.2007: Die Stadtplanung ist bald abgeschlossen
>> 21.05.2007: Unter den Augen der Presse: Der erste Spatenstich
>> 29.05.2007: Die Stadt wächst schnell
>> 18.06.2007: Die Frauenkirche ist fertig
>> 16.07.2007: Das neue Rathaus steht
>> 08.08.2007: Das letzte Gebäude steht!
>> 25.02.2008: Cheen Pitney: Eine neue Maria für die Mariensäule
>> 12.05.2008: Der Viktualienmarkt
>> 26.05.2008: Soscho baut Strassen und Trottoir
>> 25.07.2008: S-Bahn im Testbetrieb
>> 13.09.2008: Alter Peter ausgebaut
>> 08.10.2008: Harald Nomad deleted parts of Munich! We're trying to backup. Stop building!
>> 24.10.2008: Stachus ist fertig! Karlstor ist fertig!
>> 14.11.2008: Das Hofbräuhaus ist fertig
>> 16.11.2008: MünchenSL ist fertig!


Und auf YouTube - München gestern und heute:

• München im August 2007
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EohZ0JASjgg

• München im Oktober 2008
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MydER9F8lng

Augustinerstraße fertiggestellt

Das wunderbare, gebogene Gebäude in der Augustinerstraße am Frauenplatz wurde von Ralfi fertig gestellt. Endlich sind alle Gebäude im die Frauenkirche fertig und ansehnlich.

Stachus ist fertig! Karlstor ist fertig!!

"Selten ein Schaden ohne Nutzen" hat meine Oma immer gesagt und auch in diesem Fall stimmt es. Schon wenige Minuten nachdem Harald Nomad in krimineller Weise Gebäude am Sendlinger Tor und am Karlsplatz verschwinden ließ, machten sich Ralfi und Soscho auf, die Lücken zu füllen und nicht nur das! Sie haben nicht nur die alten grauen Wände hingestellt, nein sie haben die Gebäude texturiert, dem Stachus einen Brunnen spendiert und das Karlstor fertig gestellt.

Die Freude ist riesig, waren doch die ursprünglichen Bauarbeiten an der Stadt im Herbst 2007 eingestellt worden. Jetzt aber ist die Blockade überwunden und jeden Tag entstehen neue Straßen und neue Gebäude! Ein Traum wird war.

Danke!

S-Bahn im Testbetrieb!

Hallo München. Was die MVG im RL nicht schafft haben, Ralfi Beaumont und Space Cortes geschafft. Die S-Bahn in Muenchen SL pendelt zwischen dem Karlsplatz und dem Isartor mit Zwischenstop am Marienplatz. Wer Lust auf eine Testfahrt hat kann sich gerne in einer der drei Stationen einfinden.

Soscho baut Strassen und Trottoir

Soscho Aeon baut gerade Strassen und Gehwege für uns (auf Münchnerisch: Trottoir). Wenn ihr ihn also irgenwo rumliegen seht, dann ist er wahrscheinlich gerade an der Arbeit (oder AFK).

Der Viktualienmarkt

Ralfi hat uns einen neuen Viktualienmarkt gebaut. Die grünen Hütten können nun von Mietern bezogen werden.

Cheen Pitney: Eine neue Maria für die Mariensäule

Der bekannte Second Life Künstler Cheen Pitney hat für uns ein besonderes Geschenk: Eine Spezialanfertigung der Maria für die Mariensäule. Vielen Dank! Thank you Cheen!



Links:
>> Cheens Blog

Das letzte Gebäude steht!

Im April haben wir nach intensiver Vorbereitung das erste Gebäude begonnen (das Sendlicher Tor), und gestern, Anfang August, wurde das letzte Gebäude gestellt: Das Karlstor. Insgesamt wurden rund 220 Häuser nachgebaut.

Auch wenn noch nicht alle Fassaden aufgebracht sind und so manches Gebäude derzeit noch als grauer Klotz erscheint, so ist doch ein wichtiger Schritt vollbracht.

Rathaus Details

Das neue Rathaus ist inwischen weitgehend fertig geworden und das Warten hat sich gelohnt. In hunderten von Stunden sind zahllose Details gestaltet worden. Das ist sehenswert. Auf Flickr gibt es wie immer die Fotos dazu. Am Besten sieht man sich das aber in-world an.

Im nächsten Schritt werden wir das Büro des Oberbürgermeisters fragen, welche Innenräume in Second Life begehbar gemacht werden können und sollen.

Das neue Rathaus entsteht

Die Stadt ist inzwischen zu ca. 70% gebaut. Eines der wichtigsten und aufwändigsten Gebäude entsteht gerade: Das neue Rathaus im Herzen der Stadt. Hier ein paar Impressionen.

The Munich Frauenkirche in Second Life

The Second Life version of the Munich Frauenkirche is finished (from the outside). You even can see the towers from Marienplatz, just like in RL. We are going at a fine pace to re-create the Munich feeling. Right now the interior is not done. Are the any volunteers? We big heartedly share workload and fame.

Of course there will a the Teufelstritt and other important features of this extraordinary church. One personal wish I will fulfill are shelves of prayer candles like the ones in Mocha Cathedral.

Builders might be interested in this here ...

Instead of using SL time functions, we set the clock to the server time of the www.inworldprofessionals.com webserver, so we get summertime right. We added a llRegionSay() to broadcast the local time in the format "CET:h:m" on channel 5, once per minute. This allows all scripts in the region to get the local Munich time without any calculations and all clocks will show the same time.

For the domes of the towers we used sculpted prims. Again we had to learn it the hard way that sculpted loose shape when looked at from a distances. That sometimes hurts the eye. We had to do a trick by placing two additional standard prims at the bottom of each dome.

Please give us some feedback on how we proceed. Again we are looking for creative minds that want to contribute to this extraordinary project.

How we proceed

Hi everybody,

cool i have time to write something for the blog. It seems i have a bad hair day today when it comes to do prim work... I just need a break! But in general i have to say its a REAL pleasure to see the project take shape.

I still think the map is a bit crowded but in a way thats also very cool! If you fly low or walk it starts to feel almost firstlife. Good that i liked Tangram so much ... Not as easy as it looks! But not too complicated either ... Anyway the offline prim building tool is working as fast and precise that i hoped. Now we are in need of working on the time it takes to do the textures without reducing quality too much...

I have researched some PlugIns that would help a bit: - http://www.altostorm.com/ for straightening photos and this looks cool too: http://www.luxology.com/whatismodo/imageSynth.aspx for creating special unique seamless textures...

Also: The textures is where the real work is done. It rarely takes longer to build the house than to texturing it. In most cases the texture is the real work (special thanks to Parbie!)! So far we have not cheated too much, meaning useing textures of one house again for another one. But the bigger the library gets the more opportunities arise where it will not be too obvious.

Also the use of the colourize texture feature in sl is very cool! So its a great idea to upload greyscale textures of materials like stone or wood or so on and colourize them in sl! (Parbie this was a very good idea that you are now utilizing this feature more often!) This reduces lag again!

Prim count: Not too bad so far! In some cases the roof needs a lot of prims! This is always the case when the houses floor plan is of an arbitrary shape... (few or no 90 deg angles...) But on average we will get it almost done within the prim limits set.

Kind regards Mental

Ein Pferd auf dem Dach - Frauenkirche schon da

Viele Leute kommen täglich auf unsere Großbaustelle, die meisten zu Fuß. Gestern besuchte uns eine nette Lady mit ihrem Pferd. Und da die Aussicht hier besonders gut war, traf man sich auf dem Dach von Gebäude 051 an der Filserbräugasse. Natürlich mit Pferd.

Im Hintergrund kann man schon die Frauenkirche sehen. Diese ist noch nicht texturiert und daher grau. Zudem fehlen noch Hauben auf den Türmen. Diese werden aus jeweils einem Sculpty gemacht. Im Moment kann man von dort noch einen einmaligen Blick über die Stadt geniessen.

Vielleicht findet sich jemand, der gerne beim "Einrichten" der Kirche hilft?

Ein weiterer Block fast fertig, zwei weitere am Marienplatz gerezzed

Der Häuserblock zwischen Sendliger Straße und Rindermarkt, in dem u.a. das außergwöhnlich schöne Ruffinihaus steht ist fast fertig:

Erststmals erreichen wir mit dem Bauen auch den Marienplatz. Zwei weitere Blöcke wurden aus Autodesk 3ds Max nach Second Life exportiert: Zum einen der Block zwischen Rosenstraße und Kaufinger, an dessen Spitze das außergewöhnliche Karstadthaus steht:

Der andere Block steht zwischen Marienplatz und Frauenkirche.

Aktuelle Bilder gibt es immer auf Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inworldmomentum/sets/72157600231969071/

Sculpties in Munich - Are you a sculptor? Want to contribute?

Sculpties (sculpted prims) are a new way of building in Second Life. They are a special kind of prim. As you know almost everything you see in Second Life (except for e.g. land, most trees and avatars) is made from basic buildings elements (primitive objects aka. prims) like boxes, cylinders and spheres. To make e.g. a chair you have to put many prims together, squeeze them, bend them, paint them and voila: a chair.

Sculpties are different. Like a bubble gum they don't have a defined form before you assign it in a not-so-easy procedure that includes not-so-cheap 3D-software. That is the bad news. The good news is that you can give it shapes that have been hardly possible in Second Life before. That is in particular useful when you want to make statues or stucco. We will use sculpted prims wherever we can in Munich. Our tests have been very promising.

In addition we are looking for artists how want to contribute to the beauty of Munich SL. We have many famous fountains, statues (e.g. the Mariensäule on Marienplatz, see picture) and buildings in Munich. Thus we invite all you great builders and sculptors to share your talent and enthusiasm with us and recreate for Munich SL what makes public art in Munich RL so unique. In return we share our love and fame. Please IM Lislo Mensing or send me an E-Mail to weiss@inworldprofessionals.com to get more info. I will post more details here next week.

Lag ist unser Feind: Prims vs. Texturen

Lislo Mensing: Lag ist unser Feind. Ob er sich nun in langen Ladezeiten oder niedrigen Frames per Second äußert. Bei einem so umfangreichen und dicht bebauten Projekt wie München SL ist er fast nicht zu vermeiden. Tests auf Momentum I haben nun ergeben, dass die wunderschönen und hochauflösenden Texturen, die wir bislang verwenden, leider zu viel Lag verursachen. Zudem sind sie zeitaufwendig zu produzieren.

Harald Nomad: Sounds like we need to investigate this a little further. With version 1.15 (and the downtime/fixes last Friday) performance has been better than in a long time. Besides the fact that over time things change so much in SL, where the cause of "lag" can have a large variety of causes, certain elements will always have an effect. One cause of "lag" in a region is the use of certain scripts. Does not apply to the Muenchen regions at this time. One more recently introduced cause of "lag" is the distribution of databases. This shows every time you're blocked on your path because a prim isn't shown. If retrieving and transmitting textures are an issue, it will show in a large percentage of grey (texture-less) prims. A problem that was introduced to SL between 6 and 12 months ago, is cache management of the client software. When your cache runs full, performance will go way down. Liaisons have been suggesting to clear your cache often, but that doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it go away for a while. I moved the SL cache folder to a newer, less used harddisk and have little problems since. (Okay, I also empty the cache folder manually often.) Defragmentation may result in a huge improvement of performance as well. I understand that SL version 1.14 or 1.15 introduced a problem with (some) laptops. My laptop is slower than my desktop, but other than that has less problems with SL than ever before (at least till next bug is introduced), so the problem must be specific to certain graphic cards or combination of elements. For a while now, SL downsizes textures at upload time. Older textures may or may not still be stored in higher resolution, but the maximum size of textures in Muenchen is 1024x1024. In combination with the low concentration of those textures within draw distance, this results in minimal impact on performance. Most tileable textures in SL are 512x512, meaning that using 3 or 4 of them instead would already have a larger impact. Compare a popular mall with many vendor boxes. Performance will go down with an increased number of avatars (number of clients linked to the region), and with an increased amount of server intensive scripts. On the other side, the items used in the region will be used (shown to client) more often and therefore become more 'popular' in terms of internal database distribution. A known 'lag' factor in Muenchen are the 256x256m prims. These are temporary and don't hurt too much at the moment. Whatever you experience as "lag" would be good to investigate. If it was as simple as textures or prims, it would have been more generic. Others not experiencing any form of lag is a good indication that problems could have other causes.

Lislo Mensing: Harald, you are right. I use the word "lag" pretty wide as a synonym for "bad performance". (Here four types of lag are discussed http://wastelands.wikidot.com/lag). And, yes, I use a notebook that (despite the fact that it was bought just 2 months ago) is at its limits when I am using it for Second Life. But maybe that's a good indicator for what to avoid. What I realized on Munich and on Momentum is that when i look in the direction of our lovely built and textured buildings the performance goes down from 40 fps to 3(!) fps. And no matter how long i wait it does not go away, before I turn around and look to the direction. I was able to reproduce the effect on Momentum I (without the giant prim on ground and sky). That makes walking the street of Munich a pain already in this early state. I assume that this "lag" is caused by the high number of high resolution textures we use. I am afraid that this will even get worse if we continue building and texturing in the way we do it today. I talked to Ham Rambler (DublinSL) and he said prims cause more lag than textures. Unless the textures are very big. I think he refers to the fact that when you walk through DublinSL these days many buildings in mid distance and far away take up to two minutes to res. They're not just gray or badly textured. They are just "not there". That is awkward as well - maybe more than blurred texture. Mental suggests that we change the way we build and texture our buildings a little bit. Not only to to get a more consistent look (Parbie's buildings are excellent but sometimes too realistic) but to reduce the number of unique high resolution textures. Mental, please explain what exactly is on your mind. Do it here so everyone can read and comment. Please keep in mind that we already agreed on many aspects. In particular on sizes and proportions. What we have to figure out now and fast is a way to reduce the "lag" by heavy graphics while not exceeding the current prim limits. In the meantime we should continue building. But that's another discussion thread.

Mental Raymaker: lag, lag, lag nag, nag, nag Here my five pence to the subject: As we all know there is not one kind of lag but several! Reducing the lag makes sense! We want a great user experience for Munich! But reducing the quality and making it boring, but fast makes no sense!

lag 1) loading time The smaller the textures and the more they are used in different places reduces the download time and time to rez! I hate waiting! Prims take almost no time to download! My guesstimate is 1k = several Prims! A texture in 1024 x 1024 as jp2 can have several 100k (at 80% about 300k this also depends on the actual picture a pure blue picture is probably just 1 k)! 512 x 512 should be a quarter in size but that is not really true as sl compresses 1024 x 1024 heavier then 512 x 512. I tested that myself! If there are about 200 buildings with lets say 3-4 unique detailed textures we get: 200 x 4 x 200k = 160000k = 160mb! Ok sl will only download the textures that are close to your avatar. But this is almost 1 mb per building! Even if you have a fast connection the server load is massive if 50 people are in Munich the server has to deliver 60 x lets say 15 buildings = 700mb! The key is priorities: Lets say you have a house with 16 windows a door and a shop window. The 16 windows can be a tiled texture reducing the size to 12.5 - 25 % without loosing anything! The door can be used on several (lets say 3-5 buildings!) again reducing the overall load by 66-80%)! One or several prims more will not increase the download time! The texture will already be in the cache! The house has some special features like the window or a sign! Cool make that a unique texture! So if you are looking at the street you will see nice houses with a little detail missing that you can examine when you get closer! I will look at every house together with Parbie and we will decide what makes this house special. Is it the structure we might use more prims. Is it a special sign or wall feature we will have a unique texture for that. But the windows and door might be the ones of a different building! Allways keeping in mind the experience of the user! We want details! We want diversity! We want hidden messages! We might sometime want readable signs! We dont need 200 x 16 = 3200 or more different windows so! We dont need loads of different wall textures! We need loads of different Shop Windows! And our stonemason has to produce nice details!

lag 2) local display issues If you have a 512mb graphicscard this is all no issue! Displaying 20000 prims with a total 200mb in textures is no problem at all! sl reduces the tessellation of prims the further you go away! But if you have a 128mb card half of that is taken by windows! And a jpeg of 1024 x 1024 is not compressed the same way any more and takes up much more space The card also has to process all the stuff! The more the smaller the framerate when you move! I would not call this lag it is perfomance... conclusion: Be clever! Reduce without loosing important artistic detail! Five prims more don't hurt especially if you are under the set prim limit for a building anyway! Either tile or use a lower resolution for generic stuff like windows. If there is a special Detail make a special Texture for the Detail. The house will display fast, the detail has the resolution it needs and we still save a lot of total pixesl! So signs and some stonemason work will need an extra prim and a extra texture... I have just talked about this with Parbie and have decided to build the ground floor one prim high. The rest of the house hight will be another prim. This way we can have medium 0.5 pxl per cm for the groud floor and sml 0.25 pxl per cm for the upper floors. If there is a detail in the upper floors like a special stonepicture or a gargoyle or so, that will get an extra prim in high resolution 1pxl per cm which is still a small texture as it is a small detail. The same goes for the ground floor if there is a special sign that needs to be high res for readability we use an extra prim for that and dont increase the resolution of the rest. We have talked about the buildings she had done and found out that we could save this way about 70% of texture size without loosing any artistic feeling or important details! Parbie is doing a house the way i discussed with her right now. Its No 311. Lets see how this will look!