World Goth Fair: Hey, we’re open!
World Goth Fair 2012 is finally open. You can get your goth on across two sims worth of dark goodness.
Here’s some landmarks to get you started:
World Goth Fair Cursed (Adult)
World Goth Fair Dark Eternity (Mature)
And hey, we have a flickr group, too! You can find it here.
You can find out which stores are on what sim by going to this handy dandy page here.
Come on down and get your goth on!
World Goth Fair: Final Merchant Packs.
Working on it. All but two booths have been assigned. I need a few things before I can finish putting the packs together and send them out. Im on it. Im in a holding pattern until I get some stuff from Dare who is working as fast as he can.
-AK
UPDATE: Sponsor Slots for World Goth Fair
Important update: As of now, there is only one sponsor slot remaining for World Goth Fair. We’re waiting to fill it so we can release a finalized version of the poster and fill up the rest of the fair.
So if you were considering sponsoring WGF 2012, sent your application to us pronto, and nab the very last slot!
A Matter Of Scale
Or… “You’ve all got it wrong, god damn it”
There has been a debate regarding height and scale in SL (Second Life) for as long as I have been a resident – which is going on four and a half years now. On the scale side there are several issues. Some people simply cannot build and so create items (houses, accessories, furniture, etc.) that are simply not to scale with anything. The follow-cam method of viewing the world requires that buildings be upscaled so that when standing in a relatively small room your camera view is not outside the wall behind your avatar – this makes properly scaled furniture look truly bizarre and toy-sized when placed in such rooms. Worst of all, the matter of ego – avatars are grossly overscaled (as much as eight feet tall) simply to satisfy the desire to be tall and impressive (with the obvious side effect that others upscale their OWN avatar to ‘fit in’ to the seeming average and to seem appropriately sized, even if they’re not trying to be large and impressive).
Scale, however, is a decidedly tricky business, because – in a nutshell – everyone has it WRONG.
Take a close look at the image above – this shows my avatar scaled to my exact real life height, matched to the inworld prim measuring system (as in – create a prim, make it the correct height, and scale the avatar to match) – which is 6’3″ (1.905m). This was no mean feat, and took a great deal of tinkering with the shape editing system.
Now we get to the problems.
First of all, according to the shape editing system itself, I am ridiculously short – on the extreme low side of what is presented as average. Why do I say this? Because of the ‘height’ slider in the shape editing. According to that slider – my height is a 20 on a scale of a possible 100, where the preset average is 50. In real life I am still considered somewhat tall (although the average height in North America is catching up to me, and I’m not as tall-seeming as I was twenty years ago). But still – 20?? Let’s have a look at a comparison, shall we?
According to the height adjustment slider, the shortest I can be with all other settings intact is 1.87m (6’1.5″), while the average I would be is 2.05m (6’8″ ffs!!). Never mind the maximum. Obviously this is completely ridiculous and creates a completely false sense of scale in newcomers editing their avatars for the first time.
Be that as it may, it’s still not really the worst problem. Far worse is the complete inaccuracy of every available measuring system (save the aforementioned create a prim and go by straight visual comparison method).
Look again at the first image – note the three prims, their corresponding heights, and the key at the bottom.
There are two basic methods of determining your avatar’s height inworld – one is to use a scripted height finder of some sort (the red prim corresponds to this method), the second is to go by what the viewer itself ‘oh so helpfully’ tells you (the blue prim corresponds to this).
As you can plainly see – they’re both completely wrong.
According to the scripted height-finder, I am 5’10″ tall – a full 5″ (nearly half a foot, or 7%) too short.
But according to the viewer, I’m 6’6″ – 3″ (4%) too tall.
Hell, even by averaging the two it still comes out wrong – 6’2″ – but at least that’s closer.
In short, unless you have a specific height in mind and are willing to create a prim, scale it properly, and tinker with your avatar until it’s perfect – there’s really no way to accurately know your actual avatar’s height, or easily set it to something comfortable or realistic.
So to quote Lewis Black (and you’ll have to imagine the frenzied outrage here), I say to both Linden Lab and all third-party viewers teams – “FIX IT!!!”
Damn it.
Side note:
Here is a simple but graphic illustration of the further scale problems in SL.
The red prim in the picture below is a standard 10x10m square. For most house builders, this is a modest-sized (if not small) room. Yes, a single room – 10m square – slightly more than 30 feet to a side. Beneath it is a perfectly accurately scaled floorplan of what is considered a small but reasonably-sized two-bedroom apartment in real life. Note that I do not seem out of proportion to this – and yet due to the factors I mentioned above, actually building such a floorplan to correct scale would make the result seem incredibly tiny and cramped. The follow-cam would make even walking around this perfectly reasonably sized dwelling utterly impossible.
The DARING FASHION Contest!
The DARING FASHION Contest
During the month of October, we are sponsoring a fashion photo contest for the customers and fans of Dare Designs!
*The Facts:
- Contest entry registration: October 1st to 15th
- Contest voting: October 16th to 30th
- The Prize: L$2500 cash plus a L$1000 gift card from Dare Designs to the person with the most votes after the two week voting period., Each entry after 25 will add L$25 to the winner’s purse (so hitting fifty entrants would bring up the cash total to L$3750, for example).
*The Rules:
1: Entrants must wear DD (Dare Designs) as their main outfit – they can dress it up or down, wear parts, mix and match, accessorize at will, whatever they want to show off their own style and fashion sense. – as long as the result is still recognizable Dare Designs.
2: Snapshots must be taken somewhere on Dark Eternity or Event Horizon (the two adjacent sims where DD lives). Inside, outside, in the parks, or underground – anywhere is fine as long as it is somewhere on these two sims.
3: Entrants submit a single snapshot of their best look along with a ‘style description’ – a description of exactly what they’re wearing – clothing, shoes, accessories, skin, etc. – to ‘DareDesignsSL@gmail.com’. Entry emails must include one picture in .jpg format, square (512×512, 768×768, 1024×1024, no smaller than 512 pixels), the style description, and the entrant’s name.
Please entitle your email ‘Daring fashion Contest’ – and make sure your picture is named with your full avatar name and nothing more – ‘janedoe.jpg’ for example.
3a: We prefer post-processing be kept to a minimum, since this is intended to be a fashion contest, not an art or Photoshop skill contest. To avoid this simply being a popularity contest – no names are allowed ON the picture, no names will be displayed during the voting process either – people will vote based on the picture alone. In short – any entrants that are heavily processed or bear the name of the entrant will simply be discarded.
3b: Creativity in wearing DD fashion and choosing a shot location is preferred. The most creative shots will receive a special ‘editors’ pick’ feature to draw more attention to them.
*The Details:
- Entries will go up on the wall near the east entrance of Dare Designs as they come in – voting will open and entries stopped at midnight, October 15th (SLT).
- Voters will be able to vote by click for their favorite pictures, and will be able to vote on more than one picture if they choose, but votes will be limited to one vote per avatar per picture.
- We encourage entrants to show off their entry via flickr, blogs, SLUniverse, whatever they choose. We can’t even imagine how to stop vote solicitation, so we’re not going to try – spread the word, show off, invite your friends – we don’t care. 
Let’s have some fun with this, darklings!
- Dare Munro, Axi Kurmin
Dare Designs
