Pics by Peep

Oh hai there! I’ve not completed either of Berry’s memes since she came back from her holiday break. Naughty, lazy, lost all of my practical joke photos when my external drive crashed – take your pick for my reason(s) why. But since I was in SL when Berry posted her latest AND I was taking photos already, I decided to hop on right now before I get out of the habit completely.

This week she has asked us to share our viewer interface and any HUDs we use. In her words:

Meme Instruction: Share a screenshot of your viewer setup and/or a list of tools/HUDS you guys use to make your Second Life experiences better. Don’t forget to leave a comment in this post with a link so we can all come and stalk you. If you share a screenshot, feel free to share them in the Blog Memes flickr group.

I am using two photographs – one to show my viewer interface (above) and a separate one to show my HUDs. I did this so that the screen is less cluttered. Also, when shooting photos that show the interface and/or HUDs, the shots default to a low resolution setting. I decided just to use the raw shots, rather than going to the trouble of prettying them up. So this is exactly what came out of the can!

I use the Firestorm Beta 4.5.1.138838 viewer and there are a lot of features that I use regularly. One thing I love about this viewer is that it is so customisable – my setup may not be anything like yours if you use the viewer. I have had this particular setup through at least three versions of Firestorm.

1. Favorites Bar (Top row of blue buttons): These are the landmarks I use most frequently – home, my showroom, the club where I work, and various platforms/skyboxes above my mainland and showroom. To create this bar all you need to do is drag a copy of any landmark into the Favorites folder in your inventory. You can reorder them or delete them right from the Favorites bar or from the folder. I use this so often that a new resident asked me how to get back to home a couple of weeks ago and I actually had to think about it! Ctrl-Shift-H, Peep…remember that!

2. Firestorm Toolbar: (Bottom Row of blue buttons): Another thing that I love about Firestorm is that you can have labels instead of icons on your toolbar and you can choose which ones you want. All you need to do is right click a blank area on the toolbar and it brings up a list of options. This includes a box with of all of the choices you have to populate your toolbar – there are 45 options all together! I have fifteen shown on mine. Some of my favourites are Area Search, a Pose Stand, my Preferences and Places (which gives you your tp history plus a few ways to access any landmarks you have).

3. Quick Preferences (brown box, bottom right): I honestly don’t think I could use another viewer if it didn’t have this! This is literally what it says – a way to quickly access certain preferences rather than activating the full Preference menu and hunting through to find what you are looking for. I use the default settings, but there is a way to customise it (Jessica Lyon did a video tutorial on how to make the changes). It is a rather involved process, though and I am happy with the default settings so I’m sticking with them.

Why do I love this? Well, mainly because it is a way to easily access every Windlight setting that is loaded into my viewer. Firestorm has a ridiculously large list already loaded (in fact, I think too many with the latest update). Plus I have other settings that I have added myself (Berry’s and Jackson Redstar’s are some of my go-to settings). With this I can use the drop down boxes to find a section of Windlight Sky & Water sets I like then use the arrow buttons to scroll through them. This keeps yet another interface off of my screen when I am shooting photographs by not having to open the Environment Editor unless I want to change a slider on a preset. Since I don’t do that very often this is ideal for me.

Also nestled in the Quick Preference menu is the ability to change draw distance, particles, LOD, Max Avatars (handy at very busy venues) and you can even toggle name tags off and on – which I should have used in the above photo!

That pretty much wraps it up for the useful interface items I use. Now, on to the HUDs.

1. Vista Animations AO (top left corner) by Vista Barnes: I have used the Vista Animations Sensual Woman (Breathe edition) AO for about a year and a half. Other than about six months, I have always used Vista AOs. His are simply the best female AOs in Second Life, in my opinion. This AO has drop downs so you can access more stuff (ground sits, dances, different stands, etc) when you need them, then pop them back out of the way. Yay for uncluttered HUDs!

2. LumiPro HUD (right side) by Stefan Buscaylet: I’m not going to say a lot about this, other than I totally love it and I don’t know how I managed to take photos in SL before I had it. It does it all – lighting, eye control, posing, projectors for yourself and other avatars. I did a full review on Lumipro when I was beta-testing the most recent version. It is pricey, but it has paid for itself several times over for me. You can check out my review if you’d like at this link.

I don’t wear this all of the time, but you can hide it and never realise you’re wearing it. The lighting balls disappear when the HUD is hidden, but they still emit light. I try to remember to un-hide and remove the lighting balls when I go out in public so I don’t end up being accused of being a nasty facelight offender 😉

Here is a photo of the LumiPro HUD when it is hidden:

The Hide button is the white circle and the Pose button (split into back and forward) is the greyed-out circle to the right. And look! I don’t have balls anymore! 😀

3. Easy-Tool Silver (bottom right) by CJoke Oh: This is the “multi-tool” that I have used for about four years. It has radar, anti-move, spanks, teleport history and storage, and it can rez a whole lot of stuff, like a build platform, a photo changer, a photo studio, a “Spank Butler” in the form of Phillip Linden (LOL) and even, apparently, a sex bed o.O I say apparently because I saw it in the list when I was checking out what all it did, but I didn’t rez it…really! To be honest, I really only use it for the radar, although I have used it a couple of times to rez a build platform.

I was unable to find the store location in world. The landmarks in the creator’s profile all came up empty and it is no longer on Marketplace. I have noticed for the past few weeks that I am getting database errors when I log in, so it is possible he has left SL.

That’s going to do it. I can’t wait to see some of the other interfaces and HUDs that people use. I don’t get out as much as I used to so unless I see something on a blog, I’m not very likely to bump into a new, useful gadget.

Pretty stuff I’m wearing:

Top: Baiastice_Iman top-copper by Baiastice
Skirt: _Lima skirt & gold belt-white lizard by Baiastice
Shoes: [Gos] Boutique – Lauren d’Orsay – Truffle Collection by Gospel Voom
Necklace: Cae :: Promise :: Necklace by Caelan Hancroft
Earrings & Ring: Cae :: Promise :: Earrings & Rings by Caelan Hancroft
Hair: “LoQ Hair” Bacardi – Cherry Red by Gia Pawpad (available at The Dressing Room Fusion)
Skin: [PXL] Creations – [PXL] JADE SK Bare Lips MEB C2 by Hart Larsson
Hands: Slink Mesh Hands (av) Casual by Siddean Munro
Hand appliers:[PXL] Creations<a – [ PXL ] Slink Hand Appliers SK by Hart Larsson
Eyes: Amacci Gaze Eyes – Ocean Blue by Carina Larsen
Lashes: Mon Cheri *MC* “Falsies” Eyelash by Freya Oliveri

Pose: aDORKable Poses: Ella 2m by Adorkable Peapod (NLA)