And with the sound of a "Hey Torster! ;-)" I was beamed back to the Baysklef estate in Gray, where Xylor was absorbed within dimensions of his own geometrical brilliance and Delairen, the articulate purveyor of style, greeted me with what I was going to come to know as the new version of XyObject. For the unprimed, XyObject is a livingly legendary sort of tool within Second Life which uses the advanced mathematics only an adept scripterati of the highest order (or Rza from Wu-Tang Clan) could wield. YOU CAN MAKE REALLY BIG, COOL STUFF and scale it to ginormous proportions. The saying "a peanut two sims wide!" has been flogged about before, and many more constructs are possible — twisted alien towers, enormous candybar wrappers, and teapots so large they could dwarf a fleet of flying saucers. The constructs generated by XyObject are like metashapes built out of many prims, a sort of molecular macrotech as you can see for yourself here. In short, it is an expansion of SL's own build tools.
Which is funny, because the previous version of XyObject was a bulky control panel with an interface resembling the SL UI, icons and sliders and all. A shame that as I touched on in my previous post, responsiveness of such things is usually sadly sluggy at the present. So, instead of actually making stuff, you might typically spend more time adjusting the settings to your liking before hitting Build. But ah, no more! Whereas previously XyObject was a TOOL that makes SHAPES, now the TOOL is the SHAPE! Confused? So was I, until I watched Del arrange several oblong forms before expanding them into the skies above. No panel, just scripted prims: a Zennish rethinking of an already shifty paradigm. Slivers of elemental decadence, shiny in their cobalt and gold tones, flew out into shards and assembled before my very eyes. If I could see a nano-assembler at work, blown up billions of times, THIS would be it. XyObject is best watched in action, when the process of creation is alive. (I had previously been rebirthed from a Xylorian womb.)
Curious, several moments later, Xy encouraged me to play with a copy, so I created something akin to a winky smiley face with the smile section as large as a skate park ramp draped across the Grand Canyon. I set my settings, said a little binary prayer, and then pressed Build. HOLY BUCKMINSTER FULLER!
This newest fundamental reworking of XyObject — I don't know current revision number, maybe call it XyObjectZ as a play on the fact it's pluralized incorrectly often, not to mention X… Y… Z… LOL — is still a work in progress. But what a work it is.
Coming soon to the sandboxes and skyboxes of Second Life!
?
Gracious thanks to Xylor & Delairen Baysklef for the demo and fun. =)??