Monday 25 June 2012


I recently chanced on the Mayfair sim, which is the location for the Celoe and Mon Tissu shops. It's modelled on the prosperous London district.

The shops exclusively sell mesh items, primarily clothes, and Mayfair is described as a mesh-only sim, the first in SL. I did detect a few prims in the vendors, but apart from that, I could believe there's not a single prim or sculpt anywhere.

That statue is a single mesh, with 26532 vertices.


I feel quite underdressed, coming in here in jeans and trainers. That's a very classy distressed wall finish, the immaculate white walls around demonstrating that the distressed surface is deliberate. The baked lighting effects are perfect. I appreciate that all the more as my video card is too old to do SL shadows.


Fitting rooms. Except...I don't show up in the mirror!


Seats are thoughtfully provided for the friends of customers to contemplate the ancient mystery, "How long is she going to be in there?"


A back street. Look at the picture full-size -- that's mesh-modelled fruit in the barrows. You can't actually go into the grocer here or the café at the end of the alley, but you can sit at the café tables outside.


The cat wanders at random through the streets, miaowing now and then. You'll hear it before you see it.

"There was once a dream that was London..."

Apart from the two shops, all the buildings are shells, but the detail on the outside is amazing. All of the architectural mouldings are mesh: in this scene only the window bars and the frieze on the monumental building (court of justice? council offices? concert hall?) are textures simulating geometry.

I don't know who the designers of all this are (the land info just says "Mayfair Collective") but this is begging for more businesses to move into some of the empty buildings, elegant apartments on the upper floors, and for the monumental building to become an events venue.


Almost everything in this street scene is consistent with London: the signage, the telephone boxes, the taxis, the railings, driving on the left. I couldn't swear that the lampposts are modelled on an actual design, but they fit. The street names are fitting, but imaginary -- this isn't a copy of Mayfair, but a recreation of the idea of Mayfair.

There's just one incongruous detail in this picture.


You're a long way from home, aren't you?

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