Making Waves.... Natalis now sounds and looks better.

So this is almost a toy post, but not quite. I'd spotted a couple posts about the waves created by Naiman Broome on the blogroll. (Which is longer then what I share here.) I had to go see for myself. I've always wanted to do waves on Natalis but there are a couple of concerns with lag and such. So I bit the bullet and went to take a look. They are brilliant and you really should go check out the video that Bettina Tizzy did to highlight them here. They've really changed the character of the beach at Natalis for the better. The sound is pleasant and not too loud and it looks like a real beach now with surf flowing over the sand and back into the water.

When looking at the lag they only add 0.009 ms (miliseconds) to the script operating time of the sim per wave. That's the lowest I've ever seen for a wave. No they aren't surfable but they do help the ambiance. Now as far as what they are from a build perspective they are very clever. What Naiman has done is create a sculpty (Remember them?) which turns back and forth on itself. This makes the texture on the waves, when animated bunch up and crash and flow at different rates. The script itself, as far as I can tell, is the classic animation smooth script which every resident has in their inventory as part of the library. (Remind me to talk about the library soon.) This is a brilliant application, it makes the waves foam and shift and seem to change shape when the texture is just flowing across them. It's an extremely clever achievement that I wish I'd thought of. Credit where credit is due. If you're looking for great waves and something clever, this is what I'd recommend. He sells them at his island here. If you're just looking to enjoy the ambiance, come play with the jukebox on the beach at Natalis and enjoy the sound of them hitting the beach.