Boy, was I ever wrong.
/d Random
First stop took me to the Grayling Army Airfield (Grayling Airfield sim; 13, 128, 29). It's a nice little military base sim, with planes, bombers, and things of that nature. As I prefer the medieval past instead of that which is technologic, I only stayed for a short time and did a once over at the maximum range of my camera. The effort shows in the building of the sim, and appeared to be anything -but- an "abandoned place forgotten by the pixels."
/d Random
Stop #2 on my list of ten took me to Trinity Products and Defcon 1 (Amella sim; 34, 29, 128). After emerging on the floor above where the stargate was (not even the stargates are safe when you route teleporting to a set point), I had a look around to find that it was full of transformers and Star Trek things... mostly starships (some of which appear to be flyable versions).The building also had a lot of barren land around it, making me wonder just how often it was visited. The sim itself looks barren on the world map, quite a bit off the nearest major road. Makes me wonder if they couldn't move it closer to the road so it could be seen by people who have the $L to spend, because they're -not- going to see it from the main road unless they're looking right at it.
/d Random
Off next to "Earth" (Dreamworld Gem sim; 83, 84, 22). It looked to be an office with a pretty neat teleporter effect they set up. But I ran into a dead end as the only way out seemed to be blocked by a large prim, so it was back to the gate after a very brief stay.
/d Random
Chronotis Sec at New Gallifrey (New Gallifrey sim; 161, 71, 3273) was by far the most impressive place I found on my travels. It looked like a bit of a Dr. Who museum, with a couple of doors off to one side of the landing point declaring "Beware of BOB." Naturally, I went straight for the doors.Bob's a dinosaur. A Triceratops, to be exact. Unfortunately, I encountered him in a bit of a spot --- he'd ended up with his nose to the door I emerged from, and one of his hind legs had gotten caught in the rocks behind him... such is the fate of objects left "physical" in SL, I suppose.
I was VERY VERY impressed by the amount of work done on the area I did explore. The textures were amazing, and I smiled to myself as I found I'm not the only one to retexture both the outside -and- the inside of the "anywhere doors" used to get from one place to another.
5 Stars, hoards, or whatever. I would suggest going to see this build.
Dr. Who isn't my thing, so after about 20 minutes of looking around...
/d Random
My next stop was Fisher Island (Fisher Island sim; 192, 118, 3002). As it was 3000 meters in the sky I figured it was going to be some sort of hidden base or something just as interesting.
It wasn't. It was a flat featureless megaprim with a stargate. NEXT!
/d Random
I didn't stay very long at Vico (Vico sim; 200, 78, 701). I ended up on someone's build in the sky that was currently in progress, and they'd set a stargate out to accept random wanderers on the network. A quick hello, a quicker goodbye, and it was off again on my trips through the stargate network (double-checking my co-ords for these locations, I went back a few days later to find only empty air, resulting in a 700-meter skydive). Whee!
/d Random
It was off to the Rizzo sim (Rizzo sim; 48, 40, 501), which ended up a tiny shop in the sky, appropriately named the "Little Shop". This one had TWO stargates in close proximity to each other, so when I next triggered one, I'd trigger them both. The shop itself had a couple of vendors, but as they seemed to be Dr. Who vendors... yeah, time for me to "choose a gate". Triggering the stargates, one of them was about three times as slow on the rotations. I don't know why that is.
I tried triggering my home gate before hitting a random one --- only one succeeded, the other one shut down as "gate not found".
/d Random
I wound up at the campsite of the "civil barbarian" Aaron Kukulcan (Adeo sim; 20, 84, 38). This DID seem like an old spot to me and just had that "empty" vibe going. On the world map the area looks mostly undeveloped. It's on a small set of three private islands though, and who am I to judge... perhaps they wanted it mostly undeveloped wilderness as a nice and peaceful place to relax in.
Another two stargates, but the first choice lead directly into a packed sim (as in, 20 people near the landing point) with a sim name that sounded like it was a den of vampires. Not wanting to end up fed to the undead, I picked the second of the two gates.
/d Random
The result was the Destiny Isles, a solitary wilderness sim (Destiny Isles sim; 69, 153, 22). I laughed when I did a search a week later to find there is not only a Destiny Isle sim, but a Destiny Isles sim (with an s) as well.It carried the "old" vibe, as if it hadn't been used in a while. Nothing spectacular to see here, unless you count the terraformed box canyon as part of "not being spectacular". It was the most creative use of terraforming I'd seen in a while and for a brief time considered doing it to my dragon cave and layering a megaprim over it as its roof. But since I have changed the appearance of my home four times in the last 5 weeks, I thought... nah.
Still, a very good job to the sim owner. The effort shows.
/d Random
My final stop ended up being a private residence, so I'm withholding the location.
Let me just say two words. Murphy's Law.
After that, I knew it was time to stop warping myself through space, time, and the grid, so I did a quick "/d wyv" and headed home.
So it does seem that not only is the stargate network not an abandoned piece of technology as I originally thought, but it is in fact thriving. You can get a free modifiable stargate at OS Labs over in Eternal Calm (210, 49, 22). It's about 125 prims though, so you'd better have room for it.
Xymbers Slade
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