The Alphaville Herald

Review: Sexy Skyboxes – Second Life’s Mile High Clubs

by Alphaville Herald on 19/03/05 at 5:54 am

Veteran builder and gamer Pirate Cotton sets sail on a quest for sexy treasures in this review of five skyboxes. Casting his one good remaining eye over a bevvy of designs and textures and, despite his wooden-leg, Pirate manages to road-test a variety of sexballs. With him is the First Mate, Neal Stewart, slinging comments from the starboard bow and insisting that he knows a dead parrot when he sees one. Will they find some very special skybox places? Spiritually, ecumenically and grammatically?

“Oh my god, it’s full of stars,” are the last words of David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This vision of the future, from just over forty years ago, is a vision of hope and optimism, but also one where the unknown is deeply terrifying, strange and dangerous.

So it is also in Second Life. Looking up to the sky from the ground, most people will barely be able to see the clouds. With their settings optimized to keep lag down and frame-rates high, the sky is just something that marks the time of day.

But, take a moment. Extend that view range and you too may feel like David Bowman, as your eyes take in the many skyboxes that exist just beyond your ground-limited vision. But what are these skyboxes for? Why are they here? What terrors do they hold?

To answer these questions Neal Stewart and I decided to venture where few have ventured before – to explore the depths of the Second Life skybox, those strange cubes which hang so high in our atmosphere. We volunteered to fearlessly uncover what horrors may exist inside and to try out as many sex-balls as possible in just under 60 minutes.

Neal seems to think that he’s a serious builder because he once stood in his plot for six hours, in edit view, claiming that he was ‘building tension’. His final product was not visible even with Alt Shows Transparency. As an experienced builder myself however, the task fell upon me to do all the actual reviewing and to agree with Neal that yes, the term ‘prim’ is short for ‘primates’. In spite of my dim-witted baggage, I am convinced that I can rise to the challenge and help you, dear reader, to learn and grow and find the best place to join the mile-high club.

Welcome to our first Sexy Skybox Review!

Neal and I planned our investigations in a quiet corner of Second Life. First we would need a good flight script. We both had carbon rods so that was sorted. Next, altimeters to make ensure that we could explore at around 300m – where most skyboxes are. After some initial confusion, I managed to explain to Neal the difference between an ultimatum and an altimeter and he became a lot more cooperative. After a quick trip to Abbotts to pick up an altimeter for my slow companion, we set off for our first sim.

We soon arrived at Eaton and within seconds were greeted by a beautiful skybox. Shining white, she reminded us of a Greek temple, suspended in the sky, covered with sex-balls. “It looks like a gum ball-machine exploded just before we arrived”, said Neal. I, however, always expecting the best of people, hoped it would be a quiet, secluded spot for intellectual discourse.

After a couple of minutes of looking around I concluded that this could be the case only if discourse included rubbery, wall-mounted dildos. Putting aside our thoughts of higher things, Neal and I got busy and tried out a few animations. Independently, I must add. And also in a masculine and totally hetro way.

Frankly, I didn’t know I had so many parts that were just so flexible!

Anyway, on with the review!

Those Greeks sure knew how to have fun. Intellectual discourse or the sexual intercourse?

Ancient Greek Temple – Eaton 147, 247
Design: 2 – It’s attractive, but not especially pretty.
Textures: 1 – None, unless you count the colorful sexballs. Frankly, flat-white doesn’t do it for me.
Sexiness: 3 – Ancient Greece is a bit sexy, I mean, who can’t resist a toga party with all its promise of spilled drinks and slipping cloth!
Functionality: 5 – This place had a ball for everything! Hell, I’m sure I could ask a potential partner to go cook me some eggs after, and there would be a ball for it somewhere. Excellent!

After a promising start we were unsure what else we would find. However, we were not to be disappointed. Just a short distance away in Bretton, Neal discovered a very pretty Japanese-themed box. A short investigation revealed that it was the domicile of Pros, and you could tell that their clients would be well catered for in this luxurious space. I joined Neal in the room and found him shackled, hanging upside down. “This innocuous-looking thing is called ‘Hanging Love Bird’”, Neal said, “I thought it was a bird-feeder”. Yes Neal, we are sure you are such an innocent young thing. Herbert the Norwegian Blue said “*Squawk!*” sarcastically.

I make use of a special device for looking at floor textures while Neal in the background wonders where he can buy his own Down-Under rack.

A brief look around revealed an odd arrangement of balls called “oral buffet”. Feeling peckish, Neal and I moved closer. “Apparently its self-serve. Just like Sizzlers”, said Neal, excited at the thought of the snack which would await him. He was sorely disappointed, however, when the buffet reveal itself to be just more gyrating.

Where’s the buffet?!

Japanese Room – Bretton 185, 24
Design: 4 – A very attractive build with some nice touches. Neal liked the obligatory Japanese Tsunami picture and also demanded I award extra points for having a Zen gravel garden right next to the ‘oral buffet’.
Textures: 4 – done well with many unique textures. Quite a pretty location in all regards.
Sexiness: 5 – “Japan is teh seks,” as Neal ejaculated.
Functionality: 4 – A good number of balls, and even balls just for hugging – should the pressures of the moment overcome you. Neal was obsessed with an empty “classical bonsai stand”, insisting that the hole in the bottom must provide some hidden function. I remain unconvinced.

The next location we found was a rather attractive dungeon. It had as many toys as one could wish for, although I swear I only tried them out to fix my crook back. What my companion was doing on that contraption I shall never know!

Forever the gentleman, Neal’s first thought was “There’s too many water noises. Makes me want to go pee-pees”.

Nobody says ‘pee-pees’, Neal.

I also quickly reminded him that this could be entirely deliberate, perhaps as a punishment to a naughty sub. Getting into the spirit of the location I tell him to go to the cage! Which he does, like the obedient dog he is. To show there’s no hard feelings I immediately join him in there, not wanting him to feel lonely. Once again, it was totally hetro and we talked about guy things like guns and beer.

Bad reporters! Go to your cage!

Ooh, that feels better!

Dungeon – Bretton 185,24
Design: 3 – The rather pretty waterfall distracted from the dungeony feel to this build. And it made Neal want to go pee-pees.
Textures: 4 – Great use of textures, some unique ones.
Sexiness: 4 – If your idea of fun is someone in plate-mail spanking you, this place is sexy as all hell.
Functionality: 4 – A great number of sex balls to try, though not much straight-up shagging. No hugs either – as far as I could see – which could be helpful if my… er.. someone’s… performance anxiety should return.

We continued our investigations and soon realized that we were actually in a stack of sex boxes, one spaced above the other. It seems this skybox business has become very professional! Regardless, our next discovery was a doozy – a full-blown classroom! I mean, who hasn’t had naughty teacher/student fantasies at some point in their life?

“Stop doing push ups Neal and get over here and help me – I think I’ve fallen on something”

Within moments of arriving, Neal pitched in with what he thought was useful commentary. “This one’s got got character,” he commented, “There’s even a bell on the wall”. Frankly, at this point I was unsure I wanted to continue a tour of sexboxes of Second Life with a guy who, in such a provocatively themed room, noticed the clocks first. Perhaps we should just tour sexy clock-towers and be done with it! I could see it now “Phwoar, look at the hands on that one!” and “I’ll only take 2 and a half minutes of your time, baby!”. Strange, strange man that Neal.

But anyway, this room had it all; a bad math-solution on the blackboard to ‘punish’ a student for, all kinds of bent-over poses and props and an apple on the desk. It was only missing the obligatory schoolgirl. I imagine that’s what the cold hard L$ are for. At least, for some people.

I also imagine that there won’t be any flight-paths scheduled near those class-room windows any time soon.

Classroom – Bretton 185, 24
Design: 4 – It’s clean and attractive. What more can I say?
Textures: 5 – Many unique and all well-applied.
Sexiness: 5 – Classrooms are sexy!
Functionality: 4 – A great array of poses – perhaps a few that are a bit too similar to one another. More variety please.

Happy with our discoveries we decided to venture further into the world of the skyboxes. And terrifyingly, we found more. It wasn’t long before we came across a very attractive build that doubled as a residence and sexy-skybox and what can only be described as ‘an art gallery’ for the owner’s furry conquests. After several minutes of browsing, Neal suddenly exclaimed “Wait a minute… All these animals are… having sex!”. “Yes”, I replied, surprised it had taken Neal that long to make that discovery. “Kinda mesmerizing isn’t it?,” Neal thought out loud. “What? Oh, yeah” I replied eventually. The sim must have been having some problems, because we were physically locked for several minutes in front of a revolving gallery of images – of what was presumably the owner, involved in various carnal activities. One shot, with participants uh… ‘eating’ from an ‘oral buffet’ made me think aloud “She looks bored”. “Yeah”, replied Neal. We both agreed that we too were bored but should wait at least another 10 minutes before checking if our avatars were able to move again. 15 minutes and countless full gallery-revolutions later we tore ourselves away from that build and headed on.

“Parrot, cover your eyes!” Some wild rapscallion furlates another rapscallion. Also featured: self-censorship humor.

Furry box
Design: 5 – A very attractive skybox
Textures: 4 – Simple, mostly basic colors, but where used, effective… and mesmerizing
Sexiness: 2 – Rather functional build, not terribly sexy.
Functionality: 3 – Simply not enough sex – or is that ‘yiff’ – balls to really be much use as a shag-pad.

Thanks for joining us on our first tour of the skyboxes of Second Life. One can’t help but wonder what David Bowman would say if 2001 were written today. Looking up, over the vast skies of Second Life, I can’t help but think it would be “Oh my god, it’s full of skyboxes”.

Pirate Cotton is an opinionated SL blogger (http://www.tinypirate.com) with an interest in gaming and Second Life culture. He is also co-builder of Dark Life – Second Life’s first MMORPG (recently featured front-page at secondlife.com) – and creator of the ‘Game Slave’ Wiki at http://wiki.tinypirate.com.