The Alphaville Herald

Gravity Space Station Returns

by Alphaville Herald on 28/08/05 at 12:20 am

Gravity Space Station was one of the most popular clubs to ever grace the face of SecondLife when it first opened last November, and stayed open for approximately 9 weeks. Yesterday, it was re-opened in Nyna Slate’s Dragon Moon sim for a 3 day birthday bash for the Bedazzle team. Many know Bedazzle as the group that first brought Sim Horror to a reality last Halloween, then Gravity Space Station, and most recently, the Unreal: SL/Chinatown project. They are also currently working on a full-length western machinema movie filmed wholly in SecondLife that’s due out later this year entitled “Golden Bells and Silver Spurs,” a trailer of which has been released, and looks promising. For a three day weekend, they (at least) slowed production for this special birthday extravaganza. I was excited to get to be at the re-opening last night, along with some awesome DJs and an amazing number of raffles!

The space station is perhaps one of SecondLife’s most amazing builds ever, especially for a club. Hovering over 200 meters above the Dragon Moon telehub, it’s quite small, but it’s amazing how many people can dance comfortably in such a small area, even with the huge rotating light system! Local lighting even enhances the look of the club even further. Yes, it is quite laggy, but the look is amazing (all the pictures contained in this article use local lighting, just to give you an idea).

A view of part of the space station

The party opened up at 7 PM last night with Jason Spinnaker DJing, and kicked off with a “space trivia” contest, at which Govindira Galatea proved to be quite a driving force. The raffles were plentiful, and it was announced that over the three evenings of parties this weekend, over L$150,000 worth of prizes would be given away! Both Nyna Slate and Demian Caldera had simultaneous raffle balls going in order to distribute the prizes in such a short amount of time.

The entire reason that Gravity Space Station is back up in orbit – and our old buddy MAX

Later on in the evening at 9 PM, DNA Prototype took over the airwaves and held a “message t-shirt” contest. Unfortunately, because of the excessive lag, it was extremely hard to get any t-shirts to rez, let alone where they could be read! The party continued late into the night, with the large raffle prize being a lighting system by DNA worth L$8500, won by Maelstrom Baphomet!

Nyna Slate, the owner of Dragon Moon

At times, the party at the Gravity Space Station seemed like a bit of a meeting of the ever-notorious FIC, but it didn’t last too long when it did. Cameo appearances were made during the evening by si Money, Mistress Midnight, Torrid Midnight, and even everyone’s favorite winged Aimee Weber. Other appearances were made by the so-called “skin goddess” Govindira Galatea, and Foxy Xevious and Jimmy Thompson, the “brains behind Bedazzle.”

Foxy Xevious and Jimmy Thompson, the brains behind Bedazzle

I didn’t expect to keep a quote list of the night, but after seeing the following quote from si Money when he first landed, I couldn’t resist. “I can just hear my gpu crying.” Though the Gravity Space Station is a wonderful build, it is quite taxing on the computer. I was personally running between .7 and 1.7 frames per second the entire night with a maximum of 41 people in the sim. Even tonight with local lighting off, I’ve only run at 3.1 FPS with a maximum of 49 people in the sim. Yes, clubs in SecondLife are laggy as a whole, but this one takes it to the extreme. It’s a gorgeous build, but for maximum enjoyment, should be seen with no one else in the sim at that point and with local lighting on.

The “skin goddess” Govindira Galatea in the foreground, and yours truly hard at work in the background

The Gravity Space Station is a club that will long remain in the hearts and minds of serious clubbers in SecondLife. I’d go so far as to call it the most memorable club that has ever been in SL, but not the most influential (either Phantasie Isle or Club Elite would take that honor). The ambiance of the lighting system and the environment, complete with the space view of the Earth and MAX the astronaut creates an awesome atmosphere that cannot be duplicated. It’s a shame that this landmark will not persist, as well as there not being any plans at the current time to bring it back.