Monday 22 October 2007

Race and Relax with Deutsche Post

While pottering around the archipelago of German islands that include Dresden Gallery (see earlier posts), I came across a pair of sims belonging to Deutsche Post, the German postal service. As seems par for the course these days, Deutsche Post have a special website tied in with their Second Life presence. Unfortunately, this is only available in German, and I have learned from bitter experience not to put much faith in language translations tools, which tend to convert perfectly straightforward paragraphs into bizarre works of magical realism. As a result there is not a lot I can tell you about their view of the build.

The two sims making up the Deutsche Post island serve different functions. The Post Island sim houses a tall building that, from the outside, appears to be nothing more than a boring office block. However, inside is a different story. There is little stuffiness about it, as each floor is given over to sculpture parks, chill zones and (bizarrely) an Ancient Egyptian scene. A nice idea is to have the atrium* space open up all the way up to the top of the building, so it is possible to move between floors without having to muck about with teleports and lifts. There seems to be a great deal of information on this sim about the company and its activities. Outside, large abstract black patches on the ground mark out the company logo, which can be seen plainly on a "map view."



The second sim, Picassos Island, is for fun. It consists of a tortuous racing track that takes in all manner of terrain, from desert and beach, up to icy, foggy mountain-tops, with the track looping back and under itself to squeeze the most out of the land area available. At the start area you can rez a sporty little number, then personalise it in a number of ways before taking it out on the track. I still can't get to grips with cars in SL. I just can't find the right way to drive the damn things. So for me, this proved a wasted effort. However, I did see others razzing around the track with relative ease, from which I would conclude the problem lies with me. Ho hum.

I think I just missed - by a week or so - the actual Racing Cup. However, given my comments above, I think any involvement on my part would have been short lived in any case.



The build across the 2 sims is solid and professional, rather than breathtaking. But then not every site can be a gem! However, if you are a whizz in SL vehicles, you may well enjoy the challenge of this race track.

*Apologies to any real architccts out there, who may be shrieking in horror at my abuse of architectural terms!

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