It was exactly 100 years ago yesterday that the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes started in Paris. An exhibition that would essentially start a whole new style of design for, well just about everything. Back in the day, the style was named the "1925 style". Not much later, however, it became known as art déco.

There are special art déco exhibitions in various places in the real world to celebrate this anniversary. Dezeen has some more articles on art déco if you're interested.

But art déco also exists in virtual worlds. In this context, I have to give a big shout-out to @Luna Lunaria, the Queen of Art Déco in OpenSim, although she covers other architectural styles as well. She was featured in the Winter 2025 issue of Virtual Education Journal, its first issue that moved beyond Second Life.

I guess she is constantly standing in the line of "Never buy in OpenSim" fire for selling almost all her creations for money. But seriously, what she makes is certainly worth paying for because it even outshines most of what is offered in the Second Life Marketplace. And "outshines" has to be taken literally.

I mean, what kind of look do you associate with 3-D virtual worlds? I guess it's a cartoonish look with simplified avatars, maybe even with missing limbs, simple in-world structures and a rather flat look with almost or absolutely no textures and tinted surfaces instead. The kind of graphics that's guaranteed to give you 60fps on battery-powered, passively-cooled mobile hardware at high resolutions with no problems.

Both Second Life and OpenSim could look better than that when they were launched in the 2000s because they were never geared towards tiny mobile devices, but rather powerful desktop computers instead.

Luna makes good use of the graphical features available, probably even more than most commercial creators specialising in Second Life did for years. One example is Blinn-Phong, i.e. specular maps to define how shiny surfaces are and normal maps that simulate rough or bumpy surfaces or small details like rivet heads, gaps between bricks or seams between tiles.

Next to everything being textured in OpenSim makes it look a whole lot better than today's virtual worlds focusing on VR headsets. Textures like on old Second Life buildings with baked-on shadows, baked-on highlights and sometimes even baked-on spots of sunlight shining in through windows look even prettier at first glance, but they're geared towards users with underpowered computers and graphics settings at minimum. The more you can afford to have on from atmospheric shaders to the Advanced Lighting Model (both of which are permanently on in Firestorm 7) to shadows, they suddenly have their drawbacks.

On top of all this, Blinn-Phong makes OpenSim look even more spectacular. All of a sudden, for example, brick walls no longer look like smooth and dull surfaces with bricks painted on them. And shiny surfaces really start to shine, and they do so much better than with the previously available three pre-defined levels of shininess for the whole surface.

Luna Lunaria has made a whole lot of use of Blinn-Phong in her works, also and especially in her art déco creations. If you're in OpenSim already, but you're unfamiliar with her creations, I recommend you to go visit her Lunaria Emporium in @Lone Wolf's Wolf Territories Grid. Even if you don't intend to buy anything, you'll still have a lot of huge and spectacular buildings to look at. That said, they're much more spectacular on a computer that can profit from Firestorm 7's improvements than on a machine with on-board graphics that requires you to stick with Firestorm 6 and turn all the glitz off to have something faster than a slideshow.

In particular, walk all the way to the southwest. There you'll find the most spectacular art déco building on the whole Hypergrid and maybe in all virtual worlds combined: The Majestic, a massive cinema/club/ballroom/lounge complex that took four months to make, and that'd be the perfect entertainment centre-piece especially on an art déco-themed sim. In fact, the cinema is even functional when the Majestic is installed in the Wolf Territories. It's just a pity that nobody seems to have a purely art déco sim planned.

Here are a few more impressions for those of you who aren't in OpenSim: one, two, three, four, five, six. Here is a customised copy of the Majestic.

If something looks shiny in these pictures, it most likely isn't due to baked-on highlights, but due to the surfaces actually being shiny. Pictures really can't do it justice. And if something looks reflective, it isn't the old trick of putting mirrored copies of everything behind a transparent surface. It's an actual mirror.

And no, these aren't AI renderings. These are actual in-world pictures. This building really exists in-world.

But this most likely isn't even the end of the story. With OpenSim 0.9.3.0, Firestorm 7 and the Cool VL Viewer 1.32.2, physically-based rendering (PBR) was introduced. This isn't just bumpy and shiny. This is when the physical properties of real-life materials are being simulated. This is Cyberpunk 2077. This goes past "Wait, this isn't AI?" straight into "Wait, this isn't a photo?" territory if carried out well.

Luna has already started using PBR on more recent creations and upgrading existing content, including the first art déco items. By the way, she is among the very few creators (or "creators") in OpenSim who always add Blinn-Phong fallback textures for those who can't see PBR textures, and who'd see dull and featureless grey surfaces otherwise. If you've bought the old Blinn-Phong versions, you can get a PBR upgrade for free as far as I know.

I think it's only a matter of time until the Majestic is upgraded to PBR.

Oh, and speaking of art déco: I have a new place for my house. "Speaking of art déco" because it's art déco all right, albeit not as flashy as Luna's creations. It's a freebie made by the Arch-Duke of Art Déco in OpenSim, Aaack Aardvark, creator of the Arcadia product line and formerly keeper of the famous ArcadiaShop. Unfortunately, he has practically entirely retreated from OpenSim and closed his sims for health reasons, and his branch shop at Wright Plaza doesn't nearly offer all his creations. For example, his Beach House which I live in can only be obtained by asking around who still has it, as can be various other art déco sets made by him. But if it's art déco, I have it, and I'll keep it.

Anyway, the sim where I had my old home has been moved to brand-new OliGrid which was launched by an OSgrid resident after OSgrid closed down to clear and overhaul its asset server. (I'm thankful for Fernando bringing Festa 24H back to OSgrid, by the way!)

Unlike my brother @Jupiter Rowland whose home and two shops were relocated to the Wolf Territories, and who made an avatar there to at least be able to keep the two shops alive, I didn't want to move to yet another grid. In fact, OSgrid works well enough now that we've both revived our avatars there, and Jupiter mainly keeps his Wolf Territories avatar for local purposes, especially shop-keeping.

Also, unlike Jupiter, I was lucky to find that my old home existed in two places at the same time. The copy in OSgrid has not been shut down yet, but soon it will be. As I didn't want to reside in a sandbox where I couldn't even set my home point, I needed a replacement. During the Sunday evening event where my old home was moved (I had my house and everything around it removed in that new location), the sim owner established contact between me and someone in OSgrid who could provide me with free land for my house.

I got that land the same night. And yesterday, I managed to set up my house in its final position and build the raised platform underneath it, including the surrounding walls and the stairs and ramps that lead up to it. In fact, the OSSL scripts in my house work even better there than in the old place. And I actually own the land that my house is on, and I can configure it according to my needs and preferences. For example, I can rename it (and I already have), I can define the access rules, and I can choose the music stream.

Jupiter, who is still having a little trouble with finding a new place to live, will probably get his own room in my house temporarily. I've got enough land for him to put up his own house, but he has yet to find a good house.

Extra convenience: I no longer have to teleport to get the old but still useful layer clothes made by Linda Kellie. After all, I still have to replenish my virtual wardrobe. My new living-place is on a sim based on her Boardwalk OAR, complete with a beachwear shop and a fully stocked general clothing shop. It's only the costumes that I'll have to teleport for now.

#SecondLife #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OSgrid #WolfTerritories #WolfTerritoriesGrid #WolfGrid #WTGrid #OliGrid #ArtDeco