A Very Tall Tale
Here you see the modest office of Mo-Tech Industries. Simple, nondescript, a tad boring, and set in the midst of Mainland clutter and lagginess.
But set your draw distance to 512 meters and look up. Oooooo, a tall column with another office at the top? We shall see.
Go inside and look around. Oh dear, also nondescript and boring. Nothing here but a small disc directly beneath an opening in the ceiling with a representation of a power beam beneath it, a la The Jetsons. Hmmmmm. Sit on the disc and a menu will appear with three choices. Store, Art Gallery, Sky Lounge. "Well, Sky Lounge must be that room up there I saw," you think to yourself so you click the button. Whooooooosh! Suddenly you are shooting up the tube at such a high velocity that your camera cannot keep up, and your image keeps jerking up and down as you rocket upward. A few seconds later you pop out of the tube into a glass-enclosed room and are deposited on the floor next to the opening. Welcome to Sky Lounge.
As you look around you see nothing but blankness, horizon, and clouds (if any). You zoom the camera out and discover you are on the bottom floor of a three-story structure, apparently at the very top of the tube. You look down and see nothing but the tube vanishing into infinity. "I set my draw distance to maximum," you think, "why can't I see anything." Then it occurs to you to look at the elevation reading on the toolbar and you discover you have just been deposited into a structure that is 4,024 meters above cyber sea-level(!). That's 13,202 feet up or ... 2.5 MILES high! Well now, the next time you want to have an in-world chat in private with no passers-by you will know where to go. :-D
The early beginings and gradual evolution of this not-so-humble accom- plishment are published in the blog of the creator, Moriash Moreau. In this post, dated Friday, December 30th, 2005, he says:
"As you may or may not know, no object can exist above 4096 meters (save for avatar attachments). Anything that exceeds this elevation is simply returned to its owner. To make matters worse, only physics-enabled objects (such as vehicles) can be moved above 768 meters. Any attempt to move a non-physical object (by editing it, for example) will result in its Z-coordinate being snapped to 768 meters.
But that doesn't stop items from being placed there indefinitely, provided they stay still. So, to make a long story short, I had to build everything at ground level, pack it all up, and place it at 4000 meters via script. Just because I seem to enjoy making things hard for myself, I whipped up a basic script to read a notecard full of names and locations, and rez the furniture from the SkyLounge building's inventory. Not strictly necessary, I suppose, but it makes things easier if I end up with more furniture than can be grabbed in a single selected set.
Anyway, I basically did all this for bragging rights (such that they are). And, in the wildly unlikely event that I decide to start doing the virtual horizontal tango, I'll have the most private skybox in SL. The view's not too shabby, either. The cone of white rings below everything is an homage to the classic Jetson's style hover effect. It seemed appropriate."
Looking around the Sky Lounge you discover the first floor is just that, a lounge. Ample seating and some entertainment by way of a copy of PLYWOOD comics is there (Moriash is also the creator of PLYWOOD: The Web Comic). There are two telescopes with seats attached, and when you sit on them they automatically turn toward the moon or the sun, whichever is present, and put you into mouselook mode to zoom in on the celestial body. The second floor is a food and beverage bar (sort of). Around the counters are jars of food pills, and clicking on them will get you a helping of some random nosh. There are also a couple of Nutrient Analyzer machines that will determine just what you need in your beverage to enhance your health, then deliver said beverage to you. The third floor is a small auditorium with podium.
Returning to the first floor and the shaft opening in the center you have two choices to descend again. On the railings are two balls with the instructions "Descend." Click one of these and things happen fast. You are thrown outside the building and sent plummeting toward the ground at even higher velocity than you were sent up. So fast, in fact, that your avatar begins to heat up and catch fire from the friction. Suddenly you strike the ground at high speed to the sound of a loud thump which raises a small cloud of dust, then immediately spring to your feet and look around as if nothing happened. All of this just takes a few seconds. The other way is more fun to me. Simply walk into the shaft opening and let yourself fall. At normal falling speed it takes a full minute and a half to fall all the way to the bottom.
When you reach the bottom you can use the elevator pad to go up and explore the Art Gallery and the Store as you wish. The gallery has no Picassos or Rembrandts, I'm afraid, but it does have four small floors of modest graphic art and sculpture. The store has a variety of amusing goodies scripted by Moriash Moreau. Among them a light bulb that appears above your head when you have a bright idea, a Ming vase that actually summons the image of Emperor Ming, a portrait of Marty Feldman with eyes that follow you around, and a wall decoration that makes a kaleidocopic image out of any texture you drop into it. There are freebies also available.
After travelling to the top one last time I decided to make a descent to the ground in a hot air balloon. At maximum speed for the vehicle it took about 40 minutes to reach the ground.
The Mo-Tech Tower is a landmark in Second Life and a tribute to the early builders and scripters who pushed the limits of the platform in their efforts to create unique content (or just do cool stuff!).
