New release: Tropics and Grand Canyon sky environments

Over the last year I released two new environments: the Grand Canyon and Tropics environment. Up to now I only had versions to use at ground level, making use of Linden water. Today I release sky versions of both, to be used to surround any sky build.

The Topics sky landscape. The reflective waves are made of new animated materials. The beaches in front are made of the mesh beach system, ideal for use as a natural, solid & walkable surface on sky builds

The Grand Canyon sky landscape



The innovative part of these sky environments is the use of animated, reflective prim water. This water makes use of the new possibilities Materials have to offer. The water almost looks as good as Linden water, which is great news for people who want to have several natural environments stacked on top of each other above their land.

In order to see the reflective water, you have to enable the Advanced Lighting Model in the Graphics section of the Preferences of your viewer. Today, only the Linden Lab default viewer and the Beta Firestorm viewer are able to display materials. Soon other viewers will also be able to do so. What's good about the Advanced Lighting Model, is that it makes use of the latest technology modern graphics cards have to offer. Displaying them, even though they offer a much richer visual experience, does not slow down your graphics.

Activate the Advanced Lighting Model to see the reflective, animated water

Both environments will only be available in the Gold edition: they will be copyable, adjustable by HUD, won't obstruct sitting animations and allow removal of non-essential scripts after deploy. Both come in three sizes, ranging from 100x100m to 1000x1000m.

The new skybox environments are available in my in-world store and on the Marketplace. As usual, demos are available as well.

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