Decor shopping techniques for a hapless guy?

OK, I'm starting to think shopping in SL is even harder than in RL.

Today I wanted to buy an aquarium. I've seen plenty around. It shouldn't have been a problem. I found, however, that wading through the "new" classifieds is harder than it used to be and takes far longer -- almost like dial up web.

I eventually TP'd to a store and found a pretty cool tank, but stopped myself before buying it. How do I know it will fit along the wall I had planned for it? I couldn't really remember the size of the wall and there were no dimensions listed on the tank. I thought I'd measure the tank using a quickly rezzed block, but the land was set to no build.

I TP'd home to look at the wall again, or tried to, but found I couldn't in a timely fashion. Grrrr.

Then I began to worry that I might find an even better aquarium somewhere, so when I could TP again, I went to another store. After all those textures started filling up my cache, my hard drive was almost smoking and I was moving like a newb's first lag experience -- stuck in cement one moment , then halfway buried in the far wall the next.

So what is it people get out of shopping? I do finally have a nice aquarium, though it took the better part of the day. I think I could have built one in far less time. What am I doing wrong? Do I need my own version of Deep Blue to go shopping? And wouldn't it be nice if merchants provided dimensions on their product? You cannot gage just by looking because - well, you're not really there in the virtual world. I'm not complaining, just puzzled. How do you tell if something will work in size and color for your home?

I almost want to just hire someone (who has more fun at this than me) to fill my house up with stuff.

try Hoffman's for aquariums

I own a couple of theirs.

I am sure theres a lot of others though.

A sculpty aquarium with scuplty fish might be cool wonder is anyone makes those.

I recommend SLX for more efficient shopping. http://www.slexchange.com/

As much is I love the idea of SL being the next platform and all, it is far easier to shop on a website. Or you can use SLX to research what is available and narrow your choices and go in-world to look at the best or to make the actual purchase.

Enjoy your fishies!

that is what I do, shop slex then go to the store in world if I want a better look
that was how I found sylvia's scultpies hehe


as for an aquram, make your own

I used to shop quite a bit, then learned to make stuff
now I mainly window shop, seeing what is out there (more research than anything)

maybe that is what others are doing too, not shopping but, researching

Next time, try wearing the block - you'll look dumb, but you'll be able to use it to measure by.


What is your draw distance (edit>preferences>graphics) set at? When you're out shopping, better to set it low, 64 is good, so you don't load all kinds of unnecessary stuff.


I am sure you'll get plenty of interest if you decide to hire a professional shopper! Shopping is fun for some of us.

Houses look great when they are just filled up with furniture, plants, lights, pictures, etc. Many houses look like the owner just moved in. I expect cardboard boxes. I think the problem is mostly that houses are gigantic and they would need a massive amount of prims to really give them a nice feel or the owner would have to do a lot of shopping to find enough to fill it.

Why don't you take a copy of the wall in your home with you? The you could just attach it to yourself while you are at the store and standing next to the aquarium...

missed this comment earlier LOL

I have seriously considered renting out my time for services such as personal shopper

the only problem with that is one has to be sure that they know and understand the tastes of the other, AND unless the person paying, wants to go later and purchase all the items, things have to be either giftable, or transferable...

could get messy if a personal shopper buys something that the person paying, doesn't like...

how would it all be handled



edited to add
yeah!!! why do ppl make such HUGE houses in SL?
even the log house I am making I feel is too big sometimes, but at other times it fits just right.

Splash Aquatics is nice but really takes a while to load on older computers.
Make sure you turn down your settings in graphics and wait to move until everything is loaded by trying this ctrl shift 1 the screen will have tons of words pink,etc when its loaded it will shrink. turn it off by pressing same thing and keep eye on fps by ctrl shift 3 under basics if it drops under 5 things get really boinked, major freeze ups,etc.
The animations there though do lower fps too.
Any sim with lot of prims and scripts always make my computer suffer even with lowest settings.

This is correct. I have heard comments from a few people shopping for prefabs that my houses were too small. Considering the prim limits of the lots they are designed to fit on, they are probably too BIG. The problem is that unless you are good at buying low prim stuff, big houses on small lots are going to be mostly empty. That 80-prim bed will take up over 1/3 of your prim limit if you are on a 1024. Prim limits is the problem.

For people renting houses, if the houses are empty, they aren't renting in a place with big enough prim limits or are not willing to pay for a bigger limit, or they are not good at finding low prim stuff.

Supa Shang's Aquarium store. Might be Chang, not Shang. I got Sideways my crab there. They also have excellent scripted sea turtles and manta rays.

Yeah, search sucks.

EDIT: I guess that wasn't the question you asked. I dunno. When I see something I would like in my home, I check the creator, then go to their store. Been very happy with that method of filling my houses over the time I've been here.

How can search ever be good? Its not the search engine - its the people gaming the system.

If some place has a 10line keyword listing in the classified - well obviously they will show up on every classified search you make.

Poor Weston! *hands him a cookie*

I love shopping! Nika's shopping hints:

-- To measure something in a store, attach a 10m or 30m ruler to yourself and put your AV in a static pose (one of the modeling poses). If you don't have these things, IM me and I'll send them to you.

-- If you need to match colors, take a snapshot of your room and look at it as needed. This actually works better in SL than in RL! Note: take a pic of your land along when you go tree shopping. Some greens just don't go with other greens ... same thing with fountains etc. ....

-- If a store is laggy, navigate by sitting on things in the store - it's a lot faster than walking or flying.

-- TPing "home" nearly always works, even when TPs are brokenish. It is also handy to know the name of a very empty ocean sim ... TPing to these from very busy store sims works better even than going to my parcel on a class 5 generally idle sim.

-- Don't wear your AO. It'll just lag you.

Hi Weston...

I've spent a lot of hours in SL helping my bachelor friends shop and decorate their houses. I love it...if you want a shop buddy....IM me and I'd be more than happy to help ya out. (my buds keep telling me I should start a business in SL doing this, but it's just fun...if I help others, I wont blow all my own L's on more land and homes, hehe)

Great ideas here.

I never thought about actually wearing the measuring stick.

I had completely forgotten about SL Exchange somehow, and after reading these replies have used it to good effect for a couple of other items in my home. You still need to to go to the store and see the object if possible, but it cuts to the chase.

Remove my AO while shopping? In public? OK, maybe I can send a ruthed alt as a scout or something.

I think houses have to be big so your camera isn't stuck in a wall half the time. Normal sized buildings are very claustrophobic. They can look kind of sparse. My solution is to put up gigantic artwork and hope for the best.

I guess a personal shopper would be tricky. After all, for a lot of people it is supposed to be a creative outlet, myself included. I just know if I start building something I'll get all perfectionist and waste several days when someone else has already done a fine job at creating what I want. The trick is finding it.

Thanks all.

Thanks - I'll keep that in mind. I've only just about completed one room! I've got a couple of areas I'm not even sure what to do with. Little kitchen? Reading area? I dunno. Maybe just a little art gallery.

I just want to flesh out the house so I can get on with the main theme of the land 600 meters below. And it does look very empty - not to mention like default plywood in a lot of places. Haha!

That's what I've been doing lately as well And interestingly, I'm getting more compliments on the things I've built in our home (no one knows I built them until I say later) than some of the things I've purchased. I'm more amazed than anyone...who knew I could build??

We have an couple of aquariums at Temporal Gadgets that use a sculpty to give the fish a very cool swimming effect.

It's a large store though, so not sure what kind of shopping experience Weston might have we're in the process of adding an in-store search system which might make it better though