Night riding with Rhiannon's Eirwin

Rideable horses are available within Second Life from a variety of sellers for anything from a couple of hundred linden dollars to several thousand for the feature rich, best ones. But there are other options as you can see from this lovely nighttime shot along the public highways of Fantasseria - it looks as beautiful as this all over the island when dusk falls.

Several of the free starter avatars in Second Life include horses, and one - Rhiannon - includes a female riding animation overrider (AO) that you can wear instead of the default AO that came with your avatar. To find Rhiannon you just select the Complete avatars button from the menu on the left of the screen - the one that shows the man and woman icon like those used to indicate male and female changing rooms or toilets. Rhiannon is a brunette wearing blue and you can just see her archery bow behind her shoulder. Click Select and all the inventory items associated with her avatar will appear in your My Inventory folder and your avatar will now be wearing her. If you want your usual avatar to go horse riding, rewear your desired avatar and clothes and then wear the riding AO and the object called Pet Horse Eirwin (Bento Viewer Needed) from Rhiannon.

The animation for Rhiannon is actually a side saddle one, so works best with long gowns and coats - like my floor length LiViD (Sanguinus Keep - 192, 71, 52) The Sorceress Winter Coat shown here.

If you have the most recent SL viewer app from Second Life your viewer is bento appropriate. Project Bento was a Linden Labs project to create an enhanced skeleton for Second Life avatars with increased attachment points and increased joints. Eirwin is a bento horse, so when you attach Eirwin to your avatar, your walking and running movements become trotting and galloping movements for Eirwin.

Note that bento horses like Eirwin don't have the ability to be rezzed independently of an avatar - you'd need an animesh horse to be able to do that. But if you'd rather not use the 30-40 LI that a rezzed animesh horse requires, then a bento horse may be more than sufficient for your needs.

♒ Aqua ♒