Otherworldly

Gos Boutique opened for members of the update group yesterday and somehow I was able to get in pretty quickly to grab demos. Once I had decided what I wanted, it took a bit longer to get back in to actually make the purchase, but I survived that too. What was much quicker and easier was definitely the setup of the new shoes I had bought; the new HUD system from Gos really is a quite striking feature.

I’ll get into that a bit more, but first the basics. I picked up the Grace Sandals in Bronze and I am wearing them with tone four of Adam n Eve’s latest skin, Siobhan. I am also wearing one of this week’s new hairs from Truth and once again the mesh jewellery from Zaara. The poses and furnishings are from Libertine.

I am not really that into heels in either SL or RL, I am more about boots, but I was intrigued by the new skin matching system developed by Gos and wanted to give it a try. The Grace Sandals are certainly a very gorgeous shoe with some amazing details, such as the fine stitching on the straps, and they come in some truly delectable colours. A perfect excuse to get naked, in other words. ;)

The skin matching system uses a web-based database that your HUD logs you into. You can then select from hundreds of pre-made matches and download a total of five of them to your HUD (and you can, of course, replace these whenever you want). Applying it to the shoe—or bare foot; there are two of those in the collection as well—is then a one-click step.

Even so, just five swatches on the HUD is a little slim for those of us who constantly switch tones, though it is pretty quick and easy to log into the database and change the swatches out.

If your skin isn’t matched, there is a manual matching system as well, plus you can suggest additions to the skin database. I have only tested the manual matching system briefly so far, though it does seem to work quite well. It doesn’t use direct RGB input, however, but allows you to adjust Hue, Saturation and Luminance either with -/+ buttons or by colour picking.

Personally, I like having the fall back of direct RGB input, so I would have preferred to see that included. Its handy for resetting a texture to untinted, for example. I also like having a way of getting an output of the current tint and there doesn’t seem to be one included.

The Gos shoes (and feet) do not use a tattoo layer for blending. Instead, each shoe/foot comes with an alpha sheath that handles the blending. It does mean everything gets setup with a single click, which is a big advantage over having to save a new tattoo layer for each skin/skin tone. On the other hand, it means that these shoes /feet are less forgiving if your leg size differs from the standard sizes. If the sheath is a little too small, it will clip your leg. If it is a little too big, you will get a slight alpha distortion around the leg. However, from most angles, it should work just fine unless the size difference is quite large.

Overall, I think you will definitely want to give these shoes (or perhaps the feet) a try. They are very well made, quite easy to setup and use and well priced for what they offer.

To finish off, I did compare the demo of the Gos bare foot with the bare foot from Slink that I have been using for some time. Both shapes are very nice, but the Slink shape might feel a touch more realistic. The texturing of the Slink foot is a little more photoreal as well, though what one prefers there is of course a matter of taste and on what skins one tends to wear; if you tend to more photoreal skins, the Gos foot may be a little too smooth to work well. Personally, I could see having both on hand, to use with different skins.