Tack Essentials : Hooves

Hooves are an important part of any pony's tack.

There are a large number of hooves now available within Second Life, with prices to match this variety.

Hooves often hold the pony sounds and animation override (AO).

The pony AO covers the pony walk and posture (ie, hands held correctly in front), and sounds include the happy clip-clop of pony hooves.

A good set of foot and hand hooves will cost upwards of L$400, so be sure to shop around. Many of the newer hooves also take advantage of the RLV.

The Morbid Play hooves can include an optional sound and AO HUD.

This costs a bit more, but the package is well worth a look.

Mesmerize Dungeon have recently started selling RLV-enabled pony hooves - the foot hooves costing L$650, and hand hooves, sold separately, costing another L$300.

The MD Pony Hooves feature a novel, and frustrating yet strangely compelling mandatory training period.

This heavily impairs your movements until all 4 levels of training are completed, gradually easing the longer you spend in the hooves.

Be warned, as climbing even the slightest hill in these will take forever - and result in much amusement as you keep falling on your rear.

Whilst you can set the strictness of the training, if you opt for these, take the time to enjoy your extended training, and select hard as the training level.

This takes about 4 hours for each of the 4 levels to complete.

My best advice is to not rush into buying the hooves, but to go around a few of the vendors, pricing them up and making a note of the features, and deciding which is the best for you and your requirements.

Remember, the less scripts or prims that make up an object, the less lag will affect you.

And ponies attract lag like flies are attracted to... well, you know.

If you plan to make sim crossings in tack, try to strip as many scripted and prim items as you can from your tack.

This also is good advice if you are trying to shave a precious 1/100th of a second of your times on slalom or other pony events.