Tesla Vixen Desire!

Tesla Miles came out with her latest stilettos today, called Vixen Desire. Being the shoe ho that I am, I had to have these as soon as I saw the pic in the fashion feeds. These are easily Tesla's best shoes yet and not only reflect the amount of work she's put into them, but what she's learned since making her first shoes.

Visually, Vixen Desire shares a lot with Tesla's Natasha line of shoes. Vixen Desire's differences are subtle but significant. Most noticable when zoomed-in is the stitching along the topline of the shoe. It adds much-needed detail to the shoe's overall look. Like Natasha, Vixen Desire is only five prims per foot, which means they rez quickly.

The most important change is how Tesla achieved extra heel height without the use of prim feet. A script in the shoes plays a small animation that bends the avatar's feet downward slightly. Again, a subtle but significant difference. This means no need for sculpted prim feet, no need for color-matching, and no problems wearing hosiery with the shoes — all big advantages. It also means you can easily wear prim pant cuffs or ankle jewelry with the shoes.

This little bit of SL scripting wizardry comes with a couple of caveats, however. The foot animations have the potential to interfere with other animations. Depending on the other animations played on your avatar at the time, you may notice your feet tilted at an odd angle while wearing these shoes. In my testing, this happened very rarely. The foot animation never interfered with my animation overrider. If it interfered with my dances or furniture, I couldn't tell without looking closely or doing an A/B comparison.

The only time I saw mispositioned feet as a problem was when using a pose stand with high-priority static poses. (Fellow fashion bloggers, take note!) This problem was easily solved, though, by taking a copy of the foot animation from the shoes and playing it on top of the static pose in use. Doing so once again placed my feet in the correct position.

Overall, I really like these shoes! The quality is excellent and the scripting is (given SL's many technical limitations) well done. Pricing for Vixen Desire is L$500 per pair or L$3,500 for an 11-color fatpack. Permissions are copy/no-modify/no-transfer. Go get 'em!

UPDATE, October 13: Tesla has corrected the animation problem I described above! The foot animation now plays correctly with pose stands, furniture and dances. Tesla now also includes a separate copy of the animation with the shoes in case you need it. If you purchased the previous version of the shoes, just contact Tesla for a replacement.