RR highbinder

  Well, I'm somewhat back, and going to try and get into the habit of writing again. The formatting may be a bit different to before, but.. eh. We'll go with it for now.

  Anyway! New armbinder from RR, dubbed the highbinder due to its longer length, which of course allows more tightness.

Review info

Highbinder was purchased from own pocket
Reviewed after first update, which fixes some rigged straps issues 

Whats in the box

  Inside the box you'll find three attachments, The Highbinder itself, and two sets of straps, the Front X Straps and the Belly Strap. You'll also find 6 poses inside, allowing you to bend forwards at 45 or 90 degrees, with three different stances for the legs.. Together, Parted and Spread. These can be used freely with anything, and work well for Strapaddos. (Which are also good for spanking, or anything else you may wish to do to  rear forced up and helpless by bondage!)

  You'll also find four textures. These are included so that if you try to alter a texture, and mess up, you have a replacement you can drop back in to fix it back to normal. There is an alpha, as well as a maitreya autohider, so if you use that mesh body, you can just use this to adjust what parts of the arms are visible instead of having to do it manually. Otherwise you'll just find the usual, a Readme on hwo to use your new binder, and a landmark for the store.

Appearance

   First and foremost, you should turn on advanced lighting system. Don't worry, you can disable shadows in most viewers via a dropdown menu. this kills most of the performance hits you may take, while retaining the materials effects.

  Contrary to what certain people may think, this armbinder is quite the new product. Compared to the old RR one, its longer, smoother, includes far more variety in its appearance, more straps, the pattern system from the RR harness and Deluxe gag, and is, y'know, mesh. This of course allows for much easier fitting, albeit it still annoying at times.

  It uses the same retexturing/appearance adjusting system that the recent RR devices do, allowing you to adjust specific sections and surfaces. Sections are entire areas, while surfaces are specific little bits, like the sides of straps. You can also add a verity of patterns, from things such as cowprint, to text, to symbols. There's four pages of these to choose from. And of course, you can adjust the tint.

  You also have materials. There are nine included in the menu, specifically Rubber, PVC, Latex, Leather, Patent Leather, Rough Leather, Jeans (denim), Cordura (some military fabric) and Spandex. Without materials enabled (see above), you won't be able to appreciate these properly. All in all, they are all pretty nice. There's two pages of Presets included for good measure, handy if you have a specific look in mind, like classic black leather, and want to get the whole binder done up quickly.

  There's two primary ways for the armbinder to be applied, with two higher settings one ach that add more straps. Plain, which is the (very) tightly laced up armbinder by itself, while tight slots in some built in straps to further secure it. From there you can apply Chest Straps, or escalate to strapping the entire torso to the binder. All of these of course use the RR anim hud, allowing you to angle your arms further or closer to your body.. and are key to the strappado poses mentioned earlier.

  Perhaps one of the most handy things is a new plugin called Mirror. It effectively mirrors the straps on one side to the other.. So you can adjust just the left sides of the straps to fit perfectly, then use this plugin to automatically adjust the straps squeezing you on the right to match,, or vice versa.

  Added in the first update, for those that bought before it was put up, adds a BreastSize plugin, which adjust the positions of some of the rigged straps that could be outright impossible to fit the rest of the straps to correctly without clipping beforehand, get the update if you have that issue. 

  Thoughts - I really like this binders looks, there's very few good armbinders in SL, I can name maybe two others off the top of my head, and one of them is also Marines. If I wanted to have stuff added? I think a style hud would be really good, rather than a menu.. And maybe add an even more severe strappado pose! Close enough to use a short leash to keep the head in place as well.


Function

  As this is the first review in a long time for RR gear, I'll be going somewhat indepth into each menu.

  You choose poses via the top six buttons of the primary menu. Theres no extras in the More.. menu this time. from there you get the usual Lock, Last Plug and Take/Return keys options you should be used to by now, if you've used any RR product, with the tools, plugins and more.. menu beneath that.

  Tools contains Save and load. Hitting save will take your stats (best time, total time, etc) and save them for you, letting you put them into a notecard that you can then put into a replacement binder, say due to an update, were you then hit load ad get all your stats back. You'll also find the Reset button here, a sadly important one with the nature of SLs key grabbers at times. Further down you'll fine a toggle for Male settings, which adjusts some of the messages the armbinder sends, and verbose, which will turn on/off the binders ability to use local chat. The ever important Update button is here as well.

   Next on the list is the Plugins menu. You'll find a lot of familiar ones in here, the Realkey of course (set the restraint password, get a key, set the key password to the same as your restraint, give the key to someone you trust, and you're home free. Unless they use it to bind you tighter, always a risk!). Then there's Outfit, which uses RLV folders to add, remove, or outright deny the use of certain things within them. It also has a devious unshare option, that doesn't allow the person to wear anything outside of the RLV folder. The RL time menu is here as well, useful when you want someone locked until a certain day, rather than setting a huge timelock and hoping they spent enough time logged in to get loose.

  Control follows that, which lets you put a variety of RLV restrictions on people (No IM block though, which is good. And logical.) Give Keys allows you to hand them to someone, or throw them away altogether, which is quite risky, as it then restricts the plugins menu nearly completely, and no one else can access it without a realkey. Its entirely possibly to completely trap yourself in the restraint by disabling the Realkey plugin, then throwing away the keys. If you dot hat, and lock it.. its not coming off without a reset.

  The Leash  is as simple as ever, and also allows you to anchor it to other restraints, say the vixen ankle cuffs, to further hobble you, or even to ones worn by other captives. Make a slave train! You can also get a couple of tools, a leash holder, and a leash anywhere HUD object. With this, while holding the leash, you can focus on a prim (alt+ left click), then click the button on your hud to leash the sub to that prim, regardless of what it is. Bed frame? Drainpipe? A galloping horse? Go for it.


  The next row starts with Anim which is effectively the RR anim hud in menu form, which your captor can use. It has one advantage over the anim hud, in that if you know the pose in advance, you can go straight to it without flicking through others, but I'd generally recommend you use the Hud instead. Allow follows that, which is a simple one. In here, you can set it so that if the captive is IM or TP blocked, you can bypass it.

  The Autolock plugin is there of course, were you can set up macros to well, lock the restraint holder up tight after a period of time. You can do a lot of customisation here, as well as have it only countdown when the person is bound, or online.

  The next two are already covered above, HighBinderTex and Mirror, as is BreastSize on the row below. After that is Vulnerable, a newer plugin. It lets your keyholder give permissions to people to do certain things, specifically strip, put on outfits (in RLV folders), leash and forcesit the captive. If the captive is already on a piece of furniture, the latter two are unavailable. The wearer has to agree to this of course, and can block people who push their luck.

  Wear allows the locking of specific body areas for clothing. If an option is turned off, the person cannot use wear to put something on that slow. AutoAlpha finally appears, and has an extra use if you use the Maitreya body. if you put the autohider/alpha mentioned in the Box Contents section in an RLV folder, path the autoalpha plugin to it, and let it do its job, then when you get bound, you won't need to do a thing to stop your arms clipping. There's also unwear which does the same thing, except prevents you taking things off of the slots.

  Sit is one of the last plugins in the menu. Its effectively forcesit, and can also disable standing back up. Touch is also a fun one. You can have it do a blanket touch lock over all the restraint options (plain, tight, etc), or specific ones, with each touch option its own thing. Marines gear tends to lack an expose option, Vulnerable is the closet thing, so for those that want to leave their keys hanging, but have no way to get at them, get the armbinder locked on, leave the keys, then turn off touchself via this menu, You won't be able to get at any of your gear this way though, so make sure you're careful.

  Back in the main menu, we only have More left. In here you have the usual stuff like AutoRef (autorefresh, keeps the arm bound anim playing I believe), some quick timer options, and the Timer itself. Nothing to really go into here. You have the specific times (+1, +10, etc), the variable times (+30m-2h, 2h-6h, etc), the option to disable the timer, and also to hide it.

  Thoughts - I don't have too much to say here, its standard RR. There's a few changes since my last review, like the vulnerable plugin, some updates to older ones, etc. My biggest gripes are the layout of the restraint options, but that's more for ones that exceed 6, a lot of people I encounter don't realise the pretty mummy and such have a couple extra options in the more menu, but that's irrelevant here, and the fact that you can't go back to the plugins menu itself from a plugin, you have to go back to the main menu first, but that's just a quality of life thing.


The thoughts of S
 
  The latest release of the High Binder shows that Marine Kelly is still pushing the bar! The new binder is not simply an update or redesign of the previous RR Armbinder. It is a new design with new features. Being a lover of armbinders I was very pleased at this, and the added strap and binding options are very nice! The design is very well done mesh, but what really struck me is that this is the first large size Mesh restraint that really tries to takes into account the need to be able to adjust it to fit individual avatars, as opposed to a "one-size fits everyone poorly" approach we have seen until now, forcing players to alter their avatars to make the item fit. I'd love to see Marine step back and revisit some of her earlier releases, like the Pretty Mummy, applying this same design philosophy

  I like the expanded selection of material textures in the high High Binder. The new binder to uses the same style menu system as her other products, so while still in need for a more user friendly design, people already familiar with RR products shouldn't have any problems.


In closing

  Its 700 linden, its easy to fit now that we have the breastsize plugin, its well made.. Menus may seem a little clustered, but anyone whos used RR gear will be used to that layout by now I imagine. I can find little fault with it really, I mean, it does mostly everything I wanted it to, and does it well.

Would I buy it? - Yes

Can be bought in world from Marines store at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pak/76/61/105 or from the little shop of kink at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lineside/102/146/77

pictures used show black latex in the Bend_90_tight pose, with RR anim hud used to maximize the strappado, blue leather from behind, and red Spandex in Bend_45_spread, with all the straps on. Additional pics can be found at aria-warden.deviantart.com

RR Pretty Mummy

Many of you who actually know me, know my love for customisable restraints, mummification, tape and latex. And then Marine makes this. Be prepared for a LONG read, this may be the single most customisable restraint in SL.

Appearance

  Where to begin? There are four materials in here, latex, shrink wrap, tape and bandage. And these can be made transparent, thanks to good design and fitted mesh. There are alphas included for those that need them, though naturally you won't be able to use transparent with them. There are four main pieces that must be worn, the rest can be any of the materials above.. mixed up as well. You can also do fancy things, like make the bandage wrap appear to be nylon with some transparency and colour changes.

  They all have their own little quirks as well, the base bandage for example has a little bow just under the neck when your torso is snugly wrapped. The shrink wrap appears stretched, while the latex is perfectly smooth and seamless, sprayed on. They also have style menus, allowing for various changes to the restraint, such as uncovering the breasts or hands.

  Not all of it is rigged, so you may need to make some adjustments. They for the most part seem easier than the siren ropes however, which many will be glad to hear. You can also toggle between rigged breasts wrappings and unrigged, for if you use tangos or the like.

  In terms of poses.. You have eight for the upper body, and another eight for the lower. Pet, a leg based on, wil force your arms into Pony no matter what they may of been in originally.. and forces you to hobble along on elbows and knees, something SL hasn't had many options for in the past.

 Many of the poses have a load of extra options in the Style menu, letting you change, for example, the elbow only pose to be a full wrap around your upper arms, 1 strip. 2 strips or 3 strips. Elbows Only, Arms Tight and Pony have 4 extra styles, While the other options do not for the arms.

 Legs wise, you have Five styles for the hobble option (including a dress that can be worn without other bonds), tight, mummy, lie and mummy lie have four, Hogtie has six, frogtie and pet seven.

  The gag comes next, and is quite similar to the RR tape gag, though the Total is a lot stricter this time, with a full wrap around. They are also all one solid prim, so resizing one, even via edit linked, resizes them all, with the exception of the stuffing, which you can of course make bigger, push deeper, or both! You can even wrap the ears, complete with extra restrictions. Throw in the blindfold, and your head will be so snugly wrapped..

  The blindfold has a handy option that lets you cover the top of your head with it as well, for that full all over Mummy look.

 Of all the parts that will take you time to fit, expect the head to be the longest. Getting all of the prims to sit flush with each other perfectly can be quite difficult.

 There's also a pair of nipple pasties, and a crotch covering for good measure, both of unrigged mesh. You can also, if you tie without binding, get a dress like outfit, which is quite nice. Casual minidress.. turned into full out rubber cocoon. What more could you want?

 The biggest issue with all this, due to an SL limitation, all the materials are in separate boxes, and their own prim sets. Meaning once one is fitted, you need to refit all the others. Marine does have an option to make this a lot less hassle, covered below, but you may find some fine tuning is still needed.

 Due to SLs terrible wireskeleton, you may experience a few issues with the fitted mesh, especially on areas such as the breasts. Its unfortunate, but not something that can be fixed without a whole new avatar skeleton been made by SL.

Function

 The top two rows are always related to the binding. All the poses are here, the strictness of the gag and blindfold, etc. In the case of the arms and legs, two more poses are also in the More.. menu.
 
 Arms

  The six bondage poses occupy the top, then you have Untie, Last Plug, which is a shortcut to the last plugin you selected, Loosen/Tighten, when loosened, anyone can access the menu, while tightened they have to do a minigame to try and get in. Think expose and steal keys. You then have Tools, or Special, depending on whether or not you are bound. Tools lets you save, load and reset the restraint, or change it to a Male setting if you happen to be of that persuasion.

 In the Special submenu, you'll find Block, which stops the sub interacting with the environment, Mouselook to force them into first person, Autoref, which is auto refresh, helps to keep your poses from breaking. /77 allows you to turn on menu access via that channel. Alarm On/Off will turn on the domme alert should you cheat around the restraint in some way. Last plug appears again, as does Verbose, which if off, doesn't send messages to local chat. You can also find the Timer.. menu in here, as well as the Plugins button and Main to take you back to the menu.

  Timer.. Will take you to a timelock menu with a variety of options. You can hide the timer from others, and turn it off here of course. Whats more curious is how its down. Used by Marine before, instead of a preset option, you have a range per button, I.E 2h-6h, which will add anywhere from 2 hours to 6 hours to the captives timer. You do have standard options like +10mn as well, but its nice to see those other ones still around.

  Plugins.. has 3 pages for the Arms section of the restraint. The first is Control.. which has a ton of RLV related restrictions you can activate or deactivate. The follow up is Cover Hands.. which allows you to wrap the hands.Hitting wrap will apply all touch restrictions, if you then select one of the three other options in there, you'll remove that restriction. Keep touch self active if you don't want to get stuck.

  MummyTex comes next. In here you can select the Section to edit, a surface to also edit and the opacity and tint. Anim follows that, which allows you to setup and adjust all the animations.. or you can use the HUD for a much smoother, easier experience. Allow lets the person who enters it to make themselves exempt from IM or TP blocks. I.E the domme restricts IMs and TP for the captive, but also turns the exempt on for themselves. They will be abel to TP or IM the sub, but no one else will be able to.. Unless also exempt from a previous session.

 Marines usual Autolock follows that, with Style on the second page. There's another Touch restrictions menu next, separate from the hand wrappings. Unwear.. which lets you take their clothes or attachments off if you so wish, which Outfit lets you adjust what they have on, what they are allowed and not allowed to wear, etc, all done via RLV folders.

 RL time lets you change the timer to use a constant timer, even when logged out, as opposed to the standard one that runs down only when the sub is in world. Sit.. is a force sit option, with unsit and No stand options as well. Lastly is Wear, which lets you decide where the sub can wear clothing, and where they can not. (I.E no tops, but underwear allowed)

That about covers the arms..

 Legs

 To save space I'll only cover those options that Arms don't have.

 In Plugins.. You'll find a wriggle menu, to allow you to try and get into another pose. Then there's Cover Feet. This has.. a lot of options, regarding various heels you may have. Its actually a really nice system, allowing the wrapped to go over the heels without clipping. It has options specifically for SLink heels. You can have it wrap all the way to the toes, just over the ankles, or half way down your feet, with or without heels on.


 Gag

The gag works quite a bit differently to the arms, as you might expect. The gag levels make the gag much stricter, in both appearance and function. The max silences you, while the one just below makes you Mmmmph, the other two garble you to various degrees.

 Plugins has some differences again. The Gag RLV menu under it has a lot of options for punishing people who try to cheat, and a very handy option that stops the keyholder blocking your IMs if you dislike that kind of thing. It also has the Wriggle menu that arms lacks, allowing you to adjust your gag. Cover Ears is also here, which allows you to deny them local chat and IM hearing.. Lot of IM restrictions in this kit.

 Very Funny.. Is also in here, which allows you to write on the gag to various degrees, or put an Anime like emote face on it. An example Marine gave was to wrap the person head to toe, with hair free. Colour some black, the legs and head flesh colour, then apply a face with a blank expression.. Anyone watching from a distance would be unable to tell it was a real person. Very handy RP options there.

 Blindfold

  Lastly we have the blindfold. It has Six options for vision blurring, however if you hit just Tie, you'll get a faux blindfold as well.It also contains the all important Shape plugins. This will, when used, save the current size, rotation and position of all the unrigged prims for all parts. You can then undo say, the bandages, and put on the nylons, then load, to save time. You may need to do some minor adjustments, but should save a lot of work.

 My thoughts

 For the most part? I love it. It has a few issues, such as the Shape plugin not woking right for me, and an issue with the SL skeleton causing some odd ridges in the mesh, particularly on the breasts.

 But I love it still. It has so many options that SL bondage has lacked for so long, and the sheer variety of poses, looks and adjustablility this thing has cannot be overlooked. We even got transparent mummification as a possibility at last!

 The price is 1250, I personally say thats worth it for the sheer volume inside.
 

RF - Armbinder

RF has released a new armbinder, and its quite an interesting one.

Appearance

 First thing worth noting, Katie has included a new Style HUD. Its a fairly simple one, but works well. Can select each texture/colour combo for each piece without the need to menu dive. Also includes the RGB grid that so many use these days that I still say is the best, so glad more stores are using it. Currently however it does NOT have access to the Others set of textures, which include some fun ones, like zebra stripes, tartan, etc.

 Onto the armbinder itself. Its actually really quite nice. About elbow length as opposed to the more common mid-upper arm design we see in SL. While the textures are Katie's norm, they seem to fit the armbinder better than most of gear, I'd say this things textured very well. It includes an optional chest harness and crotch strap as well, for added security. The crotch strap seems especially evil. A belt around your waist, then the crotch piece itself going down and being attached to the armbinders ring, meaning you yank on your restraint.. You get the idea

 You can also hide the handsack. This does NOT rez your hands back however, and instead adds a pair of mesh hands instead, which can be recoloured to match your skin of course, and the fingernails can be done separately as well. You can even recolour the hands black (or colour of your choice) with the RGB grid and add shine to make seem somewhat latexy.

 It has Katies normal textures, 10 latex, 10 leather, 10 fingernails, 5 preset skin and 9 Others (accessed the old fashioned way via the style menu in the restraint). Its unrigged mesh, so easy to manually resize, or use the plugin in the Plugins menu. 39 sub anims this time.

Function

 The usual warning, do not lock it without taking the key first unless you want to be helpless

 To be honest, its pretty much the Transport jacket again with some small differences. First menu is Style again, second is leashing, which has an additional option of letting you Leash to the wrists, or to the front (if harness is on). Plugins includes a resizer, though its easy to fit this manually if you know how to edit prims to any extent.

 Sub anims is next, the timelock/timebound system following that. In the Settings menu you can adjust whether or not the harness appears when you aren't restrained.. Keys is the same as ever. Restraints has a few extras. You can Hide/show the crotch strap, the harness and the handsack here. It uses the Tight/Tighter/Tightest system again, each one adding more touch restrictions. Last is unlock. I do not need to explain that..

Scores

 Quality -   It looks good. Different enough to others to make to add to the appeal - 9/10
 Function - The usual from RF, works well, some little extras. style HUD is very nice to see - 8/10
 Price - 500. I think that's cheaper than others on the market? Don't quote me on that.

Amelie Barbour - Mesh Monosleeve

Another mesh product from Amelie Barbour and I think the first mesh armbinder style product.


Quality

Its pretty nice. Shiny, plenty of colours.. Not overly tight on my avatar, but thats a known issue and apparently is in the process of been fixed. It has alot of options for recolouring, extra straps that can be added, and a collar as well for more security. It all looks good. It also has a tightness adjuster, but that can lead to some.. Odd results.

It also has an a built in AO that occasionally makes you flex your arms against it, quite nice. I added a pic of it mid flex.

Function

Like all of her mesh toys, it has a simple lock system. Anyone or Single Key. If you use single key you can lock and unlock yourself safely, on Anyone? You need help to get out.

The options when a mode is chosen are simple. Lace up locks it on. When you go into the locked menu you get Free and Don't free. Free does the obvious and unlaces it, Don't Free sends a message in local about how the captive Is not getting free this time.

Otherwise there is Appearance and Tightness. Appearance also lets you save and load styles that you like, which is always nice. When not laced up there is also Leave Be, which just closes the menu.

On the lack of timer. I spoke with Amelie and it looks like there are plans to add timers to her gear in the works.. Which means I'll need to revise my reviews to be up-to-date.

So, instyead of complaining abotu lack of timer as usual, instead I'll complain abotu lack of a hide option! Much easier to effectively RP kidnap if you can wear hidden toys.

Scores

Quality - It looks pretty nice, not overly tight on me, but would fit the more usual SL shapes easily. - 8/10
Function - As usual her gear doesn;t have many options, but it does what it does well. Addition of a timer will help a lot. - 7/10
Price - 795. Perhaps a tad high for a lot of budgets - 6/10

RF Armbinder

Here we go, something from RF again.

Quality

It looks pretty good. Quite shiny, quite tight.. A devil to fit properly though. I think I spent more time resizing the prims to fit me than I've done tied up in it. I also had to use an alpha to stop my arms clipping no matter what size I made it.. How on earth did we manage before alphas?

It has an optional belly strap/harness, a very nice addition. Pins the arms to the body more securely, looks nice and snug and is always a nice piece to add to any bondage. It has a few differant appearaces. Red Velvet, denim, etc. Straps adjustabled seperatly for good measure.


Function

Has some of Katies plugins, such as Keep Away and Invisi-cage. has her ice keys as well (Sort of a self imposed tiomelock. Gives the person a temporary set of keys that melt after a preset amount of hours.) Theres the good old time, a built in relay and the typical RLV menu stuff, as well as a leash of course.

Theres an escape mini-game, and.. That seems to be all really. Theres teh other usual stuff, style change, lock, etc which really don't need me to go into detail about..

Scores

Quality - a nice look, pain to fit. Needs an alpha in the box. 7/10
Function - It does what an armbinder does, has soem nice plugins, etc - 7/10
Price -600 Linden.. Same as the RR one, which I am sorry to say is better value. - 5/10
Average - 6.5

RealRestraint Armbinder

Probably the best armbinder in SL (sorry Katie at RF) in terms of apperance and function. Lets get it reviewed.



To start, it looks great. Go in close and you cna make out every stitch in the leather, the buckles and studs, it all looks very good. It has 6 differant looks and binding types. The first 3 are more classic armbinders. The first is a sort of armsack that puits you in reverse prayer, the second is classic lace up, while the third is laceup with extra straps to ensure theres no chance of escape.

The second set of options are more.. Strict. The first is the armsack again, only this time it covers the shoulders as well, leaving your arms and hands completely trapped. The second is a smooth binder covering your shoulders down to your hands, no laces, nos traps, just one solid piece of leather. The final is similar, but with straps to make sure its nice and snug.

In terms of function, it carries many of the expected RR plugins. Leash, realkey, colour changer, autolock, etc. It also carries a touch restriction that can be activated for certain poistions, so you cna sitll touch objects in option 2, but not in option 3 for example. It also carries force sit.

Visit Marines little store at - http://slurl.com/secondlife/pak/81/61/104/?title=Marines%20Little%20Store


Quality - Very high, in looks great, the detail is very high - 9/10
Function - It works well, alternate poisitons is nice for an armbinde,r but nothing amazing - 7/10
Price -  600 linden seems fair, if not cheap for possibly the best armbinder in SL - 8/10
Average - 8/10