Fair Progress

 This week's HG Safari involved a visit to Wolf Territories to see how the Opensim World's Fair project is getting along. Several of the core organizers were on hand to give a warm welcome to the group! Most of the photos here are by Rosa and Kimm, you can also see some great pics by Star Ravenhurst on Facebook, and of course, the great Lifted Pixel filmed the whole event - you can watch that video on YouTube - don't forget to like comment and why not subscribe to her channel.

This is a massive sim, and the landing point has a 200m tall Observation Tower which seemed the ideal point to arrive  - don't worry, no stairs, there's a convenient TP down to ground level. The view from the top of the tower, when there are a lot of people, takes a moment to kick in, as you would expect of a well filled VAR  of epic proportions. The HG address is... yeah you guessed it, at the end of this blog post, where it always is.

Kimm Starr:  Hi and welcome to the Opensim Worlds Fair build.   Your presenters today are  Kimm Starr, Cooper Swizzle and Koshari Mahana along with our Entertainment Co-ordinator Rosa Alekseev.  We're excited to have you here today for an early sneak peak of the OpenSim World’s Fair, which officially kicks off on March 1st, 2025! This project is under construction and has been since February of 2024 and is no way complete. Everything has been designed to be conveniently close—whether you prefer walking, flying, or driving, all exhibits and entertainment are easily accessible. Directly below and surrounding the landing zone is the heart of the OpenSim World’s Fair, full of amusements, games, and rides. 

Dings Digital: I am looking forward to all this

Who Goes There

This week's first destination was to one of the wonders of Opensim, the Doctor Who region on Littlefield grid, often known as lfgrid because it's shorter! As usual the full HG Address is at the end of the post. The sim creator, Toy McBride, lives on the other side of the world to most of the Safari-goers, so she wasn't able to join us in person.

Dirk Mathers

However Dirk Mathers, one of the founding members of Littlefield grid, a master scripter and none too shabby builder in his own right, was kind enough to step in as guide. He's a knowledgeable Whovian, but even he admitted to getting a little lost in this build, which is encyclopedic and labyrinthine. Much like the long, mysterious and twisted plot of one of the most popular ever sci-fi shows on TV. 

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past half century, you probably know that Dr Who is a British TV show for children which began back in 1962, took a hiatus in the 90's and came roaring back in the naughties to an even wider audience of all ages, and it is still going strong.

OSCC Past and Present

 Every year for over a decade, the Opensimulator Community Conference has offered an opportunity for the platform to unite and learn about projects, passions and plans for the future of Opensim. But what is the OSCC? 

James Atlloud: Many people think Avacon is involved with the development of Open Simulator but that isn't the case - Avacon was created to build the community of people who use and care about Open Simulator. 

Avacon Plaza already looking festive

Inworld, there are two distinct grids - Avacon, and OSCC. The Opensim Community Conference, on its dedicated grid, is a weekend of talks, workshops, and parties about opensim. 

It's held this year on December 7 and 8, 2024.

The conference is live inworld, and you can also watch on Youtube. Here's the link to the 2023 presentations so you can get an idea of what goes on. But how did this come about? what are the origins of the event?

Joyce Bettencourt aka Rhiannon Chatnoir got into Second Life in 2005 and was drawn immediately to the community aspects of the platform. That included people and inworld places, and of course people and real world places. Rhiannon attended real world meetups for SL people, and in 2007 she had joined the Second Life Community Convention organizing team. 

Rhiannon Chatnoir: By SLCC 2009 in San Francisco, she was the conference content lead - coordinating all the talks. At the end of that year, the original SLCC planning team decided not to organize any more events, so a new group formed, called Avacon. The original Avacon team was Fleep Tuque of Chilbo, Linden Lab's Misty Rhodes, musician Katydid Something, and virtual fashion designer Crucial Armitage. We did two more real life events, in 2010 and 2011 but as we got more interested in Opensim, - Fleep set up Fleepgrid, if you remember that - our focus shifted.

The OSCC conference area

Rhiannon Chatnoir: We decided with the skills and lessons learned from organizing SLCC, we could help bring together the greater OpenSimulator user community in a way similar to what we had done in SL. We reached out to the Overte Foundation, the organization run by the Core Developers of OpenSimulator. That began the collaborative planning process, Nebadon Izumi initially setting up the OSCC grid and eventually launching the first OpenSimulator Community Conference in 2013!

Neverworld's Ninth

 Neverworld will be turning nine in a few days and there's a big party planned for October 22 - 25 over on a dedicated sim, NWBB9  

It's a chance for Gov and the guys and gals of this builder's paradise to celebrate another year of challenges and achievements.

Mike's Towns End

Our second stop this week was with the magnificent Mike Townsend, friend of the Safari and frequent tripper with us back in ye olden days when it was a three hour, uncertain slog through any number of  destinations. These days, Mike is busy with his Tropicana sims, where you can rent a bit of pixels for yourself in some very atmospheric places! HG Addresses at the end of the post - but you knew that already.

Coming from another grid, we all met with a fair dose of lag but the welcome was warm from both mike himself and a bunch of Tropicana friends.

Mike Townsend, flanked by Blancanieves and Tina Bey

Mike Townsend: Welcome everyone to Tropicana Village, If everyone is ready we can start the tour

Leoa Urmah: (pt:en)  I'm very ready

Mike Townsend: We will explore the area around the abandoned village and then take the path to the Trailer park. In a state of part ruin and abandonment there is still evidence of people living here. Lets walk to the trailer park.

This part of the build is a great mix of grunge and rundown architecture, with everything from nodding donkeys to a nice red phone box. Walking among all these detailed elements proved to be tricky, to say the least, but while we lost Mike for a moment, most of us were able to power through it. OSgrid's ongoing inv issues and unexpected kicks, when paired with a mass avatar event, kind of reminds us what a privilege it is in reality to be able to be part of a global community, despite the ructions of RL with its solar flares and political shenanigans.

Playing with Infinity

On sim Sirocco, one of the VAR regions belonging to the 3rd Wind community, on Zetaworlds, Han BoShi, Dolfke Barbosa, Jed Dagger, Ellemir Maven,  Nila Mari and Alia Soulstar awaited the arrival of the Safari crew. What better time to confirm or deny a popular myth about Star Trek 

Dolfke Barbosa: am I the only one wearing a uniform?

Thirza Ember: my other avatar has a red uniform on... does that mean I'll get eliminated in the first scenes ?
Nila Mari: /me chuckles

Alia Soulstar: yes, our priority is to thin out security every mission

Ellemir Maven: There was an analysis done that said red shirts are not actually more prone to death and dismemberment.

Left to right, Jedburgh, Alia, Nila and in red, Security Officer Dolfke Barbosa

Dolfke Barbosa: they tend to seed death and dismemberment

Ellemir Maven: lol it does seem to be true of the original series.  I have not checked these numbers... Being a "Red Shirt" on the USS Enterprise is one of the most dangerous jobs in any (imaginary) military. Don't believe me? SiteLogic founder Matt Bailey crunched the numbers: 13.7% of Kirk's crew died during their three-year televised mission. 73% of the deaths were Red Shirts.

Jedburgh Dagger: but as a whole there were more redshirts on the crew

Ellemir Maven: /me gets dol a second red shirt to wear

Dolfke Barbosa: thx for that, Elle, I will wear it with care at my funeral

Alia Soulstar: the dangers of space are best represented by the violent deaths of security

Dolfke Barbosa: Tasha Yar her dead was not necessary for the plot, and she wore yellow

Ellemir Maven: It was necessary for her contract though

Dolfke Barbosa: are you offering me a contract, Elle

Alia Soulstar: with a Christmas bonus... if you reach Christmas

For the Love of Lucy

Lucy was always there for me inworld with a word of encouragement, a joke or a useful observation. Always the same, generous, funny, creative.

In virtual worlds, when you don't see someone around for a while, it is easy to assume that they're simply busy elsewhere, or perhaps not feeling up to sitting in front of a computer. That happened with me and Lucy. This summer came along, the Safari trips took a break, and so did I, from virtual worlds... life got busy, and I totally missed seeing the news on Facebook that Lucy (in RL Peter Jones) had passed away. Only today, going to check his Facebook profile to see how he was doing, did I find out what happened.

Lucy Afarensis

That's part of the paradox of the modern world where in theory everyone is in touch with everyone else and we all know everything. In reality, we only know what we know, follow what we follow. Information we need and care about doesn't always get through.

Lucy was key to the HG Safari tours around Opensim throughout the years. More than either of us ever put into words, whenever we got the opportunity to chat - I wish told him more often what our friendship meant to me. Lucy was in SL from 2007 and in Opensim not long after that (Lucy's regions faced onto the OSGrid Moat, close to LBSA),  and the choice of the name name 'Lucy Afarensis' was a humorous reference to age - by a person who was never a fossil by any means.

We had a memorable visit to Lucy's region, including the Grove Gallery, in May 2018. We visited her place on Francogrid back in 2016 also, enjoying a concert by Nazira Avro - Lucy was always a canny opensimmer, spreading the wealth of builds over different grids, so as not to risk losing all if one of them should fail. That's not a lot of Safari visits, you may say, considering how interesting these places were, but Lucy was always the first to give up a spot in the HG Safari calendar, in favor of some other builder or artist, so to finally get to bring the whole group over to experience the horseback trip across this vast landscape was an absolute privilege.