One For the Road

SIWAS S: Hallo zusammen

Wyldewen Veil: You’ve crossed the unseen threshold — through cloud and current, past memory and time — and now the Veil parts for you. Before you lies Wyldewen Veil: a hidden realm adrift at the edge of wild nature and ancient magic. Beyond the open door of your plane, a new world awakens. Here, the air hums with mystery. Roads wind through forgotten forests. Waters whisper stories to those who listen.  Choose your path — by motorcycle or vintage auto, sailboat or hoverboard. Explore beaches kissed by twin suns, caverns where echoes remember your name, and towns that never show up on maps.  Stay as long as the Veil allows. Breathe deep. Let go. And let the Wyld remember you.

Star Ravenhurst: Welcome to Wyldewen Veil!  It will take a bit to rez. 

James Atlloud: How do we pronounce Wyldewen?

Tosha Tyran: Now that is a change :)

Petlove Petshop: also stunning!

Dings Digital: oh another moon, this is the real thing

Kimm Starr: It looks amazing!

Star Ravenhurst: The region is still under construction, so pardon anything you see unfinished. Enough is done to have a tour, so I hope you will enjoy.  Eventually I will have Lore and stories in place, but for now, we will tour it as it is.

Dings Digital: when is a piece of art finished?

Tina Bey: nunca jajajaj

Star Ravenhurst: This is a 6x6 region with two airports and many modes of transportation. Today we will be taking a plane tour, F-222. As we move along, if you drop your camera below, and behind the plane, you will get a good view as we go along. We can thank Kimm for the moon

Nara Nook: see the airplane taking off, so cool

Star Ravenhurst: We are going to board the plane grounded F-222. This box has a map HUD

Tina Bey: y nuestros billetes ?

Tosha Tyran: te olvidaste el tuyo, Tina? que desastre!!!

Dings Digital: will they serve food?

eva Nowicka: This is going to be worse than the bus incident :D

NWG Hits the Decade

Neverworld Grid turns ten this week, with great fanfare, on the Expo region which features a glorious golden sky and lots of great exhibits including a picture gallery with avatars transformed into photos of real people. 

The party was still on when I stepped away to write this, with a great set by Zoree Jupiter. I asked a few Neverworlders about their life here, beginning with Nexus Storm, and grid owner Gov herself.

Govega Sachertorte, and Nexus Storm

Nexus Storm: NWG is friendly , we like to be a joined collection of sims and people working together to create and have fun. For myself I just like the easy going environment ..we have a some great places to build and people always help out when asked... I'm just a Neverworlder through and through.

Govega Sachertorte: I decided to come to opensim after about two years active in SL, I had a store, but I wanted to do more than that. I bought land but it was getting expensive. I was looking for a better option, something similar to this but less expensive... I ended up in a grid called Free Open Sim, run by Mattie McBride and Tim Huxley. They were so nice.  And then we moved to osgrid, we were there a few years, and then I decided I wanted my own region, and after a month of renting I learned how to self host a region.  Soon a friend offered to build me a grid. That was Randall Flagg from osgrid, and that's how Neverworld Grid began. Today, we have a little over 2000 residents.

Role Models

 Our second destination this week was to Wyldwood Bayou Grid, which is celebrating its 5th anniversary this month. Wyldwood is best known for two activities, the music events at venues like Hot Daddy's, and for its Roleplay, and it was the latter that we went to see. 

The RP hub region is a very beautiful place to visit, and full of information about how the groups here work, the backstories and rules, times and types of activities they do here. We arrived in our usual raggedy piecemeal manner.

Petlove Petshop: ty whoever tp'd me!

Forest Azure: pet, you have clothes!

Nara Nook: skin would be nice but I am happy just to have clothes

Dorena Bree: me too Nara

Forest Azure: well, nara, you were nothing but skin in the caves

The welcoming committee. Our guides were Fitheach, left, and Tessa, center.

Thirza Ember: That green tea diet seems to be working, Xenon

Xenon Darrow: It is! Of course...all those tannins are making me a bit rusty...

Contessa Lacombe: Hi everyone!  The WWB Roleplay Hub was formed to give the Wyldwood Bayou Grid roleplayers a venue to exchange information and set up roleplaying between their groups and other roleplayers on Open Sim grids. Crossgrid roleplay offers the opportunity for roleplayers to connect their stories to those of other groups and gives all of us the whole Hypergrid as a playground.

Tunnel Vision

In 2005, a group of firm friends along with a couple of newcomers, all intrepid explorers armed with basic spelunking equipment and an intermittent instinct for survival, entered a vast system of caves, only to encounter an alarming... oh wait, that's the plot of The Descent, sorry it's the flu talking. 

This week a group of firm friends and a couple of newcomers went on Safari to an OSGrid region, owned and created by Victorious Oppewall, called Caves.

Now before you say, been there done that, don't get 'Caves' confused with 'The Caves' the build by Pasha Theas on Neverworld. This is a whole other cavern system, on Vic's home server which usually hosts about 50 sims. 

Last week, we were on a home server connected to OSGrid, at the Stregasea forest. These events put a lot of strain on a server, so serious preparations are needed.  There is, as you know, on this blog a whole page for Hosts with practical suggestions on how to have a successful Safari visit. Most people agree it's worth the effort when you can show off your work to a crowd to its best advantage. And we appreciate their hard work! Victorious arranged for our Safari tour many weeks in advance, and he turned off all other regions for the occasion of our visit to try to give the best boost possible. 

Petlove Petshop: I lost myself lol

victorious oppewall: everybody here??

Forest Azure: oh, now i'm just my thong

Tosha Tyran: but I do want my hair!

Thirza Ember: your hair just arrived Tosha, special delivery

Tosha Tyran: lol, but now the rest is gone - except for the heart - heart and hair, but no brain

Forest Azure: the heart is the most important... a hairy heart especially

Sven Ingersoll: for the tin man

Taarna Welles: Tosha the bodyless :)

Victorious Oppewall

victorious oppewall: Welcome everybody , I am happy that i may be your host , I will guide you around. On the plan you can see where we are.. the route starts here...we will walk , run or fly because then tunnels re not easy to move in. We will go into tunnel 1 and take the outer tunnels that connect the various caves. Follow me, I will not hurry and if we come in shortage of time you can plan a second visit and finish the excursion.

James Atlloud: Glad to be here

Inworld Review Returns

 As many of you know, this summer we lost Mal Burns, the creator and host of Inworld Review, the talk show on his Metaworld Youtube channel. His death was a blow to his friends and to the many people who knew and admired him through his projects, all aimed at helping Opensim to be better known and appreciated.

Mal explaining something technical on Inworld Review

For the past months, Inworld Review has been offline, and this was a decision by the team who helped Mal keep the show on the road over many years. This was out of respect for Mal and his family, and also to give some time for reflection to those who had helped Mal make the show over the years. 

Interviewing Lampi, Marlon and Tutz from Pangea Grid

In the end, the team felt that the real way to respect Mal's legacy is by continuing to let people know about all creators and innovators who call Opensim home, and the great places and projects they have brought to life here.

Spooktober

 I can't lie, and anyway what would be the point, if you've read this blog before in Octobers past, you know I don't care at all for Halloween. This one day event has become, in the real world, six weeks of solid commercialized nastiness. People who like to think they're anti crime invite their children to play at extorting the neighbors with threats. Bloodshed, loss, and torture are trivialized. It appeals to nobody's better nature. The whole sense of Samhain is engulfed by ghoulish goofiness.

That said, Halloween is a really big deal in Opensim. From September onward, builds begin to spring up online and freebie shops abound with special items to mark the month-long 'one day event' of Halloween. However, unlike the real world, thank goodness, the spirit here is not one of selling as much candy as you can. It's about generosity, and the ingenuity and creative fantasy of outfit builders, scripters, meshers, sim dressers, performers, and huntsmen and women, and good for them.

Would it be better if Halloween (and Xmas too, the other end-of-the-year juggernaut) didn't engulf such a long time span, if there were a little bit more originality in what people chose to come up with in the winter months, rather than all leaping lemming-like into the same pumpkin-scented abyss? 

Sure. 

But in light of the fact that, as you pick up your 57th different version of a dancing skeleton, you really don't care what I think, here are a few interesting Halloween builds you might enjoy. HG addresses as always at the end of the post.

Arte and Montmartre

Minord Loup: bienvenue aux arrivants

Francisco Koolhoven: hi everyone!

Lavia Lavine: Hi everybody!!! :D :D :D

Alex Salamander: <bonsoir

SoA BAD: hello all

Tristan Dehaie [fr→en]: Good evening everyone :)

Draghan Marksman: Glenn is here !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The gradual rez of the crowd, outside the SV3D Louvre

It was a typical day in the neighborhood of Opensim, yet another HG Safari tour, this time a return visit to SV3D, a mostly Francophone grid, run by the terrific Minord Loup. Not a huge place, and the region we were due to land on LeVieuxParis (HG address as always at the end of the post) is abundant with textures, so it was reasonable to think that it might be a while before anybody really saw anything. There were upwards of twenty people on the sim, quite a few had to relog, but the overall effect was excellent. A golden hour in the gilded age of old Paris, in company with several SV3D friends, in particular our host the builder Glenn Dayafter.

Glenn Dayafter

Glenn Dayafter:  Welcome to Le Vieux Paris !  Paris at the turn of the century — where art, imagination, and nostalgia meet. Le Vieux Paris recreates the city between the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time when creativity and curiosity filled every street and café.

Tosha Tyran: sounds great

Alexey Kazarovic: /me claps

Glenn Dayafter: The idea was born two years ago, and since then, the sim has slowly taken shape — a labour of love, inspired by research, art, and the spirit of old Paris. Today, it is almost complete, waiting for us to explore.

Dings Digital: wonderful... it must have been hard but fulfilling work

Cherry Manga: textures are insane! ♥

Pierre Segrov: Bonsoir toutes et tous !

Thirza Ember: how many regions have you built, Glenn?