Safari Starts

This week was the third outing of HG Safari, a new group nothing like Pathfinder's fabulous HGAC, which always seemed to work smoothly. The idea behind Safari is very different too: his Hypergrid Adventurer's Club mostly attracted seasoned, or semi-seasoned, grid jumpers and folk who already had their own grids. HG Safari is aimed at people active and experienced in Second Life, and maybe InWorldz, or anywhere in opensim from Kitely and OSGrid to the tiniest boutique grids, but who have not been out hypergridding very much. 

Reticulation on OSGrid

It's a rip-roaring clusterfuck of lag, miscommunication, disappearing skins, linden hair, and sheer determination. Not for the impatient or the faint hearted.

It's a slow process getting people started, and the aim is to assist SL artists and creators to reach a level of hypergridding savvy and new friends so they'll be able to make the most of the free uploads and masses of space that Open Sim offers, and then encourage and accompany their friends to see what's out there. 

In a few weeks, HG Safari will have its own clubhouse, where we'll be able to display our trophies, and more importantly, the members will be able to try out builds they can export and share.

The teleport  portal on Metropolis

You can use an avatar from any hypergrid enabled grid. I prefer to use my home grid (EasilyDone) avatar, since she has the most hypergridding goodies but EasilyDone is offline this month, so my second choice is my OSGrid avatar. 

In theory, Landmarks, friendships and TPs work across multiple grids but the most reliable contacts are between avies of the same grid, and since OSGrid is large, full of interesting destinations,and more reliable for hypergridding than many smaller grids, if you don't yet have an avie, OSGrid might be right for you, if you're just getting started. However, an avatar based in Metropolis, Craft, Francogrid, Germangrid, and about a hundred others you may not yet have heard of will also work. However an SL or InWorldz avatar won't work. Let us know if you're planning on coming along, and that's where Facebook comes into it. We need a central meeting point, and like it or not, FB is it. 

Robots and swimsuits are the order of the day on EasilyDone 

  We meet on Wednesdays at 12.00 noon SLT which is 9 pm CET, and notices go out from about 12 hours before the event. Our starting point has been Craft, but if and when that changes, notices will be set up on the Facebook page and group giving precise locations. Again, please send a message in FB to me or Wizardoz Chrome, or Wizard Gynoid letting us know you plan to come so we know to wait for you.  Shopping opportunities will be made available especially in these early weeks, as people get started, like here at Lani store.

The Safari aims are, in order of importance:

   To introduce people to the nuts and bolts of hypergridding, and expose them to its tiresome bugs, which smooth out with time and experience,

   To show some interesting destinations, (we aim to visit 4 or 5 different grids over the 3 hours of the event) and hopefully bump into some interesting people

   To discover freebie stores and find places where you can build up your avatar's look

   To find cool places for artists and creators to build!

If you are already in OpenSim and have a build or grid you'd like to invite the HG Safari group to visit, please email me at thirza.in.sl@gmail.com.

Wizard Gynoid bracing for hypergridding in Craft 

        The first of these objectives involves a fair bit of waiting around, which is OK by me because I remember my first trips into the hyperverse and I was always crashing and freezing and trying to fix my hair. Half the time you can't tell if it's your internet connection, your computer, or the grid that's screwing things up. Lag makes communicating ... let's call it 'challenging' but with some stoicism the whole thing sort of works out. Take yesterday for example. The plan was to meet on Hydra on Craft Grid, for no better reason than Wizard Gynoid suggested it, and Craft Store has some good a/os worth grabbing. Hydra, the main Craft grid landing area had been non-cooperative earlier in the day, and in fact when the meeting time rolled around, the grid wouldn't let several of us in.
         We had avatars from 3 different grids involved, so that also created its own issues, since you can friend other grid avies, no problem, but until you do, obviously, you can't see if they're online or not. This is why the group is based in Facebook, because it's a common point of communication. Except it broke down, because not everyone saw the change of venue notice. 

The start of any Safari always involves massive disorientation because people are trying to fix their avatars and rez and find everyone else, and sadly we lost some of the group but in the end there were four of us, or three and a bit, if you take into consideration the fact I was a cloud. 

Folk Cafe on German Grid

        We headed over to German Grid where there was a nice concert going on at the Folk Cafe. Fuschia Nightfire was 'refused entry' to the grid, but it was her first hg jaunt, so I was not entirely surprised. Somehow, our computers seem to know we're not in Kansas anymore, and won't cooperate fully with hypergridding to begin with. You have to get over the hump, and then it's much better. Three or four trips usually gets - I was going to say "the bugs out of the system" but that's an exaggeration, better say, your computer lets you jump without making such a fuss. 
        We got to hear just one song on German Grid (the idea is to show people how to jump, in the first instance, not spend a lot of time in any one place) and off we went to Metropolis. There was quite a bit of swapping avatars and crashing and stuff going on the whole time, and there were times when there were two Wizard Gynoids and Wizardoz Chromes and even a pair of Fuschia Nightfires but we made it work, and got to see... the weekly meeting on Centerworld. Last week we crashed the Francogrid weekly meeting, and you can't help but be struck by the difference between Teutonic and Gallic meeting styles. They were planning the Metropolis 5th Anniversary event which is at the end of this month. Yet another good reason to start hypergridding now! 

Dorothea's 1001 Nights on OSGrid: no foreigners allowed.

        From there we moved on to OSGrid, and visited Reticulation, with all the yummy mesh statues you could hope for. We did try to visit Dorothea Lundquist's 1001 Nights, which I'd been in to see earlier in the day, but she's had to stop non-OSGrid people from visiting, because of griefing problems. Back on Reticulation, it was getting late, and we decided to make one last jump, to Ignis Fatuus. It's such a lovely grid, and best of all, we ran into Aime Socrate there. He introduced us to Ignis Fatuus owner Max Hill and Harthelie Quatre the project manager for their replica of the Paris Opera, 40000 prims and eighteen months in the making. 

The Opera House on Ignis Fatuus 

        It rezzed with eyewatering slowness. Aime apologized for the quality of their server, but, you know, I just think it was the intertubes in general playing havoc with all of us. This build is astonishing. Not just the amazing authentic textures painstakingly collected by Harthelie, nor the precise building skills of Aime and the rest of the gang, but the intriguing labyrinth of hidden passages and tunnels. It's being made for a school - but I'm betting grownups are going to love it just as much as the kids. By the time we'd taken the tour, it was late, and we ended on that note. A big thanks to everyone who welcomed us.

It's not a well oiled machine yet, the HG Safari, but we're getting there. And having some fun in the meantime. Join us, if you can.