C'est Safari

What's the difference between SL and OpenSim? If a guy in SL asks you to touch his trunk, he's probably a pervert. In Open Sim, the trunk is a chest of Pirate Treasure, and it's a nice little freebie souvenir de France. Make a note of that for later.
This week, there was already considerable confusion over the end of Daylight Savings Time, and we ramped it up further by offering two possible start points for the Safari, the classic Outlands on Metropolis, and a new base, on Francogrid, donated by Gill Beaumont. The sim there is easy to find, it's called hgsafari. With Metro straining at the seams, a backup to out backup seemed wise. There are now three HG Safari groups, 4 if you count the unreachable OSGrid, join them all, we don't have group limits in open sim, and this way you can use Group Chat if you're on Francogrid, Metropolis, or Craft. The weekly Landmark notecard is also sent out as an announcement via the groups, so that may help you find us.

We talk a lot, on Safari. It must be really annoying for the grid owners who are eager to make their presentation, but it's so much fun to read Local Chat and get a feel for all the people coming from different grids. The big question of the week was - What is the National Dish of France? - and it seems that choucroute won, mostly because Strannik Zipper was handing out samples, but also because our first destination was the University of Strasbourg, and the fantastic virtual Campus (URIs at the end of the post). Unistra manager Anne Cordonnier welcomed us, and Cheops Forlife translated her introduction into English. Cheops has her own group of virtual researchers, the i3DM, their stamping ground was OSGrid, so when that's back up and running, we plan to go visit her there too. But back to the University of Strasbourg, and the choucroute...
Anne.Cordonnier @ever.unistra.fr:8002: Alors le projet de la grille a commencé en 2012 avec l'Atrium....
Cheops Forlife: Let me translate: This project here started in 2012, with the build of one building of the campus called l'ATRIUM, When all the university saw it, they wanted the full university reproduced, so Anne made it with some students, slowly but surely, so now all around this megaregion, are individual projects of researchers for or by the students. The grid is dedicated to research projects.

Anne.Cordonnier @ever.unistra.fr:8002: je crois que je vais vous laisser découvrir maintenant

Yay we like to decouvrir. Cheops took us to the model of the digital center, where there is a laptop running the opensim project of the university.
strannik.zipper: nothing like a reality mashup!
Cheops Forlife: so you can imagine they see themselves not yet connected but they can see Anne, and their environnement, and some of their classrooms, exactly the same as they are in RL
Cheops Forlife: so you are welcome to come back when you want to see more of this campus
jnix.fallon: cute RL pix on the wall too
strannik.zipper: wow!
Roxy.Gellar: Wonderful school!
Roxy.Gellar: Too bad I maxed out my student loans
snowbody Cortes: hello, do you study here ?
Fuschia Nightfire: no, i sneaked in
Cheops Forlife: if you have any question for Anne?

Alizarin Goldflake: what scale did you use to build the buildings?
Cheops Forlife: Anne quelle échelle as-tu utilisé pour reproduire les salles?
Anne.Cordonnier @ever.unistra.fr:8002: j'ai utilisé 150M
Cheops Forlife: 150%
Alizarin Goldflake: aha!
Jessica.Pixel: I'm impressed by this server. There's over 20 avatars here and it's not even flinching.
Fuschia Nightfire: i love the reflections in the windows of the real buildings
Cheops Forlife: so now if every body is ready we can visit one of the projects that are surrounding the campus.
We made it over to MBN which is a Bibliotheque Numerique or digital library.

The style is very different to the realism of the University buildings, and despite there being about twenty of us, the whole grid was performing perfectly.

My little bit of lag was mostly because of trying to run two viewers with graphics set to High, on the same wireless laptop. Shoes and hair don't appreciate a lot of gridjumping in High graphics, either. But we all appreciated the welcome we got from the University, and their warm helpful attitude. Strannik was particularly intrigued by their setup, and it was hard to drag him away from Strasbourg to our next stop, Francogrid, where we were invited to a special Live Concert by Scofi Robson. about 40 avatars made it there, and we had particles, crazy dancing, and amazing music. Fuschia (irl Nina Camplin) captured it on this video - go like it on Youtube!

The event was organized by Cendres Magic. If you're a musician and want to get into performing in open sim, he is a great resource and the Francogrid crowd are extremely supportive of their music evenings.  More photos are on Flickr, and elsewhere. 
Again, hard to leave one grid for another but the appointment on Ignis Fatuus was the icing on the cake. 
Another absolutely spectacular grid, with thirty sims of top notch creations. The Ignis crowd were there to welcome us, I think we were still about 25 people by this point, and all fully clothed! Harthelie, Max, Jeff, Aime were all on sim Eden to welcome us. 

French grids have a characteristic, they all seem to favor the use of Voice over written chat. We tend to stick with the written word in Safari, mainly so that people whose second language is English don't feel excluded from the chat, but it is a nice feature of Francogrid and Ignis Fatuus that, if you turn up your sound, you've got this lovely singsong French soundtrack going on, as the group chats away.
I forgot to tell Truelie Telling that she looked absolutely gorgeous all evening, this is her, all in white.

 

There are numerous fantasy builds, as well as some didactic installations, and some that are almost a blend of both. Aime Socrates uses the grid for his school, for example, the Paris Opera house on Tremplin that Safari visited a few months back. At that time, we all arrived with no hair and could barely rez. 
What a difference now. With new servers and 24/7 accessibility, Ignis Fatuus is going to be a premier destination for anyone looking for cool new places to explore, make machinima, or get inspired to set up their own grid. Look out for the free gifts, including this wonderful castle, all boxed up and ready to go. 

These guys had worked so hard to have the Arrival Area ready for us and it was extremely impressive. We had been told there is a dragon on the grid, but being slow in every sense of the word, I had not found it. Then Aime showed how to get to the cave where it lurks. That's where the trunk of Pirate's treasure is, by the way. 
Feel free to touch it.

Grid Addresses (URIs)
University of Strasbourg campus: ever.unistra.fr:8002:unistra10
Cheops Forlife's Digital library:    ever.unistra.fr:8002:MDN
Francogrid, the new clubhouse   hg.francogrid.org:80:hgsafari
Francogrid music venue              hg.francogrid.org:80:Archipel_Evenement
Ignis Fatuus Arrival Center          91.121.159:Eden    then choose your destination from the interactive map