Chester and the portals

 Chester and me have been pretty busy jumping around the hypergloop looking for destinations for the latest HG Safari project, the Self Guided tours, and we are pretty close to being done. We have nc blindness now, hopefully some wine will fix that. 

The idea was to provide suggestions for your own personal Safari at a time when the group is not convened - either because you can't make the day/time due to other commitments, or because it's between seasons (there's a gap of about 6 weeks between each 10  event season - the next one kicks off in May).

At time of writing, the Safari region on Avacon is where you'll find all the Self Guided fun, though the gates will be duplicated over on OSGrid in the near future. You can pop over any time at grid.avacon.org:8002:Safari - the region is also home to our alternate clubhouse and a freebie store with some dodgy merchandise, not to mention that Safari is home to the studio from which Mal and James broadcast The Inworld Review on Sundays.

How and what are these self guided tours?

Each trip has 6 destinations, and there is a theme in each case. 'Film Lovers' will take you to 6 regions that celebrate 6 different movies, 'Book Lovers' will take you to 6 regions with libraries, storytelling and bookish activities, for example. For each tour there is, in the normal Safari tradition, a Notecard/LM giver, and there is a portal that will take you to the first destination, to get you started. 

There are tours featuring History sims, Science venues, and places that take Outer Space seriously, with more rockets than you can shake your Saturn at. 

There are three different tours that will allow you to experience 'real places' without leaving your chair, designated 'elephant', zebra', and 'giraffe' although you shouldn't read anything into those names in terms of the height or weight of the destinations. These are trips to such iconic monuments as Mont Saint Michel, Fallingwater, the Japanese countryside, and the City of Belfast, just to name a few.

There are half a dozen tours that are dedicated to art (each tour is labeled a different color, of course). These will take you to some of the premier galleries and installations all over the hg, from Craft and OSgrid, to Dorena's World, NGrid, and Aire Mille Flux, and beyond.

Some of the destinations will be familiar to you, hopefully others will be new discoveries, and of course, these are just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of what Opensim has to offer. 

So no, of course, this project doesn't promise to show you everything there is in opensim - I've certainly not seen it all. There are no portals for dancing spots, landscape sims, oceans, or freebie malls. I have also left out those mashup 'something for everyone' regions with outer space and a sex beach and vampires and mermaids and a mall, all in 256x256 meters. There were just too many to count, and are easy to find on opensimworld and other websites.

I have also shied away from beautiful regions on grids where it's pay-as-you-go, since it seems unfair for anyone to have a steady stream of visitors casting them money, unless they specifically are ok with that. Some regions in Kitely have this situation, but not all, so I have been able to include Karima Hoisan's art and the IMA space region. 

 Grids with unreliable connections I have steered away from, often with much regret, but nobody wants to be frustrated by failing tps. There are no shops that charge money on these tours, you can figure out why for yourself. 

It's been a long project, with over 400 teleports and more cache clearings than I can remember.  40+ region owners on a huge range of grids were approached to ask if they are happy to be involved. I'm glad to say almost everyone has been very supportive and quick to say yes.

 It's been fun making the mesh, inventing the textures, and messing up the scripts. even when the hypergloop made me go all frizzy for the first time in almost ten years.

Making new friends and discovering amazing regions that have been hiding out there in plain sight has been delightful, and there are for sure loads of places that deserve to be on new trails that will hopefully come together in future months.  Hope you also enjoy.