Jimmy's Europa

 Jimmy Olsen's Europa has expanded! Most of you have already been to see this imaginative cityscape with its great Mall, sci-fi architecture and gadgets, and fabulous taxis, and soooo much more.

 HG Safari did a little tour last year - it was the season premiere, and (since we only have about an hour for each visit)  we only got a taster of this huge complex around the central build.

And now four months later the build has expanded even further.

Boom! another eight regions surround the original Europa. Seven are visitable, the eighth is a Sandbox, and there are multiple ways to see this build. You can use this greenish TP board to jump to Europa Raceway, Farm, Ranch, Mines, University, Colony, and Spaceport,

Lots of transport choices on Europa

 Loving that font, too - just comprehensible enough to make you feel like you're reading a foreign language you'd almost forgotten. A trip abroad without leaving your chair! Imagine the savings.

When you're trying to explain opensim to someone who knows Second Life, Europe is quite a handy analogy. If SL is like the USA, one monolith with the same general overarching system in terms of money, governance, and culture (with lots of widely divergent subcultures in there too!) then Opensim is much more like Europe. 

Parts of Opensim can feel pretty homogenous, like some sort of Union or shared community, but others are incredibly diverse in terms of their mentality, style, social mores, and time zone. In a word, their culture. 

Like Europe, there's plenty of rivalry, some of it friendly, some of it pretty heated, some of it deadly hate. People speak different  languages, literally and metaphorically, across Opensim, as they do in SL, but these differences are more marked n the wider, looser space of the hyperverse, and the worst thing you can do is to go in and dismiss their choices on their home soil. You might prefer Malta to Albania, but there really is no need to say so. Just stay in Malta. Do us all a favor.

Like Europe, there is such a lot of history here, still visible after all these years, and while sure, there's a certain amount of teardown rebuild, you are likely to also come into touch with the roots of the virtual world commonwealth, if you are interested to look for it. Plus, we have some very cool trains.

In fact, on Europa, if you have a little bit more time available to explore, why not let he train take the strain. The red pyramid stations contrast beautifully with the cool bluish chassis of the train. 

I spoke to Xenon Darrow about the build, she is a good friend of Jimmy's and a great spokesperson for him, as well as being busy on her own opensim projects, in connection with education. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and it's great to see how she connects the possibilities of opensim with the needs and challenges of the world of academia.

Here is Xenon talking about that, together with Contessa Lacombe and Indigo Moon on Inworld Review, back in April of this year.  

Detail of the Europa university build

So, with such a bubbly and buoyant buddy, it is  no surprise that in this new and bigger Europa, Jimmy has included a fully realized University sim - we got a glimpse when the Safari visited, but things have developed much further. 

Xenon Darrow:  Jimmy does such amazing work. I call the auditorium the 'collaboratorium'

Thirza Ember: This has just been completed, correct?  It still has that new sim smell...

Xenon Darrow:  The university part of the project called 'Inspiring Learning Spaces', and this is one of them. It's being prepped at the moment and the plan is to launch it during Winter Wolf Fest, where we will have a full learning  conference integrated into it. 

Over on Europa Colony the residential biome, there's an immediate sense of place and community. Here's Xenon's own home, customized with some of her AI art. But it's not just a place for house peeping - there's a fun Diner, featuring one of Jimmy's signature Taxi stands.

These bubble taxis allow you to tour the sim and catch all the main points of interest that include a combined Greedy and dance club. The decor is modern tropical luxury, with touches of fantasy in the xenoflora.

But wait, there's much more, including aliens, and hmm what is that vehicle? You should go over there and check that out. It's the kind of build that invites machinima - can you imagine, some sort of Back to the Future style plot happening on these sets?

Europa Farm

Another really interesting part of the expanded Europa build is the Farm. There's a whole other feel to this place, the contrast is palpable. The photos in this blog respect the moody, misty environment settings, which really impact the visitor when you are there in person. This harvester installation is a highlight. There is something almost sinister in this regimented setup, the industrialization of earth and water. It speaks volumes about food uncertainty, climate change, the challenges of technology. We're up on a smallish platform here, where the wheat is being harvested while down at ground level the earth is parched and bare. Brrr.

Failed at fishing, The Ranch

There is another huge contrast when you get to the Ranch sim. These space ranches are not the cowboy ranches of your tv childhood, it's all cosmic forest, luminous plants and a leetle bit of Avatar going on in the bosky depths. Also fishing, at which I am useless. Seriously, if you're no good, you'll get a message telling you so. Hilarious. After the fishing fiasco, why not take the cable car up to a viewing point. Mass transit - the world needs more of it!

Cable car ! This place is a movie set.

When you get over to Europa Spaceport, make sure you explore inside the building where you will find the Alien Beatles (they are a copyable freebie) and there's also Chez Watto by the delightful Tessa Lacombe, known as Watto over here. That's some top grade RP there, we had great fun with the Watto character during our Safari tour. The Watto shop has a bunch of build-appropriate outfits so you can blend in even better to the look and feel of Europa.

OMG make sure you see the orrery by Crazy Ever  on this build, it is gorgeous.

Here is the final peep into the build - the racetrack. Obviously there is way more to see than these few photos can convey, this post does not include even one picture of the Mine region. Be sure to set aside some time (might take a few visits!) to explore the whole place. Europa Raceway features Jimmy's signature fireworks happening over the main straight.

Xenon Darrow:  This was a huge amount of work and you know he did it amazingly quickly. Take the race track, for example. He worked on that every day for a week. That thing is insane.

She's right. Multiple levels and some deadly curves... 

If all this has intrigued you about Jimmy as a content creator and sharer of both assets and amazing experiences, then make sure you watch him talking about his work on Inworld Review back in March 2024. 

Creator of Flora, the Light and Sound Museum, the 3D Museum, and the Greedy Museum, he is a really modest, funny, and kind person, neither coy nor drama seeking, and his many fans would agree that he is one of Opensim's shining stars.

HG Address: grid.wolfterritories.org:8002:EUROPA