200 days to go...

Wait, what? Two hundred days from now? That's forever! 

Well, kinda... but time is like a train, chugging along with a regular rhythm but moving much faster than you think until it's suddenly right there, on top of you! So we're already planning ahead for the next HIE event, which will be from April 4 to April 6,  2025. Scroll to the end of this post to find out how you can stay informed about the event via the Socials.

What is HIE, or Hypergrid International Expo? 

It is an Opensim conference, party, expo, and art performance extravaganza, experienced live and archived on our Youtube Channel - please help people find it more easily by giving a Like and Subscribe! 

HIE gives Opensim people of any and all grids, whose first language is not English, the opportunity to speak about the projects, experiments, sims, and builds that they are proud of. They get to tell their stories in their own languages, and we provide a sort of Subtitle system that allows you to follow what's being said in English, or any one of the major languages of Opensim.

In the past, HIE has been held on Craft Grid, with the kind assistance of the lovely Licu Rau.

This year, we have a new home, a 3x3 space on the new HG Safari grid - address at the end of the page. This will resolve a few logistical issues, and means we have a brand new playground for all the HIE activities.

Nazirah Avro speaking in Spanish, HIE23

Why aren't the talks in English?

Simple - there already is a very big annual event for Opensim, where all presentations are given in English. It's called the OSCC  the Opensimulator Community Conference and this year the 12th annual event will be held on December 7 - 8, 2024. However, not everyone's comfortable giving a lecture in English, so the Hypergrid International Expo is a space for these other voices, a sister convention, if you like.

Safari on the Socials

The Alps and the New York metropolitan area both have about the same number of residents - 19 million. They both have worldwide fame as tourist destinations, and are full of storied locations - some scary, some beautiful, all memorable in their own way. They say that in New York City, you can hear just about every language on earth. The Alps, on the other hand, have given life to scores of local dialects and languages over the centuries, from Romansch and Piemontese to Walser and Friulian, and of course the mysterious language of the Voynich Manuscript is an alpine tongue.

Thinking  of Opensim and Second Life in those terms goes a long way in illustrating the difference and similarities between the two. 
Opensim is like the Alps, which span eight different countries, from Monaco to Slovenia. The weather, the culture, the laws, the history, even the mountains morph in shape and nature as you travel from the Maritimes to the Dolomites. The people aren't always so easy to spot, down in the valleys or hidden by a range of majestic peaks.

Safari Goes Into the Light

 First stop this week, Dorena's World! We visited a beautiful art sim, more More Than Lights, in company with two of the creators, Miara Lubitsch and Kjs Yip. HG Address is, of course, at the end of the post.

Our arrival point on More Than Lights

Every Safari begins with an avalanche of greetings... and some teasing. ON the practical side, here's how Safari works. The LMs and a notecard explaining our trip are located inside a giant prim, at the Clubhouse on HG Safari grid. Simply touch and 'Buy' the pack, which has the Week number on it. The weekly LM pack is generally left up from Wednesday to Sunday, for anyone who wishes to take the tour but wasn't able to join the group. 

This week, we had the nice mixture of first time Safari goers, occasional and regular Safaristas, as you know all our welcome, and we're very happy to provide TPs and help if you're new to this group hypergridding lark, so don't be shy - join us if you can.

Inside the theater - very comfortable seating!

Star Ravenhurst: Hi Yara and Alex

Yara.Eild: Hi Star, Loru :-)

Loru Destiny: -*- HeLlO-*- everybody :-) I hope I'm not naked

Forest Azure: hi loru .. and no

Loru Destiny: ahh great, a new experience when I HG

Safari Maitai

May your journey and your drink never end, or be boring

Eiaha e pau to oe haereraa e to oe inu, eiaha râ e riri

Our second stop this week was on Alternate Metaverse grid, and a beautiful VARregion with low lag and dramatic scenery. As always, the HG Address is at the end of the post.

Thirza Ember: Welcome to Tahiti... waiting just a sec for any people are trapped between tps

Lynnestra Parker: Maldrul said he has to relog, he can't tp Star Ravenhurst: I hate when that happens, Microsoft did an update so that doesn't help

Thirza Ember: yes and that brings me to my next point... This region is by Yana Dakota - you can see her photo here Forest Azure: /me peeks Thirza Ember: it says 'offline' by her picture, that's because just a little while ago her computer did that update, and something went wrong, so Yana can't be with us today sadly. However, I have some of the background, if you'd like to hear about it... In RL, Yana in the Canary islands, like our friend from last week over on Astralia grid, Marpil (altho Marpil is a native of the Canaries, not sure Yana was born there). Star Ravenhurst: Oh wow! Small world.

Thirza Ember: Because Yana loves islands, she decided to make a sim all about Tahiti, as you may be able to see it's huge...

Call it Communauté

Community! However you spell it, it's important in virtual worlds.

Nadajdae region on OSgrid is home to Hella Yver and her partner Badr Norseman, and recently they've decided to open up the sim to social events for the Francophone community.

A little opensim history, which you probably know already. 

FrancoGrid was the best-known French grid, and arguably the oldest, it started in February 2007, and closed in March 2022 when the servers suffered an irreversible breakdown and the FG committee came to the sad decision that the grid was no longer viable. Just over a year later Metropolis Grid, the giant in the family of German-speaking grids, finally went offline (you may remember the wonderful party we had to mark the end of that era!). 

Metro and Franco - these two gaps in the Opensim scenery, not to mention Osgrid's 8 month 'hiccup' in 2014, brought home to most people that probably, the way forward was  to have lots of smaller grids, where people can do their own thing, and comfortably avoid people who have different ideas and uses for virtual worlds.

But little grids, though they lead to less drama, also fracture the community, making it less likely and less easy to stay in touch.

If you read this blog often, you already know of quite a few Frenchies in OSGrid - from the lovely Paela Argus, who for many years served the OSGrid community as an active admin member; Ange Menges and nani Ferguson are here, with their signature Hunt builds three times a year; and there's Cheops Forlife of course, with the Theatre d'Adret; not to mention the delicious Cherry Manga who has sims here and on many other grids. That's just to mention a few of the better known folks on OSGrid - there are many more, plus a whole archipelago of Francophone grids out there, many of which we have visited, from Ignis, to Creanovale, to Logicamp, to Vibel, to Atlas and more. Wondering where the other French grids and French creators are located? Well, Prodyck Theas has compiled a useful list on Artefactix, his interesting blog, you can see the grid list here.

Tierra de Marpil

"Abre el ojo y desparrama la vista"

Love it when we end up on yet another new sim where paying attention pays off, and you get the full benefit out of all there is to see and learn. 

That was the case at our second destination this week, as the new season of Safari began with an exciting visit to Cloe Kegel and Vins Watanabe's grid, Astralia.  We were guests of Marpil Grafenwalder who exploded onto the Opensim scene less than two years ago. She has been a positive torrent of creativity ever since. The region is Tierra de Volcanes, 'land of the volcanoes' and of course, the full HG address is at the end of the post.

Marpil Grafenwalder

Marpil's region Tierra de Volcanes is famed for its wonderful Mall up in the sky, but our visit this time was aimed at learning more about her homeland, the Canary Islands. 

The build at sea level is beautifully put together to combine art, entertainment, and RL information and we arrived in the colorful, highly detailed plaza. 

Arriving on Tierra de Volcanes

Marpil Grafenwalder: Hello everyone, and welcome to “Tierra de Volcanes".Tierra de Volcanes was born as an inspiration from the Canary Islands

Safari Fall

It's September, so it's time for a new season of the Safari! We also have a new base for meeting up, on a dedicated grid, the address is at the end of the post. As usual, the event began at 12.00 SLT and as always, Safari trips are on Wednesdays. This post describes our first destination, you can read about our second destination in the post called Tierra de Marpil.

Appropriately, our very first destination for the Fall season was God Fall, by Tutz Zabelin, on Pangea grid, and Tutz was on hand to tell us all about it.

Tutz Zabelin: For those I haven't met before, a short history about me and Pangea. In reality I am a girl from Sweden. And i have a background from SL where i started 2007. Pangea started 4 years ago. Marlon Wayne is the man who came up with the idea.

 At Pangea, we are a blending of different skills and, like me, just a builder. There is much much  more to say about Pangea, there is some information about this on the Welcome sim. You will also find TP board to Pangea's various sims.

Thirza Ember: nice EEP

Tutz Zabelin: I was supposed to invent and write a story about God Fall but my imagination has been stuck in sim Construction.

Luna Lunaria: I get that way also

Tutz Zabelin: But briefly about the history of the God Fall is: It is at the beginning of the creation of the Earth. Good beings from space, gods and goddesses, come in a spaceship. They come to help create the Earth and protect it from evil forces that threaten to take over. On the way to Earth, the good gods spaceship is attacked by evil aliens The goddesses on the ship then stand around the ship and protect it. They succeed in using their powers to drive out the evil ones.

On Offworld

Any day of the week, no matter what the season, you'll find music and dance parties happening all over Opensim. It is one of the enduring and vivifying features of the hypergrid culture. I asked popular German DJ Genie Fegte to say why he thinks this is so.

Genie Fegte: Music is international and lets you forget the problems of the world for a moment. Music can connect people, even across language barriers. You enjoy the music together and shut everything negative and evil out of your head for a while. I think that's a main reason why parties are so popular in virtual worlds.

Offworld grid is a popular spot for dancing on Friday evenings, European time. It's a grid with a long history, all the way back to 2007 when the owner, Genie Fegte, set up his first opensim grid called  "Land of Vikings". This of course was before hypergridding became a commonplace in opensim, pre-mesh, and things were still pretty basic and often very unreliable. 

Genie Fegte:  I never let that put me off and continued working with Opensim. I am a perfectionist and when I have a problem in front of me, I sit on it until it is solved. I got my first computer in 1988. There was no real internet or pre-made programs. So I learned to program from magazines and books. Everything I know about computers today I taught myself.

Fair Do's

Opensim Worlds Fair (OSWF for short) is getting closer, and on Saturday at 12.00 SLT there was another progress meeting for people interested in this project. The steering team - Kimm Starr, Koshari Mahana, and the magnificent Cooper Swizzle, were on hand to share the news, confirm details, get feedback and explain how it's still possible for you to participate in the event - there is still time to get on board!

At the meeting took place on the huge sim on Wolf Territories Grid, with some unique chairs and couches provided for the public.... all the fun of the fair!

That hatted figure you see silhouetted in these photos is, of course, grid owner Lone Wolf. For the address of the huge region housing the entire World's Fair, feel free to scroll to the end of the post, the traditional home of all HG Addresses on this blog.