Flaking Out

Cornflakes Week, the last seven days of February, has come around again and once again it's time to celebrate a uniquely Opensim tradition.

This year on Wednesday 25 February, at 12 noon Grid time, HG Safari will be celebrating Cornflakes Week on the Cornflakes Tribute region, which also has a shop area with extras inspired by or based on Cornflakes creations - the tp is by the arrival point.

Cornflakes 

Not linked to any real world national or religious festival, it's a time when people can just be silly in their own, unhinged, untethered, utterly Opensim style. 

Some of Cornflakes' stuff might be characterized as solo creations, a single statue, but far more of it is made to form a tableau, each one poignant, with a story to tell if you have time to look for it. Here's just one of the many. 

Marpil's Wonderland

Our second stop was a complete change from the first. We jumped to Alternate Metaverse Grid, to explore another side of an Opensim favorite, Tierra de Volcanes, often abbreviated to TdV. The sim is in the top 40 most visited, in the opensimworld classification based on the beacon system, so pretty much all of us had been here before, but the real treat was of course to get the full background story from the person behind the build, Marpil Grafenwalder.

Marpil Grafenwalder

Marpil Grafenwalder: Hi, welcome, hola a todos

Cherry Manga: Hey Marpilll

Lavia Lavine: Hi Marpil!

eva Nowicka: oh oh.. tierra de volcanes :)

Marpil Grafenwalder: please accept the translator

Thirza Ember: from East Coast USA, to the Canary Islands in one short jump!!!

Marpil Grafenwalder: hahhaha yea

eva Nowicka: son unas islas muy bonitas, recomiendo visitarlas en RL :)

Marpil Grafenwalder: Hola a todos y bienvenidos de nuevo a Tierra de Volcanes. El año pasado, durante el Safari, hablamos sobre los orígenes de esta región: las islas, los paisajes y la inspiración de las Islas Canarias.

Arrival point on Tierra de Volcanes

The translator kicked in, such a useful addition to Opensim. It took many hours of hard work scripting and debugging this addition to our inworld experience, and was generously given to the community for free

AMV-T:[es→en]: Hello everyone and welcome back to Tierra de Volcanoes.  Last year, during the Safari, we talked about the origins of this region: the islands, the landscapes and the inspiration of the Canary Islands.  Today I would like to show you a different facet of this project: how Tierra de Volcanes became a creative store and a playful community space.

Adventures at the Arcade

This week's first stop on Safari was Winxtropia where Bloom Peters continues to perfect her inworld arcade game, Primmy's Adventure. The giant retro Gameboy machines awaited our group, each one set up with places for two players. This was the first time so many people had come to the region to play, so it was not guaranteed that we'd all be able to play without drowning in lag... Safari is always an adventure! Even experienced Safari hosts have a little bit of butterflies in their stomachs when waiting for the crowd to arrive, and it's in those moments when you suddenly have a thought.... 

Bloom Peters: I am a criminal for not building the sim in the game style with the blocks!  HAHAHA... 

Thirza Ember: hehehe !!! the perfectionist...

Bloom Peters: yup!

Bloom Peters: welcome!

Forest Azure: hello bloom

Cherry Manga: aloha Bloom!

Nara Nook: Hey Bloom :)

Boujee GamerGirl: welcome everyone

Forest Azure: friend of yours, cherry?

Thirza Ember: lol cherry  has to pay for 2 tickets

Bloom Peters: haha nice avatar Cherry

Cherry Manga: Always dreamed about being a plumber going through pipes

Cherry showed up with a friend, dressed for the occasion

Bloom Peters: while you are here make sure to set max bandwidth, on your viewer - slide it all the way right... might not be required but it will help

The Inworld...

 Inworld Review is a talk show on Youtube about Openism. The show started over a decade ago, and was the brainchild of Mal Burns who produced and presented the program right up to his death in July of last year. His idea was to bring together interesting people from around the metaverse and have them tell their stories, share their experiences, and explain their latest projects. The show began in SL and eventually came to Opensim, and if you go to Mal's Metaworld Youtube channel you will find dozens of  episodes featuring famous names from both platforms, as well as less well-known but equally interesting and creative  people talking about tech, about their grids, about music and art.

When Mal unexpectedly passed away, his co-hosts Tosha Tyran and James Atlloud naturally suspended the show, not only out of respect, but because Mal was, as James likes to say, the 'wind in the sails' of the production. 

Inworld Review has moved from Mal's Youtube channel  to the new Inworld Review channel

However, Inworld Review was one of those rare assets in Opensim - a point of contact for everyone in the hyperverse, a central point for conversation and news, in an environment that is by its very nature decentralized and complicated to navigate. The show was never political, or terribly technical, and had at its heart the hypergrid, never trying to promote one grid over all the others. 

 After Mal died, James and Tosha teamed up with Petlove Petshop, who had been cameraperson in the early days of Inworld Review, and me, Thirza, a previous Inworld Review co-host, to revive the show.

Neverworld's Niagara

Fifty meters deep at its deepest, and 35 km wide at its widest, the Niagara River and its famous Falls are without doubt one of the great natural wonders of the world. Sacred to the Iroquois and forming the border between the USA and Canada, the Falls sprawl over the history of the continent, in so many fields - natural history, geology, engineering, spirituality, tourism, bravado, ecology, brewing, and so many more.

If, for you, the idea of traveling to see Niagara is kind of pie in the sky, then you can do the next best thing and experience them virtually by going over to Neverworld. The NWG team led by grid owner Govega Sachertorte have done a wonderful job in suggesting the nearby towns and giving a really wonderful sense of the vastness of the river and the drama of the two falls.

People are often tempted to ruin a rl build by throwing in a random Stonehenge or Eiffel tower just to zhuzh it up a bit, which of course it doesn't. Long before the rise of computers the best kind of AI - Authentic Intelligence - the intelligence to let the place speak for itself. The sounds and sights here will transport you right into the spray.

ISM's 20th

It's a common belief - you could even call it a truism - that pixel creations in virtual worlds don't last long. Builds come and go, as do the people who make them. This week we made a return visit to a sim on Kitely that has proved this is not always the case. It's the International Spaceflight Museum which these days is an 8x8 VAR region, having grown quite a bit since our group toured it in 2017. 

The HG Address is as always at the end of the post. 

The museum, called ISM for short, was founded just over twenty years ago in SL and moved to opensim in search of more ... space (no pun intended) for way less money. Also for the building opportunities that outperform SL every time. 

Rosa Alekseev

The trip was facilitated by Rosa Alekseev a longtime citizen of the hyperverse, Kitely resident, DJane extraordinaire, community organizer, and member of ISM. To meet us on the day was Kat Lemieux.

Kat Lemieux welcomes us all - with Max and (in the space suit) Forest 

Legendary Mobius

Our first stop this week was on an unforgettable region on Mobius Grid, one of the most unusual and colorful grids in Opensim, run by the unparalleled Royale Mobian. It's a great place to visit any time, by yourself, but to be there with Royale, standing in for the region's creator, was a real treat. 

Not only is the storyline of the Legend of Zelda an epic, the video game's history is also of legendary proportions - beginning in the eighties, the game continues to be popular and has grown with the technology - the latest version is Hyrule Warriors, Age of Imprisonment. 

However for most of the Safarians on this trip, it's associated with early gaming, with their youth and the wonderful sense of adventure and agency that Zelda supplied. This post about the Zelda 'back in the day' captures the vibe.

Zelda has interesting parallel with opensim in that there are opportunities to go out exploring and do side quests within the game and if you do, you will often pick up useful items, or gain experience that will come in handy as you progress from level to level. Just like the HG, but with less hair loss, and more sword-and-shield action. 

The sim and majority of the model work is brought to us by Diana Dismantled, says the Notecard you get when you arrive, which also credits Meme Resident with some of the extra model work, with a nod to the resident builder, Geminai Resident. 

A large landing area awaited the crew of the Safari, and while waiting for them I can't lie, I played with the Chaos while waiting, they are just too cute.

A Night at the Museo

Our second stop was on the great grid Craft, one of Opensim's oldest grids. We visited the MdM, with owner Rosanna Galvani.
 Rosanna Galvani: The Metaverse Museum (Museo del Metaverso) is a virtual institution that replicates a real museum, featuring exclusive content and collections designed specifically for the Metaverse environment. It combines elements of virtual reality, interactivity and global accessibility, offering virtual exhibitions, art galleries, digital replicas of artworks and cultural objects, learning labs, event spaces and more.

Rosanna Galvani: The Metaverse Museum project was created in Second Life for the enhancement of the artwork present in that virtual world. It was founded on December 5, 2007.

 Over the years the Museo del Metaverso has been quite successful, creating permanent and temporary exhibitions. The Museum has participated in many valuable art/cultural events in the physical world, has helped many students of Fine Arts Academies who were coming to Second Life to make their theses and has collaborated with the Academy of Fine Arts of Macerata, participating in several meetings, with the aim of presenting the project of the Metaverse Museum, which was very innovative for those years.

Rosanna Galvani: Today the main Museum resides in Craft-world (a virtual world based on OpenSimulator) and preserves and exhibits purely digital works, i.e., works made on computers, replicas of works made in the physical world, and most recently also images generated by programs using Artificial Intelligence. It continues to work on different platforms, Second Life, Craft-world and Spatial, organizing exhibitions , lectures and discussions. 

Tosha Tyran: but tell me Rosanna, what was the reason to transfer the Museum to Opensim/Craft?

Playing the Market

Our first visit this week was to Neverworld Grid and as usual the group assembled at the clubhouse on HG Safari to pick up the travel pack by clicking on the Giant Prim, which is super low tech and includes a very brief Notecard, and the necessary LMs. I love low tech, it rarely breaks.

People begin showing up about 10 minutes before Go time, (12 noon Pacific) and that gives them a chance to read the notecard and say hello to all. Many arrive last minute, oor even after we've started, so they just rush along to find us at Destination 1. It all works!  Anyone can join us, we are not an exclusive club, but I can't promise Forest won't gently tease you though.

Taarna Welles: Hello peeps

Tosha Tyran: hello, hello

Taarna Welles: Hoi Forest

Forest Azure: and yay, tosha! finally I get to tease you again!

Ange Menges: Bonsoir a tous

Forest Azure: hi Ange... wow, the tour this week includes a marketplace!

Thirza Ember: there will be a video explainer i think, and dancing... the first hour quite peaceful, the second will be more manic

Tosha Tyran: good, I love videos and have the popcorn ready here

Taarna Welles: Hi Nara

George Equus: Evening all

Tosha Tyran: uff... finished eating and hands free for typing again :)

Forest Azure: virtual life is tiring

Thirza Ember: It's 12:00 so when you're ready, TIME TO GO the Neverworld people are waiting for you

Tosha Tyran: oki, seems good

Dolma Dollinger: Hello Am I intruding?

Thirza Ember: of course not dolma you are always welcome!

Dings Digital: Hello, guten Abend

Tina Bey: Hola a Todos

Thirza Ember: OK we are all here

Craft's Sixteenth

 The Jubilee building on Craft is up and running and celebrating sixteen years of Opensim. It's an impressive achievement not only in technology but also in terms of community. 

The big party is on Tuesday, 27 January and the fun begins at 12 noon SLT, that's 9pm in most of Europe, on sim Jubilee, HG Address at the end of the post as always.

Craft owner Licu Rau is proud of his Sardinian stubbornness and credits that for some of the grid's success, but he's the first to say that it wouldn't be anything more than a private plaything without the residents.

That's why each year on sim Jubilee there is more than just a birthday party, there's also a fabulous display in the Expo Center, featuring work by people who have been here from the early days, and those who have called the grid home only for a couple of years. 

Safari Goes into Fantasia

Safine Mahoe's brand new sim Fantasia on Friends Grid is a magnificent new landscape and Safine very kingly offered the HG Safari group the first look. It's 16 regions of woodland, swamp, waterways and meadows, peppered with houses and creatures all of a fantastic kind, whether it's from folklore, literature, or her own imagination. All was perfectly planned for our trip as the second destination  of the week, when about 20 minutes before we were supposed to go there, it turned out that the region watn' letting people in. Very frustrating for Safine, since all had been fine just about an hour earlier when we had checked the LMs were working. 

Safine outdid herself by getting us to the region despite the glitch

There was no time to stand around asking ourselves why this had happened so Safine very rapidly got busy trying to stop the region telling people they were 'banned' - that was not at all what was happening! But as we all know, the standard messages of Opensim when something isn't working can be much ruder and less informative than desired! With swiftness and care, Safine quickly worked to make it possible for as many of us who were willing to power through the situation to get to her gorgeous new realm, and most of us did, including the newest Safarian, Neko Littlepaws who moments before had been accompanying us around the wonderful Exodus sim on Groovyverse - you can read about that tour here.

Our fairy guide, Safine Mahoe

Safine Mahoe: first off, thank you for coming......I am truly honored! I apologize for the access issue, it was fine two hours ago

Thirza Ember: yes that's opensim for ya

Tina Bey: lol

James Atlloud: yeah - we are used to it

Dorena Bree: a mystery wrapped inside a mystery

Forest Azure: those are the best

Dorena.Bree: I think so too

Clowning Around

 When it comes to detail-rich builds with an authentic feel of the real place and a quick rez, they aren't clowning around on Groovyverse which was our first stop for this week's Safari. The destination was sim Exodus, and about seven or eight of us joined the locals in a parking lot in central Nevada, which is a really good copy of a real life place in the town of Tonopah in Nevada, USA. It's called the Clown Motel - check out that link and you'll see how close this pixel version is - with a twist of its own!

The inworld version is part of a multi region build representing the desert lands east of California, and if those gloriously alien looking mountains in the distance remind you of a previous Safari it's because we came to this general area three years ago to learn about Burning Man, the virtual and the real celebrations. 

Doctor Dave at the Clown Motel

Much has happened since that memorable visit (people still talk about the amazing train ride!) and we were ready to be guided by Doctor Dave around the whole darn place and to learn a lot about a lot of stuff, including art, rl crossover, travel, ghosts, and of course, clowns. You can't be burning if you're not learning. 

Free Radek-als

 Vbinnia Radek is an Opensim legend. Her region Steam on OSGrid is one of those places that in the early days was a haven of fantastic assets when assets were like rare earths.

Arriving on the region can present a few small hiccups, you may end up at 128,128 which is the default landing on a regular sized sim, right in the middle. Steam was regular size but it's been improved into a VAR however opensim doesn't always remember that and will deposit you at the traditional landing spot which happens to be underwater. DOn't panic take a deep breath and cam up and out and you'll soon see the vast port and the industrial steampunk landscape behind it.

We met at an incongruously countrified spot on such a townie region, a little camp fire in a wood.

Vbinnia Radek: Hello every one :)

Forest Azure: hello vbinnia

Dorena Bree: Hi

Thirza Ember:  you have inspired so many of us, Vbinnia. This region - from forever - has been one of the best places in Opensim... i'm a fangirl LOL

Vbinnia Radek: chuckles! glad someone is... right now I need to inspire myself

Hel of a Trip

 This week we kicked off with a visit to a set of sims steeped in nordic tradition. Due to some very last minute changes in the itinerary we went to a whole different set of interesting spots, some of which rezzed for us, and some not so much. For many, just getting to the sim was a struggle but we battled through valiantly, using the Welcome region on Ignis as a stepping stone, plus improvised LMs, IMs, teleports, swearing, and sheer determination.

The gorgeous Dragon Towers, maybe we will get to visit another time.

There was a big and very last minute change to the itinerary; instead of visiting the land of the Dragon Towers as planned we went to see the Viking equivalent of hell... thankfully the people planning on joining the tour had gathered at the clubhouse so it was easy to contact everyone who got lost or stuck and get them back with our tour guides, Nadir rae and Max Well, who also built this wonderful place

Max Well: First PART — The Gates of Hel,  Gnipahellir and Garm: Journey Through the Nine Worlds of Yggdrasil. The light flickers gently. The ground beneath your feet seems alive, pulsing with slow rhythms, like an ancient heart. Around you rises a colossal trunk, so vast that its summit is lost in the heavens. You are at the foot of Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

Daydream Believers

Our second stop for week one of the new season of Safari was on Kitely.

'Synthetic Dreams' is the art event organized by Koshari Mahana, Kimm Starr and Cooper Swizzle. This is one of two Opensim 'pavilions' participating in The Wrong Biennale  the other was curated by Art Blue and featured heavily at the 2025 OSCC. For the HG Safari OSCC tour last December, we took a trip around Synthetic Dreams, which is on Kitely Expo Center, and there's a blog post about this place when it first opened, so for some of us this was a return visit, but because of the overwhelming nature of the sim - a whopping 15 artists with multiple, complex installations are here  - it was definitely the case to return and try to take in a bit more of what's going on.

Arriving at Synthetic Dreams

Kimm Starr: We want to thank Thirza for bringing the hypergrid Safari to Synthetic Dreams here in Kitely.  Synthetic Dreams is ½ of our Pavilion for the Wrong Biennale. The Wrong Biennale is a real world art show seen by millions of people world wide!  This years theme is AI in Art.  Please take a moment to landmark this Pavilion.   We will visit all of the represented exhibits to meet the artists and have a look at their work. Feel free to ask the Artists questions about their work.  Please come back and experience all of the exhibits at your leisure.  First up - Forest Azure, Enjoy the tour!

Forest Azure: this build symbolizes the struggle of man versus machine, which is my thing with AI and art. 

Light Entertainment

Getting back into the swing of things after the break for the holidays is always tough. I for example forgot to turn on 'Save Local Chat' at our first stop on this week, but the visit was unforgettable. 

A good sized crowd showed up to sample the joys of Luminaria a region on Littlefield grid that opens only for a few days a year. But before we got to the good bit... it was get the LMs time!

Safari Returns

 The HG Safari tours return this week on Wednesday 7 January at 12 noon Grid time (9pm in Central Europe) with the usual double bill of destinations. As always, a host or guide will be waiting for us at each stop because sure, you can visit these places by yourself at any time, but it's even more fascinating to be there with the person who built, or owns, or looks after the sim and who can give you some context to what you're looking at. And traveling with friends makes it a road trip.

Defying drowning on Friends Grid

It's a fine human paradox that on one hand we're all trying to get away and carve out our own little paradise of expression and freedom, but on the other hand we're gregarious animals and feel the need to explain, share, and party together. Sims come alive when they're full of real people not just animesh or NPCs. 

That's the fun of group trips and kind of cancels out the more frustrating bits of herd-hypergridding: lag, missing bits, having a time constraint, and did I mention lag.