How Not to be Lonely in Opensim

Ever heard someone say 'there's no-one in Opensim'? Or maybe that was you, talking to yourself - hey nothing wrong with that!

Opensim can often feel like a wide open, empty place. Quite intimidating after, say, the bustling sims of SL. That's not surprising when you compare its size to that of Second Life. 

SL in 2024 by primerib1 aka Claire Morgenthau

SL is not small. This picture shows the main continents at the center of a galaxy of private regions, but if you think that's huge, Opensim is waaaay bigger - if fact, if you're wondering why there's no map of opensim here, that's because it's impossible to say how big the connected hypergrid universe is. 

A few people try to give statistics about it, but they do not, and indeed cannot, know the full extent of opensim, since it is a completely decentralized and unregulated meta-place where anyone at any time and for any duration can have a grid without reporting to any higher authority. 

That means there's no central control, nobody keeping complete records of all the comings and goings of our hyperverse - it just can't be done in a meaningful way. 

Cherry on Hie

Believe it or not, we're halfway through the Safari trips for 2024 and this week was a special occasion for all fans of the Hypergrid International Expo, better known as HIE, that weekend once a year where we blend theater and lecture and outrageous displays of language-y excess, not to mention a huge amount of publicity booths with freebies and info about places all over the metaverse.  

The Safari crew, which seems to be getting better by the week, descended on Craft grid for our first destination, after of course the usual Clubhouse banter among old friends, plus new friends to Friend, if you know what I mean.

If you ever wonder why there is a pre-meet at the clubhouse, rather than me just giving out the addresses of the places we plan to visit in social media, it's because the whole point of our venture is to be there for one another, to be there for newbies, to check on oldbies, and to give our hosts an exact time when we will arrive. 

Because nobody likes people who show up too early for a party. 

If you're curious about what is involved in being a Safari destination, there is a whole page about that here on this blog. And yes, the 'six' is a lie, well spotted. 

Lifted Pixel in human form... wha????

Anyway, HIE. A mix of static booths advertising everything from gorean worlds to education sims, with the main event being a weekend of music, art, and interesting talks. If you don't know much about this annual event, spanning the whole of opensim, here's the HIE website.  Oh and here is a vid of this year's booths.

Taarna and friends check out the booths

The most recent edition of HIE was about a month ago, so this week the Expo park was closing, and we had one last chance to go around and grab all the goodies we might have missed. Some of the participants made massive gift items, some didn't have much more than a nice poster, which was great, because they balanced each other out with the lag. At least, so we told ourselves - perception is reality!

SIWAS and SoA BAD at their booth, CCI grid.

Revisiting these 103 booths was fun, there are individuals, projects, regions and whole grids represented here, so probably everyone got to see something in opensim that they had never heard of before. We will be doing this all over again in 2025, so if you want to participate, stay in touch via this blog and both the HG Safari and HIE social media so you won't miss out.

So after a bit of final freebie and LM-gathering we all went into the HIE auditorium, the ever fabulous Cherry Manga agreed to do an encore performance of her spectacular "Variations monochromes autour d'une coordonnée". 

Snowglobe effect at Cherry Manga's show on HIE

All of the talks and art performances of HIE were filmed live and can be watched on the HIE Youtube channel (go into settings and choose the Closed Captions in the language of your choice). Don't forget to Like and Subscribe ! But to actually be present during one of Cherry's performances is really something special. About 25 of us lucky mortals enjoyed the 20 minute mix of mesh,music and special effects. 

Cherry Manga: hi Forest! And hello everyone... salut les frenchies :)

Jeff Kelley: salut l'artiste

Thirza Ember: please everyone, toggle your sound, to make sure you will hear Cherry's soundtrack, by Morlita M, during the show

Cherry Manga: The show will start in few seconds...

I can't lie, I think the tables are the best bit.

Twenty minutes of sensory overload / bliss later....

lifted pixel: lovely every time thank you cherry!

One andOnly: Great!

SIWAS S [de→en]: fantastic

Cooper Swizzle: Absolutely awesome

Jeff Kelley: BRAVO !

Petlove Petshop: Amazing!

Angelic Kisses: *** APPPLLLAAAUUUSSSEEEEEEE***

Ms Cal: : ҉❥•APPLAUSE•❥•҉   ҉❥•APPLAUSE•❥•҉

Kimm Starr: whispers: That was pretty awesome!

Roffellos Kisses: brilliant work!

Harthelie Atlas: grandiose bravo

James atLLOUD: Yay - so cool!

Francisco Koolhoven: incredible!

Cherry Manga: See you next year , hopefully :)

To see the full show on video, please watch it here, and again, just a reminder that you help other people to find out about HIE, about Cherry and all the other participants, and about opensim in general, when you feed our algorithm by liking videos and subscribing to the channel. 

HIE 2024 Starts !

Yesterday at 11am Pacific, the Hypergrid International Expo kicked off with three hours of music. The HIE expo regions are on Craft grid, you can get to them by coming to craft-world.org:8002:HIE Welcome and use the portals to get to HIE 2, HIE 3 and HIE 4, where all the fun takes place.

And what music! The divine Zoree Jupiter kicked things off with a truly beautiful set of Fado, the traditional portuguese songs of love, passion and of course, 'fado' or fate, destiny...

HIE - Art on Craft

 The Hypergrid International Expo is an annual event where people whose first language is not English get the chance to speak about their grid, their projects, their inventions and their opinion- in their own language - with subtitles for the rest of us - about places in Opensim.

While the emphasis of the presentations is to give non-English speakers a voice, the HIE Park is full of publicity booths that celebrate and inform you about all kinds of places in opensim. 

Getting Hie in Opensim

 October means beer, pumpkin spice cheesecake, leaf peeping, and gearing up for Halloween with outrageous sims and costumes. This year, add HIE to that list.  

HIE = Hypergrid International Expo
It is a weekend event from October 6 - 8 and it's part conference, part performance, part exposition. oh, and part party. It's not a music fest, although there will be music. It's not an art show, although there will be art. This is a conference and Expo where opensim residents - not 'hobbyists' or 'amateurs' but everyday users - Natives if you will - share their experiences of  life on the grids.

Maybe you know that for over a decade, each year, the English-language Opensim Community Conference allows folk from all over opensim to tell about their projects, art, inventions and work experience in opensim. 

The HIE is kind of the same, but focused on Opensim residents who are more at home in other languages - French and German, Italian and Spanish.