Vets in Neverworld

 Tig Eberdene: If you wish, you can click the box by the sign here and receive a poppy to wear. Remembrance Day is one holiday that everyone should celebrate. I am a Canadian veteran so I very much agree

Beth Ghostraven: Remembrance Day is one holiday that everyone should celebrate ...maybe "celebrate" isn't the right word - I think I mean "honor)

For our first destination of the day, the HG Safari crew landed in neverworld to explore ways to remember those who have served in the Military, with two veterans, Tig and Troy. Though each served ina different country, and have independent regions on Neverworld, they have found unity of purpose in the way they'll celebrate on Monday the many lives dedicated to the various branches of the armed forces. The event will be posts on Opensimworld and Facebook, and the HG Address to get to Georgetown (and to Troy's aviation collection, on Painted Sky) you'll find at the end of the post, as always.

The commemoration area is right next to the forced landing spot on sim Georgetown

Tig Eberdene: As you arrive in Georgetown you can see we are set in autumn right now. The setting is to be as how it is in Real life Northern Ontario.  Georgetown is a special place, named for my father George Thomas Wilson. He was a WW2 veteran and my personal hero.  My aim in Georgetown is to make it feel like a real place. There are 3 2x2 sims here, which are all based off a combination of places I have been or lived in RL. This sim is the downtown area. The sim directly to the North is homes for anyone who wishes to live in Georgetown, as well as a small lake and Provincial Park.

Neverworld's Ninth

 Neverworld will be turning nine in a few days and there's a big party planned for October 22 - 25 over on a dedicated sim, NWBB9  

It's a chance for Gov and the guys and gals of this builder's paradise to celebrate another year of challenges and achievements.

Tony, Jerry, & Little Willow Bay

Here is a heads-up ... or should that be deadheads-up? ... hmmm ... good question. 

What isn't in question is the following news - tomorrow,  August 1st, at 5pm - 8 pm SLT, there will be a concert by Tony Saunders to mark what would have been Jerry Garcia's 82nd birthday, held on the sim Little Willow Bay, on Neverworld, with some very special architecture put together by some of  NWG's best known builders.

Govega Sachertorte: Mr. smokes and Nexus Storm built the sim and I added the art and art info. The pieces are a gift grant to the SCA who is collaborating with the foundation on this. They will be livestreaming the event, and so will we. 

Little Willow Bay region on Neverworld is a virtual take on RL Sausalito

The full address is at the end of the post, as always! 

Wait a minute, why is this event on this sim, you ask, and not the Jerry Garcia Tribute sim that we visited back in 2023? 

Safari's Wild Season

Little bit of pre-nostalgia on Safari yesterday, as we had our final meetup on the OSGrid region HG Safari. The sim was gifted by Ange Menges back in late 2021 to give the Safari a regular base (our sim on Francogrid was still in existence at that time, but the grid was in deep decline) and since then, it has been our life-off point for 160 trips around the hyperverse. The closure here marks the start of another adventure on the new HG Safari Grid, which will be our main base starting in the Fall. More about that in future posts.

Final meetup on HG Safari sim, OSGrid

Today's first destination was on Neverworld, another large and detailed build, with extra features! The full HG Address of Wild Kingdom is of course at the end of the post. 

lifted pixel: hello hello! sorry distracted how are all you lovely avatars today?

Taarna Welles: Hello sweet people.  :)

Star Ravenhurst: I am sad this is the last Safari for awhile

Thirza Ember: well there is so much happening in opensim, plenty to do always

Forest Azure: /me smiles... last one?

Thirza Ember: until September 4 when it all begins again... I hope you guys are ready to be eaten by dinosaurs today

lifted pixel: oh hell yeah

Tosha Tyran: if later he spits me out again - why not?

Thirza Ember: make sure you are wearing stain-resistant clothes

lifted pixel: i'll be sure to scotchguard my rings before we go

James atLLOUD: Hello - I just got home from work!  Barely made it.

lifted pixel: yay welcome james :D

Dangers await at the Wild Kingdom !

We jumped over to Neverworld Welcome, in a bid to make our arrival a bit easier on the servers. As time has gone by, avies have become more complex, so we take longer to load. But not that much longer...

Neverworld by Neverworlders

Never easy to get a group photo of the team that runs a grid, but somehow, Govega Sachertorte, owner of  Neverworld Grid  managed it - she's a bit of a wonder that way! I was curious to meet up with the team after seeing their latest promo video (it's at the end of this post, if you want to scroll right past the wordy bit). 

Here's the first 'class photo' of most of the Usual Suspects in charge of making the grid beautiful and helping residents get the best possible service. We were on a sim that the Safari will be visiting for our final trip of the season, ten days from now. The region is called Wild Kingdom and this seemed like the sweet spot to get their photo, in front of the ice cream van.

Left to right: Art Bell, Nine Zero, Joshua 7, Thom Invr,
Nexus Storm, Govega Sachertorte, Morgant Whelan.

So, why do people love the grid?
I asked around. Tig Eberdene has the lovely and recently refurbished Georgetown region. Birch Grove, Jamie Wright's region, is a must-visit on this grid.

Jamie Ann Wright:  I originally joined Neverworld in 2020 but it became my official grid home in 2021. The best features of the grid are too many to name but to summarise them I would say it’s a builder’s haven community of kindness with a high level of support by the Govega and grid admins. Everyone champions each other's projects and collaborates in a beautiful way that always makes it feel like home.

Tig Everdene: I've been here just shy of 3 years. The best features of Neverworld are the people and the amazing talents they have and share with everyone. The freedom I have to create as I wish. The grid staff and owner who do their best to keep everything running as well as possible, and support our residents.         

So the residents love the grid - what about the staff? Nosey, ain't I... well, let's see what some of them say.

In the Abyss

 James Atlloud: i am mes-mer-ized

Imagine a drowned city, old as time.  Here creatures of the sea play among the ruins, while above the water a series of monumental bridges link land masses, no more than islands now, where a scatter of fine buildings, architecture ancient and modern, can be visited - even danced in and shopped in.

Mr Smokes and Nexus Storm

 From a landing point among coral and shoals of fish, Nexus led the intrepid group who made it to Aqua Abyss through the main points of interest at quite a speed. 

Go Continental on Neverworld

Dawn is breaking over a new continent on Neverworld, and it might just be the answer to your dreams. 

The new continent is called Bountiful. 

If you don't know Neverland, it's a 7 year old grid with a solid tech, drama-free, HG Friendly reputation. The grid's motto 'Live, Love, Create' fits it perfectly. It's a mixed-use grid, with art installations, a fun Hunt region with worthwhile prizes, a lot of quality freebie shops, and plenty of residential areas too. 

Click here to get to the Neverworld Grid website.

Govega Sachertorte

The rental charges, if you want to get a region of your own, are reasonable, and there are self-hosting opportunities too. If you just want a bit of a sim to live on, then the prices are ... well, non existent!  

I asked Govega what she considers to be the secret of her success.

Govega Sachertorte: I'm nice! Just kidding... I am lucky to have a good team, we give out free land, and we don't micro manage people. We don't force events on them or rules. Or act like a pyramid scheme lol We are the no drama grid. This is the 4th or 5th time I've done a project with a massive themed area, and I am optimistic about the success.  It starts slow and before you know it, you are  turning people away.

To visit the new continent, you should jump over to

Neverworld Underground

 For the second hour of our tour, we went on an underground trip on Neverworld Grid.  Our visit today was to a very special build called The Caves. It was a great contrast to AI Austin's build, and here we saw another face fo the incredibly diverse possibilities of using Opensim as a way to reflect our lives and creativity.

Andron Rae

It's beautiful and poignant and also interesting from a technical/aesthetic reason, because we all know that cams and tunnels do not really go together. Yet Andron Rae has made it work here, and in the most magnificent way. 

Arcanquest looking old school

Some of us couldn't directly jump from Space City to The Caves, I noticed this glitch all week, something going on in the intertubes between OSGrid and NVW, so I had added in the LM Pack a second LM to the Neverworld landing area, and that seemed to work for everyone who was unable to Verify Identity when they tried the direct tp.  A special shoutout goes to all those who have been trying to make an effort to lessen lag by having much less complex avatars. Here is Arcanquest Frank is a heroically retro avie,  although I'm honestly not sure how much we help or hurt with all our efforts.  

Govega (center) with Joshua and Lucy

Neverworld Grid owner Govega was totally unafraid of lag, her avie had a complexity of over 400,000 and indeed the region seemed to shrug us off.  There was a brief moment of crisis when all 25 of us arrived on The Caves, to be greeted by Govega, Joshua 7, Alba Wyrril, and Oliver Grashnar (not to mention Franco Thirza who got jammed in the corner by some barrels of what she hoped was brandy and, on reflection, was probably gunpowder).
Andron has prepared a walkthrough of the build, which is available on Youtube here.

The build involves following a trail and reading the notecards, but it's not a hunt as much as a meditation on life and love and beauty and creativity, a stream of consciousness accompanying you on your journey. Wherever you see a glowing spark, there you will find a notecard. 

Val finds a bright spark *reading*

One of the coolest parts of the build, that you may miss if your volume is low, are the sound effects, like the splash when you fall off a bridge into a rock pool. The route is pretty easy to follow, though being a big group who wanted to stick together as much as possible, there was a fair bit of TPing - thankfully point-to-point TPs are enabled here, and that saved us all a great deal of frustration. 

Whirli (foreground) with l. Nara and r. Alan

The heart of the build is a sort of cavern - or is it open to the sky? I don't think I checked - where you will find an incredibly beautiful ring of singing stones, set in a glade full of soft green foliage. Nearby a beautiful statue nestles in a watery corner. It is captivating, and had us all standing quietly, just enjoying the place and the moment.  The build is dedicated to the memory of the late Pasha Theas, who was one of the earliest members of Neverworld, and the partner of Andron Rae. She was a talented builder and her creations can still be seen in many parts of the grid, including the Welcome Center.

Apollo Star admiring the statue among the ferns.

Thirza Ember: there is a gift at the end, if you do not find it, let me know, I will pass it to you, Andron wanted all to have it

Alan Scot: got a "Conclusion" notecard but no gift, what was the gift ?

James uses his head to display the gift from 'The Caves'

Oliver Grashnar: that's an interesting structure, so much up and down I didn't know fully where I was going

Lifted Pixel: I met a ghost dog

From left to right Aphra, Jeff, George, Oliver, Truelie, Loru, Kelso, Govega, Nara, Thirza, James.
Congrats to all those who survived to the very end! 

Dabici Straulino: very nice, I love the sound installation - fountain and crystal. Thank you for the visit, this is a great work

Kelso Uxlay: Nice sounds

James Atlloud: So great to have audio effects in the experience!

George Equus: Very impressive build!

HG Address: