The Mysteries of Atlas Island

Our first destination of the day was on Dorena's World, a German-language grid with a long history here in Opensim, and always a treat to visit. Dorena and Anachron, the grid owners, were on hand to greet us, along with friend of the Safari Jupiter Rowland and his sister Juno.

We've visited lots of sims over the years, including the Beatles themed Strawberry Fields, the art sim More than Lights, and the social destination GridTalk and so on, or und so weiter, as they say here. This time our visit was to Atlas-Insel.

Dorena Verne: So, this region created Anachron single-handedly :-)

Luna Lunaria: great to see everyone

SoA BAD: hallo Dorena, hello all

Thirza Ember: takes me a minute to see colors... But we are all here

Dorena Verne

Luna Lunaria: You forgot to switch out your eyeballs again Thirza?

Star Ravenhurst: Region rezzed fast, but avatars are slow to rez for me

Dorena Verne[de→en]: See you all in color and completely, nice :-)

Anachron Young[de→en]: As Bruce Lee once said: Look at your eyes!

James Atlloud: wait, do I have eyeballs? oh  I do.

Luna Lunaria: lol James

Anachron Young

Leonitas Lionheart: nice to see you again Dorena :)

Dorena Verne[de→en]: I'm very happy too, thank you :-)

A Var Var Better Thing

Govega Sachertorte

We met on Little Willow Bay region, redolent of Jerry Garcia, whose art plays a pivotal role on  Neverworld Grid, famed for its many huge themed builds, often the destination of HG Safari trips, invoking everything from history to fantasy to TV shows and films, to the wide open spaces of the American continent. Govega, owner of Neverworld, explained a little of the background to the recent changes on the grid.

Govega Sachertorte: so you know last year we developed the roads sims, starting with cloudburst and shadowlands.. we were simply having so much fun that we decided to expand. We were having crashing issues and, turns out, all our var regions were different sizes, so Una said his OCD was crazy over that, and said we MUST have the SAME sizes for all var regions if they are attached

Thirza Ember:  he is one of many ocd people that can save your bacon

Govega Sachertorte: Yes! and that solved our problems. So once we started fixing the sizes, they all had to be 4x4s

French Respects

A beautiful buddhist bell was tolling in the wide and serene plaza on Francopholie grid, where a new build was inaugurated on Saturday.

Among those present were Edenette Catherinette, Ladyka 007, Minord Loup, Prodyck Theas, Pierre Segrov, Max Well, Nadir Rae, Sweety2 Jefferson, Vanessa and Vlad Vanhelsing, Athena Fira, Baal and Hina Starfall. Tristan Dehaie was the master of ceremonies.

Tristan, Nadir and Minord, among the first to arrive

People arrived gradually from about nine pm Paris time, beginning with Tristan, Nadir, who was in charge of the streamed  music for the event, and Minord Loup, owner of Francopholie which is a tiny grid aimed at helping French language users of Opensim to connect with each other, find resources, answers to technical queries, and the community generally. Gradually, the group grew. Here they all are, the lady with the wings is Edenette, more of her later.

Going to the Goddess

Our second destination of the week was over on Alternate Metaverse Grid, with the lovely Lynnestra Parker showing us around. We were sorry to learn that Maldrul Smith, a good friend of Lynnesta who DJs regular music events on Lynn's region, wasn't able to be with us due to RL. We were able to learn a lot about the sim from these informative boards when we arrived... this is a place of spirituality, myth and healing... with a fair dose of humor and fun thrown into the mix.

Thirza Ember: Thanks for agreeing to show us Airmid, Lynnestra!

Star Ravenhurst: I am excited to see it!

Lavia Lavine: It's positively gorgeous here. It's very relaxing

Lynnestra Parker: In Irish mythology, the goddess Airmed (also given as Airmid) was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. With her father Dian Cecht and brother Miach, she healed those injured in the Second Battle of Magh Tuiredh. I created this Armid to give people a place to relax and possibly heal.

Safari Does Anarchy

So what's new, I hear you say... anarchy on Safari is our default position. But this is another genius build by SoA BAD who, together with his partner in - crime? no, creativity - SIWAS S, met us on the Sons of Anarchy sim on their grid CCI. HG Address at the end of the post as always.

SoA BAD: First of all, welcome to California, in Charming, the fictional hometown of the Sons of Anarchy. We are here at the original Sons clubhouse.

SoA BAD: Famous people of the series will find everything here on this sim that was important in the series and where the most important scenes took place, such as the Sons' weapons depot in the mountains, police station, hospital, horse farm,

SoA BAD: ...as well as the "Casa Casa" in the red light district and the cafe and hairdresser in the center of town.

Star Ravenhurst: I love SOA! This looks awesome!

Crazy like a Phos

The second destination on this tour was also very special - a chance to meet a builder and storyteller from Mobius Grid. We were on sim Phos - as always, the HG Address is at the end of the post - and the arrival point is a small island, just off the main build... from here you walk down onto the dock and through the teleport - first accept Experiences, which allow you to get the full effect of the sim! 

The teleport takes you to the giant tower which is full of portals taking you all over the sim, to places high in the sky as well as many neat places at ground level.

Knight Knox, also known by his Display Name KAZO the FOX (Mobius is the only grid in Opensim that we've visited so far to have SL style Display Names enabled) immediately began by giving us a bit of the backstory.

Knight Knox, aka KAZO the FOX

KAZO the FOX: The story of Phos on the planet Daqtheion can be best told starting like this:  Phosfortia was the first planet in the system that started the story, but that planet was destroyed by a threat from space (cyberspace).   Now that planet is the destroyed one you see in the sky over the Desert Zone.  The main resident here Kaze the Fox got in his spaceship and escaped Phosfortia before it got pulled into the void. He traveled through space looking for a new home and found Daqtheion. Its named that because its a place that has multiple climates that range from hot to cold. The name is unique but the original languages it was made up from is lost to time.

Thirza Ember:  I love these awesome teleport rings, look at the image in the middle...  it's really fancy

Lavia Lavine: almost mystical

Thirza Ember:  we're in the heart of the sim now...

Karsten Runningbear: i hear the beat : )

Tutti i Frutti

The new Safari season began on January 1, with a fabulous visit to Bloom Peter's Frutti Music Bar, now the main arrival point on Winxtropia grid. The Winxtropia gang were there to meet us, of course! Gorgeous Boujee, Farstar, Arielle, Ghost, YumYum, made a point of being there to be part of the event - much appreciated! The sim, even with nobody on it, feels like the most bustling bar resort in all of Opensim, as you'll soon see... HG Address is as always at the end of the post.

The first thing you notice at the landing point is the busy road with cars and vans rushing by, and pedestrians and joggers too, ad the Safari crowd arrived, and gradually rezzed, their clothes and colors gradually showing up.

Thirza Ember: watch out for the traffic that road is dangerous!

Farstar Enoch: yerrr careful if u crossing the road

Boujee GamerGirl: this is awesome

Forest Azure: lol, of course james needs to try it - daredevil

James Atlloud: Yes!

Dings Digital : oh nice, urban area next to a beach

Tosha Tyran: like barcelona :)

Bloom Peters: Tosha i love your avatar! ... lol the waitresses are going to go nuts lmao

Farstar Enoch: yes, they are busy cleaning etc, i was talking to them earlier, they are excited !

 Thirza Ember: they make a lot of trash here...

Bloom's latest avatar, so cute

 lifted pixel: BLOOM i'm in love with your new avatar...  GASP!!!!

Bloom Peters: I would like to welcome everyone here to the Frutti Music Bar!  ty thirza for making this happen. The Bar was created in honor of my favorite tv cartoon series The Winx Club. But it has some Innovations  as well. As you already can see there is alot of ai stuff happening

Safari '25

 Another year of HG Safari trips is right around the corner, beginning in just six days from now on January 1 at the usual time, 12.00 Pacific time, or SLT - what time is that where you live? Answers in the comments!

The early spring season of HG Safari trips will last 10 weeks, as usual, so our final trip will be on March 5. Then after a break for a few weeks the fun starts again! As usual, each week the aim is to visit two interesting places on two different grids, accompanied by the person who knows all about the build, so that they can tell us their stories and answer out many curious questions. Where are we going? Here are a few hints - do you recognize any of these destinations?

Novelties on Novale

Another splendid Canadian winter on sim Novale, with lots of familiar features and novelties for all to enjoy! Dabici Straulino and Kelso Uxlay of Creanovale have once again created an immersive snowbound experience for everyone in Opensim. HG Address is of course, at the end of the post - but you knew that already.

There is a fabulous mixture of real life places and fantasy elements on Novale, it's always been so, no matter the season. Revamping the var region to reflect the passing from spring to summer to fall to wintertime is a major job for these two very accomplished builders. It's also a real achievement that they combine novelty with those elements or landmarks that we've all come to recognize and love over the years. They make the place feel real, while never allowing it to become stale or predictable.

Snowglobe landing point

Dabici and Kelso love their Quebecois heritage and they feature the landscape and culture in every season - for example some Safari goers will remember the Maple Syrup Safari  tour we did back in 2022 where there was so much to learn and to enjoy. 

Vela Turns Eight

 Vela dreams grid just turned eight years old last weekend, in opensim grid terms, that's a pretty venerable age. 

This small grid, run from home (the ddns in the name gives that away) is the creation of Cleopata and Myrena Rajal, and they celebrated with friends with a mixed event, starting with a fashion show, in collaboration with Loru Destiny.

The Warmth of Yana

It's no secret that Yana Dakota likes to be warm! Whether it's her signature Tahiti build, visited by the HG Safari group back in  or her take on what makes the ideal opensim gird, warmth is key. She discovered opensim by herself, and the experience wasn't all that positive at first.

Yana Dakota: I joined a grid that was not open for HG which had some serious problems and after 3 months I had had enough. Then I joined OSGrid and I didn't feel comfortable there either, that didn't last long. And then I come to AMV and it was a feeling of coming home. I was immediately addicted again, lol. What I look for in the owners of a grid, is warmth, safety, feeling safe under their wings, and that's what I found here.One big family, warmth, coziness, and especially love, because that is actually what life is all about, not only in RL but also here.

Yana on Tahiti

Yana's experience as a landscape builder began early in her virtual life - back in 2007 she got a job dressing sims for XiaoWang Yue of Tao estates - five regions, each with 16 parcels if you remember those. Plenty of work, then, in organizing them for rental use.

Yana Dakota:   I  think I worked for him for 3 years. Landscaping is a thing of mine.  All in all I got the hang of creating 3D. I put everything on the marketplace with a 3D picture and in no time everything was rented out with the result that he had to order more sims. Eventually I became general manager there.Then the recession in RL meant that he started selling his sims until there was nothing left. After that I had 2 more jobs and then took a big break from SL.

Advent Neighborhood

 Osgrid is back up, or kind of back up, not entirely convinced by it, from a performance point of view, but it's a good omen, and another promise of good times ahead is the start of the Advent build by Ange Menges and Nani ferguson. Ange and Nani have been consistently building festive, ephemeral regions for over 12 years in Opensim (and worked together before that back in SL) so they're used to the vagaries of the virtual. They have set up their latest creation Advent Calendar on two grids, Zetaworlds and OSGrid. 

When you arrive there's the usual poster board but this time, no HUD, it's just up to you to go out wandering around the snowy, bosky neighborhood and seek out structures with numbers on them. 

Something for the Weekend

 Next weekend is going to be a busy one for opensim - isn't it almost always? For starters, it's the Opensimulator Community Conference held on a dedicated grid - this is the 13th year for the event that brings together educators and developers, with speakers like Valibrarian Gregg, Lone Wolf, and Sally Cherry.

Rhiannon Chatnoir and the team at Avacon organize the OSCC every year

On Saturday at 12.00noon SLT there's a panel presentation all about the Hypergrid International Expo! Mal Burns, James Atlloud and I will be discussing how the HIE event came into being, some details about the history, technical aspects, and aims of the event. SO if you're available to come over and hear it, check the HG Addresses at the bottom of this post. OSCC events are filmed and streamed in Youtube also. Subscribe if you haven't yet done so, and visit the OSCC Expo Zone 2 to see more information about HIE. 

There's more going on this weekend though. 

It's the final party on Discovery grid, next Saturday. They have 4 DJs lined up. from 12 noon SLT, to serenade the grid offline, or should I say transitioning  to O3DE. 

We Thinx Winx

Winxtropia is one of the most fun and cutting grids out there, with a strong bias toward original opensim content, cartoon looks, lots of low poly and low lag and high performance happening here. A short while back, the new sim 'Frutti Music Bar' was featured on this blog - it's all your food groups wrapped into one!

But... even super tech savvy grids can have their  hiccups - one happened just over a week ago. A new update caused havoc to Crescent Melody, the music region you probably remember for its dancing cats.

This situation brought Bloom Peters, owner of Winxtropia, to a decision - she decided to start again. Well, not entirely of course...

Bloom Peters: I kept many backups and lost nothing. All sims are restored and inventory so Winx should work the same as it did.

Thirza Ember: OK, so what's new? Re-friending everyone, I know, possibly LMs will be broken... what else?

Film Fest! Will you take part?

Loru Destiny: My dears, I keep seeing little films here on Facebook that you lovingly created. Now I got an idea: how about an Opensim Film Festival?

Hmm that got your attention! We all love them, watching and making films to celebrate your virtual worlds. If you want to be part of this event, whether as a filmmaker, or part of the audience, or both, you may have some questions. Let's get some answers!

When is the deadline for participating?
Loru Destiny:  The deadline is 28 February 2025. After that I will prepare everything for the festival. This will take some time. I also have to agree the exact date of the festival with the video artists. So I can't say exactly when the festival will take place. But I'll do my best to organise everything quickly.

Ōpunguriddo

On this round planet, distances are no object, and in the virtual, you can teleport to a grid on the other side of the world in a moment. But one thing that can defeat us is the time zone issue. A quick glance at opensimworld.com will tell you that Opensim is at its busiest in the hours of evening in Europe and the East Coast, let's say from 11am to 8pm SLT. That translates to 4am to 1pm, in Japanese time - yawn! work! ...not an ideal time to get inworld; the Opensimmers of Oceania can also relate, no doubt.

Teddy Dragoone

That makes it even more special when there's an opportunity to hear from someone who's not in your usual time window. Meet Teddy Dragoone, class of '09 in Second Life. We met on the newly minted Open Grid, and I asked him to tell a bit of his story.

Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa, the blank slate, is a concept as ancient as Aristotle, and as modern as an empty sim. Often associated with the human mind in that magical moment before impressions, feelings, opinions and experiences have made their mark, the very words 'tabula rasa' can fill a creative person with the thrill of possibilities.

It's also the name of Ieko Catnap's art sim on OSGrid, and it's home to pleasant pathways leading between attractive buildings with a provencale feel.  In one corner, a little grey graveyard is enriched by this lovely fountain, with prim fish that say they were made by Virtual Christine, giving the place the feel of an authentic history.

Charming too are the little shops, a flower market, bakery, newspaper printers and more, the cutest has to be 'Chik' Ânes' with a bit of a Latin American vibe going on. 

Taarna's Mesh Wizardry

Many of us remember Taarna Welles as one of the few makers of good quality original mesh clothing, shoes and accessories in the first years of opensim, back when mesh was first coming in. 

One of the shops on Savvy

Bubblesz, Taarna's personal grid, still features her legacy build La Barronie from the olden days of Metropolis, and her more recent build, Savvy ,  features mens and womens clothing and footwear, a refreshing break from the aspiring crack whore outfits that make up so much of the apparel assets of our platform.

Ballerina stature on Savvy

More recently, Taarna has been working on a themed region called Domadun, adding yet another point of interest on this always interesting grid. You get a hint of the new region when you arrive on the Bubblesz Welcome sim... the portals are all decorated with a little witch's broom.

Prince's Passions

 suprema citius solvet amor die

He's Prince Amor, or 'the PrinceofAmor' - his precise name fluctuates, but for simplicity's sake let's just call him Prince - is pretty new to Opensim. He's only been here two or three years, but of course he's got a whole lot of SL experience under his belt from before. Safari goers will be well familiar with his Solar System build on OSgrid which we toured back in September. There's much more Amor on OSgrid, and hopefully over time we will get to explore the trippy Maze of the Mind, or his Star Trek build, and perhaps his automotive sim with over 300 cars, just to mention a handful of his personal sims. Along with these, he is known as the landlord of about 100 sims; his renters are either on OSgrid, or have Dreamgrid sims. It's always informative to get someone's take on the two platforms, especially if they're a fairly recent arrival, and it will be interesting to see if your observations are in tune with his. 

Prince Amor

I asked first of all for him to give us an overview of his experience in Opensim and the Other Place.

Prince Amor: Both experiences for me were about the same. When Second Life first started people there were helpful and kind. I was quite worried over privacy in Second Life at the time and they helped me a good while there. Gifts etc....things were free or close to it. Of course when Second Life first started Osgrid and it were one and the same. So it was the same kind of people. I do believe Second Life is not the same place now as it was, I believe it is because the good kind people came to Osgrid. I wish I had known of Osgrid then, but such was not talked about in the circles I was in.

Safari Finale 2025

 And so here it was at last, the Season Finale of HG Safari - in fact, the finale for the whole year, and where better to end our long journey than at a futuristic build most definitely not possible in real life even with all the cool light effects that galleries and concerts now can give people, none of it really compares with Nyx Breen's combination of 3D objects and environments, lights, particles, animesh and EEP. If you're not sure what EEP stands for, there is a nice big fat link for you. 

Nyx Breen wearing a special shiny outfit designed to enhance the Finale experience

It's been, what, two years, maybe a little more than that, since this new way of manipulating the environment in your sim was launched, and for many residents and builders, it's probably seemed a bit too complicated, so they have perhaps grabbed some freebie EEPs to liven up their sim, and left it at that.

Not so Nyx Breen, who in his RL career is a photographer of great talent and so is preternaturally in tune with the importance of ambience in terms of light and density. He has turned EEPs into such an art form, on sims that the folks over in the other place can only dream of - vast cathedrals of color are here in Opensim for us to enjoy, to wonder at and of course, to dance in.