Andron Rae's Brigadoon

 What a day this has been, 

What a rare mood I'm in...

"It's almost like being in love", Brigadoon, (Lyrics by AJ Lerner)

Our second stop on this week's Safari was to a magical place by Andron Rae, and the much missed Pasha Theas, a great builder with a big heart and a talent to match. The HG address for this build on Sharing is Caring is, as always at the end of the post.
The sim held up amazingly well considering the vast amount of detail here, much down to the grid owner, admin, and some sharp skilled building.

Chilli Bean: hi thirza n all newly arrived

Andron Rae: welcomes lifted, Jupiter, Forest, Thirza! welcome humbletim

humbletim metaverse: /me waves hello

lifted pixel: hello! thank you!

Andron Rae: there will be lots of things to click on though Thirza said let me chat in local i will walk you through most of the story, and if the sim crashes Chilli can reboot it for us lol

Chilli Bean: hopefully it will be okie lol

Andron Rae: i will shout like trouble did in the last place

Thirza Ember: i see bits of you all

Ayla Alvarez: no bytes yet, eh... the last place, everyone was naked for a bit. that was fun.

Andron Rae: i'll begin then :) Welcome to The Stories of Brigadoon region. There are several stories here, this is one of them - at the main landing 128,128 there is a hub that teleports you to any of them. This is a 2x2 region, the story was written and built by me, then landscaped with the enigmatic Pasha Theas who you may have seen from some other builds - The Caves, Crystalwind, and Shijima which is also here on Sharing Grid. Most of this sim region centers around a rewrite of the English/Scots poem ''Tam O'Shanter'' with elements from other Brigadoon legends (and some new ones!) Near us is #27 Royal Post, wherein begins your journey... you are welcome to walk inside though I will read everything off that you would click on :)

Andron Rae: shouts: Static NPCs speak on private local chat when you click on them. Other objects interact giving clues and backstory. A visitor would normally walk up the stairs and go inside to begin the tale, where you meet the postal clerk... it might be a tight fit as its a small building though feel free to step in... in this opening area the region lets you know many things are clickable.

Angelic Kisses: zoomed in....love the decor

Trouble for Safari

This week's opening gambit was a bit of a gamble, but what fun! We went over to Kitely to visit the Catronian Archipelago, a 4x4 roleplaying and sailing sim on Kitely where pirates combat navy, cannons roar, and you'll either end up in the drink, or with a drink... probably rum.
Trouble... but in the best possible way!

Cata Raven and Trouble Ahead 

There's nothing rum about this band of friends who came out in force to meet us on the sky island that serves as a TP hub for the various points of interest on the region. If you've never visited this bit of Kitely, it's a total delight. It can be shy-making to drop in on a RP group, because you never know if you're breaking in on their story, but these guys have always been super friendly - here are some of the 'usual suspects' who had just finished a battle royale when I dropped in last week to make sure of my LM. 

Captain Bally, Melanie Auxifur,  Till.Uhlenspiegel, Trouble Ahead

For our visit, there was a fantastic welcoming committee, and I guess about 18 Safari tourists, so quite a crowd was forming when we all tp'd over to Kitely...

Melanie Auxifur: greetings All

One Andonly: Ahoy everyone

Jupiter.Rowland: Hello to our hosts!

Cata Raven: Welcome:)

Captain Bally: Greetings everyone

Symphony's Mech Lab

Arriving on mech Lab in OSGrid is like stepping into a movie, or a high-end game. We were guests, for the second destination of this week's trip, of Symphony Vive, and she met the 20 or so Safari visitors at the Landing Point which sported a nice Welcome poster... always good sign!

The big white spheres are the cars that take you to the HUB

Symphony Vive: Welcome HG Safari Explorers! 欢迎 HG Safari 探险家！It will take some time  for the Region to load  for you to see... we will  soon move to a landing  HUB when we've all  loaded. This  will begin our  tour.

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. 

More Arts, More Friends!

Victoria Logan's OSGrid "Arts And Friends" adventure has a new chapter, this time it's all about 'We are OSGrid'.  

The inaugural party will be late May, so keep your eyes open for the event details which will be listed on opensimworld.com ad elsewhere on social media.

Lots to see here and also plenty of places for partying of course! 

Happy Birthday Mobius!

Happy 10th birthday Mobius grid! A big party occasion, and why not? Well this is opensim, so anything can happen...

The grid was experiencing some technical difficulties so we all crashed a few times, nothing drastic, after all you just need 2 minutes' patience and three clicks of a mouse to get back where you were, hardly a hardship, and it was certainly worth it for the chance to celebrate the event and to see the fab fireworks.

The constant crashes were a good opportunity to return to the Mobius freebie shop, and to run into more Mobians than is usual for a safari gal just wandering the metaverse - so, why not make the most of the opportunity?! I asked a range of people how they feel about the grid, from newcomers, to those who have been away for a long time, to others who have been around here a great deal.

The Last of Boston

 The Last of Boston is a zombie game based on the TV show The Last of Us on Neverworld Grid.

The build was due to be our first destination in this special 10 anniversary Safari tour, but,  the code gremlins got active in the inner workings of Neverworld's opensimulator on this occasion,  timing grr!

The usual suspects of Safari all showed up at the clubhouse, ready to go see the Boston sights, but instead it was a nice excuse to hear people share some of their feelings about our trips (and complain about the seats at the clubhouse - these people have no stamina!) 

It's been 10 years since our first forays into the unknown, with so many crashes and uncertainties in the planning and executing of our guided tours, so there was something appropriate about our last minute crisis. That's happened so many times it's a bit of a miracle when things all work out perfectly, as they often do.

But regardless of the stress related to trying to make these trips happen, I'd like to thank everyone who has joined us for their good humored patience and generally upbeat approach to Safari trips, no matter what they bring. After all, this is all about the people. If you want perfection, there are thousands of impersonal video games out there.