Diving into a virtual world

I read about Second Life for the first time in a newspaper. It was only mentioned briefly and I didn’t give it much thought. Then at work there was some talk about the tendencies of today and how everything is moving towards a virtual plane. Nothing so extraordinary, we work with distance learning so the concept is not too new. But still, a virtual world, a WORLD, were people walk, fly, meet, travel to new places, interact with the whole world, build and sell virtual things, virtual products, and so many things – that was new.

Then I read an article in a Finnish computer magazine telling about Second Life. An extensive and informative article, with pictures and an interview with a SL resident. She talked about a lecture she gave at SL on brain research and neuroscience, and it gave me an idea of how much more there is to SL than a 3D virtual environment. There’s science, culture, education, and also all the entertainment. It caught my curiosity.

Next, I visited the Second Life website, read all about it, found Torley Linden’s tutorials at YouTube, watched them all… Amazing! It was then that I decided to create an account. And little by little SL opened itself to me.

I’m always like that with everything: I read everything about it before trying. So I already know the rules and how everything works, and how you can do things... This is something I learned from having a father who used to ALWAYS try everything out without ever reading the instructions book (and damaging some things in the process!).

So, I visited SL for the first time already provided with necessary information. The Orientation Island was very helpful, but... I had some problems around there. It started with the vehicles. I couldn’t make them move. I tried everything, tried different vehicles, chose Drive, but my avatar just sat inside the vehicle doing nothing. I clicked everything, used the mouse and the keyboard controls, and nothing. And... the people around me were all as new as me and couldn’t help. I walked around the rats, amazed by them (want one!), and before visiting the rest of the island (mistake!), I saw a display about the Help Island and decided to visit it. I got distracted when talking to some people so I did not give enough attention to the warning saying I wouldn’t be able to go back to orientation island.

At the Help Island there were no vehicles. I found some people next to the tutorials and talked to them. Two men and a woman. We talked for some time and it was nice. We were all new and didn’t know much. I helped one of them with gestures. We all added each other to our Friends list. The woman was quite nice and seemed very smart and cool. Pity I haven’t seen her anymore. The guy I helped with using gestures was also really nice and we are still friends. We haven’t “met” in SL but we exchanged IM messages and he seems really cool and friendly. It’s so nice to meet interesting and friendly people! We talked about Linux!

And the other guy of the group was a disappointment and one reason why I almost thought of leaving SL aside before getting even to know it properly. I mentioned to them I was having problems with the vehicles and couldn’t manage to drive them. They gave advice, but it didn’t help much. So this second guy offered to help. Let’s go to the cars and I will show you, he said. He claimed he could go back to the Orientation island and asked me to follow him. The problem was that I didn’t know how to use the map or teleport, I didn’t manage all the camera controls well enough, and I was having a lot of trouble going through the menus and trying to figure out how everything works (sometimes reading beforehand is not enough). Everything was too fast, I couldn’t read the chat lines and try to answer and read the menus at the same time. So the guy teleported somewhere and sent me an IM saying he was there at the Orientation Island. And offered to teleport me there. I accepted. And where did I end up? At a totally different place. It was a harbour with a sex shop on it! He was inviting me to get in there and check it out. I saw the realistic skins and all sorts of prim attachments... He certainly was thinking I would buy myself a realistic skin and would next go somewhere to have virtual sex with him! Hah! In your dreams! I teleported away from there and never saw him again.

An unpleasant meeting and in world difficulties, besides a place full of lag, and I thought maybe I had seen enough of SL. Fortunately I found blogs and videos with pictures of beautiful places, and travel guides telling of all the cool places you can visit in SL. I tried again, visited sandboxes, learned to use the map and camera controls, animations, huds, all sorts of things. Made some money camping, created clothes, found out amazing freebies, prim hair, prim shoes... I met interesting people, had nice chats, and helped a lot of newbies – some just as new to SL as I am, but needed help. It was so nice to later on receive an IM from one of those I helped thanking me so much for helping him to use the map. He was so happy saying he now could teleport anywhere he liked! Hey, the world is full of nice people! Never let the bad ones spoil it for you.

It has been so nice to read about other people’s adventures in SL, that I decided to create this blog. So I can share with you things about the places I visited. I started taking pictures whenever I visit some interesting place, and I will post them here. Right now I haven’t got much time, so I don’t know how often I will manage to update the blog, but I have things to tell and pics to show. I shall post them when I have more time!

A big thanks to all of you who write tutorials and make videos explaining how to build and do things in SL, you cannot imagine how helpful you have been to all of us newbies out there! Thank you! A special thanks to Torley and to Natalia!

Second Life rules!

Here are some tips for people about to try SL for the first time:

1) Think carefully when choosing a surname from the list! The list contains all kinds of interesting surnames of every nationality. Choose rather a surname of your own nationality or one whose language you can speak or at least understand a little. I say this based on my own experience. I chose Yoshikawa because I love everything related to Japan and all things Japanese. But I am not Japanese and I do not speak Japanese at all. You cannot change your surname after choosing it! And as long as I love the name Yoshikawa, it has nevertheless been a problem when I’m approached by Japanese people who will speak Japanese to me and I cannot understand a thing! And I can’t even KNOW whether they’re talking to me at all, when there’re other people around. I have to keep always explaining that I don’t speak Japanese. I could have avoided that if my surname was from a country which language I can speak.

2) Be nice. Those avatars over there are people like you, and people have feelings. Be polite and friendly.

3) Don’t take things too seriously.

4) Respect the rules. Let’s keep SL a nice and safe place.

5) Have fun!

Best regards!

Wilhelmina

* in the first picture above you can see me making a backflip and diving at a Swedish island. More about that later! And this second pic is from the NOAA sim (more about that too later).