Destiny at the Movies

 It's finally here, Loru Destiny's fabulous Opensim Film festival. Months in the making, this unique event pitted the wits and witticism of all of Opensim's filmmakers, representing people from many different grids, languages, and parts of the world, all sharing their visions of the virtual world with us.

The sim has that 'somewhere way out West' look to it, with ruddy bluffs and a bit of a canyon, the ideal space in which to have a vast Drive In with all your favorite muscle cars and rusty trucks.

Getting International on AMV

Once again AMV grid is having their special International Diversity concert - indeed, maybe it's still going on! The idea, just like in 2024, is to have a bunch of singers from all over the planet to come in and do a 30 minute set, each one with a personalized backdrop reflecting their cultural roots, creating a feeling of vitality and world-trotting wonder from the comfort of our own desks, or, if we're honest, from a nice comfy chair.

Hypergridding has been a lagfest for the past few weeks, so I was expecting low framerates and a bit of a struggle but with over 30 people on the sim, once all the mesh boobs and brains shrunk back to their respective places, the whole sim was popping! 

Mr Mikie was singing when I arrived, followed by Cataplexia, who stepped in when Joao Frazao had an electrical outage. 

A Bayou Bye Bye

The final part of the final Safari of the season took us over to the brightly colored N'awlins build on Wyldwood Bayou Grid. It's a great combination of historical recreations, party venue, freebie mall (definitely worth exploring the sim for some unusual, useful, and beautiful finds) , and landscape with both swamp and street plan, a complete delight - HG address at the end of the post, of course! 

On hand to greet us, two Wyldwood stalwarts, Fitheach Eun and Kith Whitehawk. They held over the their traditional Carnival celebrations for us, so that the Safari could go out in style with a Louisiana spring in our step.

Kith Whitehawk: Now that's Mardi Gras brother!!!!

Luna Lunaria: These guys love playing rock blues :-)

Safari Boosts its Brains

Our first stop of the week was on Virtual Learning Village, usually this grid is mostly closed to Hypergrid tourists because it is a place of learning and meditation, for improving your brain health. What better place to end a hectic 10 weeks of HG travel. The sim has a European feel, like an elegant suburb in a historic city.

Lisenna welcomes the HG Safari group - arriving a little bit at a time, and in grey.

Lissena Wisdomseeker: Welcome to Virtual Learning Village!  VLV was created in 2018, but I have been active in Opensim since the first OSCC. I volunteer at the conference every year.  I had a region on Avacon first, then Max and I talked about developing our own grid. Our vision was to have a place outside of Second Life where we could offer our programs for organizations and groups who would benefit from a more private, controlled environment where they can design their own regions. Max's team has given this grid a very special ambiance and I am very proud of what we have built. Many thanks to Max and Buildwerk.

Lissena Wisdomseeker: whispers: Sunny has a place here, and Fran has helped us too

Maximillian Merlin: We are now in the Hypergrid region of Virtual Learning Village. The Virtual Learning Village is a non profit virtual 3D platform. The grid was developed by Lynne Berrett (Lissena Wisdomseeker) and Maximillian Merlin with his volunteer Buildwerk  team. Our umbrella nonprofit organization is the Ageless Mind Project. Our purpose is to provide lifelong learning of many kinds, all based on best practices for promoting brain health and total well-being.  The VLV grid offers limited access to and from the hypergrid, to protect our students. We have devoted much time and thought to making this virtual world more user-friendly and sheltered than SL can be. 

Dismayland, Undismayed!

Dismayland is one of the most unusual regions in Opensim, for its 'ban' on attachments, for its insulting NPCs and many scripted rides, and for the risk to life and limb! For the HG Safari visit this week, which was also Cornflakes Week, Spax Orion, the grid owner and the magician behind all these rides, lifted the no Mesh no Attachment rule, and allowed HG Safari to come and visit. 

Spax Orion

Spax had also prepared a special flying saucer ship toshow off the rides from the air, with the idea that people will get a good glimpse at the park and return to the rides on other occasions. It's one of those places where you can spend hours enjoying the variety or imaginative machines, but also the funny NPCs chatting and arguing with each other. Here's the lovely Siwas, resplendent in her many Biker attachments, enjoying the Nuclear Haste ride, as the rest of us rode around in the sky.

This week Opensim has been acting weird (well it has been doing so for several weeks, as many have noted) and lots of people are getting kicked or banned messages from places for no discernable reason. Poor James Atlloud managed to get refused entry on avatars from 3 different grids! And similar problems were found by many others. These are almost all not intentional messages by the grid owners.

There is, I'm afraid, nothing that I or the grid owners can do about that except to invite you to try again at another time, and say we're sorry we didn't have your company... and invite you not to make a drama out of a technical glitch, if at all possible.

Cornflakes 2025 NW Style

It's Cornflakes Week in Opensim, and the HG Safari crew landed on Neverworld for the second hour of our tour, guests of Govega and all the NVW friends, on the brightly colored Cornflakes stage at Never Plaza, just as we did last year.  

Nexus Storm: Welcome to everyone from the Hypergrid Worlds !!!!

Before we get on to the Corny events of the day, just a quick word about hypergridding. If you have recently gotten the 'Avatars from your gird are not allowed' message on a bunch of grids, please don't assume that there is some sort of massive war going on. These are mostly mistakes - the opensim ecology appears to be suffering quite a lot recently, and often the system is messing up, and sending out false 'Not Allowed' messages. Please try again, or try a different avatar, or above all don't assume the worst  ...chances are, it's not the grid owner trying to offend or exclude you, it's just the intertubes getting stuffed up. 

For those who may not remember, Cornflakes Week (the last seven days in February each year) is a festival unique to opensim, not linked to any real world festival, nor a holdover from SL, but a reminder of simpler times in opensim when we were all much younger and so were our prims. Not every grid does it, and no two grids celebrate the same way; Osgrid has traditionally done a big party although with the current rush to save .oars and .iars, likely they will have other things on their minds. 

Neverworld's house band the King Trio were spinning the tunes for Cornflakes Week

Entertainment supplied by the King Trio who gave us a selection of Country music. 

For a lot of people, the name 'Cornflakes' probably only means the breakfast cereal, but it has much deeper roots in the history of opensim. Virtual platforms like Opensim are more and more being recognized as places with a population and its own particular customs, a sort of virtual civilization, and having our own traditions and legends that unite us, well, that is part of what makes our archipelago of grids unique. 

Going Stag

Our second stop on Safari this week was on a roleplay grid, where Lavia Lavine has made a pastiche of life in the days of the 'wild  west' where she reinterprets what has often been overplayed in movies, the less savory side of life. 

The sim is the setting for play but at its heart are some serious observations, making it interesting for any visitor as a cultural commentary on a famous part of US history. We arrived in the sumptuously glazed railroad station, close to the ticket office.

Lavia Lavine: Stag Hollow is located in the Oklahoma territory in the late 1850s. They were just getting the Trains and Telegraph in.  

Lavia Lavine: Stag  Hollow isn't just for RP though that is my hope but it is also for historical value. The western cities and towns were not the dustbowls that Hollywood portrays.: Most of them were actually like this with dirt and gravel roads.