randomhumanity

Getting in, getting on

Like everywhere these days, you’ll need an account to log in. You can set one up at this site. It only takes a sec.

It’s possible to use the Second Life viewer to connect to OSG, but it’s complicated to set up and doesn’t support some of the cool new features. It’s much easier to install the Hippo viewer. It logs into OSG by default if that’s all you want to do, but it can also be used for SL and other grids. Here’s a direct link to the Windows installer. It should install like any other Windows program and create links in the usual places, so find one and run it!

You’ll be presented with the OSG greeting page. Enter the login details you created a minute ago in the bar at the bottom and click Log In.

OSG Login

After some loading and whatnot you’ll find yourself in one of the plazas. There’s probably freebies around if you want to snoop around, and maybe even people! Most of them are very friendly, and they don’t have rabies.

Getting to Blue Mars

Click the map button on the bar at the bottom of the screen.

Type “Blue Mars” into the search box at the right and click the search button. The map will zoom to where you want to go. Click teleport to go there. You can find any region this way if you know its name or part of it.

After a moment or two you should arrive in Blue Mars.

*phew* Made it!

What’s there?

You might see a video playing on the big screen nearby. If not, you might have to click the play button next to the little camera in the bottom right hand corner of the viewer. If that doesn’t work (yeesh, such complications…) you’ll have to enable streaming media in your preferences. Hit ctrl-p to bring up the preferences dialog and go to the Audio & Video tab. Select everything under Streaming Preferences for an easier, if slightly more laggy life.

Clickity clickity click

Now that you’ve got it playing, you can change it by typing /4 and the url of a youtube video into the chat box.

There’s a sandbox off to the side if you want to try some building. Actually you can build/rez stuff anywhere if you have something cool to add to the main area. The islands around are up for grabs if you want to build something big, like a Martian military barracks or a nuclear missile silo or uh… a house (seriously, doesn’t have to be Mars themed). Just let me know you’re interested and which one you want.

If you get sick of all that, the teleporters will take you to some interesting places (mostly freebie areas right now). Just walk into them!

But why would I want another viewer?

You don’t! You can use the Hippo viewer for any and all Second Life compatible grids! Just click the Grids button when you start Hippo and select the one you want to connect to from the menu.

Now you can ditch the SL viewer and its half-hearted attempt at lock-in! Rejoice!

Something else you will probably notice is that if you type an emoticon like “:)” on its own, the colon will disappear. You can change this in the prefs as well, under the Hippo tab. Untick the setting about the MU* pose styles.

I don’t really know how it’s supposed to work…

I hope this is helpful, and that I’ll see you there soon

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