#Firestorm viewer second life install#
#Firestorm viewer second life software#
#Firestorm viewer second life download#

You can also attend events such as live music, DJ sets, open mic poetry sessions, or just get together with a friend for a chat. If you just want to visit places in Second Life, most regions can be accessed for free. So if you buy a house, for example, then it gets delivered to your inventory – a space where all your SL stuff gets stored that you navigate in the same way that you browse files on your computer (ie, things are stored in folders) to make the house appear you need to click on the file in your inventory and drag it to the ground: this is called ‘rezzing’ an item. It basically means to make something appear. Outside one of the homes provided with a premium SL account. If you want, you can trade this in for a piece of empty land somewhere else on the grid and buy your own home to rez there. There’s a variety of homes you can choose from, including houses and houseboats. The main advantage to this is it comes with a home for you in SL. There is also a ‘premium’ account for which a monthly fee is charged. For this, you will get a basic avatar (a person that represents you) that you can use to wander around SL in.

#Firestorm viewer second life download#

A popular alternative viewer you might hear people talking about in SL is called Firestorm (often abbreviated to ‘FS’), which you can download here.

The ‘official’ viewer is made by Linden Labs (the company who created and maintain SL) and can be downloaded here. There are actually quite a few different viewers that you can use for SL (just like there are quite a few different browsers for viewing the web).

#Firestorm viewer second life software#

You need to download a piece of software called a ‘viewer’.

#Firestorm viewer second life install#

Do I need to install something on my computer to use it? If you think of the metaverse as a digital place then it makes sense that that place could be viewed through a variety of methods – yes, this could include headsets (though SL does not have this option at the time of writing), but it could also include ‘regular’ methods such as computers and phones. Try not to get too distracted by this – the main reason this association is being promoted is probably because companies are hoping to sell lots of this hardware in the future. Of course, ‘metaverse’ these days is often referred to as something you access through virtual reality or augmented reality hardware. Check out the list of things that can be done in SL later on in this article. Most of the things that people are talking about the metaverse being capable of are things that have been happening for years in SL. Second Life residents have been using this term for many years now – long, long before Mr Zuckerberg made it suddenly famous in 2021.

Dawn breaks over a Second Life residential district. My view is that SL is best regarded as a place. If, on the other hand, you think a game consists of some sort of scenario whereby you follow rules and there is a win/lose outcome then SL is not a game.

If you think that anything on a computer where you move a character around in a 3D environment is a game then – fair enough – SL is a game. The prevailing view is that it is a game, though plenty of people are not convinced by this. But it’s a game, right?Ī few years back, there was a long (and, frankly, torturous) debate over whether or not SL could be called a game. Second Life is experienced on a regular computer screen. ‘Virtual reality’ usually refers to a 3D space you look at through a virtual reality headset. A ‘virtual world’? Is that the same as virtual reality? Sometimes, people refer to it as ‘The Grid.’ This is because the world of SL is divided up into thousands of square regions (these are also called ‘sims’), each measuring 256 metres by 256 metres. But it’s a very, very rewarding one, if you stick with it. I’ll be frank: it’s a very long learning journey. I’ll only cover the absolute basics here – the very first few steps on the SL learning journey. Those of us who’ve been residents of SL for a while understand that staying at home doesn’t mean we have to stop socialising.īut what about the people who have never been in SL before? This guide is for them. Which makes sense, because one of the first things you realise after a couple of days of self-isolation/working from home is just how much we all need contact with other human beings. Since then, it’s gone on to become the most viewed post on this website. This post was originally published in March 2020 to reflect that registrations in Second Life were increasing in response to the various lockdown measures being imposed due to the covid-19 pandemic.