Tag: chatting

SL Exploration: Ville de Coeur (Small French Village)

SL Exploration: Ville de Coeur (Small French Village)

by Ellie_Avora ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Today we’re taking a mini-adventure to a small European village called “Ville de Coeur” this is a primarily English-speaking sim that has French architecture and culture. If you’re looking for a place that is both nice for photography and gives you a small taste of France, then you have come to the right place. This little village can be found in the “Destinations” tab of your viewer under “International” which means this area gets a lot of traffic. This is a place I’d consider checking out as it also mainly meshes and keeps up to standards with Second Life’s graphics advancements otherwise known as going fully mesh. While exploring this little village you’ll find that the demographics of users that you’ll find here are normally 35 and older. However, now and then I’ve run into someone who is around their late 20s early 30s. If you find someone younger here, for the most part, their either exploring, looking for a place to do photography, or just have an old soul. To be fair, this sim appeals to anyone and everyone even though it attracts older and mature individuals so don’t let this frighten you away from the overall concept and amazing community this little town has to offer. There is so much to do, always someone to talk to, and from what I’ve experienced thus far no drama (I normally try to find places with little to no drama, because who wants their Second Life experience ruined by other peoples issues?).

Ville de Coeur as told by one of the users who own a gallery within walking distance from the entrance of the sim is 7 connected full sims. I’m mainly focusing on the main area as this was mostly what I explored but will be sure to explore the rest later and compile a detailed post on it. This area is very pleasing to the eye, relaxing, romantic, and overall a lighthearted atmosphere. There are always people here and from what I’ve experienced everyone is extremely friendly in the area. There isn’t one person that I’ve questioned as far as their motives, everyone just wants to talk, relax, and enjoy the scenery. There are a lot of dance balls, poses, and snuggle areas as well as a small café by the docks. There are residential areas where those who want to be on the sim can live and enjoy more of the community. I wouldn’t say this is much of a come and go destination… if you come here you come and stay and explore everything. The French theme is seen everywhere with mimes lining the streets, churches, the French flags above the market corridor and cobblestone streets. In a sense, if you’re into old architecture it reminds me of an older France then today’s rendition of the country.

Meeting new people:

As I’ve stated, this sim is filled with so many friendly people my first visit into this area a gentleman was sitting by the dock with some coffee and a bottle of wine in a small little café created area. He welcomed me in and then asked me if I wanted to join him for a little bit if I’m honest I had to leave not long after he invited me over to chat and hang out with him. I felt bad because he was so nice about it and talked to me about the community. He explained, that he owned a small gallery in the area which is where I asked if it was real life photos displayed in Second Life or more along the lines of Second Life photography and photo editing. His gallery is Second Life photography there is nothing wrong with that as I take photos of all my adventures and then of course post it onto this blog. I will be joining him on a small walking tour of some point in the small village and community.

I’ve come here at all hours of the night so I could type up a genuine and true portrayal of this sim it required me to pop in quite a few times to be able to do so. In the end, if you’re looking for a drama-free place to meet new people and make new friends this is probably the perfect place to be. There is so much to do from walking around with a walking tour either with someone or alone to hanging out on the beach and partying in the small gazebo with a bar, seating, and dancing, there is so much to do. Also, if you love randomly dancing consistently throughout a city like you would find in a Broadway show when in a small city or village than you will appreciate all the dance orb rezzers throughout the entire sim. This is a perfect place for romance as well as it’s a very enjoyable place to be with that special someone. There are a lot of couple’s activities and dancing is for more than one person as well as some of the specific walkers. What I love the most about the people here is they don’t have a hidden agenda. You might get someone saying you’re pretty or attractive, but they aren’t going to try and de-robe you in bed within the next hour of talking to someone. Everyone here has values and isn’t the type to cause drama from what I’ve experienced the 8 times I’ve visited this area. The people who are here are here to be a part of a community and have fun by surfing the waves, dancing, virtual drinking, etc. Sex is not the primary thing on most of the peoples’ minds here so it’s a nice escape from the rest of Second Life.

Scenery:

When exploring if you can’t tell this sim is made from a French theme then you might want to re-evaluate what you can and cannot see. The theme of this village Is to connect it with an older version of France. Which of course is one of the most romantic countries in the world. The area is lined by the French flag in banners throughout the main sim of this area to a small gathering area with a water fountain. Which by the way is a super nice touch with the cobblestone streets, if I’m honest the area reminded me of how Charles Dickens in his literature describes his surroundings in 1800s England. It’s very beautiful and I feel literature enthusiasts and historians will appreciate this area! There are shops everywhere but ahead of time, I’ll explain that a lot of the shops here are mainly older Second Life outfits that aren’t mesh. But to be fair I still have some outfits like those in my inventory some things just never get old even when everything moves forward. It’s nice to support small businesses though so don’t let that throw you off from looking around. There aren’t any roads throughout this sim it’s all paths and walking areas so don’t be ready to bring out your Lamborghini’s and other cars you bought on the Second Life marketplace.

Aside from the actual city feel itself there is a nicely made beach right across the way with steps leading down to it. Over by the café I mentioned when you first land inside of the small village there is a boat dock. If you love to sail this is an awesome place to do it, I rezzed my boat and explored the scenery especially the outskirts of the sim it’s surrounded by beautiful trees and mountains. A perfect place for photography! The beach is right next to the docks.

There is so much to do there are sitting areas, you can swim, surf, sail, drink, dance, you name it you can do it on the beach except be fully nude. This isn’t a nude beach if you want to be nude on a beach there are sims specifically for that sorry my beautiful nudists out there. Right next to it which I explained in the “meeting people” section of this post is the small little shack where you can drink, sit, and dance in an outside bar-like setting. Right next to it is a small swimming area it’s a pool with a beautiful gazebo where I took a photo of my avatar. It was such a pretty section I just had too! There aren’t couple swimming animations but it’s there if you want to take a dip in the pool instead of the beach.

Everything about this sim matches the theme perfectly. There’s also a residential area if you’re looking to live in this small community to find out more about this please visit the Ville de Coeur website at https://villedecoeur.online/ where you can find more information about the community, events, and residential areas.

To conclude, I enjoyed my time here in Ville de Coeur and plan to visit more in the future. The scenery is gorgeous, and you can do pretty much anything in a beautiful setting. There’s so much to do and it’s just overall a super appealing area with so many kind people in the area to chat with and enjoy your time with. With so much to do, I would come to explore the beauty of this sim and how well made it is. If you have any more questions or want to know more about the sim please visit their website at https://villedecoeur.online/ until next time…

Chao!

How-To Decorate a Room on IMVU

How-To Decorate a Room on IMVU

by Ellie_Avora ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I feel like my blog has been out long enough now to go into some more advanced How-To’s. I wanted to do one specifically on room creation in IMVU since interior design is my favorite thing to do in any virtual world platform. So, as you may have guessed I drop some of my real-life money into virtual worlds to make that happen you can’t buy nice and interactive furniture without virtual currency. It’s not a super expensive hobby but it is an addiction and can get expensive if you start becoming like me and always shopping for the newest and greatest furniture you can find. Ahead of time, this is a beginner post to creating rooms in IMVU so if you’re new to IMVU this is for you. If you’re just getting into room creation in IMVU but are a user that has been around for a while this post is also for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below but I did try to make this post as simplistic and as direction oriented as I possibly could. I hope this is helpful for all of you out there trying to get into room creation.

Beginning view on the IMVU client
  • From the front of your viewer press the “My Room Icon”
  • Since I don’t have the default room anymore you will get a page like the one below.
My Room View
  • At the bottom of your screen, there are different icons the ones we’re going to be looking at specifically are the chair and house icon. The chair icon is the furniture that you currently own and your house icon are the different rooms you own.
These are the icons you will see the house is the rooms you have and the chair is the furniture you own
This is what you will see when you click either button but this is what I have when I hit my furniture button. On the side you can search furniture by category by the buttons. There is a chair for seating, a table button, misc, and poses. You can also sort it all by your most recent pieces which is nice if you buy something new from the IMVU shop and are trying to find it real quickly for placing.
  • On the side are your categories for rooms and furniture which will look like the photo below.
Categories when I press the button that looks like a house for the “My Rooms.”
  • In the upper left-hand corner, you will see an icon with a hammer and a music note press the hammer.
Press the Hammer! this brings up the bottom image.
Furniture Tools you can also bring this up by pressing (Ctrl + f)
  • From there you’ll get a whole other set of icons these are going to be your room editing icons. Each one performs a different function. These functions are; explore (Ctrl + E) , move (Ctrl +M) , rotate (Ctrl + r) , scale (Ctrl + s) , copy (Ctrl + P) , reset (Ctrl + t) , lock (Ctrl + l) , delete (Ctrl + d) , undo (Ctrl + u) , redo (Ctrl + m) , and a help button. The keyboard shortcuts are as you can see in parenthesis just in case you want to learn them it makes editing and creating rooms so much easier with the keyboard shortcuts. You can also pull up the furniture tools by pressing (Ctrl + f).
Empty room to start out with I’m going for a chic city style for this example.
  • Now that we know what all the icons are, how they work, and what to do let’s make a new room. Go ahead and click a room from you’re “My rooms” list. I picked “To Trust me Danny” by the creator “Typical” since it’s my only empty room. You’ll start with an empty room like the one above.
  • Then you will click the chair icon I told you about to go to your furniture tab where all your furniture is. To add a piece into your room just click one of the furniture icons and it will show up in your room.
This is how the icons will look whether you choose a room or a furniture item.
  • Since this is just the basics were just positioning the furniture with the readily available pose balls. Depending on the room you might only get specific places to place furniture you can click the move icon or use the keyboard shortcut and move that furniture piece to where you want it within reason. You’re limited at this point until I teach you a little trick in the next post for IMVU room creation number 2.
This icon will come up with whatever you chose from the furniture tools. From here you can click and drag to move or click and rotate your mouse when on the rotate icon to rotate the piece of furniture.
  • From this point, you can use any of the functions in your room tools to make your room yours! It takes a little practice, but I was able to learn how to create rooms after I knew you could do it yourself within an hour at most. It’s a pretty simple process with the IMVU platform client.
This is my end result example of how I decorated the space.

Hopefully, this helped you get started on your room creation as I noted from before this is for beginners and this is just the main basics, I’ll post more advanced How-To’s once you get this down. There are many tricks and things you can do from this point, but this was just to give you an idea on how everything worked and how to get started especially if your new and only learned how to do avatar creation or have only been in the chatroom’s or the chat now area of IMVU. Some people don’t even know that you can create unique rooms from an empty room and furniture you can buy through IMVU’s shop. Which to give you an idea looks like the photo to your right you know just in case you’re like me and enjoy shopping and wasting your money on virtual items as I do. It’s almost like in-app purchases if you’re more of a mobile user. To be fair buying things virtually is cheaper than reality and gives you the same instant gratification, however, sometimes it can get out of hand. I’ll be creating a post soon on virtual world currency and my experiences relating around that so stay tuned. Any questions about this post please feel free to type them below in the comments and I’ll respond within 48 hours of you posting the comment.

Exploring a Vast Virtual Environment

Exploring a Vast Virtual Environment

by Ellie_Avora ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
Photo Credit: Pepa Cometa

What can I say? Virtual worlds give us an experience that we might not be able to experience. It helps us to fulfill ideas of travel it will never replace going to the actual location; however, it helps you to see what a culture could look like or what a place could be. Virtual worlds give the user a platform to explore and interact with their surroundings via their avatars. I know with open simulation virtual worlds (open sims) the user can walk freely in their surroundings and interact with most of the objects in the environment. For example, I’m the type of individual who always felt like I was born in the wrong era. It couldn’t be any truer as sometimes I feel lost in the world, I’m in now there is a sim in Second Life that I just adore. It’s called 1920’s Berlin. This area I came across through the destinations guide a few years ago when I wanted to join a historical roleplaying sim. The environment is specified by the detail what it looked like in Berlin during the 20s it’s spot on! I looked at photos on Google to be honest because I wanted to see how historically correct the environment was. This is an amazing example of exploration in a virtual world you’re able to live in a world that uniquely is yours. Whether you want to live in the 20s or Luxembourg in the 30s-40s or you just want to go out and enjoy the nightlife. It’s all possible, throughout my explorations throughout virtual worlds during the years I’ve come across galleries with users artwork, photography outside of the virtual world and inside, with the technological era growing tons and tons of blogs and YouTube videos that you can access straight from the virtual world platform, there is so much it’s somewhat hard to even explain it all.

I’ve been an IMVU player since Beta testing

Virtual worlds not only give us a place to grow, learn, and explore, but they give us the confidence to live our best life even if it’s just through a computer screen. I’m by no means promoting that you shouldn’t go out and experience the world outside your front door but for those who can’t this is an awesome alternative. There is so much to do, honestly, I could spend hours just exploring, taking in world photographs, and living life. Virtual worlds are more about the experience and the exploration than it is anything else, however, it is important to note that everyone joins a virtual world for different reasons. I didn’t know what my purpose was after schooling when it came to Second Life, but I shortly found it afterward. My high school when I first started using Second Life as a platform for teaching, creativity, and communication with classmates and teachers while providing us with hands-on experiences that were created in the world. In 9th grade we would go on “field trips” to a virtual MOMA museum since obviously going to New York is kind of pricey. My school at the time used Second Life as an educational platform at some point it died out, but it was the only game kept on the school laptops that I could continue to play and explore at my own leisure. You know something to waste the time! That’s when I learned my soul purpose and what I wanted to use virtual worlds for I wanted to use them for exploration and interior design. Through the years I also picked up the title’s shopaholic, virtual world guru, and fashionista but that’s also just me living my best virtual life. I do consider shopping to be a source of explorations because you jump around to different places there are some places, I’ve never even known about that I’ve visited and just walked around their decorated sims without buying anything. One of my favorite shops in the world till this date is called +Half Deer+ the sim is so beautifully created, and it reminds me of a kawaii London feel with old telephone booths, pastel desks, brightly colored sidewalks, and gorgeously pink and light green colored trees. It almost looked like a fantasy-themed park and it is still one of my favorite sims to just hang out in even if I don’t buy anything. Exploration is so important in a virtual world platform even if it isn’t part of your purpose when joining a virtual world, it is an important aspect of one and you’ll most likely be finding yourself exploring different areas at some point during your virtual world experience. I know I’ve been discussing more from a Second Life and Open Sim standpoint these are just my favorite types of virtual worlds because there’s so much freedom with movement and a user’s creativity. However, I also wanted to discuss exploration from an IMVU standpoint!

Chatroom with random people photo taken by: Lizzicess (aka you’re wonderful blog host)

IMVU is all about exploration while chatting their avatar creation and room creation system is what makes them so popular as a “chatroom” based virtual world platform. Their goal wasn’t to provide freedom of movement but to connect users from across the world pretty much forcing them to be social with others. It’s a social platform hence the reason why their exploration is through the creation of rooms like “chatrooms” instead of vast areas of land that you explore. Even though it’s more limited as to what you can do and explore there is a sense of exploration still attached to the world of IMVU. Through personal experience, there are a lot of clubs, kawaii and Japanese type rooms for my otaku’s and anime fans out there, parks, restaurants, and scenery. IMVU uses a posing system where you sit on a “pose” and it will animate your avatar in the specific area. Poses are what IMVU revolves around. Exploration is seen more for photography purposes for virtual world enthusiasts and photographers for IMVU otherwise it’s an immersive chatroom. There is nothing wrong with that I play IMVU very often especially if I’m feeling super social and creative because the interface is so simplistic. The way of doing things such as creating environments and rooms are simplistic as well. I could place furniture, poses, etc. and finish a gorgeously made room within an hour at most. It probably takes users less than that. The only reason it takes me that long is because I’m picky about how I create things in virtual worlds both avatar and room/land wise.

When you join a virtual world, you join to explore whether it be finding who you are as a person, actual places, or even exploring friendships and relationships this is a place where your imagination comes to play. Virtual worlds give us as the user an opportunity to do things we probably wouldn’t or see things we might not see in a safe environment from the comfort of our own homes whether we’re on the couch, a comfy computer chair, or in our beds ready to go to sleep for the night and just need something to waste some time. There is so much to see and explore! If you want a game where you can explore than a virtual world might just be the right choice for you.