First night in Second Life

Travolution entered Linden, the virtual world created by US-based Second Life, for the first time last night.

We have been tracking this new world over the summer ever since it emerged the Starwood hotel group had commissioned developers in Second Life to build an exact replica of one its new Aloft hotels.

Last week we gave birth to Kevinluke May, our own ‘person’ in Second Life [another Kevin May already lives in Linden – and we will be looking for him!], ahead of our arrival.

After grappling with the control console, which unfortunately for your average home user requires some pretty hardy kit such as a fast graphics accelerator, we set about assigning clothes, hair (or lack of), facial features and the like to Linden’s newest citizen.

[It was certainly a rather unnerving experience to find oneself without any outer garments on arrival in the drop-off one where other all new residents also begin their adventures]

The drop-zone is actually a bizarre but, on reflection, probably sensible place to start.

With the population increasing every day as us immigrants arrive, it actually resembles not much more than a nudist colony for the insane.

Every other new resident is also frantically running around, learning the controls and busily trying to add clothes and ensure they have a passing resemblance to their real self [or, in reality, someone they aspire to look like] as quickly as possible.

As promised last week, Kevinluke May then decided to find the new Aloft hotel.

A directory of places in Linden quickly located the Aloft island and within seconds – via the handy teleport button – a now fully clothed new resident of Linden found himself standing outside the new hotel.

A quick tour of the hotel revealed everything is in place for the hotel’s official opening this week.

Picture shows our resident standing by the pool at the Aloft.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution