Notes on Second Life

Adding Friends: Click on the COMMUNICATE button at the bottom of the screen. Select the “Friends” tab; choose ADD. Search for the avatar name you want to add as a friend. They will be sent an invitation to join your friends group.

Hint: Do not choose an avatar name like you would an AOL name…e.g. do not use David99 Mungus.

Hint: Use IM/Call to keep your group chat private. Use the CHAT selection if you want to talk to the virtual world at large.

File Menu: Key item: Take a snapshot. This saves a bitmap file of a screen capture to disk. Handy for student lab assignments.

Edit Menu:

  • Search – Used to search places, people, classifieds, topic areas, etc. One of the most useful tools in SL
  • Attach Object – Used to attach various object found in SL to parts of your body. Can be used to attach wings, hold a wand, etc.
  • Detach Object – Same as above except in reverse
  • Take off clothing – as it implies. Careful when in PG rated sites. You could get reported and lose privileges.
  • Gestures – easier to use as a button, but this choice does allow for modification. To see the button, you must make the CHAT menu choice (under World) active. Gestures adds “character” to your avatar. Play with some of these and have fun. You can also use a command line gesture choice in the CHAT windows at the bottom of the screen. Most gestures entered in as a command must be preceded with a slash (/).
  • Profile – BE VERY CAREFUL. This is how you can tell as much or as little about the RL version of you!
  • Appearance – When you first created your avatar, you used this tool. You may use it at anytime to modify your avatar or create and load a completely new avatar. Notice at the top it shows the full path and name to your current avatar in your inventory. If you have created other avatars, you go to their location in inventory and click and drag them onto your body.
  • Friends/Groups – Easier to use under the COMMUNICATE button. Groups are handy for allowing all of a class join a particular group. They can then all be teleported, messaged, permissions set, etc. as one group. We need to own land to do this and there is a cost for setting up a group.
  • Preferences – Change various sound, graphics, networking, etc. preferences in SL

View menu

  • Mouselook changes the perspective of viewing for your avatar. Normally, you are looking from behind the avatar’s back. With Mouselook, you look through the avatar’s eyes. Most often used when riding something (bicycle, balloon, airplane, horse, etc.). To exit Mouselook, simply hit the ESC key.
  • Build – One of the most important menu choices in SL. This is how your create Primitives (prims).
  • Inventory – Another key menu choice in SL. The Inventory manages all objects, inventory items, notecards, landmarks, etc. It is extremely important because avatars are limited to the number of prims they can have, but are unlimited as to the amount of inventory items. Use your inventory to store other avatar appearances, places you visited, clothes, houses, furniture, etc. Inventory management is key to a good SL experience. It is a simple folder/drag/drop interface. Make sure you create folders with names that make sense for good organization of your SL life (tautology?).
  • World Map and Mini-map – shows you where your avatar is located and who else is on the same SIM you are.
  • Camera controls – easier done with ALT-click-hold-drag mouse
  • Zoom in/out (easier done with mouse wheel),

World menu

  • Chat – brings up a useful toolbar of buttons at the bottom of the screen. These include a chat box, a history of chat button, and a Gestures drop-down.
  • Create Landmark Here – used like a browser bookmark. Create a landmark for places you wish to return. You’ll find the landmark folder in your inventory list.
  • Set Home Here – If we ever get a CIS Dept. site, we’d probably have everyone set this to their home site.
  • Teleport home instantly teleports your avatar back to the home site they set in the previous menu.
  • Set Away/busy – when someone brings up their Friends list and you’re on it, busy and away let them know your status. It also stops other people from trying begin unwanted communications with you.
  • Force sun – If you ever login and it’s night time and you can’t see too well, simply create a different time of day.

Other menu choices can be handled with mouse movements:

  • Alt-Right Click sets focus on an item in your field of view
  • Alt-Mouse wheel – Zooms in/out
  • CTRL-Click produces a hand to “grab” something. A simple CTRL-Click will open doors for you. If you continue to hold the mouse button down, you’ll be able to drag an object from one place to another.
  • Click on an object. If the object has a script, you may receive a “Notecard.” Notecards appear in the upper-right corner of your screen and provide more detailed information about your click action. Choose KEEP the notecard if you want to read more about the action. This does not actually store it in inventory until you choose a second KEEP button choice (once the notecard has opened)
  • Click on an object may also let you take this object and add it to your inventory. You will see a cursor change to a green $0 indicating this object costs $0 Linden.
  • Right-click on an object to get a pie-shaped menu of choices. Use this to SIT, RIDE, WEAR, TAKE, DELETE inventory items. Other choices are available depending upon the object you’ve clicked.
  • Page-Up – Fly up
  • Quick Page-up – Jump
  • Page-down – back to earth
  • Quick page-down – squat
  • WASD or Arrows are used to go up down left right.

Giving Objects to Other Avatars: First, the object must be transferrable. Then, open either the Search Menu (People search) or your Friends list ( Profiles button). Look on the 2nd Life tab toward the bottom. You will see an area labeled “Drop Inventory Item Here.” Simply drag (from your Inventory list) to this area and the object will be sent to the selected avatar.

CAUTION: SecondLife does most of its major upgrades on Wednesdays. It is often down completely at these times. Do NOT schedule any SL class sessions on Wednesdays.

Handy Web Sites:

A super wiki from the Internet2 T&L SIG:

:

Especially pay attention to the SecondLife movie tutorials.

A place to pick up textures, clothes, and other avatar ideas: