There's no shame in stopping to ask for directions

Getting around in Second Life isn't as easy as it might seem. Sure, the entire world is (mostly) open to exploration for any avatar willing to take the plunge, the reality is that there are hundreds upon thousands of locations to explore - and no road signs or GPS to help out.

Being able to fly is pretty helpful — and cool — but it's no substitute for a couple of handy resources I've taken advantage of.

1. Second Life's map function

Linden Lab clearly knew when they sowed the seeds of their virtual universe that it was going to expand with the speed and chaos of a virtual Big Bang. Knowing that their virtual denizens would likely find themselves hopelessly lost and out of touch with the rest of the Second Life world, Linden crafted a map system that includes a variety of ways for avatars to get their bearings.

While I looked briefly at the map of Second Life in my second post, I'll go into more detail here.


In the above image (click to enlarge), you can see what looks like a patchwork quilt of shapes and symbols. In reality, what you're seeing is a bird's-eye view of the area I'm currently exploring - which happens to be the virtual Red Square from my previous post. As I stated earlier, you can see that small white cone representing my avatar's viewpoint within the map. If you look closely, you'll see that yellow dot, which represents me, is inside of a small gray box on the map. That gray box is Lenin's Tomb; you can see the 3D representation of his body to the side of the map window.

2. SLurl: Hyperlinks for Second Life

Second Life's built-in map system is good if you have a solid idea of what you're looking for. While there's a search function that will pick up on keywords (type "Sony" to bring up the Sony Ericsson cell phone store I visited earlier, for instance,) it's not perfect. Because there are so many islands, so many users and so many intriguing locales to visit, the best way to get around in Second Life is, in my opinion, by word-of-mouth and personal recommendations.

And thanks to SLurl, those travel tips are easier to hand out than ever.

SLurl (short for Second Life URL) is a map of the Second Life world that runs within a web browser. Web users can label locations and create links that function much like any website URL (Uniform Resource Locator; colloquially a link or web address). However, these links can be written in a way that, once clicked, boots up the user's copy of Second Life and sends his or her avatar straight to the location shown on the SLurl.com map.

It's a pretty handy way to get around, and it cuts out a lot of the pain associated with navigating solely on hearsay and intuition.