Virtual London
Owner: Virtually-Linked, LLC
Sims included: Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park and Kensington
London, what isn’t there to love about this place? The atmosphere, the people, the locations, all in all a wonderful place. The same goes for Virtual London, a 4-sim destination in Second Life.
Why not start at the beginning (or at least where most people begins)? In Hyde Park there’s an info hub, this is where most people teleport to the first time they enter VL. Here you’ll find infoboards telling you about how to do things in Second Life, along with adboards for the different locations in London. If you look around the immediate area, you’ll find lots of hidden treasures, such as trash cans that you can dive into to find freebies, bikestands that actually gives you a bike to ride around on and the TARDIS (and it IS bigger on the inside).
Hyde Park is also home to the events they have in VL every week. Every week they set up a new stage and fill the park with new things, mostly booths with items sold by VL’s most known stores to greatly reduced prices. The events are organised by VL’s event planner Jessii Warhol and the music is provided by her clubs in VL; Capital, 5th Avenue and Mayhem.
Points of Interest: The Lady Diana memorial, the WW1 memorial, the Event Area, Infohub
Moving beyond Hyde Park you’ll find Mayfair, an area with residential buildings (that you can rent and live in), shops, clubs and pubs. Among others, the pub Coach & Horses and the store K-Code are located in Mayfair, and of course also the Torch office. The office has a nice view over Hyde Parks event area and are located at the same street as Coach & Horses (guess where the staff goes to relax during meeting recessions 😀 ).
Points of Interest: Coach & Horses, Club Mayhem, Torch Office, Club Capital
Turn back into Hyde Park and walk south past the event area and you’ll end up in Knightsbridge, a large shopping and office sim, that’s currently under development, just as the real world Knightsbridge. Even if the current shops are few and far between, it’s really worth checking out, if not only for the attention to details here. All of VL is richly detailed and not only based on RL London, it’s almost a duplicate of it, but Knightsbridge in particular now, with scaffolding and heavy machinery tearing down and rebuilding the whole place. Knightsbridge also offers residences for those who wish to live in VL.
Points of Interest: The bus-stops (with working double-decker buses), Retro Grade Club, 5th Avenue, the Green Man
Right next to Knightsbridge you’ll find Kensington, one of the busier parts of VL. This is Virtually-Linked’s main working area, where they try to blur the line between RL business and SL business by offering RL shops, offices and companies to have a SL counterpart. You can actually walk right into CNN’s office here!
You’ll also find the Kensington Arcade here, and just like the RL counterpart, they offer discount items and clothing in many shops. Among others, the inworld famous BlakOpal, a steampunk inspired clothes shop for both him and her, has a store in Kensington Arcade.
Points of Interest: Kensington Arcade, Prince of Wales, Church Row, Kensington W8 Office Complex, The Kensington, Greyhound Pub
Lag: 6-8 (Heavy lag due to the detailed building and advanced scripts, but well worth it if you can handle it)
Newbie Friendliness: 10 (Extremely newbie friendly)
Personal rating: 10 (My personal favourite so far)
Article by: Morphman
Photos by: Morphman