Will Ross here, welcome to The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs. This week’s episode “Back to Basics, Part I: Using the Camera.”

Greetings, my fellow cybernauts. Today’s show is about something really basic, and yet it’s one of the things that can really frustrate new players--using the camera.  Having good, solid control of your camera will help you in a variety of ways, from helping you take better pictures, to having greater awareness of your surroundings, to helping you look inside stranger’s homes while they’re nude.  Incidentally, the QDnow network strongly discourages that third thing. But you totally could. A lot.

The first and most important thing to remember is that no matter how bad you screw up your camera angle, you can always fix it either by moving your avatar, or by pressing the escape key, so feel free to play around with your camera whenever you want.  A button driven version of the camera controls is also available by choosing “View”, then selecting camera controls.  However these controls lack finesse, and I only use them in a pinch.

Now, if you really want to know what’s going on around you, you need to get a little friendly with the “Alt” and “Ctrl” buttons, or “Option” and “Control” for you Macintosh hipsters.  If you hold the mouse and then left-click on an object or Avatar, you can center your camera on it and follow it wherever it moves.   But if you click and HOLD the left-mouse button down while holding “Alt”, you can center on any avatar or prim, AND rotate around it.  From here sliding the mouse forward or backward will zoom in or out.  If you hold down “Ctrl” at the same time, you can rotate both up and down and left and right, using the scroll wheel for your zooming.  

Once you’re comfortable with that, try jumping from object to object, and using the camera to rotate around and out of buildings.  Combine this with using the mini-map function and you’ll never be snuck up on again.  Of course you could just get a good scanner, but that’s another show.  

Having a good understanding of Second Life’s camera will also help you take good pictures.

And speaking of pictures, I’ve got three brand new copies of the book The Unofficial Tourist’s Guide to Second Life by Paul Carr and Graham Pond to give away.  It’s a neat little Second Life version of those tourist handbooks they make on every major city--you know, the ones that tell you where to go, where you’ll get stabbed, and what seemingly innocuous gestures mean “your mother was a discounted prostitute.”  I read it cover to cover, and it will definitely give you a place or two to check out, along with some interesting chapters about the history of our little world.  

And what does that have to do with pictures?  Well I’m having myself a little photo contest.  For the next two weeks I’ll be accepting snapshots either by e-mail, at secondlife@qdnow.com or you can send the snapshots in game to the character “Craig Jua.”  I’ll be giving away a book for the funniest, coolest and strangest picture.  Feel free to enter as many photos as you like, but you can only win one book.  Oh and try to label the pictures with your Avatar’s full name so that I know where they came from.  As the pictures start to roll in you’ll be able to see them on a special Flickr Page at www.flickr.com/photos/travelingavatar.  So, go out and take some cool pics!

That’s it for this episode!  Stop by the website at QuickAndDirtyTips.com to check out my Twitter Page, if you want to see what I’m up to on any given day! Send your feedback or question to secondlife@quickanddirtytips.com, and the comment line is 206-888-6975, that’s 206-888-mysl.  The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips network, so be sure to check out other great shows like Mr. Manners, Money Girl, and the Mighty Mommy, at QuickAndDirtyTips.com.

So until next time, remember, certain attachments are for alone time.  They are not to be worn while shopping.