I just spent few days in SL(Second Life) dealing with a tons of new situations. It's a kind of culture shock for me: there are new people, new social rules, new economical situation - I got to learn a lot. While dealing with this I've felton the following important SL concepts/phrases:
- Alt
Alternative account. Many players have more than one account, often free basic accounts, in order to express different parts of their personality through a different character, in order to keep them seperate. - Alpha
Textures may be given an 'alpha channel', which is essentially full transparency. This is an advanced Photoshop technique external to Second Life. - Appearance
Your avatar's appearance may be changed at any time by a selection of sliders, by right clicking on yourself and choosing "Appearance" from the pie menu. - AR
Literally "Abuse Report". When another player is acting inappropriately or harrassing you, selecting this item on the "Help" menu will allow you to file a complaint about their behaviour. This function should, of course, be used sparingly. - Attachments
As the name implies, this is any item that can be attached to your avatar. This may take many forms, and there are many attachment points available.. - Auto-return
When you own land, you can set auto-return so that other people's objects will be returned to them after a set time, to prevent your land getting cluttered. Any items you leave on anyone else's land will be returned to you after the time set. - Avatar
The visual representation of a second life resident. Avatar appearance may change all the time (if the resident wish so) - see Appearance. - Basic Account
A Basic Account is free, and allows you access to more or less everything that Second Life permits, apart from the ability to own land. - Borked
Something not working in its intended manner, literally "currently in a non functional state of operation". - Boxhead
The art of wearing a wooden box on your head. The skull was the default attachment point for objects, and a common mistake by new players was, instead of opening a box, to 'wear' it from the pie menu. The result of this would be that you would often see bemused newbies on Help Island wandering around desperately trying to figure out how to remove the box from their head. - Flexiprim
As the name implies, a "Prim" that is flexible. It is now possible to create prims that have flexible properties, which may be used to create flags that blow in the wind, flowing clothes that move as you do, bouncy hair, and many other possibilities. - FPS (1) First Person Shooter. Although Second Life does indeed have the facility to act as an FPS, in a rudimentary fashion, it is not intended primarily as a player-v-player combat system. Several groups in-world have, however, created successful combat systems.
- FPS(2) Frames Per Second. This is how fast your computer is updating your display. The higher the FPS, the higher the detail and smoothness of your view. Problems such as lag can reduce your FPS and slow everything down.
- Grey
Usually heard as "Everything's grey". When downloading data from the server, the vector data is downloaded and rendered first, followed by the texture data. Until textures are downloaded, they are rendered as a default grey, and the world can be a very dull place until this is completed. - Grid
The network that Second Life is built on, consisting of thousands of interlinked computers. - Griefer
Someone whose sole purpose in Second Life is to irritate other players. Whatever, you do, don't be one! - Hippo
The official animal of Second Life. - Island
(also Private Island) Users can buy an entire region ($1200 setup fees plus currently $195 a month tier) and build whatever they wish. These can be connected to other regions, and set as open access or private invite only, depending on their intended use. - IM
Instant Message. A private way of communicating with another user. - Inventory
Your avatar's "storage area", similar to a backpack in other games, where you may store everything you own in-world. Size is not limited, and you may move things to and from your inventory as you wish. - Lag
When there is network congestion between you and the server, or the server is overworked, there will be occasional pauses and delays in things happening whilst your computer waits for data to be processed. Virtually all data in Second Life is streamed to and from the servers in real-time. - Linden Dollar
The in-world currency unit, usually shown as L$. They may only be exchanged in complete units. - Lindex
The "Linden Exchange", an in-world currency trading system where you may buy, or sell, Linden Dollars for real world currency (restricted to the US$ at present, but may of course be converted afterwards to your own currency. - Link
One or more prims may be selected and linked together as a group of items. Objects do not affect your prim limit on land, as they are still classed as individual prims. - LSL
Literally "Linden Scripting Language". This is the code that is used to write scripts, or programs, in-world to make objects perform tasks or respond in a certain way. - M
"Mature" region status classification. Apart from the few global restrictions on intolerance, harrassment and hate speech, pretty much 'anything goes' in Mature regions. See also "PG". - Mainland
As expected, the "main continent" of Second Life. This land mass is where the majority of users own land. - MMORPG
Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. There has been considerable debate over the years as whether Second Life is indeed an MMORPG - although all conditions are met - or whether it is a development platform, the metaverse, or in fact the future of the internet. - Newbie
A new player to Second Life. Also known as a 'noob'. Although this may occasionally be used as a term of contempt, it is usually used in the context of doing something wrong that was such a simple mistake ("that's so noob"). - Object
One or more prims, when linked, create an Object. Objects do not affect your prim limit, only the individual prims themselves. - Pie Menu
When you right click on something in-world, a menu appears which is circular, with different options on each of the segments, giving the appearance of a pie looked at from above. - PG
Not literally "Parental Guidance", but one of two classifications for region status within Second Life. Typically, PG regions do not allow public nudity or other 'mature activities'. These are provided for players who do not necessarily wish to see things in-world that they may consider offensive. See also "M". - Phantom
Prims or objects may be set as 'phantom', which means that you are able to walk directly through them. - Physics
Prims may have physics enabled, which means they will respond to gravity and wind. Although physics implementation is fairly basic, it does have many uses. - PTP
(also P2P) Point to Point teleporting. The ability to go directly from one point to another on the grid. - Premium
Account A Premium Account costs $9.95 per month, and allows you to own land, which you can then build on. - Prim
Short for "Primitive Shape", the basic construction blocks of Second Life - cube, sphere, pyramid etc. More or less everything you see in Second Life is constructed from prims. - Prim Conservation
The art of being able to build something without using more prims than necessary, possibly replacing small prims with textures. - Prim Limit
When owning land, you are limited by the amount of items you are able to put out on it. Currently a 512 sq m plot allows 117 prims, up to the maximum of 15,000 on a full region. When you hit your limit, an error message will appear and you will not be able to put more things on your land. The only way to get around this limit is to buy more land. - Prim Torture
The art of manipulating prims into complex shapes, using cuts, twists and shears, and potentially saving prims in the process. - Region
A 'Region' is an area of land consisting of 65,536 square metres. Each region can be owned by one or many people, depending on how the plots of land have been divided up. The Second Life grid consists of thousands of interconnected regions. - Rez / Rezzing
A reference from the movie "Tron", this is the act of creating something in the game, either yourself by build or from inventory, or data downloading from the server. - RL
Stands for Reak Life - e.g. the real life of the avatar outside of second life - RP
Short for "Roleplaying". This can take many forms in Second Life, and is made easier by the ability to change your character's appearance at any time. Some players use alts for different roleplay characters to keep them separate. - Sim
Short for "Simulator", another name for Region. - Scripting
Second Life allows you to write programs using its own language, to perform tasks. This may take many forms. See "LSL". - Spam
Junk advertising and other communication within Second Life. Strongly discouraged. - SL
Stands for Second life, e.g. the virtual life - Stipend
A weekly allowance given to various types of account, giving you some spending money. New, basic accounts do not receive a stipend unless they upgrade to Premium. - Teleport (TP)
To either travel from one point on the grid to another, or to ask another player to teleport you to their location "TP me". - Texture
A graphical image laid over a prim to replace the basic plywood texture. This can allow you to build virtually anything, including photorealistic buildings. - Tier
This is the monthly charge for the land that you own in Second Life. Premium Accounts can own 512 sq m of land before additional charges are applied. This increases in allowance blocks up to a full region. - Watermelon
The official fruit of Second Life. - Wednesday
As a general rule, Wednesdays are the days when server maintenance and client patches/updates are applied to the grid. Sometimes this can run for longer than intended, so it is best not to plan to do anything on a Wednesday until the grid is back up. Players often ask "Is it Wednesday already" when things are not performing as they are expected, as the grid can often be unstable for a little while after maintenance. - XYZ
The three axis used in construction. All prims can be stretched and rotated in either axis.
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