The Newbie Guide to Sandboxes in Second Life

In my recent post on unpacking boxes and objects, I learned that there were some free, newbie-friendly public sandboxes to explore in SL, and I was keen to check them out! Before I get to my recommended sandbox list though, here’s a trick if you’d like some additional privacy or open space in any sandbox or build-enabled area. Note: I use the Firestorm Viewer exclusively to connect to Second Life, but I believe these commands work on the official SL viewer and additional third-party viewers as well.

• In the Nearby Chat box, type gth followed by any number of your choosing, up to 4000. This will immediately teleport you high into the sky, where you can build or rez objects away from any crowd you may encounter. Many people choose even number heights when they’re on sky platforms – 1000, 1500, 2000, etc – so if a sandbox is particularly crowded on that day, perhaps choose an odd number for a better result.
• For example, let’s type gth 1772 into Nearby Chat hit the Enter key. You should immediately see yourself appearing (and falling from) high in the sky. Quickly click your mouse outside of the chat box, and then hit the Page Up button on your keyboard, which is the default hotkey for flying. This will stop your fall, and you’ll begin to hover in place.
• Then once more in the Nearby Chat box, type rezplat, which will rez a platform directly beneath your feet, which you can then stand on by clicking on the Stop Flying button or by holding Page Down until you meet the platform. The default platform size is 30 meters, but I’ve reset this to 5 meters in my preferences (see below) because I generally wouldn’t need a large platform for unpacking boxes or similar. You’ll find these shortcuts in the Firestorm preference menu under Chat / CmdLine. Bear in mind that the location of the CmdLine section has changed in the Beta viewer, which I’m using. In older versions, I believe these shortcuts were under the Firestorm tab in Preferences.

Firestorm CmdLine Preferences Menu

So let’s visit some sandboxes! I decided to compile my recommended list into its own page, which I’ll keep updated in case the links change or locations come and go. Please click the link below to view the list, then come back for some additional tips:

Free & Public Sandbox Locations in Second Life

Second Life Sandbox Etiquette

Now that you’re armed with some sandbox SLURLs, what are the guidelines and best practices for utilizing these public spaces? While most have a stated auto-return allowance (which means that any items you’ve rezzed or built on their land will be automatically returned to your inventory after a set time period), some sandboxes will only return your items once you’ve left the parcel or logged out, and others may only clean or reset themselves once a day. However, just because you know your items will come back to you eventually, it doesn’t give residents free license to leave things lying around, especially if you’re unpacking lots of goodies.

Stop it right there and clean up your mess, young lady!

See all those packages and parcels? Believe it or not, some of them have a fair bit of land impact, which means leaving a lot of discarded objects lying around may take up a good amount of the prim allowance of the sandbox, potentially preventing others from making full use of the space. So always be respectful and clean up the area before you teleport away.

You may be thinking: “I’ve just rezzed a hundred or more boxes. Cleaning them up is going to take ages!” Luckily there’s a trick for that as well. To delete a large number of objects at once:

Highlight all the things!

• Right-click on any of your objects, and choose Edit from the menu.
• While the Edit menu is open, click your left mouse button and drag a rectangle around all of the objects you’d like to delete. This is where rezzing them all close to one another is handy, but you can always zoom out if you need a wider view.
• Once every object is highlighted in yellow (the color may vary depending on which viewer skin you use), right-click with your mouse on any highlighted object and choose Delete in the menu. You can also press the Delete button on your keyboard.

If all goes well, every highlighted object should have been deleted all at once. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

If you happen to miss an item, or for some reason an object doesn’t delete itself, you can always right-click it directly and use the same Delete function. But please bear in mind that if you delete items with No Copy permissions, they’re gone forever. The same goes if you happen to leave a No Copy item behind at the sandbox; once the auto-return kicks in, that item will be deleted rather than returned to your inventory. So be mindful of the permissions on the items you rez in-world, just in case!

Ahhhhh, all those boxed up purchases, freebies and gifts finally unpacked and ready to go in your inventory, and you’ve quickly cleaned up after yourself. Good job, avie! Go ahead, strike a silly, self-satisfied pose. You’ve earned it.

Skin: Insol Body Skin Scarlett – Ivory (L$0, no longer available)
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