Portal Brazil: Newbie Reflections

Portal Brazil is open to the public for a couple of days.  (This official SLURL drops you in the water so be prepared to hike a little :D) I was interested to see how the newbie experience had changed since I popped out of the pod. And it definitely has changed. Getting into the spirit of things or trying to, I donned some of the newbie clothes from my inventory's library. All was not working however and the database was having major problems with clothes, TPs and such. So this is the best in unfashionality that I could do.

click any photo for a high rez version

I was impressed with the layout and the thought given to the indoctrination process. The colorful information kiosks were all numbered. I could figure out the messages with my smattering of Spanish. I played the part of a newbie as best I could. Here I tried to wear a box and of course I did just that. We've all been there in our history.

There are some gifts along the way, nothing an old-timer would be interested in, but I ended up in much nicer shape on my exit from Portal Brazil than I did from Help Island over two years ago.

Part way through the process I found a box of attire that included hair, a shape (they believe in thunder thighs in Brazil it seems *wink*) and even an AO.

Here I am in the very large and completely furnished house where new folks can explore and learn about sitting and animations with or without poseballs.

Arrows point to important lessons to be learned. Since the house has many fairly small rooms, I am guessing that navigation (i.e walking without bumping into everything) might be tricky for new folk. It is impressively large however and it took me awhile to find my way out. Yep, it did.

The area that let's newbies explore camera controls is quite lovely. Characters like the fellow gazing at the pond are liberally placed in the environment. I can't tell if they will stay once the portal is open or if they are there to give early visitors a sense of the space with new citizens in place.

There is even a very nicely themed sandbox where you can read about building basics and try your hand a creating. I remember one at Help Island long ago, but this is much more fun. Again, all these "people" are prims, not avatars.

Right after this building area there is some sort of waterway with alligators that you need to traverse. Fly was turned off and I had no clue how I was actually supposed to make my way over, so I cheated and double clicked my way onward. Maybe this will be a fly area later. It is a mystery.

This is graduation. You can see my newbie pack look here. Everything but skin was included and the pose is one from the AO which has a much nicer sexy walk that the typical public domain one. So ladies can exit in style. The turnstyle leads to a subway station. I couldn't tell what you needed to do to get into Second Life proper, but it most likely is not set up at this point.

That's my quicky tour of Portal Brazil. It was definitely an interesting couple of hours.