Stage 1 - Registration

First off you need to create your Second Life account. Just follow the link below to create the account. (We suggest you read through this whole page first though!)

Register for Second Life.

If for any reason that service is not working you can also use our backup SLURL service (and click the orange Sign Up button top left).

Stage 2 - Email Confirmation

Once you have filled out the form you will be sent an email to validate your email address. When you receive the email just click on the link that it gives you. That will bring you back to this site where your registration will be completed.

Stage 3 - Install software

To use Second Life to its full extent you will need 2 pieces of software installed on your PC. You can install these either before or after Stage 1.

• The Second Life client. Download from the Second Life site.
• Apple Quicktime media player. If you haven't already got this Download from the Apple Quicktime site.

The whole download and installation process should take no more than 10 minutes.

Stage 4 - Orientation

You can now launch the Second Life software application from your desktop. It will ask you for your SECOND LIFE first and last name, and your password. The first time round it will also ask you to read and accept the terms of service and the behaviour guidelines, and also to choose a male or female avatar (you can change this later!). It will then load the Second Life world.

To start with you will arrive at our orientation experience on the SGI Nexus island in Second Life. This consists of a series of linked rooms, each with a "station" where you learn a particular SL skill. There are only about 6 of these initially and it should take you no more than 5 - 10 minutes to work through them. They are intended to give you the basis to be able to move around in Second Life and use some of the key features - such as watching streaming video.

• Watch a 7 minute video of the orientation process so you know what to expect WMV (42MB), MPEG4 (52MB), MPEG4 Small (15MB)
• Read the text information that you will get during the orientation

Once you have completed the first stage of the Orientation you can either move out into the rest of SGI Nexus, and Second LIfe itself, or complete a further 6 stations covering topics such as search, maps, profiles, voice chat etc. You can also come back and do these at another time - or indeed the whole orientation exeprience.