Today I found some time to do some initial exploring in the Chinese virtual world HiPiHi. I used the excellent installation and navigation instructions created by Alto Xeno, with the able assistance of our office techie Usman. Within a few minutes of setup, I was walking around, teleporting from place to place, modifying the appearance of my avatar, and rezzing objects.
The experience is disconcertingly familiar for a Second Life resident like me, since the whole thing clearly is a reverse engineered Chinese version of SL. Everything from the basic user interface, the avatar modification sliders, the "instant transmission" / teleportation system, and the mini-map are all heavily borrowed / stolen from Linden Lab’s virtual world.
Sadly, I did not run into any other avatars while I was there, which given that it was 4AM in China is not surprising. That’s my next goal: first contact!
Glad to see you made it into HiPiHi and that my “how to” articles worked for you!
To find other people in HiPiHi, open the main map and look for the dots (just like SL), then click on a dot and us the option for instant transmission to go there. Visiting at 4am China time might not be optimum for locating a crowd though 😉