How To: Transportation (Getting around in Second Life)

Discover all the ways to move about in the Second Life world.

The first way you will move your avatar in Second Life will, in all probability, be walking. This is done with the arrow keys. You can also do this with the W,A,S and D keys if you do not have the chat bar open. Press E and C to jump or descend. Pressing and holding E will make you fly. You can also use your number pad if you do not have NumLock activated.

And as you can walk, you can also run. The controls for running are the same. Simply press CTRL+R. After this, running should be activated. Use the same keys you use to walk. If you wish to stop running and return to walking, just press CTRL+R again.

Another way to move is to fly. You can activate flying several ways. The first is to press the “Fly” button on the bottom of your screen. When you’re done flying, just press it again to go back to walking. You can also press and hold the page up key. Likewise, page down will make you stop flying. If you do not have the chat bar open, you can also press E to fly and C to stop flying.

Another common mode of transportation in Second Life is teleportation (aka TP-ing). There are several ways to TP in Second Life. Someone can offer you a TP. This will bring up a notice in the top right of your window. Choose accept to teleport to their location. Decline the TP to stay where you are. You can use your map to choose a TP destination. Within the map, serach for a location, click an area on the map, and select “teleport”. You can also use the “search” button to search for a place. This is useful if you only have keywords for a location. Once you’ve found the location within search, a teleport button will be available. You can also use what are called Slurls to teleport. These are links that show up in your chat history. Simply click and choose teleport from the landmark you are given. Speaking of landmarks, that is the last way to teleport that I will tell you about. Just open your inventory, double-click a landmark, and teleport. As you can see, teleporting is a very, very common and necessary mode of transportation with several methods. It may sound confusing, but you’ll get the hang of it in no time. (More about how to teleport someone to you and how to use landmarks in other posts.)

Finally, there are vehicles. Cars, bikes, planes, boats, etc. These are common, but I don’t see many people using them regularly.  Generally, you just rez the vehicle, sit on it and steer it with the same keys you use to control your walking. I’d suggest getting comfortable with other ways to move around before you attempt vehicles as these can be tricky to control at times.

These are the standard buttons you should have on the bottom of your screen.