If you haven't already, you really should upgrade your passport to the fancy new Version 3. (If you hold a Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS) passport, don't worry – it has been V3 since inception).
This is what the old V2 passport looks like. When you run out of space on your Passport HUD, you have need a series of additional Visa HUDs. You can only wear one HUD at a time, so you never see all your stamps in one place. Your stamps are stored locally and are therefore vulnerable to being lost if you suffer a bad teleport immediately after collecting one.
This is what the V3 passport looks like.
Notice the buttons at the bottom to turn the pages and the Minimise button top right. You have one passport HUD, which won't run out of space. You never lose a stamp in a dodgy teleport. If you lose or bork your passport, your stamps are safe in our database and will show up on your replacement.
Your editor is a citizen of Bellisseria, the CDS and the Mainland continent of Satori and can use all three passports interchangeably. His stamps show up on all of them. The new database can be used to generate all kinds of stats and reports. For example, using the StampsOnPP HUD available from BBB HQ, you can securely view your stamps on the web more quickly and easily than turning passport pages in-world.
When using the application form, please be sure to select Upgrade from the drop-down field (not New PP) before clicking Submit (see screenshot below). A few users have made this mistake and it results in a new V3 passport without the option to transfer stamps from your V2.
If you filed your Upgrade form correctly, you will receive a Reader HUD with your V3 passport, which will allow you to transfer the stamps from your old V2 Passport HUD and each of your Visa HUDs.
When migrating the stamps from V2 to V3 (a one-time chore) please follow the instructions included with your new passport carefully. The procedure of sitting on rezzed copies of your V2 Passport HUD and Visa HUDs to copy the stamps may seem comical but it's actually a clever way of imprinting your unique avatar ID on the stamps. Make sure you sit properly on each of your V2 HUDs in turn before you click the Reader HUD. You'll get progress reports in local chat.
After stamp migration is complete, flip a page on your new V3 Passport HUD and be patient. It will take a while for the migrated stamps to show up.
The StampsOnPP HUD will give a much quicker web page display of your stamps via the secure personalised link it announces in nearby chat. Please note it may not display your most recent stamps collected since the last database update announced in BBBug notices. Don't worry, those will show up later.
Article by Robert Rhodan. Illustrations by Robert Rhodan and Gazette Staff.
This was originally published in The Gazette on 8th July 2023 and is stored here for ease of reference.