CHOUCHOU - White sands and clear water. A lonely tree and a piano. Some debris, and a ladder that climbs endlessly into the sky. That’s what the new sim made by the Second Life music group Chouchou is about. It’s not much, but the simple beauty of the place has attracted an amazing number of visitors since it opened last week.

“We’re glad that so many people like our sim, and surprised,” Juliet Heberle said. She’s the singer of Chouchou, and the conveyer of the idea for the new sim. “I love the region the way it is now. Very simple and nostalgic, but I thought people would like something more built, more complicated. But we can’t add anything to this landscape. It’s completed. This is it for us.”

Part of the allure of the Chouchou sim is the piano music created especially for the sim that’s being played by Arabesque Choche, the other half of the duo, It's a piece called “Repose”.

And then, of course, there is the freebie Cinematic Hud that lets residents view SL in a way they've never seen it before. At the top and bottom of the screen, they get the broad, black stripes that give them a widescreen effect, and the view slows down to a dreamy pace.

“I asked my friend Miya Grut to make the HUD. I told him how it was supposed to be,” Heberle said. The idea came to her when they shot the official video for the new sim. “We then changed the zoomtime. And by just changing the zoomtime, you make the whole world seem more cinematic.”

Heberle built the sim together with her friend Yuki Aabye. “First, I have these ideas, and then I share them with Aabye who is among the great creators in SL. He helps me transfer my ideas into shapes.”

Chouchou has been a band since July last year, although Heberle and Choche have known each other for five years. Together, they span three continents: She’s a Japanese currently living in New York, while he’s a European-Japanese living in Tokyo. They make their music by sending data to each other and use Skype.

Their music is only performed in Second Life, in the Islamey venue they opened in October last year.