Restructuring

It's been awhile since I've typed some notes in this blog... but that does not mean I have been absent from Second Life... But even in a constantly changing digital Universe you sometimes have to pause minute before doing anything drastic.. Building an educational Second Life Island is uncharted territory.. One of the major difficulties of building the IML SL Space is looking from the perspective of someone completely new to Second Life and probably new to 3D environments in general. I scripted the prims for the floor of the IML using a color coordinate script that changes the prims color based on it's location on the Island.. This created a gradient on the floor that people used as a reference for flying around the Island... that's IF THEY COULD FLY... I've also learned that most residents even if they are quite capable of flying PREFER TO WALK... sooo.. I added ramps to all of the different areas... This was fine if they could SEE the ramps from a distance. I've had students prefer to login to Second Life with their laptops instead of a desktop and use wifi... this greatly reduces the users graphics rendering capabilities. So I had to take into account someone who is new to navigating a 3D space and has limited draw distance... so what I did is actually delete some of the gradient grid and make prim paths to the specific areas on the Island.
Other Changes... I removed the ceiling. I find the idea of walls in Virtual spaces odd. Why is this wall here?.. Is it blocking me from an area that I shouldn't be in? To have a ceiling when regions don't have an actual height limit seems unecessary. It also allows the user to see other projects from almost anywhere on the Island.
I changed the texture of the ground/DIRT (dirt, trees, water, etc..in SL are also baffling to me)..so now all of the base height is textured and says 'IML'... it's even viewable from SPACE (or the map that is)... working with .raw files in photoshop I was able to change the floor level to be even (much more accurate than working with the land terraform tools).
I blocked out the OCEAN... I constructed walls around the edges of the Island using the same color coordinate script of the floor up to a height of 256... this gives the full color gradient.. Walls on the edge of the island do not bother me because you can't actually fly off the Island... the large expanse of the Ocean is a LIE!!! You cannot go swimming out there... no virtual fish..NOTHING. So to replace this view with one that shows you that there are boundaries and can be used as a navigational tool I feel is worth the extra prims.

The Creator Speaks

Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale speaks about Second Life. The talk covers quite a lot of issues from Virtual Environments as Utopia to the inevitability of digital technologies. A great argument for Second Life instead of Video Game Environments such as World of Warcraft is the sheer amount of USER created Content. Second Life has 20,000 servers full of data compared to WoW that comes on a couple of discs. bzzzzzzrp

EVENTS

The last few weeks have had the IML hosting several events and here are some experiences gained.

PECHA KUCHA RECAP

For 2 days a huge tent was visible from my office window setup on the lawn in front of the IML building. From this spot the Pecha Kucha presentations were being streamed into the IML Second Life Island, delayed about 20 seconds, it creates a bizarre experience. Here I am facing the opposite direction of the presentation looking at a screen displaying a presentation space with a screen streaming in the presentation going on right behind me. brain melt....




















































FAIR USE

This was a different experience. People were streaming into SL, but I logged in for another purpose and that was to relay questions from the SL space to the RL space. Also we learned about quality levels in the streaming of video into the space. At one point we boosted the resolution level and it looked fantastic, but anyone without a wired connection had their viewers almost crash on them. Perhaps in the future we can have people that RSVP for the event submit what type of connections they will be using so that we can provide the best experience for everyone.

Both events in Second Life were attend very poorly....and that's putting it nicely.
Factors that contributed to this were the fact that most of the attendee's that would have done this in SL were able to attend it physically. The other was the times that both these events were held. Pecha Kucha was done in the evening and on a weekend. This meant that it was almost midnight on the East Coast and early morning in other parts of the World. Also the Fair Use event was held during the week at 8:30 AM times when most people are just waking up or in the middle of their day, especially students. However, video and stills taken during the event can be added to the Island afterwards for those that missed it.

Surveillance

During out day our presence is recorded several times a day. Our phones have GPS, security cameras, our IP! Second Life is far from anonymous, especially if you have a premium account. When I visit regions and other avatars are present I can signal a wand I've scripted to grab the names of all those around me. This I used mostly for meetings with too many people to look up while trying to keep up with the multiple chat conversations going on. I applied this same type of device to our IML Islands to monitor the traffic going on and if something goes wrong (harassment, builds destroyed, etc) I have something to reference. When the students of the CTIN 482 class were told that their presence was recorded a few skeptical glances were shot in my direction. How does this affect assessment for projects when you have a record of how many times someone logged in World? Professors are probably very skilled at spotting the papers started hours before they were due. Can time spent on a project be separated from the final product? This is when documentation of the process comes into play. Sometimes final products don't work for a variety of reasons (technical limitations, technology failures, results aren't what you expected, etc), but that doesn't negate the knowledge gained. bzzzzzzzrp

CTIN 482 -Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments

Yes that's right... but that won't be discussed in this blog post. HOWEVER, students in the Cinematic Arts Interactive Media 482 Class (CTIN 482) will be doing this over the course of the semester on IML 2, the new Second Life Island, that was just recently added. Steve Anderson has been handed the teaching torch and I'm helping with the technical side.

The first two classes were dedicated to explaining the task the students will face over the semester and to have them create avatars, join the CTIN 482 group...now....

Week 3.. The Students have now entered the IML 2 Island...and immediately something happened that you just can't predict... a giant mass of land sprung up in front of me... a cube rezzed next to me... spheres in the distance... the land rippled as multiple students began playing with the terraforming tools. I build on the IML Island alone and unless you are in public sandbox most of SL's architecture is already in place when you visit. So seeing 16 avatars all working on a space is something rare. Suddenly a scream cut through the room, in the physical space not the IML 2 Island, as someones newly created monolith was obliterated by another terraformer cutting across the virtual landscape. It was a lesson quickly learned and everyone realized the potential hazards and benefits of a collaborative space. Everyone eventually settled into separate areas to build, terrafom, or explored off IML 2 Island for research.

Avatar Rendering Costs- 3D Optimization

One of the challenges of creating the IML Island has not only been designing a space that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing, but keeping the range of hardware resources people have in mind. Not everyone has high bandwidth and powerful graphics cards that can make the common lag problems a little less frequent. On many educators lists a large topic is how to bring Second Life Education to K-12 Programs, many of them not as well funded and sometimes relying on donated equipment. This makes accessing some of Second Life's areas IMPOSSIBLE as heavy amounts of scripts, animations, particles, flexiobjects, etc. choke already strained resources. Students at the IML are taught how to optimize their project assets to make 2D projects smoother, but 3D projects are new to almost everyone and the same principals need to be applied. This optimization needs to not only be applied to objects and environments, but to YOURSELF... something not applicable in 2D spaces. Avatars have costs unfortunately and sometimes your special outfits, bling, and gadgets can cause others around you to get bogged down. Torey Linden and Linden Labs has posted some blogs and videos explaining AVATAR RENDERING COSTS. Check it out and lets do our part in making this transition from 2D to 3D spaces a smooth and pleasant one. bzzzzzrp!!!



Avatar sets from the Library Linden Labs Provides

all of these Avatars are <1000. ARC(avatar rendering cost) >1000 is considered expensive.....so what does mine cost.... EEEEEEEKKKK!!!!!

Mine fluctuated between 4900 - 5900!! Prim hair is a common expense as most people find the built in hair options less than satisfying. Flexi clothes (Gosurori fashion doesn't come cheap in SL or RL apparently) and my grappling hook add a lot of expenses too. However, this doesn't mean you shouldn't ever deck out your avatar. I spend a lot of my time in SL alone building, scripting, and exploring so without other avatars around the expensive costs of mine doesn't hinder performance.

Immersive Sound and Vision Sculpture Art

Most of our offline and online audio experiences are the same. Whether it be listening to music while at an event, working with it playing in the background, music videos and films, etc, the sound is always whats being created by the media source and projected at you. However, on

Ramonia - Garden of Immersive Sound & Vision Sculpture Art you experience something different where space, sound, and image are intertwined by the gorgeous installations created by Adam Ramonia. The Island reminds me of the first time I played Myst and started to explore the sparse alien landscape at once beautiful but spooky. The sculptures move around you and the sound changes as you pass through them... your speed, location, and camera all warp the sounds around you. Now if we could only connect this to 5.1 and 10.1 systems.....

Here are my first experiences playing in it. I uploaded to YouTube and Veoh. Veoh being full quality, but YouTube is more accessible to people with mobile devices. bzzzzzzrp