When I was a lad, like many a lad, I dreamt of one day being a train driver and although that dream has long since faded, there’s this magical theme with trains still, which makes it a perfect subject for this year’s SL8B. The bonus here being that Qie Niangao has made a display that not only captures that magic, it also allows you to simulate riding a train inworld as well as promoting the Virtual Railway Consortium and Second Life Rail Road (SLRR).
The display starts with a simulation of a toy train which you ride.
Then before you know it you’re inside a train carriage, with sound and shaking.
I caught up with Qie Niangao to ask him more about the display, the Virtual Railway Consortium and the SLRR.
Qie Niangao: “So, it’s for VRC, and tries to show the “magic” people find in trains, rail travel, etc. It’s a little odd in that entry to it is solely by sitting on a little toy train in the front. So that’s why the rest of the exhibit is so blank from the outside.”
Qie Niangao: “Once seated, there’s a little chat script that it goes through, trying to drop a few hints about “magic” times people may have had in their history experiencing trains… in the course of that, it drops the visitor into a “transit simulation” that I got from Apollosmile Resident (and reworked some to remove megaprims, reduce scripts, etc), so then you “ride” that simulator for a while, and come out onto a station platform, where there’s more information about VRC, it’s mission, a freebie train that runs on the SLRR, etc.”
Qie Niangao: “One of the things there (if they don’t force me to remove it — it’s only three scripts, and two of them are trivial, but it looks scary as hell) is a real-time updated interactive map of traffic on the SLRR. One thing that’s interesting, perhaps, is that both that map and Apollosmile’s train simulator won the Sunday show-and-tell that Barney Boomslang and flo Kerensky run, in Avaria, so, in a way, we owe Barney & flo for the exhibit. (and I like to plug that event whenever I can).”ddd
Then I asked Qie about how much involvement there had been between Qie and SLRR for this exhibit:
Qie Niangao: “You mean LDPW? (the Moles… and Michael, who maintain the SLRR)… well… nothing for the exhibit. For that traffic map, another VRC officer identified that my little traffic probes seemed to be “tripping” the SLRR switches (this was at the very beginning, like two months ago or more)…. and we chatted with Sylvan Mole about what was going on… then it was easy to just change the waypoints that the probes used, to avoid tripping the switches.”
Qie Niangao: “So… VRC (and others who use the SLRR) are very appreciative of the close cooperation we get from the Moles and Michael… for working out specs for the SLRR system, etc. (It’s just that this particular exhibit doesn’t emphasize anything that really needed that cooperation.)”
Then I asked Qie whether Moundsa Mayo had been involved, I still have a notecard from Moundsa from years ago about SLRR and was trying to find out what he’s doing these days:
Qie Niangao: “He’s the president of VRC. He’s pretty busy with RL (paying) projects these days, so he wasn’t actively involved in this exhibit, no. We chatted among the officers whether to do the SL Birthday bash this year or not, and who could take it on, so I volunteered to do it. Last year, Stryker Jenkins (VRC’s secretary/treasurer) did the birthday exhibit, and to be honest, he’s been doing the vast majority of work for the group.”
Finally I asked Qie who else had been involved with bringing this exhibit to life:
Qie Niangao: “The simulator is all Apollosmile’s, just reworked and fitted to SL8B by me. the rest of the build (shell, etc) is mine, with contributions by Stryker — and, of course, the freebies and exhibit stuff, which is Stryker, Moundsa and others (for the freebie train), me for the traffic Map, oh… I should mention that we got some discussion and suggestions in the VRC forum, from other members, long before building started ..some of that discussion prompted what we submitted as a concept for the exhibit, and what ended up getting built. ”
To visit the display at SL8B go here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SL8B%20Spellbound/217/177/22
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