When you see a headline of ‘Steampunk’ Infographics Beautifully Combine Past and Present, your first thought probably isn’t going to be that this article might mention Second Life, although Steampunk certainly has a thriving community in Second Life.

When you consider that this is an article on National Geographic, you’re probably even less likely to think Second Life is going to get a mention, but get a mention it does.

The article is about how information graphic designers are looking to the past for inspiration for their visualisations and in many cases using modern technology to do so. The author of the article, Geoff McGhee, links this mixture of old and new as :

When information graphics designers also look to the past for inspiration, the result—something I’ll call “steampunk infographics”—tells us a lot about the state of information visualization today.

So where does Second Life fit into all of this? Well the article has a few use cases of people creating maps and quotes the opinion of David Rumsey, who is impressed with the work. The article then points out some of David Rumsey’s work :

Rumsey is no stranger to adapting antique maps for the digital world. Not only are his maps available in Google Earth, but users of the virtual reality environment Second Life can “fly” through and around his collection of antique maps and globes.

Which led me to go and visit David Rumsey’s work and where I found myself getting lost in a virtual world representation of old maps, as well as viewing old maps as textures on flat surfaces too.

You will find maps in a variety of formats, including globes. One of the areas here is a map of Yosemite, which has some interesting interactions. The notecard you can pick up informs us how this was created :

The Second Life interpretation was done by creating sculptured primitives, each transformed into a piece of the map’s topography. Segments of the map itself were then textured onto the sculptured primitives, creating the stunning landscape below.

The Yosemite part of the regions is 3D, that may not be clear from the picture below, but this is not a flat surface.

However you do have the option to turn it into a flat surface, by going to a platform in the sky and clicking Height Map on or off. When you turn the Height Map off, the area around you flattens, and obviously when you turn the Height Map back on, the area around you rises in parts. There’s also an option for full bright.

The Globes that can be found in the sky were created in the following manner :

The Second Life interpretation was created by segmenting the map into 1000-pixel-square textures. Each segment was then mapped onto a segment of a sphere.

Whereas when it comes to the map on New York 1836, the creation process was :

The Second Life interpretation was made by segmenting the original map into 50 1000-pixel-square textures. Each texture was applied to a 20-meter-square primitive. The map pointers are driveable.

Personally I find these different creation processes interesting.

There are a lot of maps here, there is also a lot of information about the maps and the project itself. The notecards are well worth reading, for the historical context of the maps and about the project itself, which goes way beyond Second Life :

The David Rumsey Map Collection, founded in 1983, is one of the largest private map collections in the United States. With over 150,000 historical maps, the Collection’s primary focus is the cartography of the world of the 18th and 19th Centuries. The Collection also has many atlases, globes and maritime charts of Oceania, the America, Asia and Europe. Digitization of the map library began in 1997; currently there are over 17,000 high resolution images of the maps, availably for free at www.davidrumsey.com

The maps in their different formats work very well in Second Life.

To find out more about the maps in Second Life you can go to : http://www.davidrumsey.com/view/second-life. Alternatively of course, you can get interactive and visit this location in Second Life.

SLURL To David Rumsey’s Maps : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Rumsey%20Maps%203/116/75/55/