Second Life – Page 55

July 21, 2015

ANSIBLE – An OpenSim Inspired Virtual World That NASA Might Take To Outer Space

PC Mag have an interesting article by Sophia Stuart : Inside NASA’s Version of the Holodeck. What makes this article interesting is that NASA’s version of the Holodeck looks like OpenSim and it seems like there may be a very good reason for that.

The crux of the article focuses around an interview with virtual world and virtual reality legend Dr Jacquelyn Ford Morie, founder and chief scientist of All These Worlds LLC. I’ll use just part of Dr Morie’s bio to exemplify her credentials :

Dr. Morie has 25 years experience in developing innovative techniques for rich, emotionally evocative virtual reality (VR) environments. As part of this pioneering work, she invented a scent collar to bring the emotional power of smell to immersive experiences, and developed new types of functions for VR, such as connections to multiple sensor and feedback systems to make VR more effective. Dr. Morie spent 13 years as a Sr. Research Scientist at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), which she helped found. While there, she created novel VR telehealth care activities using her deep understanding of art, computer animation and human behavior to enhance patient engagement with these programs.

Impressive stuff, and from the PC Mag article we learn about some things that are a little closer to home for this blog. Dr Morie is quoted as saying :

“In the early 90s, I was participating in networked VR like Dactyl Nightmare, BattleTech, and Virtuality, but they weren’t totally open worlds, they were applications. But I could see the potential, even then” Morie explained. “So, the first virtual world that I really took part in was Second Life.”

However Second Life is of course closed in many ways itself, so, yes I’m getting there, OpenSim comes into the equation. Dr Morie’s work had came to the attention of none other than NASA. They asked Dr Morie to write a technical document on how virtual worlds could be used in space. Two companies were asked to work on a prototype of this. One was Dr Morie’s All These Worlds LLC and the other was Smart Information Flow Technologies (SIFT). However they didn’t just build a protoype, they built the whole damn thing.

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July 20, 2015

Taking A Lick At The McFly Project

LICK in Second Life is interesting. This is the home of The McFly Project and connects differing worlds, from the creepy fairground landing point where you can test your feats of strength to a futuristic landscape that you can use vehicles to travel around.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, although I did wonder if I had found the Droid I was looking for at one point.

The landscape and items are extremely engaging and so is the exploration, following the clues I found myself in an underwater cavern, with a hint that I needed to pull a lever.

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July 18, 2015

Second Life Going Gothic As H.P. Lovecraft Festival Approaches

I saw the above advert for Second Life last night, it says “Explore The Gothic Scene“, which straight away made me think of Marsha Warwillow and SL Goth Magazine. The magazine is as you would expect, largely about gothic culture in Second Life :

slGoth Magazine is an independent showcase of gothic Second Life residents, places, philosophy, fashion, entertainment and events. The articles are written by resident avatars and cover a variety of topics in the gothic community. It is published monthly in-world and is a wearable HUD which supplies landmarks and gifts from sponsors.

I interviewed Marsha back in January, the interview came in two parts, part one and unsurprisingly, part two.

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July 17, 2015

Relay For Life Weekend In Second Life

This weekend in Second Life is Relay For Life Weekend. Now if you’re wondering what Relay weekend is, it’s explained on the official Relay For Life in SL website : What is “Relay Weekend” in Second Life?

Relay For Life is the signature event of the American Cancer Society and has been active, and continually growing in Second Life for 11 years. In 2005, the first Relay For Life of Second Life (RFL of SL) was attended by a few hundred avatars and raised almost $5,000 US dollars for the American Cancer Society. Five years later, in 2010 the Relay For Life of Second Life raised over $220,000. The 1 MILLIONTH US dollar was raised in 2011 when more than 2000 volunteers raised over $375,000. In 2012 we passed the 1.5 million dollar mark. In 2014, we passed the 2 million US dollar mark and we are approaching the 2.5 million dollar mark quickly.

Relay Weekend is a fun-filled, overnight event that unites SL individuals throughout the world to celebrate survivors (anyone who has ever been diagnosed with cancer), remember loved ones and raise money for the fight against cancer.

For more information about RFL in SL please visit the American Cancer Society Region anytime, day or night, all year long.

A host of activities are planned for Saturday and Sunday, a full list of which you can find out about on the page I linked to above.

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July 17, 2015July 17, 2015

National Geographic Point Me In The Direction Of David Rumsey’s Maps In Second Life

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.

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