Episode 33 of The Linden Lab sponsored Drax Files : World Makers takes us to Luxembourg, but in a sci fi style twist it takes us to Luxembourg in 2015 and Luxembourg in 1867 at the same time.

The main protagonist in this episode is Second Life resident  Cyperpiper Roelefs (AKA Pit Vinandy outside Second Life). What makes this episode particularly interesting is that the physical world footage takes place not only in the streets of the City of Luxembourg, but also in the Fort Thüngen Museum and the City Museum of Luxembourg

Inside the museum lies an exhibit; Pfaffenthal 1867 – A virtual walk through the historic Pfaffenthal. This is an exhibit that visitors access through computers as they enter the virtual world of Second Life to find some pretty damn impressive recreations of the historical location.

This is an exhibit that also takes advantage of more modern developments because as well as ten computers, there are also two Oculus Rift headsets available for people to immerse themselves deeper in the virtual experience.

At its heart this is a history exhibit, which utilises the virtual world environment to tell the story of how in 1867 there was a bit of a crisis in Europe (this is not unusual by the way!) when France wanted to buy Luxembourg. However those pesky British were having none of it and during negotiations it was decided to allow Luxembourg to become an independent nation. The aim was partially to prevent war between Germany and France. There’s a lot more to it than this!

Recreating 1867 isn’t easy, but Cyberpiper explains how with the use of models of an old fortress they were able to create a virtual world representation. There’s a really interesting (to me at least) part in this episode where we see the power of prim building, never underestimate the power of the prim. However we are also informed that the creators behind the virtual world recreation also use tools such as Blender and Adobe Photoshop.

Another interesting point that gets raised is in terms of people immersing themselves in these builds. That is that people come and roleplay in these locations, they occupy the buildings, they wear period costumes and those avatars add an extra dimension of life to the build as the streets come alive with avatars.

Going forward Cyberpiper feels that exhibits such as this should be part of museums and that this is a good use case for virtual reality. However Cyberpiper also points out that exhibits such as this shouldn’t replace history books, but they give people the opportunity to get a feeling of what life may have been like back then via a different perspective.

The use of real world and virtual world footage exemplifies just how impressive a job Cyberpiper and his team have done in terms of recreating these locations. The textures and design compare very well to the physical locations they are meant to represent.

We also get to see the Second Life acting talents of one Marianne McCann, who plays a variety of roles during the episode! Go Mari!

This is another excellent episode but what I felt made it particularly impressive was that although it delves into the past, it also gives us an insight into what the future may hold in terms of use cases for virtual reality. Another fine job from Draxtor who manages once again to pack so much into five minutes.

I’ll end this post by embedding the video of the episode and adding links so that you can visit the location within Second Life if you want.

SLURL To Luxembourg City and 1867 The Virtual Pfaffenthal : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pfaffenthal%20Vauban/169/18/29/