Linden Lab – Page 80 – Ciaran Laval

February 19, 2015

A Visit To Whispering Windz In Second Life

A while ago Guardian Witness ran an assignment to share your favourite virtual cities :

We want to hear about your best-loved virtual places – from a beautiful view in GTA V to that 20-million-strong SimCity megalopolis you’ve been building (or possibly destroying). What would be the best video game cities to live in? The worst? Perhaps you’ve designed one you think would be better than your own city? Share your screengrabs and we’ll feature the best on Guardian Cities.

Well virtual worlds were always likely to feature here and Second Life certainly gets a good mention. There are OSGrid places there too. However one that caught my eye this evening was Whisperdale Village.

Cranston Yardstorm described Whisperdale village as :

My wife, Shaylin, and I decided to create a medieval Tudor city on our sim. Sitting on top of our cave venue, you can enjoy a brew in the tavern or try your hand at spinning wool in the tailors shop, We hope you enjoy visiting Whispering Windz and our medieval city.

Unfortunately my visit coincided with a strange green gaseous storm, which infiltrated my snapshots! However, the place is quite beautiful.

Whereas Whisperdale Village caught my eye, the extended area is known as Whispering Windz and features some gorgeous scenery, statues, caves, rivers, lakes and waterfalls.

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February 18, 2015

Linden Lab’s Callum Prentice Makes The News Over His Flight Stream Code

An Image Should Be Here — Flights In The Sky

Who is Callum Prentice I hear you ask, well it’s what I heard myself asking when I saw an article in, of all places, The Daily Mail : Watch the world’s ‘swarming’ flight paths in action: Beautiful multicoloured visualisation reveals air traffic across the globe.

So the answer as to who Callum Prentice is comes in the article :

The British-born developer currently works for 3D Virtual World Second Life in California and has released the code for his Flight Stream design, as well as his other interactive projects, on his website.

Then we land at the website, we finally find out who Callum Prentice is! Hurrah!

British bloke, in San Francisco via London, Singapore, Barcelona, and Hong Kong ● Second Life developer during the day since 2004 ● Enthusiastic WebGL hacker in the evenings ● Founder of Industrial Might and Logic Combat Robots ● Eager traveller ● Crossfit and indoor rowing aficionado ● Insanely happy husband and father.

As Callum has been at Linden Lab since 2004 he’s an oldbie, he’s been there for a long time, seen a lot of changes and I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know what Callum Linden does. However it appears he was involved at some point in bringing HTML on a prim to Second Life. Callum has a strong interest in WebGL.

However back to his flight stream, as that’s what’s making the news :

The site was created as an ‘experiment to map many of the airline flights between world airports,’ explained Mr Prentice.

Tools on the site let visitors control the opacity of the individual flight tracks, change the size of the airports as well as adjust the speed of the animation.

The animation has been designed for desktop browsers, but Mr Prentice has also created a video for people on mobiles to be able to view the animation.

Mr Prentice told MailOnline the visualisation was just a hobby, and admitted that there is so much data around major airports, ‘it just blurs into a mess’, but the visualisation was fun to do and ‘looks pretty.’

However besides looking pretty, flight stream is fascinating as it shows just how many flights are in the sky.

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February 17, 2015

Valdosta State University TIES Conference Will Explore Teaching & Learning In Second Life

Valdosta State University presents TIES Conference Feb. 18-20. Ok first things first, you may be wondering what a TIES conferences is. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s not about ties. However it is about education and e-learning and these are noble causes which I very much support. There’s also some discussion on storytelling in virtual worlds too, hurrah!

Valdosta State University’s Center for eLearning will present the Conference on Instructional Technologies, Innovations, and Educational Strategies — commonly referred to as the TIES Conference — Feb. 18-20 in the Student Union.

This is a three day conference and the linked post above contains further information :

The TIES Conference is open to all VSU faculty, staff, and students, as well as members of the general public, who want to learn more about what educational leaders are doing to support student success both within and beyond the college classroom. Registration costs $69; includes all materials, breakfast and lunch on the second and third day of the conference, a social, and more; and will be accepted up through 1 p.m. the first day of the conference.

However for those of us who are fans of virtual worlds and storytelling, there’s even more details further in the post.

Day 2 is where things seem to get a bit more appealing for virtual world fans, with Second Life 101: Creating an Avatar, Exploring, and Teaching in Second Life.

Dr. Michelle Ocasio, Valdosta State University
Dr. Fleming Bell, Valdosta State University
Dr. Karen Acosta, Valdosta State University
Dr. Beatriz Potter, Valdosta State University

For the beginning user, this Second Life workshop aims to demonstrate some of the practical and educational uses of virtual worlds in distance learning and face-to-face interaction. Four speakers will explain engaging spontaneous and fun conversations in foreign language clubs, academic advising for distance students, coordinating student presentations for online courses, and oral assessments for online foreign language courses. A hands-on workshop to create an avatar and explore some interesting locations (including Valdosta State University Island) is included.

Day 3 also has potential with Digital Storytelling in Virtual Worlds: Designing Lessons Promoting Student Engagement.

Dr. Steve Downey, Valdosta State University

This workshop presents and demonstrates the new Instruction for Massively Multiplayer Online Learning Environments, i-MMOLE 2.0, framework for designing lessons utilizing digital storytelling practices to promote student engagement and learning in virtual world environments. Participants will get hands-on time using the virtual world of Second Life as well as guidance for designing lessons using the i-MMOLE 2.0 framework.

Digital storytelling in a virtual world can of course go beyond Second Life.

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February 16, 2015

A Visit To K’Taclysme Town, A French Speaking Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland In Second Life

I decided it was time to go International with my Second Life explorations, so I headed to the International section of The Destination Guide. I looked around at a few interesting looking links and decided to brave a visit to a scary looking location known as K’Taclysme Town. Now first things first, this is a sim created by French speakers and the notecards are in French. Therefore you may struggle with the roleplay if you’re not a French speaker. However don’t let that put you off from visiting.

One of the beauties of a virtual world in circumstances such as this is that the landscape is painted for you, therefore you can get a bloody good idea of what’s going on. Another beauty of a virtual world is that if you’re familiar with the mechanisms, you can work some things out for yourself. For example I figured out how to get hold of a visitors tag by touching the prim that contains said visitor tag.

I could also figure out how to get hold of some of the rules and background to the sim, again by touching the correct prim.

Obviously, if you’re not a French speaker then you may well have difficulty understanding the instructions, but there are tricks of the trade to guide you, such as using Google Translate to give you a nudge in the right direction. However even before doing that it wasn’t hard to work out that something bad had happened to this town. Armed military figures, strange gases on the streets, crashed vehicles, collapsed roads, floating spores and blood on the street give you the distinct impression that it didn’t end well here.

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February 14, 2015February 14, 2015

Giulio Prisco Has Been Talking About Religion In Virtual Reality, Will It Work For Him This Time?

A couple of posts from physicist and computer scientist, Giulio Prisco. The posts are linked to each other. The first post was published on Hypergrid Business : Virtual reality a new frontier for religions. In that post Giulio talks about churches in virtual reality. In that post Giulio revists some of the ground he has covered before, which I covered when Giulio had been talking about the book Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life by Robert M. Geraci.

In the Hypergrid Business article Giulio says :

The book reports that many groups in mainstream religions, including Christianity and Islam, established a virtual presence in Second Life, often bypassing institutional channels and creating grassroots communities instead. These virtual communities are often independent of traditional religious hierarchies, and much more open to inter-faith dialogue and alternative lifestyles.

Physical churches can and do work together, I know that the local Catholic and Baptist churches near me have joint ventures in terms of open days and money raising causes for example, but could virtual reality help people to make those links and alliances without the structure of their own church leaders? This is an interesting thought process. Giulio goes on to suggest that new religions may be formed in the metaverse :

The chapter “Sacred Second Lives” of Virtually Sacred is dedicated to new, emerging religious movements in Second Life. Perhaps more than established religions, new “native” metaverse religions will be able to take full advantage of the endless possibilities of virtual reality and offer a spiritual home to multitudes of people worldwide, especially those who search spiritual meaning independently, outside the legacy framework of mainstream religions.

I don’t think Giulio was talking about The First Church Of Rosedale when he wrote that. Especially as The First Church Of Rosedale is Second Life only and has as its tagline :

There is no Chairman but Philip,
And Torley is His Prophet.
The first church devoted to an entirely SL-focused religion!

Samantha Poindexter has a lot to answer for!

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