Voice and Sculpted Prims

New tools are being introduced to Second Life. They are really exciting. One is sculpties, which uses an image map's colors as the coordinates for a mesh (I'm in love). The other is Voice, which allows people to talk to each other in Second Life, if they have a headset. Jamie and I tried it, and it is a completely different experience than the usual.
Some people are suspicious of these new tools.
I'm all for these new developments. Voice may create a subdivision, but I don't necessarily think that it will be a stratification. It's more of a diversification. Besides, anyone who's tried VoiceBeta realizes what happens once your typing fingers are free; your avatar comes to life. It can move around and communicate simultaneous. It's a lot of fun and will be really useful for in-world interactions.
I just learned about Sculpted Prims this morning. What a weird baby! They are no more intuitive than the tools that LL (Linden Labs) has already provided, though. No worries to the existing SL (Second Life) builders. In fact, I think it is a boon to them, another tool in their box.
Voice and Sculpted Prims shouls be very exciting tools for us to use on Wolverine Island.

I feel like I'm in Michigan

This is so much fun. I've been doodling on these drawings for a while now and was beginning to get overwhelmed. Add a touch of color and it's so very fresh again. Just note that this image is not yet complete. I'll be doing the same to the other three.

Workspace 2

I'm getting lost inside of these drawings. Wolverine Island is becoming more immersive everyday.

Audio Feeds

Just an idea for audio on Wolverine Island. Aside from localized sounds such as birds and insects in the Arb or bell sounds at the Tower, I thought we could link-up with live stations such as WCBN. Maybe WCBN would be best zoned to the Student Lounge area. Then, perhaps WHYY could stream in the Diag area. WDET at the Sandboxes?

I'm not exactly sure how or if this would work, but even if it's not as easy as copying a link into a script, we may be able to get the cooperation of such stations to stream into Second Life, because of the exposure.

The Rest

Since this blog was started a little late, I'd like to send you (if "you" are new) to url that has some of the images and Flash layouts that came prior to the Quadrant drawings.
IMAGES/FLASH

Quadrant Four

Here is that fourth Quadrant in a similar state of finish/unfinish. I need to look at the finer details on all 4 of the Quadrants, such as architectural finishes, lamp and kiosk positions, landscaping, and more people and furniture. Once I have the forms down, I'll rescan the drawings and move to working digitally. There, I will colorize the images.

After that, I'd like to work on some fairly quick interior studies. By then we'll have gotten more feedback from some of our potential users.
So send us that feedback! :)

New Quadrants

I've worked on detailed drawings for three quadrants. Each needs a bit more work before it is colorized, but they are close.
The last one is The Arb Quadrant.

University of the Arts

University of the Arts in Philadelphia has begun working on their SL presence. It seems quite different than our project, but it might lend us a few ideas.
Here's the slurl.
I visited it briefly. I wouldn't recommend going there. Too much crap all at once, and not very relevant.
I would suggest visiting the blog, more than anything.

Backhoe

This was an example file that came with a program called "Backhoe". It only works on macs (Sorry guys). Apparently you just draw and export, then upload to SL... Amazing! I don't know about the texture. I'm checking it out a bit more.
I found it here at Penn State Virtual Worlds Blog. It send you to the SL site.

Bumpin' Student Lounge

I was stumped for a while on the student lounge. But I think I've come up with something fun on the bottom and sophisticated on top.


Just note that the two larger views and the one 3D view don't include that bottom lounge area. I'll be making some 3D views of this soon.

Testing Testing

We visited a Sandbox yesterday on the Beta grid to test the Voice Beta version of Second Life. We measured an approximate 25 meter threshold. But it was difficult to hear one another clearly unless we were at least within 15 meters. The reason that this is so important relates to the layout of the island. We don't have ot follow real life building codes but we do need pay attention to these kind of factors.
25 meters is pretty far away, and that is going to really limit our ability to create any sort of density of gathering spaces. We must do one of two things:find a way to make sound-proof regions of space or we could spread these spaces out so they aren't within ear-shot of each other. Spreading things out seems like not such bad idea. It will help to keep processing lighter. But in scenarios like the simulation building, we'll want to have concurrent training sessions happening, etc. This may absolutely require some kind of sound proofing. Any ideas?

drawings vs. modeling

Sometimes I am tempted to create a model that will represent the structure I'm imagining more clearly. It's not always the fastest solution to draw something first. But I often avoid the model making (at least with wolverine island so far), because I know how wrapped up in it I will become.
Please, if there is ever a structure that you don't understand, request a basic model. They are actuially pretty quick to make, but I want to avoid making them until I absolutely have to.

Tower

Much to my surprise, the sleek tower design that I thought was going to be too edgey turned out to not be edgey enough. Here is the initial design:


As I understand it, the Tower needs to be more "Second-Life". This made me very happy. Most of my energy today has been devoted to this. I won't show you everything, because I drew a lot of ugly. But here is the idea that I think works best:


You can see the bells hanging like a chandelier from a floating structure that is schematic and transparent at the top and more opaque at the bottom. It hangs over a platform that will have a portkey to the top.