Friday, August 31, 2007

Final Push


Many of the major structures are in place on Wolverine Island. We are mostly focused now in textures, details, and simple scripts. A few small changes seem to be presenting themselves as we move forward. One is lights; I don't think we will want to use as many lights as appeared in the original plan. this would use up prims and I have found another way to solve the problem. If we use key lights that are brighter, we can illuminate particular areas just as well as if we had a number of small lights. I've already put some of these lights in place, but am still tweaking the intensity and the fall-off.

The image above is of Clement Greenberg working on the the Sky Tower's Bells. In the background appears the Simulation Building. As you can see, we made some changes. We added observation decks around each of the floors. The walls are also thicker to make it less likely for avatar names to pop through. And I think we found just the right height for each floor (8m) in our little powwows the other day with Ted, Memetic, and Dale. There may still need to be a set of suggestions for the use of the building, but I think we have created quite a unique space for medical simulations in Second Life.

Hank Rau has been amazing with making the structures of the Library, Private Auditorium, and the Admissions Building look easy. We can call him "Ars Geometrica" from now on.

Orientation Station


I recently discovered a possible resource (or resource example) for Second Life orientation called the Orientation Station ( another SLURL). It's pretty nice and has a good deal of lessons. I think we could create something similar to this that would be more targeted at faculty, students, and staff of the university. Any university policies regarding Second Life could be built into the training.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Medical Simulation at Ann Meyers

Ann Meyers recently conducted what they claim to be the "first medical simulation in Second Life". I missed it somehow, but a blow-by-blow can be found here. I'm not sure if it was quite as intense as some of the simulations that Wolverine Island will probably be doing, but it looked well attended.

Friday, August 17, 2007

The Life or Death of Second Life

I recently wrote an article on the N Formation Blog about recent developments and criticisms of Second Life.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Over the hump


I think that we can safely say that things are moving along on Wolverine Island. Personally, it's very nice to see all of it coming together. There are a few small changes we are making due to in-world revelations, but other than sore fingers everything is coming together smoothly.
Up next: Simulation Building Tests, Small Structures, Architectural details, Textures, Script Examples, Tweaking

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Construction


N Formation is well under way with the construction of the buildings and land on Wolverine Island. Most of our focus has been on laying out the core areas and seeing how it feels. So far, we are focusing on the geometry of the buildings, using generic textures and will add other textures, once we have blocked everything in. If you're really interested in our progress, you could even visit the island to stop in and say hi.