Common Currency in a virtual world

It does not take long in SL, before you realise that the whole experience can be improved if you have some money or Linden Dollars to purchase stuff and there is some excellent material around, or even better making money by selling stuff. Just recently I have been taking some excursions into the metaverse according to Open Simulator. In fact I now even have a sim running on my desktop, a very singular experience after the comings and goings that you get in place like SL. One of the things that struck me about OpenSim and there is increasingly a lot of it about it seems, is that there does not seem to be too much by way of resources. I began to ponder this and it came to me that maybe this is because of the complete absence of money, maybe, possibly. Lets face it OpenSim or SL almost by any other name and I am still to reconcile all this, does not have an equivalent of Linden Dollars, even though they are mentioned on some of the panels, stranger still. Then the other day, and probably a while after many others discovered it, I found out about the Open Metaverse Currency (OMC) and the number of virtual worlds that are using it; it seems there is an exchange rate with SL, terminals available and a link to PayPal. . There is a good web article here with some nice videos that explain the whole thing. If you have any thoughts or experience with OMC then please feel free to comment on this post.

Kind regards Skipper

Just how emmersive will it get?

That is the question that I was asking myself the other evening as I was standing on a small hill looking through the palm trees to the sight and sound of the waves rolling in, the gulls calling as they flew over head and in the near distance the faint cracking of a camp fire. I know that the on the near horizon there is talk of SL HD and that will improve the visual for sure, great.

So I began to look around the net for some insights and the first that I came across was from Digicents blog: -

Smell reaches out into a new, visceral dimension, transporting viewers, gamers, and music fans into the realm of the senses. Atmosphere, mood, emotion and characters can all be enhanced with scent.
The Power of Scent…
o makes content extremely immersive and compelling
o creates mood, such as foreshadowing or ambiance
o intensifies emotions, such as fear or love
o establishes place and season
o helps develop characters
o gives a heightened sense of reality

How will this work, well according to Wikipedia: -

The prototype connected to a personal computer via USB or serial port and was designed to emit a smell when a user visited a web site or opened an email. The device contained a cartridge with 128 "primary odors," which could be mixed to replicate natural and man-made odors. DigiScents had indexed thousands of common odors, which could be coded, digitized, and embedded into web pages or email

So in the near furure in SL one evening soon, I may be standing on a small hill looking through the palm trees to the sight and sound of the waves rolling in, gulls calling as they fly over head, and in the near distance hearing the faint cracking of a camp fire, while at the same time taking in the smells of the ocean, cant wait.

Then the other day I saw something that blew me away, Touchable Holography, what is that, follow this link to core77, and a CNN demonstration, now lets start getting getting ready for the real holodeck!!!!

Comments welcome, Skipper

New web virtual world search facility

I have just been uploading my SIM images and comments to a new site at http://www.threadmap.com. Once you sign up to the service, you can upload screen captures via email direct from the SL viewer, nice one. You can Teleport in-world from images each of which can be annotated with text and or tags to aid searching, and you can even include video content. One word of caution here though is that you need to take care at the point of account creation as some details cannot be changed once set, and there does not seem to be a way of deleting. I have been browsing and searching the site and find that its about as easy as it gets to use. If enough sign up to this then it could become a really powerful search tool. Recommended, Skipper

Virtual World Project Reviews

As part of my regular house keeping work here at Shimmer Island, I recently decided to take a look at the resources available in the main hall area of the facility. I am really pleased to say that the main tutorials continue to be popular with visitors and so they have remained as they are. Looking over at the smaller hall, I decided to remove the usual video display of project work and replace it with a new feature. If you teleport over now you will find some new books have appeared. These are project overviews with student feedback statistics of trials that I have carried out in the virtual world. Touching on each resource will produce a pdf file. I have more in the pipeline so you may like to teleport over now and then. Please feel free to take a copy and if you find the survey results useful, then they are free to use, I will only request that you site the original source. if you have any further questions about use or the projects themselves, then please feel free to IM me, Skipper Abel here at Shimmer Island.

regards Skipper

Tranceformational Learning

I came across a really interesting site the other day, which I think you will find is well worth a visit. The site is called ImagiLearning, by the way its not their actual logo that I have used here in the post. The key thrust of the group who run the site centers of what they call Tanceformational Learning or TL. What is TL, well here's a paragraph from one of their pages:-

Tranceformational Learning blends the elements of learner centered instruction, concepts of game design, current brain research, and virtual world technologies to create experiences that engage the full mind of the learner in learning that goes beyond the traditional. Since the brain does not always clearly distinguish between "real" and "virtual" experiences, if we can create activities that trigger emotional, visceral responses leading to increased synaptic connections...learning is enhanced. Rather than simply connecting the new content to 'normal' patterns in the brain, Tranceformational Learning leads the brain to make wider and 'altered' patterns of synaptic connections with the new learning. We believe the result is increased learning.

They have a presence in Second life which naturally gets my interest and I suspect the interest of many who are wondeing where these new web 2.0 and 3.0 tools are likely to take us.

please comment with your views, regrads Skipper

Solar Cell Project Feedback

The latest virtual world project, which involved my project BTEC level 3 students building solar panels in OpenSim has now come to an end. As you can see from the accompanying screenshot there has been a good amount of activity taking place.

The feedback report from my students is available from this link. Please feel free to take a look, If you have any comments, then by all means drop a reply to this posting.

For more details of the project, you may like to visit my OpnSim blog at http://bcopensim.blogspot.com

Kind regards Skipper

SL viewer 2 and the killer apps

Even from my early days in Second Life, graduating as I did from 3DML, anyone remember Flatland Rover? Enthusiastic as I was then and still remain, one of the frustrations was in the need to have a seamless connection with wider services that support cross platform collaboration. Well OK there is the Sloodle project, brilliant, though maybe sometimes a bit techie, and I soon learned how to worked out a way to talk to an sql database and use xml-rpc to talk back into Second Life from the web, all good stuff. From your non-techie user there are white boards and chat and of course speech with all its disclosure implications. Then the other day I found viewer version 2 and its greatly enhanced media on a prim feature, Wow. The screen shot shows me using EtherPad on a prim and typing into it directly from SL. The comment on the second line is also me talking into SL from a web page, this is for me the first new generation killer app. Remember having to snapshot all your slide images to jpegs and upload them to an SL board, well now you upload to Google Docs and paste in the shared url, Wow again. Web pages can be scrolled and media played including Flash games. If you have any thoughts, idea’s even anecdotal please feel free to comment, me I am off to play.

Regards Skipper

OpenSim rollout blog

We have just started a new blog, that we shall be using to journal the rollout of the OpenSim platform for our FE and HE students here at Bromley College, as we continue to explore the possibilities of Virtual Worlds - http://bcopensim.blogspot.com so please feel free to visit and comment.

Blog from a Shimmer Island visitor

Object-Name: SI Blog
Region: Star Beach Island (194304, 294656)
Local-Position: (194, 182, 22)

Hi nice SIM

Aso Galicia

Outting life into Second Life

A little while ago, weeks, I was reading an article on the growing number of virtual worlds and their individual merits or not as the case may be; cannot recall now if this was in a magazine or web. Anyway, when it came to SL, the author made the observation and given the comparisons with other virtual worlds, it was a valid point, that there was not much life in Second Life. Sure you have your avatars wandering around with the odd tree blowing in the wind and of course the buildings that our avatars use or occupy; all signs of life, but apart from that very often not much seems to happen, well maybe. Anyway I thought lets try changing that and see if it makes a difference to my virtual impressions, so I went along to the Aminata Sim


Outside of the main learning space, I changed in waterfront to accomodate a couple of Dolphins. Like dolphins do, they swim around a predifined area, make dolphin sounds and click away with enthusiasm. My impressions very nice actually.

Tortoise seemed to be a suitable addition to a sub-tropical type of environment. These two and you get a choice of size and wandering area, crawl around just as you would expect, with I must say some very realistics movements, though there is no sound. In fact from my limited experience of the tortoise, they only make sounds when eating, though I am sure experts will correct me on that one. Impressions realistic

The Cranes are really good, they walk around a defines area moving heads bending over and making Crane noises, not those that I would have expected, so I learnt something there. Impressions very good and realistic.

The pink Flamingo's are really very much like the Cranes and I suspect much the same code engines driving them. I created a small wetland type of area for them to wander around and they perform reliably, as do their calls, something else I have learnt, you can detect I am sure that there is a thread emerging here.

On the other side of a small inlet, where if you have been a visitor I keep the boat. I purchased and placed two paddling Pelicans and a Toucan. The pelicans wander around their placement area very happilly, while the Toucan will fly off at random times returning to his perching place, have a look around and off again. And of course all the while making their calls, more surprises for me.

I have not mentioned the seven free roaming seagulls, a flying parrot, and two flocks if that is the correct term, and I bet it isnt of butterflies.




So Virtual impressions. Well I certainly learnt something about birds, and without a doubt it has put a whole new feel to the island, so in conclusion I do actually feel that its worth putting some life into Second Life.

Your feedback is welcome

Shimmer Island RSS on the move

If you take a look on the right side bar of this blog, you will see that we can now offer you an RSS feed to your mobile. Simply click on the image, a popup web page will take you to the site. From here you can either use the top left page controls to scroll content or more desirably post the address to you mobile. If you do try this option out, then naturally we would appreciate your feedback.

Bye for now Skipper

REZ magazine

The September 2009 edition of REZ magazine is now available for reading at Shimmer Island, so feel free to teleport over any time for a browse of its popular and informative pages. While you are standing on the first floor reading area, you may become aware of some clicking sqwark noises, these are the dolphins, just look at the in-shore seaward side of the obersvation platform and you will be sure to see them jumping and splashing around.

Shimmer-Island, where eLearning and virtual worlds meet.

Running OpenSim

On the left here you can see a quick screen shot of our OpenSim(Open Source version of what amounts to Second Life), on a local server here at Bromley College. Though the software is at present only in Alpha release, we have been running some tests with building and scripting, including physics, which all seem to be performing very well and we certainly intend taking the project forward. If you are interested in setting up your own OpenSim, then you may like to stay in touch with the technical details by following this link to the blog maintained by Clive Gould

Skipper

Freebie Beach

Approaching the Shimmer Island from the sea the other day, I was surprised to see how many crates of freebies had washed up onto the shore. So if you are teleporting bye some time you may like to have a browse and see whats new.

Wind Turbine case study published

For those of you who have been following my Wind Turbine project here in SL, you may like to know that JISC have now published a case study of it on their Excellence Gateway. If you would like to read the material in-world just wander over to the hill top News Gazebo and be sure to have your browser set to popups enabled.

Off-SIM Island

I was standing having a casual look out to sea from the beach at Shimmer Island the other virtual day toward an open horizon, when I began to think it may be nice to add something off-shore, beyond the boundary of the sim.



This is where I discovered an add on xstreetsl from Zunie Button, which read:- !!!ENLARGE YOUR LAND!!! Offsim /outside sim Island - with sit animations ENLARGE your land with this OFFSIM ISLAND.!!! NOT ONLY VISUAL, you can even sit on it !!!!ONLY 19 PRIMS, include:- 5 of my palmtrees and shadows- 1 sitting palmtree with lay animation- 1 sitting rock with bath animation- 2 boxes with sit animation(no script menu enable for offsim items).

This produced just th effect I was looking for, at only L$10

While I am not actually able to walk around on my new island residence, I can take a sit option from one of the wooden boxes and look back to shore or rotate the camera controls. All in all a good deal and easy setup.

Please feel free to teleport over anytime and give it a try

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Star%20Beach%20Island/196/185/22

regards Skipper

Zen Meditation

Looking around Shimmer Island these days I think the old place is beginning to look a whole lot more comfortable and realistic. I then began to think about maybe including some new features that were not necessarily associated with virtual learning, maybe along the lines of simulations for my visitors. I know that dance areas are popular in Second life, but its not just about the popularity, I wanted something that while being at best of use and at least amusing, I remembered that the oldest of our girls had recently qualified as Yoga teacher, brilliant for that, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to show that the avatar in the family was maybe not as disconnected from life as maybe suspected. The result was a couple of very cheep L$5 Zen yoga cushions from Ei Yue with poses and copy, so I only had to actually buy one even better. Next I purchased the Zen Flow water feature from Myla Carter, just to make for some ambience, and, not bad. If you feel like a teleport over to Shimmer Island for some meditation with poses to the sound of waves and seagulls then please feel free. Of course if you would like to try yoga for real, then drop Amanda an email from her weloveyoga web page.

Bye for now Skipper

New palms

I was watching the screen from xstreetsl scroll through its random products the other day when I saw an add for scupted palms from Tobias Novi. These palms are 2 prims for eight and they can cover 15, 20, 25 and 32 mtrs. If you would like to include an animated shadow, then this is one extra prim, at just under L$500 they seemed a good deal so I teleported over for a closer look. I was immediately impressed by the graphical qaulity of the trees and the shadowing, so went for a couple of models to replace the foliage that I had been assembly over the last year or so for my sim at Shimmer Island. The effect was transforming.
After purchasing some very convincing wave effects recently from Real Waves, seven free roaming seagulls and now the palms, I am beginning to realise that modelling in Second Life is becoming incerasingly realistic and convincing from those early days a few years ago when I first joined.
Please feel free to teleport over at any time for a browse.

Skipper Abel

The game nearly begin

My level 3 students following a Games Development module are currently exploring SL as a platform for developing Games. The storyline requires they collaboratively design and build a castle, and each group has just about completed this. Today they have been busy installing some transparent Sentinel (these are the guardians of knowledge) rezzers, in the grounds. If you would like to teleport over anytime and review the progress or wander around then feel free, though beware as you may be pursued by some rather familiar looking Sentinels.


My level 3 students following a Games Development module are currently exploring SL as a platform for developing Games. The storyline requires they collaboratively design and build a castle, and each group has just about completed this. Today they have been busy installing some transparent Sentinel (these are the guardians of knowledge) rezzers, in the grounds. If you would like to teleport over anytime and review the progress or wander around then feel free, though beware as you may be pursued by some rather familiar looking Sentinels.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Maritime%20Greenwich/106/24/21

Regards Skipper Abel

Free Plants

Having a stroll along the beach at Shimmer Island the other evening, and I came across a new box of free plants had been washed up onto the shore. Feel free to teleport over anytime and take a copy.

regards Skipper