The Bartlett building was more or less completed and it was time to get ac-quainted with land concepts of Second Life. Land ownership is a fundamental is-sue in SL and it is one of the main sources of income for both Linden Lab and pri-vate residents. In spite of the fact that the whole notion of the land in virtual world sounds a bit fictional, it is actually the point where the virtual meets the reality. Thus, in order to create a new virtual “region” (a piece of land 256x256m) Linden Lab has to add a fully material single CPU to the system. That leads to an-other basic concept of the virtual land that a single region can not contain more than 15000 primitives due to the technical reasons and network capacity.
There are three types of regions in Second Life: mainland, private (island) and openspace. Mainland regions are operated by Linden Governor and they can be bought from Linden Lab or any other resident. The so-called Mainland consists of plenty interconnected mainland regions each of them usually is divided in parcels. The price and monthly land use fees vary according to the size of a parcel. Most residents do not need the whole region which is 65000 sqm and they usually buy parcels. And here comes into effect another fundamental concept of SL’s virtual land – density self-regulation. The idea of this concept is based on the principle of maximum 15000 primitives per region. Thus, if the area of a parcel is 1/10 of the region’s territory than the maximum amount of primitives on that parcel is 1500. Consequently, building a complex model is impossible on a small piece of land and highly detailed buildings need some free land around in order to save overall balance of prims per region.
Islands are private regions that are usually located separately from the Mainland. They have greater possibilities in terms of terrain organisation and some land ownership advantages comparatively to mainland regions. Islands were designed for large scale projects or for activities where ever changing surroundings are not desirable. Another common utilization of islands is converting them into private estates which are then divided into parcels for further rent. Such private landowning has become one of the most profitable businesses in SL.
Organizations usually tend to buy islands due to the opportunity to give the company’s name to the island and as a result to put this name into a search list. Moreover it is possible to create a unique style for the island and to provide additional privacy if needed. Linden Lab offers special discounts on buying islands for educational institutions and non-commercial organizations.
The price of an island set up for educational institutions is £350 with a following £75 monthly fee for maintenance.
There is a long list of universities already represented in Second Life. The first university to appear in SL seems to be Harvard. It has public islands for representation purposes and private territories accessible only by students and staff. The restricted access islands are used for educational purposes.
A remarkable island is owned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A part of territory is dedicated to the main building of MIT but the largest part is given for experiments and student work. Students from MIT even created a short video that was filmed within SL using avatars as actors. This film is now projected onto the large screens in front of the main entrance.
Leeds college of Arts and Design has a dedicated exhibition space SL where stu-dents’ artwork can be seen. Though the artwork was not very impressive, the island in general appears to be very informative.
Other universities I visited seems mostly do not use their virtual land for educational purposes, rather just for branding and promotion. On the other hand it may be that their educational activities are not so obvious.
In the meantime I continued searching for a proper temporary place for the Bartlett. And soon I found it. It was a small and not expensive parcel on a beautiful deserted island. The Bartlett looked gorgeous under the sunset...
...two days later I was not alone there anymore.
Islands are private regions that are usually located separately from the Mainland. They have greater possibilities in terms of terrain organisation and some land ownership advantages comparatively to mainland regions. Islands were designed for large scale projects or for activities where ever changing surroundings are not desirable. Another common utilization of islands is converting them into private estates which are then divided into parcels for further rent. Such private landowning has become one of the most profitable businesses in SL.
Organizations usually tend to buy islands due to the opportunity to give the company’s name to the island and as a result to put this name into a search list. Moreover it is possible to create a unique style for the island and to provide additional privacy if needed. Linden Lab offers special discounts on buying islands for educational institutions and non-commercial organizations.
The price of an island set up for educational institutions is £350 with a following £75 monthly fee for maintenance.
There is a long list of universities already represented in Second Life. The first university to appear in SL seems to be Harvard. It has public islands for representation purposes and private territories accessible only by students and staff. The restricted access islands are used for educational purposes.
A remarkable island is owned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A part of territory is dedicated to the main building of MIT but the largest part is given for experiments and student work. Students from MIT even created a short video that was filmed within SL using avatars as actors. This film is now projected onto the large screens in front of the main entrance.
Leeds college of Arts and Design has a dedicated exhibition space SL where stu-dents’ artwork can be seen. Though the artwork was not very impressive, the island in general appears to be very informative.
Other universities I visited seems mostly do not use their virtual land for educational purposes, rather just for branding and promotion. On the other hand it may be that their educational activities are not so obvious.
In the meantime I continued searching for a proper temporary place for the Bartlett. And soon I found it. It was a small and not expensive parcel on a beautiful deserted island. The Bartlett looked gorgeous under the sunset...
...two days later I was not alone there anymore.
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