Wednesday 25 June 2008
Bartlett Digital Mirror
My first test with video broadcasting in SL.
The activity on my laptop screen was captured and broadcasted live in the Internet via veodia.com. That broadcast was used as a stream parcel video in SL.
An inevitable time delay peculiar to live Internet broadcasting resulted in a delayed representation of events happening real time. Thus every next layer on the screen represents a certain moment of the past.
Thursday 19 June 2008
First Visitor
Jana Beermann's (aka Jana Haystack) archive project was used for streaming in this video
Monday 16 June 2008
New location
My rent period has ended recently and I decided not to extend the contract. This time instead of renting I bought a small parcel in the Mainland. The site is only 64x64 metres but it costed me £29. Moreover this purchase automatically granted me a land ownership which means that now I have to pay £13 monthly fees for owning a parcel. The more land you have in SL the more your monthly fees are. Anyway, buying a parcel was a forced decision because I want to experiment with live-streaming and so-called "parcel media" which is impossible without a land ownership.
The good news is that the Bartlett model is now again available for public access. To find it you can click the link in my SL profile (Max Ballard) or teleport to that location using a direct address: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mino%20Volcan/94/43/42
All are welcome!
Sunday 15 June 2008
Day 7
Obviously I was not the only one architect wondering around in SL and it was time to find the others. I remember that once I asked about architects in SL at one of the “new residents Q&A” meetings and someone mentioned about Architecture Island. But for some reasons I did not manage to get there till now.
Architecture Island is in fact a group of three islands run by Jon Brouchoud (Keystone Bouchard in Second Life) – a trained architect and founder of Crescendo Design Studio. Jon is one of the active members of the group called “Studio Wikitecture” which uses Second Life as a platform for real life architectural colla-boration. Parcels in the Architecture Island are rented by architects experiment-ing with virtual world possibilities.
There are two projects on this territory which impressed me a lot and influenced on my attitude to SL and virtual world in general. First one is a parcel for Studio Wikitecture where people develop the ideas and techniques for open source architecture. The major part of the site is occupied by a prize-winning project of a health clinic in Nepal that was done for the competition organized by the Open Architecture Network. The value of this proposal is not so much in a final result as in a process of design development. Actually the members of Studio Wikitecture were more interested not in designing a building but in designing of a new methodology for design itself. They created a special tool in SL allowing people to take part in the design process and contribute their ideas to the general concept. Participants are able edit any stage of a project and submit their version to the common virtual archive. The archive is done as an abstract 3d tree-like scheme where every submitted design is represented by a sphere connected by branches to previous and following modifications. Anyone from the participants can take any of previously submitted designs and modify it according to his own vision. Modified version of the design is added to the archive as a new sphere connected to the initial one via a direct branch. Participants can also vote for the proposals they like and do not like. The sphere that contains a proposal with positive feedback is tinted in green and the spheres with negative response tend to be red. Versions of the design turned into clear red are automatically removed from the archive. As a result the archive becomes a visual representation of the design process done by many people collaborating with each other in a virtual world.
The ideas of open architecture and its implementation I personally find very exciting. It seems that such collaboration between different people is really something on the cut-ting edge of our civilization development. But there are still much more questions about the future of open-source projects than answers.
The second project deserving attention on Architecture Island is done by Michael Vincent DiTullio (Far Link in Second Life) who is interested in responsible architecture. His virtual studio in SL was designed to demonstrate and test interactive capacities of building environment. Every visitor to this studio can try to walk through a solid wall which becomes more and more penetrable according to the distance between the wall and the person.
There is also a real-life interactive project which was just replicated and scripted in SL. The project explores the swarm-like behavior of dozens of small planes ro-tating towards passing by pedestrians.
Architecture Island is in fact a group of three islands run by Jon Brouchoud (Keystone Bouchard in Second Life) – a trained architect and founder of Crescendo Design Studio. Jon is one of the active members of the group called “Studio Wikitecture” which uses Second Life as a platform for real life architectural colla-boration. Parcels in the Architecture Island are rented by architects experiment-ing with virtual world possibilities.
There are two projects on this territory which impressed me a lot and influenced on my attitude to SL and virtual world in general. First one is a parcel for Studio Wikitecture where people develop the ideas and techniques for open source architecture. The major part of the site is occupied by a prize-winning project of a health clinic in Nepal that was done for the competition organized by the Open Architecture Network. The value of this proposal is not so much in a final result as in a process of design development. Actually the members of Studio Wikitecture were more interested not in designing a building but in designing of a new methodology for design itself. They created a special tool in SL allowing people to take part in the design process and contribute their ideas to the general concept. Participants are able edit any stage of a project and submit their version to the common virtual archive. The archive is done as an abstract 3d tree-like scheme where every submitted design is represented by a sphere connected by branches to previous and following modifications. Anyone from the participants can take any of previously submitted designs and modify it according to his own vision. Modified version of the design is added to the archive as a new sphere connected to the initial one via a direct branch. Participants can also vote for the proposals they like and do not like. The sphere that contains a proposal with positive feedback is tinted in green and the spheres with negative response tend to be red. Versions of the design turned into clear red are automatically removed from the archive. As a result the archive becomes a visual representation of the design process done by many people collaborating with each other in a virtual world.
The ideas of open architecture and its implementation I personally find very exciting. It seems that such collaboration between different people is really something on the cut-ting edge of our civilization development. But there are still much more questions about the future of open-source projects than answers.
The second project deserving attention on Architecture Island is done by Michael Vincent DiTullio (Far Link in Second Life) who is interested in responsible architecture. His virtual studio in SL was designed to demonstrate and test interactive capacities of building environment. Every visitor to this studio can try to walk through a solid wall which becomes more and more penetrable according to the distance between the wall and the person.
There is also a real-life interactive project which was just replicated and scripted in SL. The project explores the swarm-like behavior of dozens of small planes ro-tating towards passing by pedestrians.
Day 6
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.
Day 4-5
Meanwhile I was ready to build my own virtual Bartlett. I was very excited about all virtual lectures and tutorials I had already attended in SL and wondered why we still did not try using such tutorials in The Bartlett. Moreover making of the virtual Bartlett seemed to be a seamless continuation of my previous ideas about non-office building where physical presence of a building was not necessary for completing day-to-day office tasks. Though still not quite sure if this virtual Bartlett would work or not, I was confident to find out everything through making.
I started from looking for a territory where I could build a relatively large con-struction. It turned out that there are special construction sites in SL called “pub-lic sandboxes” where everybody can build something temporarily or just simply practice his modelling skills. There were many such sandboxes around Second Life and they differ from each other by size and the time between cleanings. Every object created on a public sandbox will be automatically returned to its owner after some period of time (usually a couple hours). This process is called cleaning and it prevents sandboxes from overloading with objects.
When I was happy with sandbox I started modelling. Ground floor slab was the first part to appear and the first thing to challenge my skills. Due to its large size I made it out of 12 box prims and wanted to put a texture of a plan on top of it. Unfortunately it was not possible to apply one texture to the whole slab and I had to cut it in parts in Photoshop and apply to every prim in the correct order. As soon as I got the first slab with plan scheme on it I started to use it as a reference for inner walls. Photographs of the real Bartlett interiors were used to create unique textures for walls, floor and ceiling. After erecting interior walls all these textures were applied to the model which made the virtual Bartlett look very similar to its real prototype. Outer walls were also done from several repetitive parts and the entrance was created using textures with alpha-channel.
I started from looking for a territory where I could build a relatively large con-struction. It turned out that there are special construction sites in SL called “pub-lic sandboxes” where everybody can build something temporarily or just simply practice his modelling skills. There were many such sandboxes around Second Life and they differ from each other by size and the time between cleanings. Every object created on a public sandbox will be automatically returned to its owner after some period of time (usually a couple hours). This process is called cleaning and it prevents sandboxes from overloading with objects.
When I was happy with sandbox I started modelling. Ground floor slab was the first part to appear and the first thing to challenge my skills. Due to its large size I made it out of 12 box prims and wanted to put a texture of a plan on top of it. Unfortunately it was not possible to apply one texture to the whole slab and I had to cut it in parts in Photoshop and apply to every prim in the correct order. As soon as I got the first slab with plan scheme on it I started to use it as a reference for inner walls. Photographs of the real Bartlett interiors were used to create unique textures for walls, floor and ceiling. After erecting interior walls all these textures were applied to the model which made the virtual Bartlett look very similar to its real prototype. Outer walls were also done from several repetitive parts and the entrance was created using textures with alpha-channel.
During the laborious hours of modelling The Bartlett in SL I started to think about the sense of the replicating something real in virtual world. And this topic suddenly ap-peared to be quite controversial. On the other hand, why do we need to have all these rooms, chairs and tables in the virtual world? The roof also does not make much sense because there is no precipitation and walls do not hide anything because it is possible to move your point of view without moving the avatar. Consequently the architecture should start making use of different physics and environment and as a result trans-formed into something completely different. But on the other hand SL pretends to be a real life simulator and it has opportunities to envelop digital interaction between people in a more familiar environment. It seems to me that SL can be considered as another stage of the remote instant communication development. Started with dot-and-dash the technology was gradually evolving during last century through audio, video and other media. Each new step contributed more and more to the elimination of physical boundaries and promoted bringing the remote interaction closer to real life communication. In these terms all attempts of replicating real world in SL do really seem sensible.
To my mind the truth should be somewhere in between. It seems necessary to explore the new possibilities for architecture in the virtual world but at the same time it is rea-sonable not to ignore the opportunity of adding some real life atmosphere to the vir-tual space either. Thus, the precisely replicated Bartlett will be a part of my experiment of creating a new virtual-world oriented space where the reality will be advanced by the virtuality. In other words the building of the Bartlett will be used as a raw material and a reference for a new space which takes into account the absence of gravity, teleportation, interactivity and other specific features of virtual word. Functional characteristics of the Bartlett as an educational institution will be reconsidered along with spatial concept. The on-line class will be held within the virtual Bartlett in order to explore the advantages and drawbacks of such tutorials.
To my mind the truth should be somewhere in between. It seems necessary to explore the new possibilities for architecture in the virtual world but at the same time it is rea-sonable not to ignore the opportunity of adding some real life atmosphere to the vir-tual space either. Thus, the precisely replicated Bartlett will be a part of my experiment of creating a new virtual-world oriented space where the reality will be advanced by the virtuality. In other words the building of the Bartlett will be used as a raw material and a reference for a new space which takes into account the absence of gravity, teleportation, interactivity and other specific features of virtual word. Functional characteristics of the Bartlett as an educational institution will be reconsidered along with spatial concept. The on-line class will be held within the virtual Bartlett in order to explore the advantages and drawbacks of such tutorials.
Day 3
To learn how to built Bob advised me to attend one of free building tutorials which take place regularly. The one I found was named “NCI Class: Building ba-sics”. NCI stands for New Citizens Incorporated and it is an educational institution within SL. NCI offers free classes for residents on different topics in order to involve more people in developing virtual world.
The building class I had chosen took place in a special platform that was called NCI sandbox. I was explained later that sandbox is a territory where people can build and practice modelling skills. Usually sandboxes are cleaned automatically to delete objects that were left by residents.
There were around ten people attending that class and a tutor who preferred to use a text chat instead of voice. When tutorial had started I understood that in this case it was more convenient to rely on a text chat due to the possibility of searching through the history of conversation. Students performed tasks with a different speed and using of chat history was essential for those who accidentally missed something. On the other hand the tutor was not in a hurry at all and waited for everyone before going to the next step. She explained us that nearly everything in SL is made of prims (short for primitives) except avatars, clothes, land and water. And everyone can add his own contribution to this world using prims and modelling techniques.
It is evident that building possibilities give SL unbeatable advantages over other rivalling virtual worlds. Due to the modelling capacities Second Life became an open-source virtual world where nearly everything is constantly being developed by its own community. This requires a high level of creativity among the residents but in the long run that makes SL exactly what it is.
Apparently I had much more 3d-modeling experience then others and com-pleting all the tasks was not a big deal but at the same time it gave me some clue about how all the modelling features worked. Modelling tools are relatively easy to use and the whole process is very intuitive. The most challenging factor in virtual building process is probably the size limit. In SL prims can not be larger than 10 meters. Needless to say that 10m unit is not what the one dream about while designing a huge building. It adds some specific to the construction process but as in any modelling application there is always a workaround how to make a disadvantage be on your side. In case of SL somebody scripted so-called mega-prims which are non-editable but sometimes can be irreplaceable.
After tutorial I decided to explore the world on my own to see how exactly the modelling techniques are being applied. I searched for London and in the results list clicked on the place called Knightsbridge. I was teleported to another location where the firsts building to appear was the precise model of Big Ben. Near the tower there was a tourist bus offering a free trip around London sim.
Actually travelling by bus was a bit slow and definitely was not worse it. This popular London’s attraction did not work in virtual world at all. So I got off near Harrods.
As far as I understood London sim with its many shops was designed for further let but many shops including Harrods were still empty. Occupied places were mostly souvenirs shops and a couple of art galleries.
London sim consists of three regions: Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Mayfair. In terms of urban structure they have nothing in common with the original districts of real London. Each of these regions in SL is only 256x265m and each has several imitations of well-known buildings. There are also two underground stations and a tunnel between them. Everything looks rather like Las-Vegas or some Hollywood film sets but anyway London sim definitely deserves some attention at least as an example of a real city replication.
The building class I had chosen took place in a special platform that was called NCI sandbox. I was explained later that sandbox is a territory where people can build and practice modelling skills. Usually sandboxes are cleaned automatically to delete objects that were left by residents.
There were around ten people attending that class and a tutor who preferred to use a text chat instead of voice. When tutorial had started I understood that in this case it was more convenient to rely on a text chat due to the possibility of searching through the history of conversation. Students performed tasks with a different speed and using of chat history was essential for those who accidentally missed something. On the other hand the tutor was not in a hurry at all and waited for everyone before going to the next step. She explained us that nearly everything in SL is made of prims (short for primitives) except avatars, clothes, land and water. And everyone can add his own contribution to this world using prims and modelling techniques.
It is evident that building possibilities give SL unbeatable advantages over other rivalling virtual worlds. Due to the modelling capacities Second Life became an open-source virtual world where nearly everything is constantly being developed by its own community. This requires a high level of creativity among the residents but in the long run that makes SL exactly what it is.
Apparently I had much more 3d-modeling experience then others and com-pleting all the tasks was not a big deal but at the same time it gave me some clue about how all the modelling features worked. Modelling tools are relatively easy to use and the whole process is very intuitive. The most challenging factor in virtual building process is probably the size limit. In SL prims can not be larger than 10 meters. Needless to say that 10m unit is not what the one dream about while designing a huge building. It adds some specific to the construction process but as in any modelling application there is always a workaround how to make a disadvantage be on your side. In case of SL somebody scripted so-called mega-prims which are non-editable but sometimes can be irreplaceable.
After tutorial I decided to explore the world on my own to see how exactly the modelling techniques are being applied. I searched for London and in the results list clicked on the place called Knightsbridge. I was teleported to another location where the firsts building to appear was the precise model of Big Ben. Near the tower there was a tourist bus offering a free trip around London sim.
Actually travelling by bus was a bit slow and definitely was not worse it. This popular London’s attraction did not work in virtual world at all. So I got off near Harrods.
As far as I understood London sim with its many shops was designed for further let but many shops including Harrods were still empty. Occupied places were mostly souvenirs shops and a couple of art galleries.
London sim consists of three regions: Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Mayfair. In terms of urban structure they have nothing in common with the original districts of real London. Each of these regions in SL is only 256x265m and each has several imitations of well-known buildings. There are also two underground stations and a tunnel between them. Everything looks rather like Las-Vegas or some Hollywood film sets but anyway London sim definitely deserves some attention at least as an example of a real city replication.
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