Over the last few weeks I have had the great pleasure to meet “Jason Swain”, “Kerry Giha”, “Theodore Folsom” and “Squirrel Wood”. All members of the FurNation Pony Club and extremely experienced Second Lifer’s, they have supported me in the development of the Second Life Media Zoo. They continue to be great supporters of our work and great people to hang out with whilst developing, giving me a pleasant experience of Second Life communities.

Second Life is truly a social platform!

Pictured at the Media Zoo, left to right (Jason, myself (human avatar) and Kerry.

The Virtual Second Life Media Zoo launch date has been confirmed, 18th December 2007, this will be a soft launch and synchronised with a Real Life launch at the University of Leicester. The launch will include the following events;

Media Zoo Group Meeting; (Andrew Jinman) is an opportunity for those members to meet each other, discuss their interests and projects and begin to form a Community of Practice – the Media Zoo being the focal point.
I will initially start this proportion of the event giving a very brief presentation, introducing the chaperones and other developers involved in the project. Identifying Twofour’s interest in immersive 3D virtual environments in regards to education, proposing several questions we aim to answer with the use of the Media Zoo.

TwoFour Question Time / Workshop; would provide an opportunity for TwoFour to market their skills and develop potential new clients through the event.
Firstly I will hand the presentation over to Chris Weight to describe a few of the projects other departments have produced. E.g. Led Zepplin and CBBC.
After which we will open the floor for questions about Twofour and services we provide and allow an opportunity to discuss further work and project ideas.

E-Cology: The Circle of E-Life; (Professor Gilly Salmon) a fun and informative seminar exploring the evolution of Learning and its life-partner, Technology. The seminar will examine:
• How do avatars learn?
• How do avatars teach?
• What do educational resources look and feel like in Second Life? And what disciplines and topics benefit the most?
• What can universities achieve in Second Life that they cannot do on Real Life campuses?

Virtual Worlds Group Meeting: would be the start of trying to form this group and to help shape the strategy prior to advertising, those in attendance will be the specific audience this group would try and attract and so is a suitable opportunity to start the process.

A quest in a gaming context, especially in MMORPGs, is generally a task or series of tasks, which a player or group of players may complete in order to gain a reward. In a Media Zoo context; a previous occupant of the island a pirate who once ran an extremely profitable smuggling operation out of the Sim has lost his cargo… see if you can find the quest!

VR Cinema

Above the mounting there is a giant cube, which you can teleport inside from the observation deck. The cube is situated out of sight from the rest of the island 2000 meters up in the sky; from inside the cube the visitor is immersed inside an image, with the opportunity to switch between several images. The panoramic images wrap around the inside surface of the cube, including the roof and floor, giving the impression the visitor is situated within the image. The code was provided by Stephane Zugzwang, free of charge.

Boats

Currently I have incremented several sail boats; these are situated next to the boat house. They are intended to be used by visitors to freely roam around the island and bay area. With a little help from Jason Swain, when a visitor jumps off the boat it will auto return within 10 seconds.

Airship

The airship was a solution to the original idea of having boats guide visitors around the island, boats would present a very limited view for the visitor, and this provides a better vantage point of the whole island. The airship follows a path around the island and talks to the visitors. The code was provided by Ordinal Malaprop, free of charge.

Foliage again was extremely important to creating an immersive habitat, this was an extremely time consuming process. I purchased what is known as a “plant rezzer” this allowed me to walk around the island and plant, trees, grass, ferns, seaweed and rocks on demand.

Our first co-written article was published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Information Society in Merrillville, Indiana. USA in October 2007. The proceedings can be accessed at http://www.i-society.org/2007/

Ground Floor

This will be the main Twofour section of the island; I have finished incrementing the furnishings of the ground floor, with personalised seating and several computer displays, which are yet to be finished (see computer displays)

First Floor

This is intended to be the arrival area for visitors, where they will be able to acquire a “Birdie guide” (a little sidekick character inspired by Navi the fairy present in many Zelda titles) who lends advice when needed. And a Tour HUD, which will allow visitors to transport around the island and again provide even more information to guide visitors around the island! General island information will be included on this floor of the boathouse, e.g. who Twofour are and why we have created this island in Second Life

Second Floor

Video showroom; traditionally Twofour is a broadcast company therefore it’s essential to dedicate a floor to a few tantalising video clips, show casing a few of Twofour’s productions.

Laying paths between the domes and the boat house, this gives visitors a sense of direction, for the more adventuress visitor they’re free to visit and explore the entire island. This point needs further development.

I must admit being from the south west of England I’m a real fan of the Eden project in Cornwall

The Domes and flooring were created using build tools; these are objects that construct a particular shape automatically on demand to any size and diameter. I then needed to correctly position them in place and modify the domes to allow for an entrance and exit at the top.

Modelled on Professor Gilly Salmon’s “Island of E-learning” I went about terraforming the Second Life Media Zoo Sim. Reproducing a mountainous area, habitable plateaus, and a lagoon

As part of my efforts, I used a very nice tool called Backhoe to visualize the terrain before uploading it into Second Life. Within Second Life a Sim’s terrain can be downloaded in the form of a height map or Raw file this can then be edited using “backhole” for the Mac OS X 10.4, this software allowed me to model the entire island map, the software produces a .RAW file which is then uploaded to second life and the whole island is remodelled into the provided RAW file. After providing several different alternatives Leicester decided on the current map. This was the first stage of the project, if the island was to be remodelled with buildings on it these would have been lost, so it is very important to complete this process first.

As the island layout forms the basis of an immersive environment it was essential to agree on the shape, from there I was able to progress to development of the domes and foliage of the island.

Here’s a screen shot of the island in backhoe: