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OpenVCE - Second Life Island - Visual Style

Austin Tate's picture
June 5, 2009 - 22:04 — Austin Tate

A discussion is needed on the visual style to adopt for the OpenVCE Second Life Island "VCE" which is meant to provide a number of open source key elements that can be copied and adapted easily by others.

A Second Life region or island is 256mx256m. The water level is at 20m by default. Building into the air and under the water level is possible. 15,000 objects can be on the region in total. A maximum of 100 avatars (more usually 50 is the set limit) can be accommodated simultaneously. General Style: open, flat, an area of hills, coastline or use of whole sim area, ground only or use of multiple levels and sky platforms.

The proposed in world facilities for VCE are listed here.

The location for the VCE island is in the vacant corner square to the SE of the current Virtual University of Edinburgh (Vue) facilities in Second Life.

General Style: To discuss: fixed season or changing? Parkland, desert, oceanic? Ground textures? Coastline or all sim area used?

Buildings Style: To discuss: traditional or modern? Buildings with large flat surfaces to attach screens to easily. Glass windows to open up visas across the area, and to make nice screen shots.

Flora: To discuss: Naturalistic, stylistic or none? Trees for screens, or very open? Sparse or dense? Remember Linden Labs trees and plants are special single primitive objects that have special properties to increase realism.

Current Proposal:

  1. Natural coastline. Landscaping may overlap into adjacent Vue areas for a pleasing and integrated coastline design. A water strip all round to allow for circumnavigation of water vehicles
  2. Central lake area for (Twitter) bubbler fountains, etc.
  3. Visually impressive Central Plaza status area, news centre, with arrival point in exact center at [128,128]
  4. Main meeting auditorium to NW corner
  5. Larger meeting capacity via "4 corner sims" facility using extension areas on Edinburgh University (full sim), Informatics (full sim) and Vue South (homestead sim)
  6. Orientation and Event Reception facilties on way to NW corner
  7. Expo Pavilion (Galleria) to S
  8. I-Zone (Intelligent interactive collaboration zone) to N wit I-Room shaped building
  9. Single hill and sea cliffs to SE - "hilltop" meeting area
  10. Possible hidden cave in SE area - "sea cave" meeting area
  11. E coastal strip for smaller meeting rooms, breakout spaces and home offices

Suggestion for Layout Plan

Current Facilities on Vue:

OpenVCE Logo and Colours

We might consider picking up on the visual style of the "wave" logo for OpenVCE.... implies building up, increasing, future... all good motifs. The logo is coloured in three shades of grey: a very pale grey for the lettering, a mid dove grey for the wave lines and a warm dark slate grey background.

Pattern Language - Suggestions from Jeff Hansberger 12-May-2009

[We could be] guided by the Biophilia hypothesis (Edward O. Wilson) which suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems. It postulates that humans have a predisposition to favor and prefer environments in which we are prepared to function well in. The predisposition comes from our evolutionary past. The history of human civilization is very short compared to that of the evolutionary history of the human race (~1%). Therefore, we should be mindful of the natural elements in which the human race and our evolutionary ancestors have been adapted to and with.

Fundamental characteristics of Biophilia and environment features we find attractive are:

  • Refuge - Provided by size, sheltered places where a person might hide and feel secure. The "impression of penetrability" is important for any refuge area or building. Many of Frank Lloyd Wright's (FLW) buildings have this with their eaves & overhanging balconies (FLW called it nesting).
  • Prospect - Ability to gain an open unobstructed view of the environment. It was important evolutionary and for survival reasons to be able to see without being seen by predators for example(e.g., viewing the landscape from an elevated position or from the edge of a wooded area over savanna like terrain).
  • Complex Order - Predisposition to prefer landscape scenes with some complexity and cognitive simulation but is still understandable and makes sense.
  • Enticement - Enticement and curiosity reflects the human need for exploration, discovery, mystery, and creativity.

I know we don't have a year to design the environment but there are several aspects, particularly with the landscape items and aspects from The Pattern Language book. A quick comment about The Pattern Language, Alexander and colleagues present over 250 "patterns" and I've gone through them and picked out the relevant ones for my house. That list is represented in the ones in theBrain file and would be different for public area like the VCE. The pattern language items can be viewed here, http://downlode.org/Etext/Patterns/ A version with patterns that may be relevant to the design of the VCE 3D Space is available here

Event/Meeting Area Notes

  • If the screen is on a corner AWAY from the sim corner, then extension via extra seating "galleries" (main stalls, side stalls, circle, upper circle kind of idea) then that has seemed to work well for us on our own 4 sim corner Venue - the lash up I showed you in NW corner of VCE and the adjacent 3 sims was a quick show of that. It works since media textures show on screens even in adjacent sims.
  • The idea of limiting pathways between the sims around the edges of the meeting area, and then designing the transitions, underlying solid ground, etc to make movement work well for avatars (as we discussed and as you clearly have much experience of) is sensible. Take a look at this this setup on a NASA related facility which shows the bar/railing separating the upper searing area from the lower main meeting and seating area. They also have excellent control over positions on acess to the seating (or of course you can also fly/drop in)
  • Ulreung - Kira Dome 2 sim meeting area, with bar separating zones:
  • We have found it useful to have 3 screens (though we sometimes only use two of them and turn the third off so its not a distraction. Main media screen for focus of attention, two smaller screens usually use for fixed slides pre-uploaded to SecondLife/Opensim or supplementary content such as agenda, title of event, etc.
  • Screens need to allow for video for current media texture (whether movie, screencast, web URL show, etc), uploaded content via any texture (in screen, or a given UUID), or allow the screen to be turned off. For the main screen, we use a modified version of the "Freeview 1.2" screen freely available in open source for in Second Life and Opensim. This allows for "video" including real time streamed video/audio, prerecorded videos, etc. "bookmarks" for selection of videos/URLs/etc., "pictures" - any uploaded images preloaded into the screen, or for specific URLs top be stated. The modifications allow for YouTube URL translation (as, at present, SL does not directly show those in their usual format). We also use a University of Edinburgh custom built static image viewer with slide previews for up to 8 slides around the one currently on show. These are available to mix in with the Clever Zebra presenter code to create a fully adaptable next generation screen presenter.

Good Ideas from Other Second Life Regions