NMC Campus Observer

NOAA gets environmental in Second Life

Corwin Carillon (aka Nick Noakes) : Sep 5, 2007 03:20am

On Tue Sep 4, Hackshaven Harford gave a great tour of some of the new features of the NOAA sims in Second Life. Starting from the original Meteora sim, and after a brief intro to Hackshaven’s NOAA and Maya Realities work we were treated to a tour of some the new exhibits and a great demo of the Maya Realities avatar heat map. We watched as large translucent, colored boxes (none of your wood variety here!) appeared. Different colors representing different avatar concentrations on the sim within a given time period - red naturally being the hottest hotspot!

We then did a quick tour of a number of spaces including marine sanctuaries on Big Island that were still under development but already boasted some great sculpty, marine mammals. The plan is to upgrade the current submarine tour to a moving movie theater! We then got taken to an environmental disaster area - an oil slick. Having worked in the oil industry back in the 70s and 80s, this avatar had memories rushing back! Luckily Hackshaven mobilized the avatars into a quick clean up crew and after one false start, the environment was returned to its pristine virtual condition!

Our thanks to Hackshaven for a great demo and tour and look out for the next Buzz on 17 Sep , when Aurili Oh (Suzanne Aurilio) of San Diego State University will take us through their work on helping faculty and instructional staff get to teaching grips with Second Life.

Story filed under: Campus Headlines, People, Places, Things, Teacher's Buzz, Teaching and Learning
Tags: teachersbuzz
See all stories by Corwin Carillon (aka Nick Noakes)