Monday, April 20, 2009

Antelope: Virtual Harbin, Second Life, Anthropology

Hi,

Greetings from Canyon, near Berkeley. After getting more accurate on-the-ground measurements for the Harbin gate house on Saturday at Harbin itself, I removed recently the walls from the building I had started on Antelope Island in Second Life. As you know, I had put this up as a preliminary Harbin gate house, from which to teleport to an as-yet-undetermined virtual 'location,' an anthropological field site, - but didn't have the building's proportions correct. I hope to make progress on this project this week, with a meeting on Tuesday.

I'm writing to ask whether I might build virtual Harbin (potentially the equivalent of 1700 acres, or at least Harbin's Mainside and Domes area - possibly 50 acres) on Antelope, perhaps in the sky, for example (like the Gardens of Bliss's multiple levels' sim in Second Life), teleporting to it from a Harbin Gate House from near the main, virtual camp. I'm happy to put this gatehouse elsewhere on the virtual camp, if better. I also have 4 virtual Harbin regions in OpenSim presently. OpenSim has been quite buggy, but perhaps that has changed now. I'm in the process of checking about this. If it's as buggy as it was, I'm only interested in working with OpenSim as a kind of demo, and I'll wait for new versions to catch up with Second Life. (I also don't have a computer which is always connected to the internet, which is important for hosting a vritual island from your own hard drive). I'm essentially interested in getting the basics of virtual Harbin up and running soon, and potentially with DEMs (data elevation maps available for free at http://seamless.usgs.gov), with which I haven't yet worked. Coll may be of assistance with this.

Thanks,
Scott

http://scottmacleod.com

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