My presentation on virtual world building in Second Life (delivered to a college course on virtual world building and design) – Ryan Schultz

As I mentioned earlier, right after my 60th birthday, I gave an hour-long presentation on Second Life. In ~ Second Life, a graduate class in virtual world building and design currently being taught in college (first blog post, second blog post).

I’m happy to say that my presentation was well received by students! This was followed by a “field trip” to a separate architectural area where we spent an hour practicing old primitive buildings, and were quite impressed with what the students were able to come up with in such a short amount of time. (And no, you can’t see anything. I’ve set up a short-term rental so that only students taking this class can access and build it. Yes, even Terraform That, to the joy of their hearts!)

Below is a PowerPoint slide presentation from the Second Life lecture held on the evening of January 31, 2024. Except for the last slide, which gave students a variety of ways to catch me! (Sorry, blog readers, all you get is the comments section of this blog post! I will do my best to support the entire class. I don’t have time to support you all either!)

Click the Download button to save a copy to your hard drive and view it in your PowerPoint version (or export it to Google Slides, or whatever you use to view slides).

After consultation with the two professors in charge of the course, we have decided to extend the lease of the building area for the course until the end of this semester to ensure that any student who wishes to complete the 3D building assignment for the course can do so. Second Life. (Students are exploring a variety of virtual world platforms, both 2D and 3D, including virtual reality, although the latter is limited by technological constraints, such as the number of VR headsets available.)

So my role in this graduate program is not yet complete! In addition to teaching about Second Life and demonstrating how to use world-building tools, I will serve as a Second Life resource person in the class until mid-April to help students apply their learning. From this virtual world design class to in-world building projects!

I told the class that if they don’t know the answers to their questions and problems, they should be able to find someone who can help. ~can do Answer authoritatively. So don’t be too surprised if you have questions like how to optimize a mesh model created in Blender for uploading to Second Life. Yes, in my presentation I build both the old-school prim and the more modern mesh method of creating content (the latter is devoid of detail and wavy by hand). I had to trust, believe, and do some research. myself I need to write a specific part of the presentation. Because I’m more of a free fashionista than a content creator.

We’ve set up a comparison of some basic fabricated furniture (on the right in the photo below) with a more modern mesh model piece of furniture (on the left) so students can examine them and compare their impact on the land.

For example, the gray and red metal swivel desk chair on the right (in front of the large gray desk) is 39 (?!), the wooden chair in front of the desk on the left has an earth impact force of only 2, many bigger than and More detailed than the basic version. And the same goes for everything else. What better way to demonstrate the impact of creating mesh content on the grid than to display both old and new items so students can compare for themselves?

We also placed a house circa 2003 side by side with a house circa 2023 so students could see how much residential construction technology has advanced in just 20 years!

Anyway, back to my graduate school classes. I expect there will be a few embarrassing moments I will have. clearly Please reach out to all of my loyal readers who are true Second Life experts and help me get through the next few months! (Please pray for me.)

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