"Getting Physical" with Second Life building and scripting

Dear Folks,
Do you know that you can "get physical" in Second Life with prims? There are a few settings you can use in Second Life where prims can exhibit real-world object behavior and gravity.
The next time you create an object in Second Life, click the "object" tab and then check the box called "physical." When you choose the "physical" attribute, it means that it is subject to the laws of gravity. After you create it, it will roll, bounce, and also fall through any other prim (if you create it over another object).
I decided to create an exhibit showing the mathematics of motion using an inclined ramp and rolling spheres. Galileo reportedly experimented with dropping objects from the Tower of Pisa to demonstrate that objects fall at the same speed, whatever their mass. He also used an inclined ramp, to slow the rate of descent of objects so that he could more accurately record his findings. He wanted to study gravity and how it affected the acceleration of objects. Through many experiments he discovered that as acceleration continues to make the rolling object move faster it continuous doubles its speed as it continues to roll.
From his many experiments he concluded that acceleration acts in a uniform fashion on a rolling/falling object and that the amount of distance covered is in relation to time squared. In other words, as an object is rolling it is continuously doubling in acceleration. One of the formulas he developed was
d ∝ t2 OR the total distance covered is proportional to the time squared.
I have constructed a simulation of Galileo's experiments in the Online@UCF area in Second Life. In one exhibit you can make spheres fall from the Tower of Pisa and there are also ramps so you could observe the mass of falling objects and acceleration. I also created a reflector telescope of the type that Galileo had used.
Here is the SLURL to visit the site:
Online@UCF (formerly UCF Course Development and Web Services):
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Arts%20and%20Letters/214/186/22/

I am still updating this exhibit, but you are welcome to visit the area and try it out. Fortunately, there is another useful attribute to assign to an object in Second Life, it is called "temporary." When an object is temporary, it is created and then disappears within about sixty seconds. This is fortunate, otherwise the area would soon become littered with rolling spheres !

To Megaprim in Second Life ?

To Megaprim or not to megaprim, that is the question ...

The topic today is about megaprims. Everything in Second Life you see is made from prims (the wooden plywood boxes) that are changed in shape, size, and texture. The prim is 1 m2 in size, which is about twice the size of a normal avatar head.

When you are building in Second Life, the largest size that you can stretch a prim (the wooden box you create) is 10 m2. If you view the attached image a 10 m2 size is the red box in the middle of the image. The first structure on the left is an oval megaprim that is 30 x 30x 40 m2. The tiny stick to the right of the 10 m2 box with the arrow pointing to it is my avatar. A structure that is the size of 10 m2 (the red box) is not very large. What do you do when you are building and have a huge amount of area to build? If you are building, let's say a sidewalk that is going to reach from one side of your land to the other, this could involve 20, 30, 50 or more of these 10 m2 prims. Why would this be important?

Most people don't know this but you are allowed only a certain amount of prims on your land. When you exceed that limit, you have to stop building or delete something in order to free up more building capacity. A region or sim is 65.536 m2 in size. If you are visiting an island, have your avatar fly around the perimeter of the island, you can get an idea of the size.
Here are the usual sizes of land and how many prims you can use:

65,536 m2 = a region/sim = 15,000 prims allowed
32768 m2 = 1/2 region/sim = 7,500 prims allowed
16384 m2 = 1/4 region/sim = 3750 prims allowed
8192 m2 = 1/8 region/sim = 1875 prims allowed
4096 m2 = 1/16 region/sim = 937 prims allowed

When you rent or buy land you normally are not obtaining a full region and must be concerned with prim limits and maximizing your use of prims.

One of the methods that builders use to save prims is to use something called megaprims. They are prims that have been created in such a way that they are much larger than the 10 m2 limit and only use the equivalent of 1 prim when used in a building application.

You must be careful when using megaprims because you don't want to accidentally rez (create) a huge cylinder on your land that covers your entire area and also that of your closest neighbor.

The easiest way to obtain megaprims to use is to go to https://www.xstreetsl.com/ and type the word "megaprim" in the search field. You can buy some preboxed megaprims for very affordable prices.

Holodecks in Second Life- Click Picture to see larger image

There are actual working Holodecks in Second Life. The Holodeck idea was

immortalized in a famous TV science fiction series where a crew member on a star ship would enter a large room and by a verbal command change the room to any setting.

This technology has great applications for learning and simulation experiences. Imagine a Second Life site where you have a Holodeck program recreating a hospital emergency room with photographs from the actual medical facility. The avatars using the site would be the actual employees using the area to simulate different medical experiences. Or, the Holodeck images could simulate any number of county and government facilities, such as a driver’s license bureau.

Here is the SLURL to a site that I built that has a working Holodeck:
Online@UCF (formerly UCF Course Development and Web Services):
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Arts%20and%20Letters/214/186/22/

After you reach the site, go to the teleport area and choose the sign that reads “Holodeck.”

If this would take too long, just have your avatar fly over the area, look for the huge wire ball that is atop a cube. The Holodeck is directly below the wire ball. There is also a large sign that reads "holodeck" next to the wire ball with an arrow for direction.

You have a choice of 40 different environments. You can just click one of the 10 colored prims, or read the instructions on the signs to choose from 30 others.

The Holodeck will say “program loaded and ready” when you have made a choice. After the program is loaded, have your avatar walk inside the environment.

The Shrugging penguin, Medical, Science Studies, and Virtual Worlds

I remember the good old days in high school when we had to dissect a frog in biology class . The frog was already dead and was preserved in formaldehyde, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a gruesome, and somewhat unnecessary use for a small animal. We were studying the reflexes of nerves and muscles and we stimulated the nerves in the frog’s leg and watch as it moved. I felt sorrow that this unfortunate frog was born and harvested just so that high school students could watch a leg twitch. Fast forward to today.

We now have virtual worlds that are accessible to a global audience where we can potentially watch simulations of virtual animal behavior, physiology, and anatomy.

I am working with a simulation software in Second Life where you can program up to 26 different actions into a “puppet” creature.

If you wish to view this, you can go to my Usability Learning area in Second Life at

http://slurl.com/secondlife/RUC%20Seven%20Oaks%20/119/111/24/?title=Usability%20Learning%20Center&msg=Usability%20Learning%20Center

and watch the shrugging penguin.

My plan is to create a virtual frog or turtle puppet that turns itself over and then dissects itself so that a student can observe and learn. Of course, it may look gruesome, but it is a better alternative than dissecting a real animal. I will let you all know how it is going.

The other uses for this puppet software is to show puppet human avatars with a variety of situations that a student must diagnose. You could have an avatar show respiratory distress, cardiac problems, HIV symptoms or other ailments. These virtual world simulations would not replace the advanced studies that are a necessary part of many medical and science studies but hopefully will reduce some of the waste and cruelty that may occur in the beginning studies in these fields.

To parcellize or not to parcellize in Second Life

Many people in Second Life subdivide the land to have the ability to view more than one streaming media source at one time on their virtual land. It can be a slideshow, a video or other source that is uploaded on your website and then streamed into Second Life. This is particularly important when you are using your site for online education, since you can have multiple training/learning modules for your students.

Here is how you parcellize, and only the land owner has the permissions to do this:

Click with the right mouse button on the ground and then left click the "edit terrain feature."

It will open a window which allows you to choose a portion of your land.

The selection tool works by pointing at the land and dragging a square big enough for what you intend to do there. Then click subdivide and the parcel is created. You do not need to parcellize a very large area, it can just be an area large enough for perhaps just a screen.

Graphic Files in Second Life and creating Powerpoint slides

Graphics file formats supported in SL:

TGA, JPG and BMP, and now PNG. The ones that support transparency are TGA and PNG for creating items like clothing and objects such as windows.

Second Life pictures that you shoot from Second Life are BMP files and should be converted to other file formats because they use up so much memory.

Many people use Photoshop to create TGA and PNG files, but some thrifty educators use the free GIMPshop and Paint.NET (which just added support for saving 24-bit PNGs).

If you are in a hurry and it doesn’t matter if you have transparency or not, here is a simple solution to obtain JPG images for SL uses:
Create a Powerpoint presentation. Then when you save it, click “save as JPG.” This saves all the slides in the presentation as individual JPG images in a single folder. Then, from SL, you click Upload, then “bulk.” You browse your computer’s folders, find your folder and then hold down the Ctrl key to choose your files. Or, you can choose the first slide, then scroll to the last slide and press the Shift key to highlight all of them.
Many educators use this method, since they still have the original Powerpoint presentation to use in RL, while they have the same slides in SL. This enables them to use the same material between RL and SL. There is a charge of 10 Lindens per slide. This quick method is useful for creating signs to use in SL also, but ensure that the text is larger than 24 points so that they are easy to read.
When hosting an event in SL using slides, the area supporting the event will usually give instructions to the presenters a week prior to the event. The presenters usually give them a SLURL to the area and a “practice” area with a slideshow viewer so they can practice uploading their slides and using their presentation. They also designate a small area where they are allowed to place their posters and graphics.

Textures for a Virtual World - Second Life software

There are several popular programs to create virtual textures in Second Life: Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, and GIMP. The most affordable for online education and distance learning is GIMP, since it is free. You just have to decide if it is worth the learning the program to create your own or just to buy textures other Second Life people have already created. They all have different attributes, while Photoshop has the most features and is the most expensive.