In class on Monday, I plan to discuss why I don't think Second Life or OpenSim are good venues for Writing Center work.
I've blogged about my reasons here and then, later, after reading an article about a centers' use of Second Life, I reconsidered. A virtual world might be JUST the venue for a gathering of writing tutors between schools. They would not be there to look glamorous or roleplay as elves. They'd be there to chat about ideas, as they would in a face-to-face conference.
A conference of this sort does not require a world and a persistent set of avatars. A one-off event in something like Reaction Grid's Jibe might be perfect, and with a team of developers I could see setting up a conference venue that small or large groups could use year after year.
So in class Monday, my students won't see a hard-to-master user interface best suited for collaborative teams building in a virtual world. They'll see something that can work with a Web browser and a plug-in.
I remain skeptical about Jibe and Unity 3D when mainstream-techie faculty like me wish to do building, especially in collaboration and in real time. As I've often stated, I am not evaluated on my 3D modeling skills. Thus, I don't plan to master the complex tools to make these models, no more than I plan to master LSL scripting. Unlike Photoshop or Dreamweaver (and hand-turned HTML code) these 3D applications do not yet figure into my daily work and annual evaluation.
But for such a conference venue, where pedagogical decisions are not vital, I'd be happy to hire out the work and focus on the content we'd share from the other side of the screen.
Update 4/17/12: Jibe was very jumpy indeed on a wired connection and a decent Windows 7 desktop. While downloading the Unity plug-in was a snap, the rest of the experience was very subpar. My avatar could not walk, lag was enormous, and after lots of fumbling I managed...to sit in a chair.
My students were not impressed. Sounds a lot like Second Life under bad conditions.
With some glitches along the way, six groups of students completed their final exams, or at least the immersive experience upon which they'll base a take-home essay exam.
It all began very poorly, and that's a warning to those working in OpenSim for classroom work critical to students' grades. The first day, the grid would not load, but I was in luck: the one student in the lab happily delayed his journey to the House of Usher and joined a group later in the week. Jokay Wollongong, our grid manager, was thenceforth online for every exam: thank God. We had a serious crash later in the week, but Jokay restarted the region and we all relogged. In fact, we roleplayed the disorientation within the scope of Poe's story, and odd things do happen to Poe's characters.
The culprit for our crash may be the old server software that runs Jokaydia Grid. Jokay cannot fix that, but the owners of the servers at Reaction Grid can. The good news is that Reaction Grid plans an upgrade next week. I'll hold them to this...I want to restore hypergrid availability to our build.
A word about the talented folks at Reaction Gird: the company has switched emphasis in recent months to Jibe virtual world technology. Jibe is promising for ease of use and the ability to run inside any Web browser. On the other hand, it's not for those who wish to build collaboratively in-world and in real time with students. That's a killer app for my use of virtual worlds. Jibe's protocols for 3D object design, like those of SL's recently introduced Mesh technology, are beyond my and my students' skills; Richmond lacks enough advanced arts students who might wield Maya or Blender. And there is no incentive for faculty here to learn.
On the other other hand, prim-work in OpenSim or Second Life are within my skills set and those of the student-builders I train, often in teams working together, so that's where I'll stay.
As for getting hypergridding back? It offers special affordances for educators. That, after all, is how edutech works: we share and link to each other. Even Blackboard, the course-management behemoth, is now moving to a more open model with the arrival of a "share" button.
The closed-grid model, on any platform, is that of the video-game world. It protects IP and functions for gamers and socializers, but it's not best for many of my colleagues in education. I give my own content away with Creative-Commons licensing or in the Public Domain. We are even considering whether we have tech support, locally, to host an OpenSim grid on our campus, as schools such as the University of Bristol are doing as they pull their work out of Second Life.
As we move forward to new engagements in an OpenSim grid or Second Life, I still need more data. From my students' essays, I plan to gather data for an article about effective educational roleplay and types of student roles. But I've already learned one lesson: without Jokay Wollongong's hands-on help, I'd never have trusted Reaction Grid's old version of OpenSim for something as crucial as a final exam.
Next up, I'll finish the Usher series from Jokaydia Grid with reflections by the students, from their exam essays. And a surprise twist right out of Poe: Usher is coming back to Second Life!
The conference ended early for me today, as I have RL commitments that keep me from attending other sessions. I want to thank the organizers this year for a great event. I admit to having been dubious about whether everything would come together, until the schedule appeared. In the end, everything came together beautifully. Moreso than in prior years, VWBPE seemed like a flesh-and-blood conference.
John Lester's talk was a great way to end my participation. He's the soul of patience and has an optimistic side about the future developments of these spaces that inspires us all. His presentation, on Web-based interfaces, revealed the potential for Unity-based worlds such as Jibe from Reaction Grid. I did not, before today, know that Jibe worlds can be linked by something like OpenSim's hypergrid, nor did I know that OS worlds and Jibe worlds can, in theory, be linked as well.
Amazing stuff as we begin building a network of linked grids that, for education at least, will be the future of virtual worlds.
AJ Kelton, founder of the VWER, just announced the group's new home: a four-region minigrid set up by Reaction Grid. The technology will permit those with avatars in OpenSim grids that permit hypergridding to teleport to meetings and events. You can also read Maria Korolov's coverage of the group's move here.
I'm most excited about expanding my own knowledge of running an OpenSim server, since it's a goal I have, long-term, for my university.
The VWER membership has sufficient skills to build what we'll need for this new grid. It will be considerable: making a meeting place, designing scripted objects, even pimping our avatars that are "native" to the new mini-grid.
Why is all of this important? The group's move signals that yet another educational group (like colleagues in New Zealand and at Clemson) have branched out to a technology superior to Second Life's closed universe. We have more control when we own or manage the technology of our builds, including region back-ups that resemble the ways we retain data for all of the other work we do outside virtual worlds.
Essentially this is an evolutionary move, not a revolution. Many members thought we were leaving SL, which isn't at all true. As long as that grid exists, VWER will meet there, though the price-hikes mean that our current home will vanish in May. The group's next step in SL will be to find a new home on that grid.
Lalo Telling once quipped that we may come to see SL as "the old country" from which we immigrated. I'm not sanguine about the future of walled-garden grids in general or SL in particular, but I will always feel fondness for SL.
Personal note: the last two weeks marked the first time I'd spent more time--a lot more time, actually--in OpenSim than in SL.
It's gratifying to have someone like John "Pathfinder" Lester pick up your blog from time to time. John noted, either in a comment here or on the SLED list, that the Imprudence Viewer does still permit exports. I'd not been able to do so the other day.
Today, starting with the very door that I first built for The House of Usher, I let poor old Iggy Strangeland, my junkie stringbean avatar in Reaction Grid, give it a go.
First, Iggy in SL selected the Usher front door:
Then he saved the source file to my hard drive under, yes, "Usher Front Door." Note that any export must be wholly owned by you and textures do not transfer but can be uploaded for free (I had made every texture on the door so they did copy).
Iggy #1 logged out and Iggy #2 logged into Reaction Grid. He teleported to Sandbox Island and chose the "Import Object" option from Imprudence's File Menu.
Well, that's a door, ain't it!
I had to rescript a door-open script using my favorite Script Me! site. It's an LSL script so mileage may vary in an OpenSim grid. I put it into the door hinge and presto! Door that opens and closes.
Just the metaphor I need today. Incidentally, stability in Reaction Grid was superb. I kept Iggy Strangeland standing around while I wrote this post. He's still there.
He left a copy of the door for anyone to take. Be my guest. Just go to Sandbox Isle in Reaction Grid and help yourself. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
It is appropriate that I made my first-ever grid-to-grid jump while standing beside my favorite monment to the future. As Iggy Strangeland waited near the Trilon and Perisphere in Reaction Grid, I went to this page and, because I like the name, chose the hypergrid coordinates for “Scooter” in Jokay Wollongong’s Jokaydia Grid.
Then I clicked the teleport link and saw this familiar sight:
After clicking, the teleport proceeded normally. Though he ended up in the Western District region, Iggy Strangeland, what there is of him, made the jump with every bit of inventory intact.
And this on (ahem) a day when Second Life was not permitting logins.
I don’t yet know if my inventory would transfer to a grid beyond Reaction Grid’s universe, since Jokay leases server space from the same company. But making a jump from one grid to another, even within the same server farm, is very different from jumping from one SL region to another.
At Jokay's freebie store, I pondered how to make this poor fellow look less like he's still going to the Methadone clinic regularly. Other than Iggy's perpetually junkie look, this is thrilling stuff, and it’s the paradigm for educators who need to link in-house clusters of servers to privately hosted ones to big public grids. This is the game-changer I’ve heard about, but it meant more.
To go somewhere and not be “Ruth” provided just the antidote to end a rather dark and angry week.
Educators, onward! It's not my kind of Rock, but cue up Boston's "Gonna hitch a ride" for some added energy. image: GM Futurama Pin, from my collection of 1939-40 World's Fair Mementos
Since I'll be doing a feature on Reaction Grid for Prim Perfect, I simply could not resist featuring the build of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair. It was "The World of Tomorrow," baby, and by 1960 we'd have 10-lane superhighways elevated above robotic farms, planned cities, and 100 mph mass transit running from Pleasantvilles spread over the map like 1000 Greenbelt Marylands.
Heady stuff. In fact, a virtual world rendered in 1/18 scale.
Funny thing, but the first thing I saw in Reaction Grid exists in real life, a few miles from my house.
Iggy materialized about where I’d left him on his last visit: the NY World’s Fair managed by Trivia Tiratzo and built by Joey Cernov. I wrote an entire chapter of my doctoral dissertation on The World of Tomorrow, the Fair’s official name. The entire two-sim homage to the Fair (many sims would be needed to do it all) demonstrates the power of megaprim builds in OpenSim.
Since my last visit, I spotted a new building on the grounds: the pavilion for Belgium designed by Henri van de Velde. By chance, it not only is one of the few buildings left from the Fair, but it was moved to Richmond VA and rebuilt, where it serves as offices for Virginia Union University. It had been the university’s library as well. My dad went to that building to sign up for Navy duty in 1941, a couple of days after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Eerie coincidence, that, but compelling. I pointed Iggy into the building and looked around.
I noted that the entire building is done in brick in RG, whereas the actual structure as it stands today reflects its 1939-40 design, with a slate-clad central tower (notorious for leaking, a faculty member at VUU told me, when it housed rare books!) with radiator-fin décor right out of Flash Gordon.
I'll have more to say about this build, as well as Jokay Wollengong's work in Reaction Grid, in the next issue of Prim Perfect.
Given the extended downtime in Second Life recently, I thought it high time for Iggy Strangeland to visit Reaction Grid for a bit, before his real-life driver dove back into grading final projects.
Note that for both RGURLs (is that what they are called?) the path still includes "SLURL" and "secondlife" so I'll leave it to readers to find the region and locale using whatever best practices they choose.
I began, as I often do, with a visit to Jokay Wollengong's land ( Jokaydia/121/115/23 ) . She's expanded her work in RG and linked a good deal of what I saw to the recent Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference. She's holding two "Unconference" weekends in Reaction Grid, the first at the end of May. Read more here.
Jokay has a large sandbox for visitors who agree to her terms (it's a PG grid, so nothing objectionable may be made). Mega-prims are not objectionable in Reaction Grid, and I captured an interesting picture of some planetary-looking spheres hovering on the horizon.
All this was great. I had my graphics pumped up, which might have accounted for the problems I later found: sim-crossings by flying were nearly impossible. After a few attempts, I crashed and crashed hard.
I returned bald and in a garden of sculpted plywood in MellaniuM sim ( MellaniuM/155/118/49 ). The effect was of a builder's sandbox, and it was a curious installation and worth a look.
Following that very advice, I walked back, on the bottom of the ocean, to Jokaydia. The crossings worked, but it was not an intuitive or immersive way to travel, compared to my easy sim-crossings in my virtual car in Second Life. For my Mac OS client, Jokay's media would not work. I understand there's a Mac plug-in for media. I'll try it soon.
These alternative grids continue to expand. They need to add more functionality, such as as seamless cross-platform support (40% of our last first year class came in with Mac laptops), attachments that stay with you, and grid crossings that work. In time, they will. Right now, the green dots on the grid map are sparse.
And by the end of my journey, I did find my (bad) hair. But, hey, free is always good, and there's no chance in hell I'll get too immersed in poor, skinny, pale Iggy Strangeland. He looks way too much like some of my creepier (tip of the hat to my students who love that term) friends from UVA in the early 1980s.
But how often? The visit to Reaction Grid by the VWER group revealed many things about the world and the developers' plan for groups (from an unnamed "partner"), the number of prims available for those leasing a region (large), and other interesting details to be found in this full transcript.
Bad hair or not, Iggy Strangeland will keep looking around this new world.
Photo Credit: Thoth Janzen, posted by Olivia Hotshot
Today a group of educators met in Reaction Grid, the second outing beyond Second Life for the Virtual Worlds Roundtable. I was teaching a class, so Iggy Strangeland logged in after the meeting ended. Without a landmark, I still found the crowd easily: they were the big cluster of dots on the Reaction Grid map.
Several regulars at our weekly meetings were around, as well as GeoFrank from NASA. Many of the new Reaction Grid folks had customized their avatars very effectively; if only I could figure out where Olivia Hotshot got her blue skin--nicely done and right out of Cameron's Avatar.
What impressed me about the gathering was its size: although regions in Reaction Grid can only support a dozen avatars, give or take, as many as 27 avatars were present, by meeting in an area that bordered two regions. The Reaction Grid team was on hand to build a "chat bridge" between the two areas.
I've not had time to even look at the chat transcript that reached me after the event. I'm quite impressed, however, that so many of us could make it in-world, not crash, and not worry too much about our hair.
My only glitch was a freeze that led me to relog after I teleported to the meeting site.
We walked around afterward to see GeoFrank's rocket-garden, Viv Trafalgar's land with its amazing giant flowers, and Olivia's meeting area itself. As a DIY sort of fellow, I like Reaction Grid's start-up feeling. The rough patches will smooth out in time, as I've seen in Heritage Key since last fall.
This was truly an historic day for the Reaction Grid and its team.
You are looking at a Reaction Grid build that subQuark discusses in the post "Moving from Second Life to OpenSim." With Ener Hax, subQuark was part of a large investment of time, energy, and cash in Linden Lab's metaverse.
Now they have emigrated, shuttering their 19 sims in Second life. Educators considering a similar move should have a look at subQuark's reasoning, including a not-so-subtle jab (and an accurate one, in my experience) at Linden Lab's management style.
I have recently said hard, but accurate, things about Reaction Grid's performance, but the fact remains: it's a viable alternative to SL, if rough around the edges.
Keep in mind that subQuark and Ener are experts using, I presume, systems faster than God's. Their work will bear watching as more content developers make their move to diversify their work, or just leave SL completely.
Location: Out (usually) and About (sometimes) on Reaction Grid
Where I've recently found improvements in Rezzable's Heritage Key experience, I am still withholding judgment on Reaction Grid (henceforth RG). Using both Hippo Technologies' as well as Imprudence's Mac clients for virtual worlds, I've spent a few hours struggling with tasks that I mastered three years ago in Second Life. Despite clearing my two RG avatars' caches, getting on the fastest connection available to me, and proceeding carefully, the situation has not been promising.
Perhaps the grid is growing faster than patches and support. I am not technical enough to know.
I'd high hopes for this Second Life competitor, based upon my first visits last year, especially to the 1939 World's Fair simulation. Prices are far lower than in SL to own land, and jokay Wollengong maintains a sizable operation in RG. Many educators went to RG to purchase land following her move, in part a way to express anger at Linden Lab's treatment of jokay and her work, in part to avoid having all eggs in one virtual basket. Some talented builders like Ener Hax have moved out of SL completely. Like Rezzable, Hax finds costs lower outside SL. Unlike Rezzable, however, other immigrants do not own our own servers or have a team of coders to tackle a problem.
Perhaps my subpar experiences come from being a Mac user on a grid now run on Microsoft servers--though I'm sure that was the case last year. But that's "how I roll": no Mac client, no visits by me to the grid or attention in my academic work. To its designers' credit, RG does offer a Linux client as well as, of course, one for Windows.
My problems could have come from the number of items and scripts running in the Sandbox region, but the simulator crashed repeatedly with only me present. Other regions worked somewhat better, but tasks were still painful. Setting up a free animation override to have a better walking animation took over an hour with a few relogs--I'd accomplish that in 2 minutes in Second Life.
A simple teleport to the Houston region left Iggy Strangeland--my primary avatar--wearing only a scalp-lock for hair. Then he folded up like an accordion and crashed. Both he and my secondary avatar--Zome Orlan--tried making top hats. Just about the time the hats fit, they made the avatars skin and clothing layers disappear.
I was the invisible man with hair and shoes. When the hat came off the avatar reappeared, though attaching or detaching prim items in RG frequently made me crash.
I eventually gave up on the hat and tried some hair from the inventory. Teleports resulted in random changes of hair to styles I'd worn earlier, or baldness. These glitches point to the world's database not keeping up with my choices. At least my pair of sunglasses worked out. I left a free pair on the nose of a sculpted goat at Sandbox Island. Good luck, builders, I thought. Here are some shades to hide your tears of frustration.
At least uploads are still free, because I'd have been really angry paying for my experiences in RG thus far. I thought of buying some land in RG near my friends Olivia an Viv and setting up a version of Richmond's House of Usher simulation. Now I'm going to explore more before putting down a credit card. If stability does not improve, I'm going to pass on investing.
And this week, the Virtual Worlds Roundtable makes a grid-visit to RG. That should prove interesting. I'll post a report here. (Update for Feb. 8: the VWER visit has been postponed for at least a week).
Now for a slideshow of my misadventures in RG. Let me know if you have better luck over there.
