Heritage Key Update: Expansions

Location: End of the Cosmos, Heritage Key Grid

IggyO Heritage razzed in his old spot, the Amarna sim, and he quickly found that a good deal more of Heritage Key's grid had changed. He found his way to the Rezzable starting point in order to pick up an animation override. These were on offer when last I visited HK, and I've been eager for them because it's a pleasure not to walk like a duck. In time, I'm sure Rezzable will offer variations on these AOs, so we don't all walk like Billy (or Billie Jo) Badass in exactly the same way.

I'm planning a post on the journal HUDs that will guide explorers though Heritage Key, but as usual, a map view distracted me to just, well, do what novice users might do: jaunt about randomly. The map view is enticing; it indicates how many sims Rezzable is adding to its virtual world.


Rezzable's coders are also moving things around, so none of my old landmarks work. That Heritage Key even has working landmarks, teleportation, and a good map shows that the virtual world is nearly ready for explorers. It was also good to see that I did not crash, even once. I used the Hippo client rather than Rezzable's, but I don't think that accounts for the good performance I found.

I suspect that a lot of other work remains--such as avoiding my mistakes of "pick a spot on the map and teleport," which left IggyO stranded underwater or on desolate parcels with the real content nearby in a large box or bubble. This is, of course, how any precocious student would wish to travel. It's also intuitive: pick spot on map by name (or green dots) and go there. I'm certain these anomalies will vanish as quickly as Rezzable's staff sets default landing zones for each sim.

The Travel Center remains a great place to start, and from my peeks behind the scenes, Rezzable has many areas planned for Heritage Key. The teleporter boards--rather like the old Linden Lab telehubs?--provide a sense of that. The entire system worked well, except for a then-offline Collections Gallery I'd wanted to visit, until I went off script and began my random map-hunting.


Thus far, Heritage Key passes my test for what an OpenSim world should be with one exception: user-generated content. Right now, with so much in flux, that probably should not be a high priority. Opening building up could also invite griefers still angry over the Builderbot program that Rezzable briefly considered offering to the public (and DO I want a copy to back up my Usher build in SL). If Rezzable wants residents instead of occasional explorers of Heritage Key, however, some sort of educator's sandbox would be an excellent start.

That lack of a "dwelling" keeps me out of HK, but even a small academic office as a base for my research and teaching, and a place to stash my archeological finds. Such spaces for regular users, even for a small monthly fee, would retain the metaphor of time traveler meets Indiana Jones.

CEO Jon Himoff has noted, many times, that Linden Lab made a mistake by becoming a landlord. So I can see why Rezzable might not want to begin renting us offices. Yet like many faculty, I like being in charge, or at least the illusion of being in charge. If I cannot build stuff or scatter the virtual equivalent of my books and academic impedimenta, I'm still a tourist, not a creator.

But I can wait for such improvements. There's a lot of Rezzable's plate: the Chinese Terra-Cotta warriors, more at Stonehenge, and of course Ancient Egypt will keep the company busy for a long time. I got a peek into the test-area for the Unity-based viewer, so I confirmed that it's part of the main HK grid. That means that avatars using the full client should be able to interact with the web-based users, a very exciting prospect indeed.

Balancing Act: Philip's Back

Location: "Capricious" Build at SL7B Celebration

I really want there to be an 8th birthday party worth attending. With Philip Rosedale's return to the throne as "interim" CEO, will the magic I felt in 2007 return? I'm no "oldbie" but one of the "midbies" who came into SL during the "hype" years. I don't know that I want those sorts of expectations back, at least until the world can scale up to host hundreds of thousands concurrently. I want Rosedale to pull off the sort of balancing act needed to make SL vital again, to fix its problems. It will be a hard balance to maintain in economic times like ours.

With those thoughts in mind, I went to the celebration just to see what is up.

Here are a few standouts I saw on my random wanderings. SLURL links follow. It was a fun event for me, but it had more of a county-fair feeling, perhaps mandated by the closeness of many contrasting builds, than Burning Life's expansive Playa.

1) "Capricious" by windyy Lane, shown at the top of this post. This would be a build worthy of Burning Life. I think the metaphor is very apt for these times in Second Life.



2) Philip Linden's Keyboard and the animated Philip Linden made by dileoo Kirax. I'd just read about the keyboard being one of the older objects in SL, via Lalo Telling's blog. I sure hope the love Philip Rosedale is feeling from SL residents does not cause his head to swell up as big as the one here.



3) Primtionary. This was just pure old fun. As the host, Hotten Haller (I'd kill for that name) said in chat: " Primtionary is a game in which I (your host) secretly IM a word to the builder on stage. The builder has 10 minutes to build this word by illustrating it's meaning or its sound! The rest of you say your one-word guesses and try to be first to get the word!"



4) I like to end a visit to a fair with something quiet, even wistful. Thus I stopped at "Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts." To quote from Linden Lab's page, "This exhibit from Sand Castle Studios demonstrates how the different communities in SL are not just amazing on their own, but are improved and enhanced by existing within the Second Life metaverse."

How true. I want our hosts to keep this maxim in mind as we move forward. Here's to the chance of there being a Burning Life in 2010!

In Praise of Second Life Content Creators

Location: Shopping and Building

Recently, in comments at New World Notes and on the SLED list, I fretted that the arrival of meshes in SL, while giving us more vivid landscapes, clothing, and avatars, might raise the bar even further for faculty who want to create their own content.

The reactions to my concerns were rather harsh, running along the lines of "hire a professional," "learn Blender--it's free," "you'll still have the old build tools," "hire students," and "most education builds are crap."

While I'm willing to learn tricks and hope to find more students with 3D modeling skills, this old dog also feels a special draw to virtual worlds that permit users to make their own content, however poor it might appear alongside professional creations. This reason, as well as the Windows-only viewer, keep me out of Avatar Reality's Blue Mars.

Yet a well devised simulation cannot come complete from a purchased box and, no matter how good it looks, the simulation has to be pedagogically useful. The trick for those of us in SL and other worlds will be to master the tools without sinking our annual reviews. Right now, evaluators do not always see the worth of dozens--or hundreds--of hours learning a new software tool when faculty time could be spent otherwise in ways that institutions value.

That said, educators should learn to build, as it provides a way to interact with the simulation and add customized elements hard to otherwise obtain. I'm surprised that a simple table I made a couple of years ago remains one of the most important and immersive elements in our House of Usher simulation. The table, retextured many ways, provides an obvious location for lots of important clues we want visitors to find as they tour the House.

I am not in the camp of educators I met who disdain spending any money in-world, as if it taints their virtual existence. Linden Lab runs a business, and many talented individuals have invested in that business to bring their own content into SL and then sell it. I'm happy to support such small businesses.

To trick out The House of Usher with a visitor counter that would fit the mood of the place, and even add a touch of levity to a rather dreary story, I purchased our own talking parrot, "Nevermore" (yeah, I know). I got him and several other well made accessories from The Golden Oriole, a shop of "antiques and curiosities" owned by Oriolus Oliva.

I hope that merchants like Oliva thrive if Second Life begins to grow again; now it's a difficult transition as Linden Lab "re-focuses" on consumers. As we educators branch out to other virtual worlds, however, let's not forget that unless we roll out an OpenSim grid of our own, our virtual hosts need to make money. And whether or not I learn a 3D modeling program, I will still be paying for good content from others.

Challenge #6: What I Got From It

Location: Rock--> me <--Hard Place

For the final BBBC blogger challenge, Alicia put this question to us:

What did you get out of your experience? Do you think it will change the way you blog in the future?

I liked being given these writing prompts. They were fun, but to be honest, I didn't learn a thing, Alicia. I am cursed to always ask "what does it mean?" about everything I encounter. So many folks, in both real and virtual worlds, recall the bound figures from Goya's "The Spoonfed," shown above in our House of Usher simulation.

We all should question more. We might even, as my colleague Beeble Baxter puts it, see "the man behind the curtain" who pulls the levers that make us dance.

Finding that man and the levers will continue to be my focus. The BBBC topics were a bit too Iggy focused for my taste. I prefer not to lifestream but to poke fun at myself while exploring Second Life and other virtual worlds.

I'll be sure to participate next year, if there even is a Second Life worth blogging about.