Virtual Architectural Visualization in Second Life
Model of proposed steampunk sim in Second Life
Second Life resident and filmmaker Dagny Hemingway has put together a perfect little one-minute video showing off a new project in Second Life, a steampunk region for which a new residents group is now raising money. What’s interesting about the project is how the group is going about promoting it: by advertising a scale model of what the region will look like once it’s been built out.
Just as you can add imaginary buildings to the virtual landscape of Google Earth, the steampunks have added them to Second Life. Of course, all the buildings in Second Life are, in a sense, imaginary. But the model region the steampunks have built constitutes another layer of abstraction atop the already virtual world within which it’s been built, creating something of a virtual virtual world, if you will. Most 3pointD connections link the virtual to the real, but here’s one that links the virtual to the even-more-virtual. Quite interesting.
Click in the SLurlPane at the top of the right-hand column here to visit the model steampunk region. And look for more of Dagny’s video work on 3pointD in the future, with any luck.
Feeds
Well, they’re not the first, and see my comment about this project back on the Herald — an architect named Desmond Shang of the Independent State of Caledon, where Dagny is renting, already worked his ass off, built, created, sold in the market economy (instead of looking for handouts) and bought a sim, sold it, and is already started on his third sell-out Victorian/steampunk rentals whereas this guy is still there with the coffee can out for the dimes.
There are many scale models all over Second Life, and the Steampunks are not the ones who “added them to Second Life,” although I realize that if they’re the first kewl people to be noticed by kewl Walker Spaight it might *feel like* the first.
Over a year ago, for example, I made a scale model of the building SuLuMor Romulus did for the Pharos Lighthouse in Ross. I even had a scaled-down version of Carson Hadlee’s casino sign for the casino, it was cool. In December 2004, I put this scale model out in a rentals office in Anshe Chung’s mall in Ross (I believe it was the first such rentals office of its type) and I used that scale model to sell the vending space. People liked to come and click on it — there really is something compelling for people in feeling themselves, in the virtual world, that the virtual world is the real world, and then there’s another layer, the virtual model below.
Some six months ago, Aliasi Stonebender successfully bid in a building contest I had in Hartwick to build a residential community and marketplace. She, like many other architects in Second Life, made a scale model for her project. Later, I took her scale model and put it on display in my rentals office in Ross and sold the townhouse rentals quickly using that model — it proved very popular. People love to come and see scale models of builds and then plan where they’ll live and what they’ll do there.
And I’m sure there are people elsewhere in SL who could come forward and tell you all about their scale models and how they used them to plan sims or raise money or sell land or rentals.
While I realize you can’t see everything in SL, it’s way too big, I do hope you will have the journalistic integrity to come back to this story — please bookmark it for your follow-up file — and see if these people raised their money and made their sim, Walker. There’s lots of thinkers, planners, dreamers in Second Life. There are less *doers*. People make cool models, plans, movies. But…do they buy the sim and DO it?
No, model buildings aren’t new in SL, either for in-world purposes or as a representation of RL plans (there was a rather good one on Democracy Island, I don’t know if it’s still there). That does not mean that they are not useful.
Anybody wishing to follow up on the issue of the Steampunk Sim and its relationship to Caledon can certainly contact myself or Dagny - Mr Gould is away at the moment though I’m sure he’ll be back forthwith. I can also suggest a number of others who would be happy to speak on the matter.
Plenty of honorable ways to build a sim, soliciting donations from a supportive and vibrant community among them. Rather like having a vested interest in the outcome of endeavors in which I’m interested, for sure.
Don’t think this piece was about “firsts” , just Wallace remarking on something he discovered. What was unique, was not the 3-D map, but the advertisement of it. Perhaps. Mr. Wallace?
The in-depth reporting you mention requires a great deal of time and commitment. You ask too much of the weblog genre if you expect “New Yorker” style journalism in its text.
Prokogy, to couch your comment in terms of “integrity” seems a bit “leading,” if you don’t mind my saying. Your suggestion is well in keeping with this site’s scope, so allow me to second the idea for a more in-depth piece on the subject of the use of digital 3-D models.
In closing, I should like to thank Mark for noticing. *smile Made me feel someone was paying attention; all I really need is one to make it worth while.