Week 11 - Term 2 Introduction to Second Life

Introduction
This coursework is divided into two terms, first term was what we covered so far and second term is all about Second Life. Second Life is a virtual 3D world and this is created by the people who use it. In this virtual world you can fly and run and travel around the world in a few minutes. In Second life one has avatars and primes. An avatar is your character which you can create according to your likings to do whatever you want him to do. In second life you can build your own things. These objects are called primes, short for primitives. Everything is build out of cubes then you can turn these cubes into different shapes like triangles, circles and more. These shapes can be giving any texture and also you can sculpt them into anything you want to create any shape. Once you have the primes you can make them communicate between other objects by getting some sample codes. A sim is an area on the map based on a simulator, this area can contain a number of prims on it. Second life is being criticized for some things like there are few people which are in it another thing is that one needs very good internet connection.

History
Second life was founded by Linden Lab by Philip Rosedale, in 1994 he taught of connecting computers via internet and create a virtual world. Linden Lab was founded in 1999 which started as a hardware company. This company needed something to go with their hardware so in 2001 they started building the Linden World and this was very much different then the Second Life we know today. They continued working through out the years and in 2011  the new Second Life Community Platform was launched and on the 29th March they also introduced a new function being the modes which the user can use Basic mode and advanced mode

For this term we won't be given any tasks one must complete, instead we will talk about what we have done. First off I started by downloading second life viewer from http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/. It's installation was pretty much straight forward and easy. After installation you register with second life. When registering you add the username that you will be using and select a password.  When loging in you can select a mode basic mode and advanced mode. The basic mode is an easier and simplified experience. While advanced mode is a bit more complicated and for those who will use the full features of Second Life Viewer.

I started of by creating my avatar, you select the gender of your avatar and also choose an outfit of your likings. If later on you would  want to change the avatars outfit you can, you can also change it's username, the only thing that cannot be changed is the name.Once you are done then you can jump into the world of Second Life. When you go to Second Life for the first time you are placed in a specific place. In here you find only first time users

Taking my avatar to Middlesex campus

Moving Controls

Once I jumped to that world I started by experimenting with the things your avatar can do. Your avatar can move to move you can either click the move button on the screen and you will be shown the controls or else using the arrow keys on the keyboard. At first I taught that clicking the on screen controls is going to be a bit frustrating as I taught the for each click it would make a step but then I noticed that you click once and keep it pressed on the controls and while the forward button is clicked you roll over the other controls to rotate or change direction. In this panel you can also choose to run or fly.

Flying using Pg Up

Your avatar can also do certain gesture. A gesture is telling you avatar to do something without moving to different places. Gestures can include clapping, bowing, crying and more. I noticed that in the gestures drop down menu each gesture starts with a slash. This is because a short-cut for using gestures would be typing the gesture you want to do in the chat and including the slash before it. On the interface you have a view button this will change the way to view. You can zoom in and zoom out and rotate.

Teleporting is going from one location to another destination. This is done either by using the search or using the world map. First place I teleported to was the Middlesex Campus. Although to my disappointment there was barley anyone there. Here one can find loads of posters and some classrooms and also a hall.  

Your avatar can also go to shops and buy whatever things you want to buy. Clothes for your avatar and different things. 

Conclusion

After several lessons we are to be able to build a room which has a garage and as soon as you approach it, it will automatically open and close. I never used Second Life and never heard of it. At first I couldn't understand why we were learning it cause for me it looked like a "game" but then when I started researching deeper and unserstanding it concept I realized that one will use coding in this and will make things move and communicate with others. Also it might be that in the future Second Life will take over chatting with MSN and Yahoo and this can be the future of chatting or it can be enhanced more and take over facebook. It could imitate the users movement and the avatar will be able to do them on screen. Since technology is evolving fast everything is possible. I see great potential in Second Life and think that teenagers would really enjoy it as I enjoyed it myself.  Although this is a good thing I do find a disadvantage to it, even nowadays kids forgot how to have fun and play because they are always stuck with their screens playing games. The question is, If second life is enhanced  will this make it worst? 

References: 

                  http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/History_of_Second_Life

             http://secondlife.com/