Plan for SL-city in reality

Hallo everyone,
I´m an architect and planning a city for people who want to meet in person and play Second Life. This is about a real architecture in Real Life.

I made a website where I will present the progress of my work.

Here it is:

www.heloise.de.vu

Let me know what you think about it!

I think Second Life is for now the virtual platform which offers the most freedom to its residents. That´s why I take it as the (virtual) base for my project. This is an idealistic project. My main interest as an architect is to renew and improve urban structures. So some of my decisions might appear strange, but I´m positive to find some ways of dealing with the connection from virtual to real. I hope to have some main principles in the end, which might work for a city as well as for one building.

Heloise

Ambitious, mapping metaspace to realspace. I like the idea, of course - I'll take a look at your PDF, and see what can be done to support your efforts. I'm in the middle of some projects now, but I am interested in your concept!

Thanks for sharing this.

Very interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on this to see how it develops.

Thats why I love this game. You can use it for almost anything!

Just tell me when I can turn up and I'll be there.

Hallo everyone,
thanks for all your messages. Of course this is planning in process, I plan to work on it at least until july. The PDF-file is just showing a first step, the functions it shows have to be integrated in a real surrounding. I will update my website from time to time, it is made to show the process of my work. Of course this project is a futuristic one, but I´m convinced the development of the technical basics will be quite fast. I think it´s important that we (the users of the virtual world) define our own ideas of how we use the virtual platforms and what we expect them to be in the future. If not, we will be dependent on the decisions of companies and governments. There are a lot of open questions, but I hope to find some answers during the process of this project. Fell free to comment on it, I´m thankful for your support and your criticism.

Heloise

This kind of optimism and eagerness to push further up the tech curve drives a lot of projects in SL. There might be a way that new initiatives like this can help to increase our understanding of one factor that trips up all our projects to some degree. I mean lag.

I hate lag! And, like most residents, I'm looking forward to occlusion culling. But every technical advance that helps to reduce lag is soon negated as residents' creative self-expression imposes new lag burdens on themselves and others. For example, gorgeous high-quality textures, and lots of them -- use of alphas, texture animations, shiny, particles, avatar animations, scripted enviroments and amazingly sculpted primwork. Is there a way to manage the tradeoffs between unfettered self-expression and the lag burden it imposes? Could we make everyone aware of the tradeoffs so people can help out instead of getting irate at 'lag-police' rules?

The forums contain useful threads detailing various factors that cause particular types of lag. We need more field testing by island owners who are willing to channel part of their energies into furthering the general understanding of this problem. I'm thinking of a post by Aliasi Stonebender that mentioned their new island (not sure if I'm supposed to keep quiet about this island until it's open, so IM Aliasi if you want to know the name!). She described what sounded like a lag experiment done when they were first exploring the possibilities of their new sim. It sure sounded like inactive scripts were causing lag.

We need more field testing like this. I don't mean buy an island, and pay the tier on it forever so somebody can do lag experiments for the public good. But you might consider taking the time for a rigorously designed experiment before you plunge into your dream project.

One aspect that doesn't come across clearly to me is the extent to which you would look at physical proximity/connectivity in RL to parallel SL. For example, the highest degree would be face to face meetings in person. At the next remove, you have various forms of communication (video, audio) that don't involve physical proximity. It might be interesting to have an optional video feed from RL to go with the activities of an avatar.

These presuppose that one objective is the real time integration of the two worlds. An alternative approach is to set up processes that allow moving sequentially from SL to RL and vice versa. That would be more suitable to determining what impact each has on the other and how behavior patterns transfer from one world to the other.

Perhaps this is a little broader than just architecture aspects, and requires a cross-disciplinary team.

I don't think Occlusion is going to significantly reduce lag. Instead of rezing all items, it now has to check and see what items are visible, including the variables of transparent light, and alpha.

The method they use is significantly faster than actually drawing the item. I've experimented, it's a real improvement - I'm excoted about it.

I updated my website!

I tried to find solutions for some problems you mentioned. Even though there is still a lot to do, I hope to give you a better imagination of how a virtual city could work.

Give it a try:

www.heloise.de.vu

I like the way the cool virtual modelling makes the rl place look more interesting. I don't see where your website talks about funding. How many sims are you going to use?

What is this exactly? An SL based city in real life or a city inside of the game Second Life?

Ok, I guess I have to point this out more clearly on my website:
This is a SL based city in real life.
It´s a plan for a town for users of the virtual world. some might go there for some time, like you go for some time abroad during your studies. Some might stay longer, either because they work there or because they just like living there.

Concerning the funding:
I think I need to have a proposal first, then I can ask for money. I guess it will take 5 to 10 years until the technics to make this happen are fully developed, enough time to think about funding and detailed realisation.

And:
What is meant with sims? inhabitants?

Heloise

Heloise,
I think people are confused about the proposal. As I understand it, the city will exist in Real Life, and have elements of Secondlife integrated, via displays and such, perhaps even directly imported and 'mapped' content from SL into RL directly -- via technology like the projector glasses.

Am I correct?

Some people may think you intend to make this only in SL, so they're asking about how many simulators (sims) that you would use, etc..

Its a far-reaching proposal, but it is interesting. Keep dreaming, it is what the future is made of

I have to agree with Maxx its is far reaching and awe inspiring I and he partners at IVM which you much luck, if we can be of assistance my door is always open

Heloise//

I stumbled across this post today and the project, the idea of the project, blew me away... not because I understand exactly what you're proposing (and quite frankly I'm not convinced that you do...), and not because I think that it is necessarily breaking new ground (the idea has existed for a while, especially in cinemagraphic and installation art spaces...), but because you make it seem so... conceptually probable.

I'm not so sure that it is, at least in the way that you frame the project.
What is the connection between the location and the project? The idea doesn't seem to really hinge on the qualitative characteristics of a site, as is the case with any architectural project in RL. Would it change anything if instead of Tall Ursynów, the site is Staten Island, NY or Saint-Denis, France? If it doesn't matter, it seems to me that we could simply have this experience, these sensations, through an immersive augmented reality technology (if it existed) from where ever we happen to be.

And if this is "an architecture project about the connection of the virtual to the real world," wouldn't RL architecture, with its cultural baggage, social ambiguity and physical limitations, only confuse the true intentions for the project... " the connection of the virtual to the real world "?

The real question(s) seems to be: How best can a virtual place, like SL for example, inform RL (and visa-versa). Is it really through a culturally consensual system of signs and conventions in the built environment (architecture), or throught a shared RL location? Or will it require another layer of abstraction, a virtual machine of sorts, before we can exploit the advantages of the two worlds, real and virtual, made possible by our coming and going between them?

I like your project for its vision and guts, and I know that it took you a whole-heck-of-alot of energy to get it to this phase I offer this input absolutely NOT to thwart its progress, but to pose the question: How does one continue it?

//Kliger.

Very good points, Kliger.

I really had a hard time deciding a location for this project.
At a first sight, in fact, i could have chosen any location on earth for it.
It is also true that „Augmented reality“ is possible everywhere, you don´t need to build a town to get this experience. But there are good reasons for a local concentration as well as for the positioning in Ursynów.

I added an article on my website concerning this questions.
Go to
www.heloise.de.vu

and check the location-page.


Heloise

TP me!

This is an interesting idea. Although it is true that you can live almost anywhere and enjoy SL, there is a real competitive advantage for businesses in related fields (and for individuals engaged in or trying to break into related careers) to be located in close physical proximity (ie, computer related businesses in Silicon Valley). Not to mention that it would be cool to open your window and scream, "I can't take this lag anymore!" and have people know what the @#&! you are talking about.