Linden Lab – Page 2 – AvatarPlanet Blog

Second Life’s Great Wall of China

You can walk on the Great Wall of China, or at least your avatar can, in Second Life‘s Mao Island, "Home of the Great Wall of China". You can even buy the complete wall, or parts of it, to erect on your Second Life land!

Mao Island, despite having a name that evokes ghosts of China‘s Communist Cultural Revolution, is a decidely non-Communist place that would make old Mao turn in his grave. It’s part of the Hosoi-Ichiba cluster of thoughtfully designed and constructed Asian-themed islands. The other islands are Japanese. I’ll be reporting on them in the future.

My first visit to Second Life’s Great Wall was unsettling. It’s surrounded on all sides by water, not at all like the remote desert and mountain regions of the original Great Wall of China, and a voice within me kept saying, "this isn’t right". That voice soon faded. After all, creating a wall that’s the SL equivalent.of a wall thousands of miles long and guarded by over a million men isn’t reasonable. The Great Wall on Mao Island is an excellent fascimile. Built of 3592 primitives and encircling most of an entire sim, it’s an impressive structure in its own right.

The picture on the right is of the moon rising over part of the Great Wall, seen from the bridge leading from the landing point. The entire wall, including its guard houses, was built in only about two weeks by creator Amiryu Hosoi working alone. She did it as a commission from an RL friend. Before undertaking the project, she searched 3,000 photos of China’s Great Wall to assure the greatest possible accuracy in design and textures.

When you first land on Mao Island, you are in a guard building that houses nearly all the commercialism you’ll find. There are vendors for traditional Asian clothing, buildings, and the Great Wall itself. You can buy the entire thing for 59,500 Lindens, or individual components.

The picture on the left is of a traditional sampan for sale outside the building. You’ll have to jump off the bridge onto the beach to see it close-up.

Any Second Life member wishing to visit the Great Wall can teleport there by clicking slurl.com/secondlife/Mao/150/142/31.

Make a video screen and watch videos on your Second Life land – part two

"About Land" Media box before setting media

Last week in part one I told you how to build a simple screen for watching videos on your land. Today I’m going to show you how to get video actually playing on it.

Second Life only plays Quick Time movies, so this is what you’ll need to look for. If you don’t have your own streaming video server (most of us don’t!), you’ll need to find one. If you’re not certain whether a movie is in Quick Time format, look at the extension on the file name. If it’s “.mov”, it’s Quick Time. You’ll also have to have Quick Time installed on your computer. Before you can watch video in Second Life. Quick Time is free. You can download it at www.apple.com/quicktime.

The next step is to find videos you can play on your land. One source of Quick Time videos that you can play on your land is NASA, which has downloadable videos at www.nasa.gov/multimedia/index.html. We’ll use NASA’s podcast about the Kepler Mission for finding habitable planets as an example. The URL is http://kepler.nasa.gov/media/mpeg_files/ARC-KeplerOverview-480p.mov.

Now that we have a video URL, we’ll set our land to play it. To do this, we right -click anywhere on our land and then click “About Land” in the popup pie chart. The About Land window, will popup; click the Media tab in it. With the Media tab selected, you’ll see “Media Type”, “Media URL”, and “Replace Texture”. The picture at the left shows the Media box for Second Life land before you’ve changed anything..

"About Land" Media box: entering the media URL

The box on the right is where you enter the media URL

The Media box after making your changes

On the right side you’ll see “Set”. Click “Set”. This will open up a new window to the right. Copy and paste “http://kepler.nasa.gov/media/mpeg_files/ARC-KeplerOverview-480p.mov” into it and then click OK. If you’ve done it correctly, the URL automatically appeared in Media URL and “Movie” appeared in “Media Type”, as you’ll see in the picture on the left.

The final step is to set the media texture. We do this similarly to how we did for the screen. First, left-click the texture box (to the right of “Replace Texture”. This opens up the Pick Texture window. Type “default media texture” in the white search box and when it appears in the list of textures, click Select.

Before playing the movie, make certain that you’ve enabled media in your Preferences. Click Edit, then click “Preferences” and click the Audio&Video tab. Make sure there’s a check in the checkbox next to “Play Streaming Media When Available

You are now ready to play your movie! If you’ve done everything right, in the lower right of your Second Life window you’ll see a small icon of an old-fashioned two reel projector with an arrow to its right. Click the arrow. The screen you made should turn black and then in a few moments, the Kepler movie should begin playing on it.

You’ve now created a simple, crude screen. You’ll eventually want one that’s scripted for additional features, and seating that automatically sets your view to the screen, but the screen you’ve just made is a start and will allow you to watch or to test media on your land.

Babel Project machinima (video)

Fernando Pessoa exhibit in Babel Project II

The European Babel Project in Second Life is producing some impressive machinimas. One of them is the absolutely amazing 12 minute machiniema PESSOA, which you can view at rezlibris.com. The picture on the left is in Babel Project’s Fernando Pessoa exhibit. If you’re a Second Life member, you can teleport to it by clicking slurl.com/secondlife/Babel%20Project%20II/228/62/21.

Machinima is essentially a video made in a virtual world such as Second Life. Another of their videos, the 2-1/2 minute Ideagoras, is on YouTube and can be viewed by clicking the play button below. Enjoy!