Christian Westbrook of the Electric Sheep Company has written about a text to speech application that he created. He cites the fact he had missed blogging about his babel fish translator and that Yossarian Seattle had got all the press for his translator HUD 🙂
We had been talking about voice to text but we have been beaten to it in this case.
It will certainly benefit from the soon to come change for http requests per object, assuming thats how it works.
Its well worth a l$25 rating for building skill.
Category Archives: Second Life
Generating Second Life structures from PowerPoint
It occurred to me that building things in Second Life is quite hard (well it is for me anyway), and even when you buy a “house in a box” which creates you a house when you touch the box, someone still needed to go to the bother of creating all the prims and working out their dimensions and coordinates for you. It would be far easier if you could just draw your basic layout in something nice and easy like Paint or PowerPoint and then click on a button and the basic structure would appear on your Second Life land. I realise that something like PowerPoint will only easily allow a 2D drawing experience, but that’s exactly what I wanted to start with – something close to being as simple as doodling with pen and paper so that I could try different room shapes and layouts quickly and easily without spending more than a few minutes on each one.
I knew that generating Linden Script from a bunch of drawn lines in PowerPoint was not going to be hard. Since I am new to Second Life the main area of complexity for me would be working out the Linden Script that I needed to generate the entire building from a single prim and a single script. I wanted to use a single prim and single script to minize cut and paste activity from the generator to Second Life. I spent some time proving that I could use Linden Script to create multiple instances of a single object and then transform them into whatever I wanted. Once this was proven I used the Linden Script that I had written to become the basis for my code generation template, and drew a simple room with a doorway using four lines in PowerPoint. I generated the Linden Script from PowerPoint, pasted the code into a Second Life object and ran the code. Sure enough, my simple four sided room appeared right in front of me. Excellent.
Now I wanted a tougher structure to generate in order to test my generator. I had a search around and found a copy of the maze layout for Hampton Court garden maze, which certainly met my need for a complex object! I pasted this image into PowerPoint and traced the outline of the maze hedges, which took about 10 minutes. I then clicked to generate the code, and it worked first time, although I should point out that I then proceeded to find a few bugs in my code to convert cartesian coordinates into lengths and angles, and also had to add code to handle the creation of multiple objects when a wall of longer than 10 metres was needed, and code to handle offsets of greater than 10 metres. I also had to add code to split the generated script to ensure that each fragment remained under the 16k script limit. This little lot took a bit longer than 10 minutes…
Anyway, with those wrinkes ironed out I now had a wooden box which contained a single wooden sphere, both of which contain scripts that have been completely generated. The only tedious bit is that you need to manually copy and paste the code from RL to SL, and for a huge object like this maze that is about 10 scripts, although for most normal buildings/rooms a single script will suffice.
Now, when I touch the wooden box I get a 30 second delay followed by some frantic rezzing activity! The final result is a Second Life version of the Hampton Court garden maze generated from a single wooden sphere using code generated from outside Second Life. The structure consists of 144 prims and is approximately 120 metres by 80 metres in size, and yes I did get quite thoroughly lost in it when I tried to walk round it :o)
Now that I have proven the generator technique I hope to try some more practical examples along with a technique for enhancing the amount of data that can be captured in the drawing tool, such as the texture of the walls, whether they are windows or doors etc. I am still very keen to keep the input technique as simple as possible though as I’m really using this as very quick building outline generator, so I’ll probably shy away from full blown 3D drawing tools at this stage.
Second Life and West Wing?
As has been reported in a number of places politicians are starting to come to the metaverse. I will be politically neutral here. However it does bring up something that a few of us were discussing the other day.
We met with Asif Noorani from Epiphany Productions, to discuss how we work in Second Life and show some of our other projetcs off in the Real World. Asif mentioned he was a big fan of the West Wing and one way and another that led us to a mad idea. Many of the meetings in Second Life tend to be people gathering in spaces and staying still.
Now in West Wing much of the interaction happens in fast bursts as the characters walk down the coridoors.
So what if we just replicated a coridoor/conveyor belt for a specific type of meeting. i.e. rather than those with a fixed place, or the ad hoc instant messaging across places. When you want someone’s full attention for 30 seconds to 1 minute then both teleport to the West Wing coridoor.
You are giving one another the ability to have full attention, and indicating that by your presence but you are also indicating that this will be fleeting, yet you still have avatar expressions and non verbal exchanges whilst walking.
It very easy to build in Second Life, but what other new meeting metaphors are there out there?
Yet more events in SL
Its about 30 mins until the u2 in sl event. Being at 4pm SLT it’s a bit late, even in a holiday weekend for a uk visit. However I am a bit of fan and like to support things like this. I have done the tourist thing…..
I have also had a little play at being in the band
The crazy thing people may not understand is that their presence and way of arriving at these event puts load on the server
Normal webservers each person connecting puts on an equal amount of load. But here you can arrive and exhibit your personality with bling and prims attached to you that add processing load to the server.
UPDATE: It was a great event, they kept it initmate to 70 people, so the lag was minimal. The crowd certainly got into it. Another great event
Yossarian Seattle’s wedding present
Yossarian Seattle one of eightbar’s prominent builders and scripters will be off the grid for a few weeks as he is getting married today. In Real Life I might add.
Over at new world notes there is a great article about Yossarian’s language HUD on New World Notes. This recognition is a great wedding present for him, and I am sure Second Life will feature in his best mans speech.
Whilst very active on Hursley private Island Yossarian has gone out and explored and worked with the rest of Second Life too.
As a keen photgrapher and flickr user has has created a very nice gallery located next to the superb newbie centre of New Citizens Inc at Kuula. This is landmark I send everyone starting to get to grip with Second Life as they join eightbar.
Anyway, congratulations for Mr & Mrs Seattle to be.
Mitch Kapor on the Impacts of Second Life
In this excellant write up on 3dpoint.com Mitch Kapor’s speech at the Second Life Community Conference gets an airing.
The short term and long term impacts are discussed, but it is clear that Mitch Kapor knows a disruptive technology when he sees one.
Also on his own blog
Cool eightbar builds
Some more people have joined eightbar in Second Life and a diverse set of skills has emerged.
Judge Hocho showed me his design skills in the clothing department yesterday. He has made some great Eightbar tshirts and hats.
Meanwhile a newer resident has dived into building some clever things too.
Turner Boehm has a fantastic Tardis that appears and dissapears with sound effects. Now I know Turner is a boffin, and some of the recent conversations indicate he has some exciting things on the horizon.
As per usual all the shots can be seen on snapzillaI just need to get around to tagging them !
Virtual Worlds introduction presentation
When talking about Virtual Worlds with customers and other IBMers, I often start with some examples of the state of the art in Second Life. They give a flavour of why integration between the metaverse and real life is both possible and important, and why people are paying attention. I usually find it helpful to put Second Life in the context of Web 2.0; pointing out that it’s really all about two concepts that have already been changing the shape of the web: user generated content and social networking.
I reasoned that I could save everyone some time by putting the highlights of my introductory presentation up here. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of projects, rather a taste of what has caught my attention (and that of the media) in the last few months.
Introduction
Depending on the audience, I will usually start by visiting the Second Life website to show the interactive map, all the time reeling off some interesting stats – largely gleened from Google TechTalk video – to help
people realise this is not just a game:
- A glance at secondlife.com shows us the number of residents, how many residents have logged on recently, and how many US$ changed hands between players in the last 24 hours.
- Yes, people make and sell things for money. 25% of users are currently sellers, 75% are primarily consumers.
- Easy to build and script (using Linden Scripting Language but moving to support Mono).
- Rich scripting API includes support for email, XML-RPC, HTTP Request, …
- Video and audio streaming are easy. Mozilla’s Gekko core (Firefox’s rendering engine) is eventually being integrated, so any surface will be able to be a web page.
- It’s growing fast. According to Linden Labs, the rate at which new land is added exceeds how fast you could explore it.
BBC One Big Weekend event
- The BBC, who are frequently early adopters, announced an event in Second Life in May 2006. The streaming video from the One Big Weekend event (being held in Dundee) was shown in-world to provide people with another means of following the action.
- The key thing here is the party happening in the foreground. People are dancing, showing off and chatting.
- More: Read about BBC Radio 1 ‘One Big Weekend’ island on BBC Online, and the announcement.
Eggy Lippmann collaborated with Rivers Run Red on this one. - The BBC also did a Second Life session for Newsnight around January 2006.
American Apparel
- A large US clothing store opened a store in Second Life.
- Possibly the first example of a real brand creating a SL store?
- More: read the story on news.com. More details at Aimee Weber’s portfolio. Link to the store in SL.
Warner Brothers
- Warner Bros, who promote Regina Spektor, are marketing her latest album within Second Life.
- The New York loft apartment (also built by Aimee Weber) houses a tape recorder playing clips of Regina Spektor’s music, with the mood of the room changing with the music.
- More: read the press release and creator’s blog.
Baseball
- Major League Baseball (MLB.com) paid the Electric Sheep Company for a virtual baseball stadium to host the Home Run Derby event.
- I’m not a baseball fan, but even I was hooked enough by the lively atmosphere that staying up until 2am UK time was well worth it.
- More: Eric Rice has a great summary and Ian wrote up the event on Eightbar too.
Forbidden City
- John Tolva’s writeup of the Forbidden City project, creating a virtual copy of Beijing’s famous palace.
- IBM has a press release too.
Amazon
- 3pointD report that Amazon employees are working to bridge the gap between their real-world shopping platform and SL. Quick summary on Eightbar.
- More recently, there has also been some interesting work done by “Hugo Dalgleish”.
Wimbledon
- Eightbar readers can’t have missed the fact that Ian Hughes worked on a prototype build for the Wimbledon tennis championships.
- It involved displaying the path of the ball (thanks to the ‘Hawkeye’ data captured on-court) as well as clothing and even flying towels.
- Read the original Eightbar post on Wimbledon demo for more.
So there you go. Naturally, this list will be out of date almost instantly, as more things are happening all the time. Let me know if I’ve missed something important though.
Collaboration with a bang
Idz Ni of eightbar pinged me to say he had found something interesting and amusing in Second Life today. So I popped over to have a look for 5 minutes.
He had found a cannon, with cannon balls that lets you climb in and be shot out of the cannon, and you go further if you are carrying a heavy cannon ball! This cannon is by Abramelin Wolfe
No this may seem frivolous, and in a way it is. However Idz and I then collaborated in order to get a good picture of the device in operation. It is very difficult to take the picture as you are being fired out yourself so it was a two avatar job.
It involved timing, and patience but it acted as both a demonstration of collaboration and is a great energizer to any brainstorm session. 
Snowcrash IN Second Life
Ok, if you know what I am talking about you will smirk. Snowcrash, albeit a mini version has made its way to Second Life.