Back on Track

This week has been a bit better for me.  I’ve successfully created the invisible overlays for the map on the back wall, so it’s now responsive to user interaction.  This will lay the ground work for the object communication.  Tentatively, I’ve planned it so the clicked region sends each lab table a message saying it’s been clicked, the lab table itself figures out how many people to make, and then people either go visible or start spawning in place.  Each step in this equation is not very hard to do. Mostly, I’ll have problems making designing  things in an aesthetic, functional way (and maybe dealing with the overflow prim problem too).

I’ve also tinkered a bit with making a lab table and will soon try and make my own ring platform system using the ShapeMaker program Dr. Polack gave me.  Tomorrow afternoon/evening I’ll post a screenshot or two so everyone can get a better idea on what I’m designing.

Not much progress

So far this week, I haven’t been able to make much progress (beside some minor tweaking of the Asian mannequin and contact with the mannequin guy).  He sent me some parts to create my own mannequin (some sort computer heating problems keep him from consistently staying online), but I haven’t been able to sign on to Second Life to try them out.  Because of homework obligations, I really couldn’t spend much time in Second Life on Wednesday and Thursday.  I was away for the weekend, so I had no time to do it then.  Finally, I’ve been trying all day today Sunday, but power/internet problems have kept me off Second Life (both the Trinkle labs and my room cannot connect to Second Life…I can’t even keep a consistent connection for purposes of writing this blog!).  Despite these problems, I hope to sign in and make some progress to show off on Wednesday.

A Second Life (For My Project)

This semester, that is Fall 2007, I’m doing an independent study based off my summer research project (for anyone who doesn’t know, it was titled Visualizing Data in Three Dimensions Using Second Life). I’m going to be creating a new visualization and solidifying my earlier test results.

Currently, I’m planning on this visualization being centered on the education data in the Census 2000 data set, with a focus on the racial makeup of undergraduate education. What I’ve done so far is to build 4 different races mannequins out of the 6, those being the Caucasian, African-American, American Indian, and Pacific Islander/Hawaiian. This pastweek, I’ve done two things: I’ve designed a beta version of the Asian mannequin, and storyboarded two possible arrangements of the room I’m displaying the information. I have reservations about the mannequin for the Asian, but I’m not really sure how to change it. Arguably, one of the most distinctive traits for Asian-Americans is the eyes/general facial makeup, but with these mannequins I’m not including any facial detail. I’m posting a screenshot of the mannequins for everyone to see. Regrading the story boards, I’ll just show them on Wednesday (I drew them on my own paper).