Game Development Reference
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projects by utilizing Second Life's building tools to create virtual concept models of the architecture they
were designing. Together, they created concept models that were eventually measured in detail, translated
into construction drawings, and built on the real site. With the U.S. Department of State's support, Denton and
Attia brought together two groups of students in architectural design collaboration. From Egypt, 40 students
who worked with Attia at Ain Shams University and eight students from the University of Southern California
School of Architecture who worked with Denton got together as avatars in Second Life to design a master
plan for the area around the site of the new Grand Egyptian Museum. Near the end of the semester, ive of
the students from Cairo came to California and gave live demonstrations of their designs, meeting their U.S.
counterparts in real life for the irst time. This project returned far more than its investment in time and
money; the cultural exchange between the two groups of students, and the opportunity to develop international
design connections on both sides, contributed not only to their skills but also to their worldviews on culture
and design. As a designer, you can encourage similar cultural exchange programs at your local educational
institutions to enrich their students' experience and build a cross-cultural design network.
13.3 MATH, MOLECULES, AND MILITARY ENGINEERING
One of the great advantages of virtual environments is the capacity to design in unlimited scale. Just as you
can make a full-scale replica of the Great Pyramids, you can also go in the opposite direction and make scale
models of the tiniest things as shown in Figure 13.3.
Dr. Andrew S.I.D. Lang (professor of mathematics, Oral Roberts University); Dr. Peter G. G. Miller
(School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool); and Dr. Joan L. Slonczewski (professor of biology,
Kenyon College) have all taken that fantastic voyage into microscopic virtual space by utilizing virtual
worlds to create prototypes of molecules.
Design considerations at this scale should focus on the clarity of the structure and consistency of colored
labeling. It is easy to get lost in complex models of proteins or quantum shells, especially if the structure is
too large to see as a whole on a standard camera draw distance, or if it is too small to see its connecting parts
clearly. Other design elements to take into consideration with a molecular exhibit are (1) the background color
and texture of the display, (2) the types of avatar access to the entire model besides craning the camera around
it, and (3) the interactivity of the model and how many ways it distributes related information about itself.
The background behind a model is of paramount importance because, like the setting on a diamond ring,
it supports the observation and understanding of the central element. Nothing in the background should
distract the eye from the structure of the model, so neutral colors or sky backgrounds are preferred. If the
model is in a visually congested area, you may want to enclose it inside a hollow phantom sphere that is
large enough for an avatar to enter. If you put an alpha texture on the exterior face of the sphere and put your
neutral color background on the inside face of the hollow sphere, you have a molecule that is visible from
across the room and will also envelop the avatar into an isolated viewing space as they approach the model
and enter the sphere.
The U.S. military, which has a great number of systems and devices to prototype, has been utilizing virtual
world platforms such as Second Life and OpenSim for several years. When the Naval Undersea Warfare
Center (NUWC) needed to ind a better way to prototype the layout and functionality of the command-and-
control center, they turned to virtual worlds for a solution [3]. What they discovered was that virtual world
prototyping worked well with their security requirements, and that they saved signiicant amounts of time
and money during their design meetings because the reviewers could visit the prototype from their desktop
computers. Furthermore, they discovered that these prototypes could become functional training environ-
ments for people as avatars, and that real-time training scenarios could be run to test the eficacy of the
prototype's overall design.
