Virtual vehicles for the metaverse
Things I’ve created either in the real world or the metaverse.
Not everything I make in Second Life is necessarily useful or even desirable. For example, today I adapted the classic ELIZA-type chat bot that used to dispense psychological help to be an extremely rude and insulting salesperson.
Here’s a brief excerpt of the result. The bot’s name is “Terrabucks Coffee”.
Continue reading “In which I teach a bot to be extremely rude”
One of the best collaborations I worked on in Second Life was an ultralight plane — the Terra-Kojima Starling — designed by Reitsuki Kojima then scripted, bashed, and cajoled into flight by me. It was one of my absolute favourites to fly because it instills the feeling of the freedom of powered flight without insulating me inside the fuselage of a larger airplane.
And then our friends at Linden Lab changed how physics bounding boxes worked so that we could use mesh objects. Unbeknownst to them, it had the side-effect of breaking the Starling so that its physics bounding box extended a couple of meters below it. Essentially, it couldn’t taxi anymore. If you can’t taxi, you can’t take off and fly. So I retired the Starling.
Today, I put my newfound knowledge of Second Life bounding boxes to use and updated the Starling model. It now taxis correctly, and I corrected a couple of other minor issues that I found along the way.
Want to fly my favourite plane in Second Life? You can find it in the Second Life Marketplace and at the Terra Aeronautics shop in Abbotts in-world.
Available starting Saturday, November 22!
What’s the coolest thing you can think of? Han Solo? Yeah, Han’s pretty cool. Alright, admittedly, my latest product for Second Life isn’t as cool as Han, but it’s still pretty cool. It’s the Terra Xplorer personal transport.
I’m glad you asked, because I didn’t want to start rambling on about this if you weren’t interested. Here’s what Terra Xplorer is…
Continue reading “Terra Xplorer is kind of nifty and you want one”
The rumour is true. On Saturday, November 22, I’ll have something new for Second Life.
Stay tuned to my Twitter feed…
So I’ve taken up a new hobby since I gave up on Second Life. Instead of building virtual vehicles, now I build plastic ones.
As it turns out, since the release of the new Star Trek movies, there has been a resurgence of interest in building scale model ships. Further, there are groups that make use of 3D modelling and printing to design their own custom starship kits and parts. The folks at AllScaleTrek.com are among these.
Companies like Round 2 are actively designing and releasing new officially-licensed Star Trek kits that are of much higher quality and detail than were ever available before. Among their offerings are the small kits for kids and novices, like the ships only a few inches long, and kits for skilled builders (in other words, adults), like the stunningly-detailed 32-inch-long Enterprise.
I started somewhere in the middle with a 1:1400 scale Enterprise C — a ship that appeared in only one episode of The Next Generation. But rather than simply follow the instructions (I write instructions; I don’t read them), I designed my own internal lighting using parts from a local electronics shop.
I’ve completed two kits now, and I’m working on the third. I documented the builds on Flickr for no particular reason except that the Internet is all about sharing stupid stuff. So from oldest to newest:
It’s a fun way to spend some free time while engaging in creative problem-solving. Go ahead give it a try.