SOURCE: The Advocate
LSU is on an island, Nicholson Hall backs up to a beach retreat and the Quad houses a fountain.
These are not attributes of the actual campus, but they are some features of LSU in the Second Life virtual environment.
Researchers with the LSU Center for Computation and Technology, or CCT, have spent the past semester creating LSU in Second Life, an online social tool where users interact with each other through 3-D avatars.
The group unveiled LSU in Second Life on Thursday.
“A key focus of our center is exploring ways we can use new applications as resources for interdisciplinary research,” said CCT Director Ed Seidel in a prepared statement. “Virtual environments are an excellent opportunity for us to explore how to collaborate in ways we previously could not.”
The LSU project involved people from the School of Music to architecture students, who ensured the campus buildings had some realism.
The Second Life campus is mainly limited to buildings of the Quad and the second quadrangle behind Thomas and David Boyd halls. Since all locations in Second Life are on islands, LSU features oceanfront property in the design.
The campus features Memorial Tower, which users can scale with their virtual avatars for an aerial view of the campus. Class and teaching space is available in Dodson Auditorium and Atkinson Hall offers a display area where students can showcase original art they design for Second Life.
Nicholson Hall is home to CCT’s visualization laboratory, which features an immersive environment to study coastal modeling, hurricane simulations and other areas of scientific visualization.
The Greek Amphitheatre sits behind Coates Hall and will be the site of live concerts streamed into Second Life from the School of Music.
Publish Date:
05-10-2008
