I held off on writing this post as I wanted experience first-hand presenting in Second Life before providing feedback on the other groups presentations. I felt I needed to better understand the challenges and limitations within the space that could affect a group presentation before I could feasibly comment on my experiences with the other groups. Having attended all the presentations, I’ve provided brief commentary about the positives and negatives I experienced in each groups work, including my own.
Stars Hollow
I thought this group touched on a very interesting application for the virtual space. I definitely feel that there is a lot of room out there for authentic spaces capitalizing on successful TV and movie shows. This would be a great benefit to companies specifically as they can tap into a larger market at a time when many are switching to pirated or web-based methods like Netflix to experience shows. There is room to even provide real-time experiences while users watch their shows on the computer.
Some of the struggles I noticed at the building level were little things like the roofs being so low it messed with camera angles and some floating furniture. The presentation was alright and I liked the concept, though I feel the group could have explored a little further how it would apply to the virtual space and spent less time discussing the details of a specific show. Otherwise, it was a very interactive presentation and clearly a lot of planning went into the set, costume, and script design.
The Marriage of Culture and Virtual Worlds
I felt this group was the most organized and prepared group of all four groups. Their history of cultural weddings was interesting but not overwhelming and they tied all of it back into Second Life which made it that much stronger. The user engagement component was not burdened with being too long or too rushed. It felt well planned and thoughtful of the points being presented. The invitations were a great touch!
Being a participant in the presentation it was hard to focus on the details being presented while waiting for my queues. That was my only issue really as I’d have loved to have been able to focus more on the material. The build was beautiful and I liked that the group modified purchased items into the build, tweaking them rather than simply placing them in a spot untouched. It showed thought and consideration for the project as a whole.
Second Life in the Jazz Age
This presentation was interesting but I struggled with the first half due to the lengthy discussion about jazz with little tie-in to the virtual space. It was clear the group did extensive research on the topic, though, so that is to be commended. The build was fun, though I couldn’t get some of the instruments to work. It felt as though the group had put some thought into creating an atmosphere rather than simply a space which I loved. It was an authentic club on the inside and the little details like the lighting and furniture only served to augment the theme even more. I’d have liked to have skipped the trivia as most of it did not apply to the virtual space so much as the actual world material presented in the beginning.
Virtual Nostalgia Amusement Park
This was my group’s presentation and I would say we were the weakest group in terms of overall builds though our presentation information was about average when compared with the other groups. We did a good job at providing many motivations and considerations with virtual amusement parks with strong examples in most of the areas of research. I felt as with the wedding presentation, we were able to speak to the virtual world benefits thoroughly and we made sure to bring each point back to the virtual space rather than splitting our focus with actual world counterparts to our space.
The building is where we fell short. I do commend some of my group for taking on the challenges of scripting and building functioning objects in the space. Time was definitely a factor in most cases and I am confident that had these projects been started at the time of the proposal in March, my group member’s builds would have functioned as desired as they showed significant progress over the last 24 hours.
Of my own builds, I am quite proud of what I accomplished since I had never scripted, created animations, or used sculpted prims before. These presented an array of new challenges for me which I loved to tackle. My goals were for authenticity to the carbon originals on which these rides were based as well as creating experiences that would have lasting impressions on the users. I feel both the bungee jumper and carousels succeeded in that. I only wish more of the class could have attended the presentation as we only had 4 non-group attendees besides our professor.
Live Life Virtually 