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Hi all,<br>
<br>
I'm very new to OpenSim and just signed up to this list to ask a few
questions. Sorry if I come across as a bit of a newbie, although
I've been studying OS for a few days and I have my own standalone
grid up and running at home.<br>
<br>
I'm putting together a proposal for this educational portal run by
the ABC here in Australia:<br>
<br>
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<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/learn/proposals.htm">http://www.abc.net.au/learn/proposals.htm</a><br>
<br>
My project is all about teaching history, the idea being that
students and history classes could put together simple sims telling
stories about the history of their own local area, linking them up
with videos, photos, essays, etc (which you could hopefully launch
from within the sim). Their sims would all be linked up in a
hypergrid, so students from all over Australia (later maybe the
world) could get into a virtual time machine and visit different
places at different times, to see what was happening. Students would
be able to chat with each other and show each other around their
creations. Hopefully the act of collaborative world building would
engage them in learning about history, but I would want them
focussed on just telling small stories, involving a small number of
characters (which would be created as NPCs if that's possible, with
simple, looping animations if not more complex behaviour) and
buildings, objects, etc. (I have ideas about how to source lots of
3D content, which I need to explore more). <br>
<br>
I'm sure none of this is an original idea, but it seems like a good
opportunity to put an idea like this forward. I just was wondering
if anyone could tell me whether it would work in OpenSim or if there
are some big barriers to creating something like this.<br>
<br>
My main issue right now is trying to work out how you create sims
that represent not only a region in space but also a period in time.
I've been thinking that I would have a grid that contains regions in
which only stories from, say, 1950 to 2000 were created. Then
another grid would represent the same real world area, but contain
stories from 1900-1950. The further you go back in time, the longer
the time intervals would get, along an approximately logarithmic
scale, so if you were telling stories about the dinosaurs one grid
would represent the entire Jurassic era, for example.<br>
<br>
Would this be the right way to go? I've been reading about regions
and grids and hypergrids but I'm pretty sure there's a lot I don't
understand.<br>
<br>
My own background is that I've been working in 3D animation for
film, TV and games for the past decade, as a 3D all rounder and a
technical artist. I've worked on one big MMO for three years that
was never released. So I know about 3D modeling, animation,
worldbuilding, etc. but I've never spent much time around Second
Life or OpenSim, so a lot of this is new to me.<br>
<br>
Thanks for any help!<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Lisa Evans<br>
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