1. SL9B Presentation
Making Virtual
Learning Spaces
AReality

2. The Team Alexis Tokhes
Digital Media Specialist
Troy Vogel
Senior Programmer
SL Builder
Niko Acropolis
Instructional Designer

3. The Team Atomilux Nikolaid
Graphic Artist / Programmer
Maya / Unity Builder
DrBrockBrownAboma
Geography Professor
LT
Graphic Designer

4. El Cerrito Village
El Cerrito, New Mexico
San Miguel County
Founded 1824
Population approx. 13
Elevation 5712 feet
From San Marcos
725 miles
12 hours and 32 minutes

5. Statement of Goals
Virtual Field School Project
A comparitive study that breaks our team out of
the habit of using Second Life for every virtual
reality / simulation project that comes our way.
A chance to compare different development
platforms and assess their offerings.
End result will be used in GEO4190 Class.

6. Comparative Study of Virtual
Environments for Teaching
Criteria for selection
of development platform
Portability Longevity
Affordability Fidelity
Compatibility

7. Comparative Study of Virtual
Environments for Teaching
Development Environments Evaluated
Second Life Google Earth
OpenSim Unity Engine

8. Development of the Village
in Second Life

9. Gathering Data
for the Simulation
Data Gathered
Building photographs
Videos of village tour and interviews
Elevation data
Publications on the history of the village
Ambient sound clips

10. Layout of the Simulator
Pecos River
The School House
The Church
Acequia
Madre
El Cerrito Village, Second Life El Cerrito Village, New Mexico

11. Building the Village in SL
Scale and Placement
Limited space on a simulator
Orientation & layout of the village
Building scale vs. avatar scale
Terrain scale vs. building scale
Photo Sourced Textures
Captured on digital camera
Edited in Photoshop to SL requirements
Uploaded and applied to objects in SL

12. Field School Sim in SL

17. Simulation Requirements
Village Structures River
Church & Plaza Dam
Houses & yards Acequia
Water pump & tank Long Lots
Walls, fences Gates for fields
Domesticated animals Irrigation runoff to river
Foliage Roads
Vehicles &Litter Bridges that provide access
Surrounding Elements to the village
Village streets
Mesa Cliffs
Trees
Low lying ground cover

18. Additional Items
in the Virtual Field School
Info Cones Virtual Classroom
Video tours Hay bales
Interviews Slide projector
Information pages
Self-Assessment activities Signage Displays
Surveys Instructions
Map & guides

19. Porting the Sim to OpenSim
OpenSim Campus
Our own servers on campus
We administer the accounts
Still in BETA stage
Virtual Field School in Opensim
Exported with Imprudence & SecondInventory
Imported raw files and terrain textures
Imported linked objects and placed them

20. Porting the Sim to OpenSim
TXSTATE has her own OpenSim grid

21. Google Earth Building Process
Textures Building Shapes
Edited in Photoshop Modeled in SketchUp
Imported into Sketchup Exported as KMZ file
Information Geographic Data
Pop up info pages Terrain in Google Earth
Village placed at location
Flyby Tour
Final Product
A fly by tour scripted in XML
An XML file (KMZ)

22. Authoring
in SketchUp

23. Field School in Google Earth

24. Unity Engine Building Process
1. Building Shapes 3. Village Assembled
Modeled in Maya Unity imports
Exported as Collada Terrain from USGS
2. Textures Created 4. Final Exports
Edited in Photoshop Web enabled plugin
Imported into Maya Stand alone application
Exported as UVMap

25. Authoring
in Maya

26. Import
into Unity

27. Convergence of Platforms
After the implementation of mesh, the building process
in SL is quite similar to the building processes in most
other professional 3D authoring packages.
Digital asset formats are similar or identical. This brings
the luxury of streamlining the process of developing for
several 3D simulation platforms.

28. SL9B Booth Demonstrates
Various Dev. Platforms Used
Click the image to teleport to our booth in SL9B

29. El Cerrito in Second Life
Click the image to view a video tour

30. El Cerrito in Unity Engine
Click the image to launch the Unity Web Plugin

31. El Cerrito in Google Earth
Click the image to launch the Google Earth Version

32. Questions & Answers
“ The ability to independently walk around
EL Cerrito to get a sense of the
environment and peer into the (digitally)
well preserved history of the village is
nothing less than extraordinary.”
-student comments
“ It is amazing to me that we are able to recreate
a real life village on the computer, and allow
people to tour and research this place. I am all
for Texas State and other universities pursuing
more opportunities like this one.”
-student comments
Project Website: http://bit.ly/IRB5pF