Virtual Campus Blog

Second Life Will Revolutionize New Product Development and Engineering: “Second Life Will Revolutionize New Product Development and Engineering”

“It as serious development tool,” says Assistant Professor Chang Liu (a.k.a. Chang Tuxing in SL) of the Virtual Immersive Technologies and Arts for Learning (VITAL) Lab. at Ohio University. “Second Life is just emerging into the mainstream and a lot of engineers are not there yet,” says Pam Broviak, PE, (a.k.a. Pam Renoir in SL) public works director and city engineer for La Salle, IL. “When I show engineers Second Life, their initial reaction is ‘it is just a game’ because it looks like a game. They have to get beyond that.”…..

“I see Second Life being used as the first step in the planning process for many future engineering design projects,” Broviak says. “Building something in there does not take a lot of time. Companies will soon discover that much of their initial design work can be accomplished in-world where everyone has a chance to use it and comment on it before anything is actually built,” says Pam Broviak.

On November 9th, we held the BGSU SL Virtual Campus Grand Opening. This event took place in real life at the BT Student Union on the BGSU campus with live musical performances by students from the College of Musical Arts and two student DJ’s. In Second Life the event was attended by people from all over the world and documented by several of our learning community members. Below are just a few of the snapshots from in-world.

We’ve also received some great press lately (see my last post), including this article in the Toledo Blade.

Anthony’s snapshots:

Radhika’s snapshopts:

U.S. college to hold grand opening: “U.S. college to hold grand opening”

Our recent SLNN.com article.

CNN has opened its latest “office” in Second Life. In an experimental move, the news company is not only moving into the realm of virtual reality, but it’s enabling Second Life users to create the content. This actually looks like a very interesting implementation of a virtual location, with tools that Second Life users can use to transmit copy and gather photos. There will be kiosks set up throughout the virtual world in order to provide news to users.