3D Weather Data Visualization in Second Life

An anonymous reader noted that the Second Life media blitz continues by saying that "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) with Aimee Weber Studio just unrolled a sneak preview of their educational project in Second Life (due to open in mid November). This appetizer of things to come features the three dimensional visualization of live weather (now on display at the Science Center)." Don't go there expecting that they have like every doppler radar in the US updating in realtime or anything, but it's actually a practical real use for Second Life.

Practical?

This is the easiest way to find out of it's cold outside?

Already done

This has been around for ages and in much higher resultion. It's called a window.

Weather layers for Google Earth

Ok, I must admit, the way they represent it in Second Life is interesting. Symbolic, not realistic, but sometimes symbolization is simply more efficient than realism.

US weather radar layers for Google Earth [gearthblog.com].
3D pseudo-real-time global clouds layer for Google Earth [gearthblog.com].
And while we're at it, weather radar data for Canada [ec.gc.ca].

Oh yeah.. you can't use GE at work (as clearly specified in the license), so use the great (and open source) NASA World Wind instead [nasa.gov].

Second Life?

So I have to wait until afterlife in order to use it?
What about a solution which already works during first life?

Another Second Life story?

I don't get why we get such a disproportionate number of Second Life stories on /.

For those who have never tried it: don't bother, it's not that cool. Unless you really enjoy 3d modelling and scripting, it offers nothing over regular text chat.

In 10 years, we'll have the network and the machines to handle everything that the Second Life guys are trying to do, and they'll be hailed as "pioneering" and "ahead of their time". But honestly, it kind of sucks.

interesting for about 3 minutes

I tried Second Life again recently expecting to see a lot of improvement since the last time there was some hooplah about it and I was disappointed. This time around, it was pretty much the same thing.

In the very early days of the Internet there was a project that looks strikingly similar to Second Life - I think it was around 1998 or so and the concept and look and feel was the same. Anyone remember the name? They got a little venture funding and the site never took off - it suffered from the same "Ok, I'm here, now what?" issues that SL seems to have.

a brief response from a person involved...

I wouldn't call this project abandoned as much as it is still under development. Reading the previous comments, my answer to having easier ways to find the temperature outside is "YES." :-) I recommend turning on a TV, reading the newspaper, or surfing to a web site of your choosing. This visualization should be considered a beta with the intention of showing what Second Life (or technologies like Second Life) may be capable of in the future. (Slashdotted before prime time, ouch)

NOAA and ESRL are looking at Second Life as a possible platform for educational outreach as well as visualizing some of our data much of which is inherently 3D rather than 2D. Our island, which will have more of a focus on education rather than data visualization is slated for opening in the middle of November. If you are interested in more information you can visit our web site (also under construction) at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/outreach/sl/ [noaa.gov]

Eric

Thank you for avoiding calling this "game news"

Second life might be an incredible simulation, but it's far from a game. It is interesting though.

3d Weather simulation though? I'm sure we've had that in multiple places. a large scale version is Flight simulator X which can now pull live weather data every 15 minutes from Jensen.com (A major flight tool provider). And even better with Flight Sim you see exactly how that works in real life.

Though how they present it in Second life might be interesting, I'm finding that now it's even less of a game (not that it was before) and new way to advertise. Though I have to admit it sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe after everything calms down they can do a cyber E3, miniture version. It'd cost them a lot less then those huge booths last year, and even though players think they should be there, they shouldn't but at least they can see a idea of what it used to be like.

overexposure

I work in Second Life. So I don't feel the need to be a troll and bash anything about it to tell the truth. Slashdot is running too many stories about Second Life. These stories get about 50 replies at most and are usually no more than rehashed press releases like this one or obvious attempts to drum up interest in a Second Life. Slashdot readers have shown through lack of comments that they are not interested in this many stories about this subject. Not to mention it is overexposing a young platform and even creating a bit of backlash against it. This backlash is the fault of an overzealous PR machine at Linden Lab more than anything.

I think it would be nice to cool down this campaign and let something that is actually groundbreaking happen before posting another Second Life story. I love SL but all of these stories make even me see it as overhyped BS.

Never mind realistic weather in Second Life...

I joined the other day to see what the fuss is all about. And I'm now totally baffled as to what the fuss is all about. I was looking at graphics that hadn't advanced since the hoo-ha about virtual worlds back in the late 90's. Crude and extremely difficult to navigate in a world about as attractive and welcoming as a... well as a graphically rendered world circa 1998. Nasty.

And the thought of interacting with even more poorly rendered avatars which only represent real humans' own invented alter egos is even less attractive a thought. Utterly lame, as the kids would say.

So rendering weather in such a horrible environment seems rather pointless. So now we'll see a bunch of people with bugs bunny heads and angel wings wandering randomly about the place spouting random thoughts whilst walking right through various bits of random stuff strewn about the place... while it pours with rain. Well that sounds like a lot of fun

Another option

If you're too busy living your First Life to check out the weather in Second Life, you can always visit the Great Blue Room...

Gray

It isn't good or bad, its somewhere in between. Sure you could join up, give yourself some supermodel physique and tear ass around the world spouting the same dumb ass crap you would in your normal body. Dur, that's a given.

What I saw in my first few minutes there was not the NOAA link I originally signed up for...which by the way, kind-of sucks. But I found an International Space Museum that offered crude, but better than I've come across inside views of the space shuttle, Virgin galactic, and even the monkey-death-trap-based cockpits. This was along with 3D models of any rocket I could and couldn't really think of with an info placard that briefly explained its service history. (shhh they even had commie rockets!) It was like 3 flight museums rolled into one. There even happened to be a guest speaker about Hubble at the time. His speech was bland and predictable. blah blah pillars of creation...blah blah (insert generic Hubble image quote). The real kicker was an animated 3D image of the approximated guts of Hubble. Now any enterprising person interested in space imagery or astrophysics would already have a Sombrero Galaxy (M104) desktop image. But people that think stars are pretty crap that shows up at night, and mostly in rural areas would really stand to learn something. Plus this guy is really a PhD, with enough interest in spreading truth that if I had a good question to ask him, I might've learned something.

I later attended a course in scripting objects that communicate with the SL world. Sounds gay to be sure, but the guy was a human teaching other students how to work in the world with a very basic tool set of comm functions. He handed out example objects with code tied to them and *we* uncommented pertinent lines of code to alter the objects behavior. It was definitely a 101 course but it had a human element. Q&A that you don't get from a wikipedia or some 3l173 guy saying RTFM. You could actually ask a pro with absolutely $0 spent and no time really wasted on finding him. It was like a class at the Y for SL scripting.

So for everyone that says WTF, I agree completely. The alternate lifestyle via this medium is completely ridiculous. Like this one "girl" that was every bit of 36x24x36 at 6'2" and wearing something lacy that where it wasn't bear skin exposed erect, I kid you not, erect nipples under lace. To top it off, model face and some kind of feathered-bleached-layered hair-do that is pretty much what anybody would attempt to lay. That said, I can guarantee it was a 40 year old guy in the Midwest that had a penchant for children..If not it was a 300 pound woman in the Midwest missing said husband. SO YEAH, THERE IS A DIRTY UNDERBELLY. If you have half a brain cell, you can discard those dorks and move on with a pretty good educational tool.

Re:Why is Second Life getting all this buzz now?

This is a joke news, right? The service is the lousiest weather service I have ever seen in my life. No detail whatsoever about the weather and the 3D representation doesn't add any detail neither. It serves no purpose.

Re:Why is Second Life getting all this buzz now?

It is amazing crude but also wonderful none the less to think about what it might become.

It might become another damn waste of time and money. Oh wait; it already is.

Re:Why is Second Life getting all this buzz now?

It would have had to have been an invisible dome. You could easly fly over the wall.

Performance wise I tried that place out. On a dual core 3ghz machine with 4 gigs of ram and a 7900gtx nvidia card it was a bit slow in places. The graphics were nice but it reminded me of a cross between Active Worlds and There. Somehow that cross gave me pretty poor performance although I did have my visual range set to around 120m. I cut it back to 60m and it was slightly better.

Object creation and manipulation is interesting. Reminds me of Calagari Truespace. So Second Life is like three programs in one to me. Active Worlds, There, and Calagari Truespace.

Re:Why is Second Life getting all this buzz now?

I'm sure they were bribed... perhaps they were told that the servers run on Linux...

Re:Why is Second Life getting all this buzz now?

In my experience, it's very much like MySpace but in 3D. However, it's a very interesting platform for live music - I've 'attended' a number of gigs there and been impressed with what's going on, and moreso with the potential once the technology catches up.

It's an interesting platform for lots of other things too, which is what TFA is about. You're comparing it to something that it's not, which explains your confusion.

Re:Why is Second Life getting all this buzz now?

Actually, if you don't like what's there to offer in Second Life, DON'T USE IT. Why is that so hard to understand? It's not like there aren't any alternative ways to waste your time.

Re:Why is Second Life getting all this buzz now?

When you go to a place that DOES have people gathered around usually ends up just being either virtual prostitution or porn. [...] 3D avatars that all look like nymphet women wearing very skimpy clothes [...] I felt like I was in some world that was made 15 years or go or something.

Sounds great. I can't believe I've been missing all this pr0n! And the graphics ought to be just right for me; all the stuff made after "15 years or go" gives me motion sickness. This ought to be easy on my head and stomach. WooHoo!