Tag: University of Manitoba

My Presentation on Virtual World Building in Second Life (Delivered to a University Course on Virtual World Building and Design)

As I mentioned, shortly after my sixtieth birthday, I gave a one-hour presentation on Second Life, in Second Life, to a graduate class in virtual world building and design, currently being taught at my university (first blogpost; second blogpost).

I am happy to report that my presentation was very well received by the students! It was followed by a “field trip” to a separate building region to practice some old-world prim building for an hour, and I was quite impressed by what the students were able to come up with in such a short period of time. (And no, you don’t get to see any of it; I have set up the short-term rental so that only students taking this class can access it, build on it, and yes, even terraform it, to their hearts’ delight!)

Here is my PowerPoint slide presentation from my Second Life lecture given the evening of January 31st, 2024, minus the final slide where I gave the students all the different ways that they could get a hold of me! (Sorry, blog readers, all you get is the comments section on this blog post! I’m gonna have my hands full supporting an entire class; I don’t have time to support all of you, too!)

Just click on the download button to save a copy to your hard drive, to view in your version of PowerPoint (or export to Google Slides or whatever you do use to view slides):

Building-Virtual-Worlds-Presentation-on-Second-Life-6-Feb-2024Download

After consulting with the two professors teaching the course, we have decided to extend the rental on the building region for the class to the end of this term, so that any students who wish to complete a 3D building assignment for the course can do so in Second Life. (Note that students are exploring many different virtual world platforms, both 2D and 3D, including some in virtual reality, although the latter is limited by technical constraints, i.e. the number of VR headsets available to use.)

So my role for this graduate-level course is not yet complete! In addition to delivering a lecture on Second Life, and a demonstration of how to use the in-world building tools, I will now also be the Second Life resource person for the class until mid-April, as the students apply what they are learning in this virtual world design class to an in-world building project!

I have told the class that, if I do not know the answer to their questions and problems, I should be able to find somebody who can answer with authority. So don’t be too terribly surprised if I do reach out with questions about, say, how to beat optimize a mesh model created in Blender for uploading to Second Life—because yes, in my presentation I do cover both the old-fashioned prim-building and the more modern mesh way of creating content (as detail-free and hand-wavy as the latter is!). Trust and believe, I had to do a bit of research myself to write that particular part of my presentation, since I am more of a freebie fashionista than a content creator.

I did set up a comparison of some older, prim-built furniture (to the right in the pictures below) with more modern mesh model furniture (to the left), so students can inspect them and compare the land impact of them.

For example, the grey-and-red metal swivel desk chair on the right (in front of the big grey desk) has a land impact of 39 (?!), whereas the wooden chair in front of the desk on the left has a land impact of only 2, while containing much greater and finer detail than the prim-built version. And so on, with all the other pieces. What better way to demonstrate the impact that mesh content creation has had on the grid than to show both old and new items, so students can directly compare?

I also put out a circa-2003 house side-by-side with a circa-2023 house, so the students could see how far that art of domicile building has come in 20 years!

So, anyway, back to the graduate class. I expect a few panicky moments when I will definitely be reaching out to the true Second Life experts, all of you, my faithful readers, to help me get through these next few months—especially on the finer points of modern mesh modeling and uploading! (Pray for me.)

Editorial: Why Am I Buying a Meta Quest 2 Wireless VR Headset—After Swearing I Would Boycott Meta Hardware and Software Forever?

I will soon be the owner of a shiny new Meta Quest 2, as shown here in this screen capture from the Meta website

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I have, over the years, developed a well-founded aversion to Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook), its business practices based on surveillance capitalism, and its products and services.

For me, the final straw was when then-Facebook-now-Meta did an about-face, and insisted that users of its then-Oculus-now-Meta virtual reality hardware had to set up accounts on the Facebook social network in order to use the devices (more on that in a moment). I angrily responded by giving away my Oculus Quest 1 to my brother’s family, and upgrading my trusty Oculus Rift to a Valve Index headset using SteamVR. I was DONE with Meta, and I was willing to vote with my feet (and my wallet).

So, it might come as a surprise to some people, to learn that I have decided to purchase a shiny new Meta Quest 2 wireless virtual reality headset. Why did I do this? Several points, which I will take one at a time.

Well, first and foremost, Meta blinked and backtracked after much criticism; you no longer need to set up a Facebook account to use the Meta Quest 2 (although you still have the option to link your Facebook or Instagram account to your Meta account, if you so wish). Instead, you set up a new Meta account for your device, as explained in the following YouTube video from six months ago:

It is now possible to have up to four Meta accounts per device, with one as an admin account, and you will be able to share some (not all, some) apps between Meta accounts using a new app-sharing feature. Note that Meta is still dragging its feet in setting up systems for use in business and academic circles; its “Meta Quest for Business” program is still in beta test with a (U.S. only) waiting list, a rather mystifying decision given the push Meta is already trying to make with Horizon Workrooms for corporate users. Then again, Meta seems to be just generally flailing (and failing) with its still-recent pivot to the metaverse, so who knows?

Second, as you may remember, I am still working on a project to set up a virtual reality lab within the University of Manitoba Libraries. While my original proposal was to purchase and install four high-end PCVR workstations using HTC Vive Pro 2 tethered headsets, we are now looking at offering faculty, staff, and students a wider variety of headsets for use in their teaching, learning, and research activities.

It’s probably not wise to purchase only one kind of VR hardware, which leaves you vulnerable if a company decides to shut down (although this is highly unlikely in the case of both HTC and Meta!). Best not to put all our eggs into one basket; life tends to throw all kinds of unexpected curveballs at you!

One unintended consequence of the coronavirus pandemic is that I had several successive years’ worth of travel and expense funds carried over and built up, some of which had to be spent by a certain deadline, or I would lose the money. So part of that funding went towards a brand-new work PC with a good graphics card, and an HTC Vive Pro 2 Office Kit, which of course is one of the models we are looking at purchasing for the virtual reality lab. However, I still had some money left over that I had to spend soon, and I decided to also buy a Meta Quest 2 as another testing unit, since we are considering also using that device in the virtual reality lab.

Third: while hunting around for easy-to-use, introductory demonstrations of virtual reality for those coworkers who have never experienced VR before, like Felix & Paul Studio’s excellent Introduction to Virtual Reality, I discovered to my great dismay that many apps were only available for Meta devices, and not available on SteamVR at all!

Unfortunately, some VR apps are exclusive to Meta VR headsets

In other words, some of the programs which students might want to use force us to purchase headsets on which they can run. This “walled garden” approach is antithetical to setting up an academic VR lab, where ideally we should be able to run any app on any headset. However, we have little choice, given the way the marketplace is currently structured (and especially given Meta’s outsized influence, with a little under 20 million Quests of various kinds sold, which makes it by far the most popular VR headset).

The University of Manitoba’s School of Nursing recently opened the first virtual reality lab on campus, and they are only using Meta Quest 2 headsets. This lab is currently training nursing students using UbiSim software, with plans to expand its offerings over time (more info here on Mastodon). And the U of M’s Computer Science department is also planning to use Meta Quest 2s in its planned VR lab.

The VR lab at the University of Manitoba School of Nursing

In other words, you can choose not to dance with the 900-pound gorilla in the room (i.e., Meta), but it will severely limit your choice of dance partners! And that is why, despite my lingering antipathy towards Mark Zuckerberg and his company’s business practices, we will likely be buying a number of Meta Quest 2 headsets to add to our planned virtual reality laboratory at the University of Manitoba Libraries, starting with a single test unit purchased on my travel and expense funds for work.

Wish me luck; I am off on yet another adventure!

HOUSEKEEPING NOTICE: Be Careful What You Wish For…Because You Just Might Get it!

Be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
You just might get it
You just might get it

—When I Grow Up, by The Pussycat Dolls

Last week, I met with the head of my university library system, and I was asked to draw up a proposal for a virtual reality lab, which will be set up in one of the libraries on our university campus. Within the next month, I have to spec out hardware and software, plus any other supporting equipment, as well as work out staffing and training implications, etc. I’ve also been tasked with building a initial collection of platforms, programs, and apps for use by faculty, staff, and students using those VR headsets for teaching, learning, and research purposes.

*Ryan does the happy librarian dance*

I am reminded of the familiar saying: Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it. I am simultaneously flabbergasted, elated, and panic-stricken (the latter is due to the rather tight deadline to submit a proposal with a budget to my boss!).

What this means is that the RyanSchultz.com blog and the Metaverse Newscast show are going to have to be put on hold, at least temporarily, while I beaver away at my brand new project! I hope to be back within the next month, folks, but right now, I have to put my head down and WORK.

Wish me luck! I am about to get a crash course in dealing with the corporate sales departments of virtual reality hardware and software vendors, as an educational institution! This is going to be a very interesting, and certainly very different, perspective on the business of virtual reality.

Housekeeping Notice: I’m Juggling

Between the ongoing pandemic, the recently-concluded five-week faculty strike at my university, and now the unexpected war in Ukraine, things have been a little crazy around here these past 3 months (did you know that 14.5% of Manitobans are of Ukrainian ancestry?). Like many of you, I have been glued to the news lately.

Throw in a broken Valve Index VR headset (my unit, of course, died a couple of months after its one-year warranty expired, and Steam has asked me to ship back my headset and cables to be replaced with a refurbished, non-warrantied, headset.) Also, Carlos and I have also—finally!—started working on Episode 1 of Season 2 of the Metaverse Newscast, about which I will be sharing more news soon.

I forgot to mention that after 23 months of working from home for my university, this week I finally returned to my office in the library full-time. (The University of Manitoba has a firm vaccine mandate and a KN95 facemask mandate. Faculty, staff, and students were required to upload proof of vaccination to a special, secure website, and students who did not do so were deregistered from their courses this term. U of M is following the science and absolutely not messing around, which makes me feel much more comfortable coming in to work every day!)

I’m juggling a lot of balls at the moment
(photo by alexey turenkov on Unsplash)

I’m juggling a lot at the moment. All of this is my very long-winded way of saying: don’t expect a whole lot of blogposts from me over the next few weeks. I’ll do my level best to stay on top of all the news and events happening in the metaverse, but no promises 😉

Thanks to my readers and followers for your continued support and engagement! And you are welcome to join the RyanSchulz.com Discord server, with 650 passionate members, representing every social VR platform and virtual world! We discuss, debate and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and all the companies building it, and we’d love to have you participate (or, if you prefer, just lurk and learn!).