I’d read about this, but never before experienced the agony first-hand. Extracting funds from SL, the wait for funds to arrive at PayPal was a bit slow. In fact, in the time it took funds to go from Linden to PayPal, a bamboo shoot in my back yard could have grown taller than me (that’s my RL not SL height!), and would have been over 2 meters tall. Anyway, Process Credits are quite lacking in symmetry with how quickly credit charges can flow into the Linden realm.
During this week of waiting my random prims have been cleared out from Amida and nary a trace of Berkurodam BART Station remains besides a video in Gualala. The video screen was actually entombed by a neighbor, who may not like it but did not send any message.
Anyway–for me this week is all about generating maps and graphics while keeping up with work. I’ve generated a 50cm terrain grid for parts of my county where perhaps 150,000 people live. With computational process improvements I should be able to make production stable enough to generate a 25cm grid. The point is to model terrain slope and aspect within urban parcels. OpenSim can pack 64 terrain megaprim sculpties over each region to refine terrain more than the built-in 1-meter postings, and display 10cm orthoimagery at full resolution.
Last year, I used first-return LiDAR data of the UC Berkeley campus to generate a 25cm grid for 10cm imagery. Now, I’m working with bare-earth LiDAR data from FEMA, topographic contours (densified to 1.5m vertex spacing), and most importantly, photogrammetric terrain and water break lines.
Throwing all those data into the mix, the data are built into an ESRI Terrain Dataset, from which I generate TIN and GRID models at various reolution and extent. The ESRI ArcGIS 3D Analyst Terrain-to-TIN generator breaks down after about 10 mega-faces (so would I…) And the ArcGIS Terrain-to-GRID generator seems to drift into Windows-unconsciousness after about 1.0 giga-cells. So for the grid, I break it down and do the pieces, then merge the tiles using ERDAS Imagine, because the ESRI ArcGIS raster mosaic function does not produce output grids much over 10 GB. As annoying as learning these ArcGIS limits can be, it is very satisfying (and instructive) to see huge swaths of seamless terrain with great detail once it all comes together. Thanks to the break lines, many driveways and most home building site cuts and fills are resolved. And it will be a lot of terrain by OpenSim standards–enough to calibrate terrain for over 20,000 contiguous regions–not that I ever expect to build it all at 1:1 scale!
Not to ever underestimate the value of a good location, I’m happily Linden$ed-out and set free of tier starting next month. Somehow the word got out:
Large parcels help to market themselves
After a 32-month run of parcel ownership in Gualala, Vitersonus, Amida, and finally Stanford, I’m keeping a postage stamp in Gualala, a boat ramp in Amida, and a tiny refuge in beautiful Stanford. A few of my favorite prims remain here and there, granted clemency for the moment by Governor Linden.
Sometime, it just isn’t worth it. Such is my new view of tier, in the context of what matters to me with immersive 3D and GIS. For about six months I’ve continued my hold on some land in the classic Stanford sim of Second Life, without quite being able to work out the boundary changes to just barely squeeze in a 1:1 scale model of a single large building. Even if I had been able to get the parcel into the shape that I needed, I still would not be able to model the structure’s dome with a prim that naturally had the large radius required. Not everyone is trying to model a Frank Lloyd Wright public building; perhaps the land can be better used by someone else with an architectural focus.
I’m scaling back ownership this week to the tier-free 512 square meter level in Second Life. I’m also building up a freshly configured Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope 32-bit server (dual 3.4 GHz Xeon – 4 GB, HP DL360 G4) to do some more serious sort of work with OpenSim. In the past five months I’ve developed some terrain data that can handily provide 1-meter postings over more than 500 square miles. With that much to publish, I really need much, much more than 1/8 of a sim, even a suberbly cool sim like Stanford.
View of beautiful Stanford sim with pond features
The orange area is available at L$20/square meter
So if anyone reading this has use for a great 7520 (< 1/8 sim) mainland location in Second Life with over 40 meters of terrain sculptability, it’s available for L$20/square meter. Discount available for OpenSim community members or known GIS people. With the world’s economy as challenged as it seems to be, I’ve decided that it’s time to focus on where things matter most, and for me now that’s OpenSim more exclusively.
I’ve been waiting for some property boundary issues to resolve in SL, and it’s sort of pitiful to see how long that can take. It’s with ever more regret that I find myself on the Mainland. But that hasn’t kept lots of real-world interesting stuff from taking shape.
The following video is not new. In fact it’s about a year old, but somehow I hadn’t seen it until tonight and I found it somewhat encouraging. Thanks for O’Reilly and Where 2.0 for bringing these two on stage together!
And the following pean to Google Earth did inspire me, personally. Hey, I was reading road maps at 5, covered my wall completely with National Geographic maps at 10, learned to navigate with nautical charts at 12, read aeronautical charts and completed an urban planning project at 14. Sometimes, it’s fun in rare moments when it’s dark overcast and I’m in an exotic place for the first time and I don’t know the way north; more often, I’ll savor the feeling of knowing which way is north while dreaming.
Meanwhile, back at the lab, the global set of county terrain is being compiled into an ESRI Terrain Dataset. This will include over 360 million masspoints, merging both interpolated 2-foot interval contour vertices together with FEMA LiDAR mass points, plus break lines and waterlines from photogrammetry. The goal is to use the ESRI Terrain data as a format to stage everything together to produce 30cm grid interval DEM in the urban areas. With luck, we’ll have that ready about the time that the latest photo mosaic finally gets loaded into ArcSDE successfully. Maybe grids from the Terrain can help create very detailed 3D county models. Hey Wei – we still have inverted terrain in Google Earth at the quarry on San Pedro Point! ;^)
As my patience with Second Life wanes, and I wait for more architectural input for my next SL build project, I have a dark OpenSim server with no fixed IP. I’m having stability issues with the Linux SL client, but have upgraded the workstation to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. Google Earth client there is more stable, the NVidia drivers install themselves (sans Envy), and everything Ubuntu-wise seems to be getting incrementally better by the quarter.
I’m grinding some large images that have taught me that one very special difference between Windows XP variants and Windows Server 2003 is the latter’s ability to open files on the high side of 80 GB. I’d never quite realized it before but the moderately massive mosaics that I have created in years past (edging toward 250 GB single files) actually depended on Server 2003 to get created. Once the destination file exists, then XP can take it from there, and in all cases Windows Explorer can copy the monster files. But in that tenuous moment when a mosaic first grabs its space on disk for a huge output—one can’t seem to do that with XP.
So while I’m enjoying Google Earth on Ubuntu, there is something cool that I go back to Windows for, and that’s the new Google Earth browser plug-in. Since I’m gaining a bit of facility with the keyboard shortcuts in the full-stop Earth client, these all carry over to the plugin. My first test page has been stood up here and I’ve been deep into four continents with it so far. I understand that the plugin is only available for Windows and Mac systems at this time. If you can, Enjoy!
Also, as I get even faster with my keyboard navigation of G-Earth, I’ve actually seen some artifacts that are quite familiar from OpenSim. While zipping about between the Gulf of Yakutat and Canada’s Mount Logan, at certain viewing elevations I can accelerate the point of view forward quite fast. Doing so in this very mountainous terrain, I saw blocks of terrain standing up along what look like sim edges, resolving in a few seconds as more (sculpty?) bumpmap arrives. This is the same sort of artifact I’ve seen with terrain sculpties and sometimes, with region crossings in OpenSim. Also, I’ve found a couple of wild terrain grid errors in G-Earth. In one, a quarry dug hundreds of feet below sea level, right next to the sea, is displayed as positive elevation (absolute-value terrain, anyone?). In another, a boundary between US and Canadian terrain has a glacier flowing uphill onto a plateau. Go figure. Blame Canada! ;^)
Terrain has been in the mix for me quite a bit these past four weeks. I’ve worked on pushing ESRI ArcGIS 3D Analyst to its limits of masspoint digestibility, trying hard to bring everything into focus at the same time that everything is sinking down to NAVD88 datum. An abundant set of waterlines and terrain breaklines have helped to make possible some terrain models that appear to be as good as any one is likely to get from photogrammetric data. As with LiDAR source, I’m working toward a 30cm gridding interval to sample any reasonable-looking TIN models.
One fascinating aspect of the terrain model is where it ends. There appears to be a new 1:1200 or 1:4800 shoreline that can be sussed out of some combination of 2.5-foot elevation waterlines, 2-foot elevation contours, and related artifacts. In fact, it’s a great patchwork of artifacts that must be stringed together. In the tidal flat areas, there is also plenty of need for validation with multiple photos (hopefully shot at times of lower tides).
Adding to the data bulk there’s a new ortho in town, 30cm natural color flown just about two years ago. There’s hope of extracting it from the grip of California HARN coordinates after it is all mosaicked.
As part of the ongoing mainland cleanup, the abandoned Berkurodam site has been restored to its natural state. Governor Linden has packed the BART station safely into my Lost & Found folder, and she’s made an attractive -looking open space where once there was a highly urbanized build.
When notified of the demolition, we dispatched SIMGIS.com intern Rat Dawg to the site to investigate–and managed to capture the investigation on machinima:
The terrain forge was fired up tonight, and the virtual dump truck made dozens of runs into immersive reality. Compared with OpenSim where terrain megaprims can be fine-tuned to the precise size requirement, in Second Life I must back-calculate the scale from actual terrain sculpties. Apparently my trusty Gene Replacement 40-meter spheres can be induced into 35.70-meter terrain blocks, using the method I developed for use in Level 2 OpenSim build of UC Berkeley. This version 0.9 of the terrain made some mis-calculations about the ultimate size of the top sections of each sculpted prim. Look for better scale control with version 0.91 soon!
view Sly in RL, vu Ely in SL, northerly Stanford region
closer look at drive-under location ("first arch")
There’s some progress on a couple of project fronts. I’ve started assembling some USGS terrain for a 1:10 scale Level 1 build that could involve more OpenSim regions than I’ve ever stood up on one machine before. Snapshot of progress is here, with a goal of 304 OpenSim regions for the model. I expect that the OpenSim server will be re-imaged and a new build attempted in the next couple of weeks.
Vicinity of Colorado Springs, CO - with a full mile of terrain elevation subtracted
The site design for the Marin Civic Center build in Second Life Stanford region is also moving along with its target 1/8 region (two SL acres) based on RL terrain and building at 1:1 scale Level 3 build. Progress sketch below:
Context model data of terrain for Civic Center Administration Building
A bit more can be reviewed by looking at the PDF of the same map here.cc_topo_20090211
Finally, a sky tag has been added to the space above the build. It is visible as a streak to anyone who visits SLURL.com by a mouse roll. The Stanford region now has a large “MARIN” visible in its upper reach, squarely in the middle of the ancient Second Life Outlands.
Reading more than writing these past couple of days, I have really felt both an in-world and RL sadness to know that Robin Linden is leaving the Lab. My first use of the SL client was in 2006 10, so I’m not much of an SL oldie, although I was at Burning Man ‘98 and ‘99 like certain key Linden folks (who I don’t recall meeting there!)
Since my 2006 embrace of Second Life, and more recently, I have benefited from, experienced, and valued Robin’s ability to bind together for Linden Lab three organizational traits in Silicon Valley culture into an attractive whole: 1) the heartless drive for competitive productivity, 2) shameless brilliance in relevant technical matters, and 3) a human warmth in the old-school California style. People don’t learn to braid those strands together well without a solid education and (plural) decades of diverse work experience, IMHO. Really. Any appearance to the contrary I’d assert as either brief good fortune, or marketing hyperbole with short legs.
Anyway, with 650 square miles of simulator space, 80,000 concurrent users, and a willingness to explore new business directiions, some good things are happening. Perhaps this is the dawning of the age of Linden Lab 2.0 and a wilful departure from start-up style? It is my hope that by selecting a new executive team with less in-world experience, Linden Lab may grow more open to new applications of Second Life Grid technology, particularly applications that are disjoint from a vast, contiguous user-generated content space. Perhaps?
