Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

In late 2008, the US Army made the headlines in a number of on-line periodicals such as Wired, when it announced the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) was opening a “recruitment island” in Second Life, hoping to tap into the “4 million” users of the platform (yes, this was the era of hype about SL) into signing-up through a mixture of promotion and tchotchkes.

While that announcement was met with sniggers by some of the press reporting on it, it actually masked the fact that the US military had been engaged in evaluating Second Life as a platform for modelling, simulation and training (MS&T) activities for more than a year.

This work was centred on a group of regions called MiLands – Military Lands – which at their height (2009-2010) were made up of around 30 regions, split between the four major branches of the US military: Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine Corps. Such was the US military presence, Linden Lab assigned Scott Linden to manage the regions and liaise with the US Department of Defense in its use of SL.

Within those regions, Coalition Island, established (2009), was created to offer a public point of access to the US Military’s use of second Life. Today, it remains as a piece of Second Life’s early history – although it could in all honestly do with a little TLC as parts of it have not weathered the passage of time too well.

At its heart is a large pentagonal area – the symbolism here fairly obvious! On four of its sides, this presents photographs of each of the four military branches mentioned above Brownstone paths radiate each to lead to informational displays on how each branches was using SL – although both the Army and Air Force displays look more recruitment oriented, and the US Marine Corps is now conspicuous in its absence. The US Coastguard also gets a passing nod, with a small inshore patrol RHIB moored to one side of the island.

The fifth side of the pentagon comprises a broad set of steps once used for presentations (and now somewhat disconcertingly inhabited by three disembodied heads). At the top of these is the island’s former greeting / conference / meeting centre, the upper floor of which contains the Second Life US Military Coalition Charter, covering the aims and use of the former MiLands regions.

Close to main conference centre is a display by Team Orlando, a collaborative alliance of U.S. military organisations working in modelling, simulation and training using a number of platforms including – back in 2009-2010 – Second Life.

While I was unaware of Team Orlando’s use of Second Life, thanks to Dr. Douglas Maxwell (Maccus McCullough in SL, and also the founder of he in-world group RL United States Military in SL), I had originally become aware of attempts by the US military to use Second Life as an MS&T platform, back in 2011.

As a civilian contractor, Dr. Maxwell was employed at the Navy’s Virtual Reality laboratories in Washington DC, and in 2008 he was asked to head-up the work in establishing a 12-region campus in Second Life to be used by the Navy Undersea Warfare Centre (NUWC) for training and simulations.

It is a computationally steerable persistent simulation. The capabilities in here are tremendous: in-situ scripting, terrain deformation in real-time, every object is composable, not static. We got the idea that if we could increase the fidelity of the physics in here, it could actually be very useful.

Dr. Douglas Maxwell discussing NUWC’s use of SL in 2008

Maxwell’s involvement with the military use of Second Life expanded in 2009 when he became the Science and Technology Manager at the US Army’s Simulations Training and Technology Centre (STTC), also looking to make use of Second Life. This came at a time when Linden Lab was engaged in the (ultimately ill-fated for a variety of reasons) development of the “standalone” (or perhaps more accurately, the “behind your firewall”) Second life Enterprise (SLE) product, and Maxwell and his team were steered towards SLE as a potential solution to their needs.

In fact, Maxwell’s team found SLE to be highly conducive to their work thanks to a greater freedom of control over the simulator software and capabilities than could be achieved with the “public” SL product. This allowed them to develop a number of feature-rich training simulations to help train troops in advance of their deployment to Afghanistan.

Nor was the STTC alone in the use of SLE – the US Navy invested in it, at one point filing a US government FBO request for the purchase of up to 70 SLE support licences for the product, worth in the region of an initial US $3.5 million, had it been approved.

But before that came to pass, Linden Lab opted to discontinue the development of Second Life Enterprise, thus ending US military interest in the product. For Douglas Maxwell and the STTC, this meant taking the lessons they had learnt and applying them to building a simulation environment using OpenSimulator (see: MOSES: the US Army’s OpenSim exercise).

Whether or not the ending of SLE development was also the cause of other branches of the US military stepping back from experimenting with Second Life, I cannot in all honestly say. Today, as far as I’m aware, the US military has little or no official involvement in Second Life. However, Coalition Island today stands window on a time, as short-lived in the scheme of things though it might have been, when Second Life was being looked at seriously as a platform for training and simulation, and so it remains as an integral part of the platform’s history.

SLurl Details

• Coalition Island (rated General)

Caitlyn and I have long enjoyed visiting the Lost Unicorn regions held by Natalie Montagne and designed by Noralie78. The designs offered within them have been the most captivating of any within Second Life. Sadly, as I reported in The closing of a Storybook in Second Life in March 2020, one of the region designs – Storybook Forest  – went away, although in a kind-of compensation, Noralie78 went on to design Finian’s Dream, also held by Natalie (see A touch of Celtic magic in Second Life).

But, and as the saying goes, you just can’t put a good book down, so Storybook Forest is once again back; this time with a new name – a simple Storybook -, a slightly different approach and entirely the work of Natalie, who announced the new design in her blog on June 26th, 2020:

I have been working on and just recently completed my first attempt at building a region all on my own. I had a lot of fun and am pretty excited about it and am ready to share it with everyone 🙂 Remember Storybook Forest at Lost Unicorn? This is an all new version … now called Storybook. It is above the gallery region, Faerie Tale.

– Natalie Montagne, Lost Unicorn Gallery blog

As a sky build, Natalie has been able to combine the new design almost seamlessly with a mountainous region surround. This gives the real feeling that this is – to coin a phrase used in relation to fairy tales – a land far, far away, something which the ground-level Storybook Forest couldn’t achieve to the same degree. A further difference between this design and that past iteration is that this includes a number of rentals properties that present people with the chance to live within a fairytale setting, and of which more anon.

Visitors initially arrive at a landing point sitting on its own – a click of the storybook there will carry them onwards to the setting itself, delivering them to a small town setting that may at first look quite ordinary. But again, as a saying goes – looks can be deceptive. A mouse looking a little like Stuart Little awaiting a tour guide stands close to the landing point; down the street, another mouse is carrying a try of drinks and cakes in the café; the street, an antlered jackalope enjoys a cup of hot chocolate while another bunny is preparing to take a photograph – perhaps of the little robot trundling down the street or perhaps of Mary Poppins, who is dropping in via umbrella overhead (so much so that it’s hard not to hear the melody of A Spoonful of Sugar as she drifts in).

The little town marks the heart of the setting – and the detail that has been poured into it: as well as the characters on the streets, the little shops are all given furnishing and décor entirely within the contexts of a storybook setting; but it what lies beyond it that gives the land its soul. The T-shaped streets all end in tall wrought iron gates, neatly splitting the land into three area of exploration: south and east, north and west, and westwards, with the first two – south and east and north and west – having paths that loop through them to return to the little town fairly close to the landing point.

Which route you take is entirely a matter of choice: all three offer much to see, although the forest itself lies through the gates that sit to the west, within an archway of a great castle. Beyond them, steps descend into the forest, mist snaking among the trees, the paths between the tall trunks set out with paved slabs of stone, each with a name that reflects the theme to be found along them: Cinderella Way, Brave Boulevard and Snow White St.

Each of these gives a clue as to what lies along them by way of vignettes. Those familiar with the past iteration of Storybook Forest will be pleased to note that here – and elsewhere – familiar characters from that build can still be found, although some are now offered in a new aspect of their story, as is the case with Snow White. There are also some new characters to be found as well. Follow Brave Boulevard, for example to its twisting end you’ll discover the old woman who lived in a shoe sitting and reading, while her children are at play. Behind them, their shoe (or in this case boot) house rises – and a careful examination will reveal it is one of the units available for rent.

And therein lies the secret of seven rentals here: all of them are offered in a style entirely in keeping with the vignette they may be placed alongside, or the theme of the setting as a whole- shoe, forest cabin, pear house, watchtower and more, none of which interfere with people’s ability to explore.

Elsewhere are other reminders of the previous iterations of the design: Alice is still attending an unusual tea party; the little village of animal houses curves around one of the paths, while books and quotes on stories await discovery.

Within the castle – a new addition that forms a gallery space – the Wonderland theme continues on the lower floor with the Red Queen / Queen of Hearts waits. Through its halls, floors and towers can be found more of the Storybook Forest characters, offered in reflection of the art on display: interpretations of Peter Pan (while Captain Hook’s ship floats over the region), Cinderella, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, making for a visit in its own right.

The new design offers a setting that captures much of the magic of the original whilst offering something new – a new chapter in Storybook’s tale.

SLurl Details

• Storybook (Faerie Tale, rated Moderate)