Food for thoughts in these troublesome times

[ChinRey]

I know this is not strictly speaking SL related but at least it starts with some pictures of SL models.

I'm working on an insane project right now, finish all the unfinished houses that have accumulated in my inventory over the years. Two of them really got me to think of all those discussion with people worrying about covid and what comes after.

Here's one:

This is a model of an Anderson Shelter in RL size - and my avatar beside it is also RL size.  It was build to house a family of four. Not as permanent accomodations of course - they were bomb shelters used by London families during the Blitz - but imagine spending night after night with your mom and dad and an obnoxious sibling crammed inside this.

Here's another one:

This is a Dutch kooihuis. In Norway we would call it a koie or a bu. I don't know if there is an English word for it, a crofter's cottage would be a mansion by comparasion. It may actually be a bit larger than RL size. It's based partly on an old prim replica by F. J. Giesbert, partly on photos i found on the internet and what I know in general about such houses so I don't have the exact measurements.

These houses were not just residental, they were combined workshops and sleeping quarters for workers of various kinds. Nowegian lumberjacks would spend half the year with four, five, six or more of them crammed up in a koie (theirs were made from logs rather than stone of course).

This is not ancient history. Some people people here may have experienced that time themselves, most of us have parents who did and all of us have grandparents. And of course, there are parts of the world where this isn't history at all but very much the present.

2020 is a troublesome year and the worst is probably yet to come. But even now, think of how privileged we still are compared to our ancestors. At least we are in the western world.

---

On a side note, there are a few museums in SL where people can go to experience and learn about the past in ways that isn't possible outside virtual reality. But why aren't there more such places? It's too late now of couse but am I the only one to think it was a big mistake to overlook that potential use for a virtual world?

Edited April 14, 2020 by ChinRey

[Paul Hexem]

On 4/14/2020 at 6:40 AM, ChinRey said:

But why aren't there more such places?

Most people, in SL or otherwise, are too dumb to appreciate places like that. They'd be money sinks with very few visitors. 

[Rhonda Huntress]

Lots of topics lately have been reminding me of my early years ...

I never called it home but I have spent more then one night under an overpass.

 

Your post also reminds me of the housing booms just after WWII.  Lots of quonset huts and shotgun shacks went up all over.  Not that I actually remember those days but the "victory villages" left over were still common when I was young.  These were intended for couples and returning vets and were usually 2 room affairs.  One bathroom and one kitchen/living/sleeping area.

[sirhc DeSantis]

Sure. My grandad had a sister (that I never met obs) who died in an Anderson while he was elsewhere being a  fire warden during an incendiary bombing.

Go for it. Mean that too BTW

[Madelaine McMasters]

There's barely enough room in that Anderson for your hair, Chin!

I've got an old "two holer" between my barn and the lake. In my youth I used it to change clothes before/after swimming and sometimes went out there to read. I can't imagine sharing that space with anyone. It has seen better days...

Edited April 15, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Scylla Rhiadra]

On 4/14/2020 at 6:40 AM, ChinRey said:

On a side note, there are a few museums in SL where people can go to experience and learn about the past in ways that isn't possible outside virtual reality. But why aren't there more such places? It's too late now of couse but am I the only one to think it was a big mistake to overlook that potential use for a virtual world?

You've been to the London 1940 parcel at the Time Portal, right? It depicts London during the Blitz. And it's very good.

[ChinRey]

10 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

Most people, in SL or otherwise, are too dumb to appreciate places like that. They'd be money sinks with very few visitors. 

They would with SL's land prices. I'm sure they would be organisations and people who would be willing to sponsor such projects though.

But there there are three other closely related problems. To really experience a replica of a historical site we need first person point of view, we need builds in RL scale and we need realistic walking speed. The first two can be solved relatively easy but the last one is much trickier and without it the first two don't really mean much.

If you read this before autoreturn eats my setup (or after I've re-rezzed it - I do that once or twice a day while I'm working on this project), go to Mesh Sandbox 2 on the beta grid, jump up to 30/140/1001 and try to walk around inside this in mouselook:

This is a 160 m2 fairly modern bungalow built to scale. Not a particularly big house but not small either.

Notice how you keep crashing into walls and missing doroways. And of course, the house isn't even furnished with extra obstacles yet. (You can try it at your own RL home too if you dare: try moving around at a brisk jogging speed. Don't blame me for the bruises and broken bones though.) I don't really see a solution to that, movement speed is so deeply ingrained into the core of the software and the habit of experienced SL'ers. I know the CtrlAltStudio has a hack to solve it (it's VR headset based so it simply can't work with regular SL walking speed) but it's a very crude one that is likely to cause serious load problems if it's applied on a large scale.

Of course, SL's skewed and uneven perspective is also a serious limitation to how convincingly it can emulate RL scenarios. All of this are serious negative factors for its usability, not onyl for historical presentation but for all "serious" and "professional" 3D applications. It can't really be "fixed" and probably whuoldn't be either at this late stage.

[Cindy Evanier]

On 4/14/2020 at 11:40 AM, ChinRey said:

This is a model of an Anderson Shelter in RL size - and my avatar beside it is also RL size.  It was build to house a family of four. Not as permanent accomodations of course - they were bomb shelters used by London families during the Blitz - but imagine spending night after night with your mom and dad and an obnoxious sibling crammed inside

Slight derail but I was catching up on on tv yesterday and saw a young couple on BBC's Garden Rescue who were determined to keep the Anderson Shelter in their garden.   The whole garden was done in a festival type theme and the Anderson Shelter became a chill out zone

Edited April 16, 2020 by Cindy Evanier

[ChinRey]

46 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

Slight derail but

I think this is going to turn into a derail thread.

 

47 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

The whole garden was done in a festival type theme and the Anderson Shelter became a chill out zone

Aww, that look lovely!

I suppose it means I have to redo my build though, split off the end walls as separate meshes so the tunnel can be used this way.

[Da5id Weatherwax]

On 4/14/2020 at 11:40 AM, ChinRey said:

This is a Dutch kooihuis. In Norway we would call it a koie or a bu. I don't know if there is an English word for it, a crofter's cottage would be a mansion by comparasion.

Up here in haggis-land, we call it a Bothy.