Second Life isnt the standard two-dimensional web. It is web 3-D.
Its mesmerizing, immersive, and inherently social, but its also
perplexing and intimidating, clunky, and occasionally slow.
Second Life is different from gaming environments because nearly
everything you see is created by the sites users. Residents use 3-D
modeling language to build houses, trees, streets, and furniture.
These tools also can be used by training professionals to
illustrate technical concepts in powerful new ways.
One of the advantages of Second Life is that you can manipulate the
sense of scale and perspective, says Chuck Hamilton, director of
the IBM@Play program at IBMs Center for Advanced Learning. You can
crawl around a big oil rig or fly around a network diagram.
Paul Steinberg, project manager at Intel Software Solutions Group,
finds these modeling capabilities useful for various skill training
challenges.
We can miniaturize large systems like our digital health solutions
with remote access, he says, or blow up a computer chip.