Second Life releases viewer code

This actually was announced Monday, but I couldn’t decide what approach to take when talking about the fact that Linden Labs has released the code for their Second Life client into the wild. I decided to go with…

This means a couple of things:

1) Second Life will become more robust as open source coders who are in Second Life will definitely support the cause of a more immersive VR, and

2) content specific Second Life clones are sure to surface with a reverse engineered server-side

But why should folks in the geospatial arena give a hoot. Well, one educational example, Second Life navigation is map based, whether you are walking or are transporting, you can keep up with where you are, and learn a little about spatial relationships in the software (compare the number of kids in Scouts doing orienteering to the number running around virtual worlds these days). With the opening of the code, new, better, more interesting and interactive maps could be created. Mash-ups on the Second Life world map anyone, maybe use GeoRSS with the inworld Second Life coordinate system. I don’t know, there seem to be a few things that would help (unintentionally of course) to teach spatial concepts and to continue to increase the visibility of geospatial technologies.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Second Lifers get hands on code

Second Life releases viewer code

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