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3D Weather Data Visualization in Second Life

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Oct 29, 2006 08:22 AM
from the because-you-can dept.
Role Playing (Games) Technology Science
An anonymous reader noted that the Second Life media blitz continues by saying that "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) with Aimee Weber Studio just unrolled a sneak preview of their educational project in Second Life (due to open in mid November). This appetizer of things to come features the three dimensional visualization of live weather (now on display at the Science Center)." Don't go there expecting that they have like every doppler radar in the US updating in realtime or anything, but it's actually a practical real use for Second Life.
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  • Practical? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mateo_LeFou (859634) on Sunday October 29 2006, @08:30AM (#16631446) Homepage
    This is the easiest way to find out of it's cold outside?
  • This has been around for ages and in much higher resultion. It's called a window.
  • Ok, I must admit, the way they represent it in Second Life is interesting. Symbolic, not realistic, but sometimes symbolization is simply more efficient than realism.

    US weather radar layers for Google Earth [gearthblog.com].
    3D pseudo-real-time global clouds layer for Google Earth [gearthblog.com].
    And while we're at it, weather radar data for Canada [ec.gc.ca].

    Oh yeah.. you can't use GE at work (as clearly specified in the license), so use the great (and open source) NASA World Wind instead [nasa.gov].
    • Not in video games!

      Take your hippie ways back to the 60's and leave my virtual worlds alone.

      I want cutting edge, razor sharp, earth shatter reality.... and I want it to gut your belly so I can watch the virtual steam rise from the wound.

      Now, off with you and your voodoo symbology!
    • WeatherBonk http://www.weatherbonk.com/ [weatherbonk.com] has a dynamic data layer for Google Earth with realtime temperature observations, webcams, radar, and alerts.
  • So I have to wait until afterlife in order to use it?
    What about a solution which already works during first life?
  • Has anyone actually used it? It's primitive at best and quite frankly looks unfinished and abandoned by the developers. I'll repeat what I wrote before here about Second Life:

    I've tried this out several times. It's free and even THEN it's not worth it. Now I have about the quickest high-speed internet connection and yet it still just sits there for a few minutes downloading everything you walk or fly through. Go to a new place, it starts downloading again....forever.....Ok, so I know it's not all just about
    • This is a joke news, right? The service is the lousiest weather service I have ever seen in my life. No detail whatsoever about the weather and the 3D representation doesn't add any detail neither. It serves no purpose.
      • I'm sure they were bribed... perhaps they were told that the servers run on Linux...
      • In my experience, it's very much like MySpace but in 3D. However, it's a very interesting platform for live music - I've 'attended' a number of gigs there and been impressed with what's going on, and moreso with the potential once the technology catches up.

        It's an interesting platform for lots of other things too, which is what TFA is about. You're comparing it to something that it's not, which explains your confusion.
      • It is amazing crude but also wonderful none the less to think about what it might become.

        It might become another damn waste of time and money. Oh wait; it already is.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          The internet was partly a damn waste of time and money in the early 80s. Just like SL there were stupid areas. I distinctly recall running emacs on a machine at MIT but telnetted to a machine in London. Why? Because I could. And better yet, I tried to summon an elevator to the 9th floor but since I was "in" London I couldn't.

          Waste of time? Certainly. But the hackers who wrote that bit of code? Not a waste of time at all. Second Life is an infant right now, just trying to figure out what is going on.

    • It would have had to have been an invisible dome. You could easly fly over the wall.

      Performance wise I tried that place out. On a dual core 3ghz machine with 4 gigs of ram and a 7900gtx nvidia card it was a bit slow in places. The graphics were nice but it reminded me of a cross between Active Worlds and There. Somehow that cross gave me pretty poor performance although I did have my visual range set to around 120m. I cut it back to 60m and it was slightly better.

      Object creation and manipulation is interest

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't set the network bandwidth at maximum, set it slightly less than your upload speed.

      I guess you never learned to use the search feature either if all you went to was the places with the highest number of people "Popular Places" Don't go there! Would you judge the usefulness of the internet as a whole based on just visiting porn sites? People like you are why I keep begging the Lindens to add the equivalents to "newbie quest givers" to the welcome areas and help islands. So that the people don't "get

    • When you go to a place that DOES have people gathered around usually ends up just being either virtual prostitution or porn. [...] 3D avatars that all look like nymphet women wearing very skimpy clothes [...] I felt like I was in some world that was made 15 years or go or something.

      Sounds great. I can't believe I've been missing all this pr0n! And the graphics ought to be just right for me; all the stuff made after "15 years or go" gives me motion sickness. This ought to be easy on my head and stomach. WooH

    • When you go to a place that DOES have people gathered around usually ends up just being either virtual prostitution or porn.
      What do you mean, just?
      • Actually, if you don't like what's there to offer in Second Life, DON'T USE IT. Why is that so hard to understand? It's not like there aren't any alternative ways to waste your time.
  • I don't get why we get such a disproportionate number of Second Life stories on /.

    For those who have never tried it: don't bother, it's not that cool. Unless you really enjoy 3d modelling and scripting, it offers nothing over regular text chat.

    In 10 years, we'll have the network and the machines to handle everything that the Second Life guys are trying to do, and they'll be hailed as "pioneering" and "ahead of their time". But honestly, it kind of sucks.
  • I tried Second Life again recently expecting to see a lot of improvement since the last time there was some hooplah about it and I was disappointed. This time around, it was pretty much the same thing.

    In the very early days of the Internet there was a project that looks strikingly similar to Second Life - I think it was around 1998 or so and the concept and look and feel was the same. Anyone remember the name? They got a little venture funding and the site never took off - it suffered from the same "Ok,

  • I wouldn't call this project abandoned as much as it is still under development. Reading the previous comments, my answer to having easier ways to find the temperature outside is "YES." :-) I recommend turning on a TV, reading the newspaper, or surfing to a web site of your choosing. This visualization should be considered a beta with the intention of showing what Second Life (or technologies like Second Life) may be capable of in the future. (Slashdotted before prime time, ouch)


    NOAA and ESRL are looking at Second Life as a possible platform for educational outreach as well as visualizing some of our data much of which is inherently 3D rather than 2D. Our island, which will have more of a focus on education rather than data visualization is slated for opening in the middle of November. If you are interested in more information you can visit our web site (also under construction) at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/outreach/sl/ [noaa.gov]


    Eric

  • Second life might be an incredible simulation, but it's far from a game. It is interesting though.

    3d Weather simulation though? I'm sure we've had that in multiple places. a large scale version is Flight simulator X which can now pull live weather data every 15 minutes from Jensen.com (A major flight tool provider). And even better with Flight Sim you see exactly how that works in real life.

    Though how they present it in Second life might be interesting, I'm finding that now it's even less of a game (not
  • I work in Second Life. So I don't feel the need to be a troll and bash anything about it to tell the truth. Slashdot is running too many stories about Second Life. These stories get about 50 replies at most and are usually no more than rehashed press releases like this one or obvious attempts to drum up interest in a Second Life. Slashdot readers have shown through lack of comments that they are not interested in this many stories about this subject. Not to mention it is overexposing a young platform and ev
  • I joined the other day to see what the fuss is all about. And I'm now totally baffled as to what the fuss is all about. I was looking at graphics that hadn't advanced since the hoo-ha about virtual worlds back in the late 90's. Crude and extremely difficult to navigate in a world about as attractive and welcoming as a... well as a graphically rendered world circa 1998. Nasty.

    And the thought of interacting with even more poorly rendered avatars which only represent real humans' own invented alter egos is
  • If you're too busy living your First Life to check out the weather in Second Life, you can always visit the Great Blue Room...
    • I heard some guy put a sun in there, but it's tricky, you can only find it in the daytime, and sometimes, it's hidden behind some clouds! That guy's amazing!
  • It isn't good or bad, its somewhere in between. Sure you could join up, give yourself some supermodel physique and tear ass around the world spouting the same dumb ass crap you would in your normal body. Dur, that's a given.

    What I saw in my first few minutes there was not the NOAA link I originally signed up for...which by the way, kind-of sucks. But I found an International Space Museum that offered crude, but better than I've come across inside views of the space shuttle, Virgin galactic, and even the mon
  • I've been waiting for a live weather layer in Google Earth for months. Makes sense right? Even if the imagery isn't completely up-to-date, the weather in the area is very helpful. Zoom, tilt, rotate, and see where that storm is going to hit! :)
  • At the risk confirming my ignorance, I open my mouth to ask:

    As I understand, "Second Life" (or "SL"), is a "Game"? It is sold by a third-party and uses network servers to allow player? Isn't there a subscription fee for access (besides the outlay for the initial game software)?

    If NOAA is working on a project to display their publicly funded data in a virtual setting, that will be displayed in SL, will people be able to access this data on a "free account" in SL, or is the outcome of this project only access
    • Ignorance confirmed :)

      A quick jaunt to secondlife.com you would have seen a big orange box proclaiming membership is free.

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