Construction Junction Session 5: Sky Building

Session 5 of the Construction Junction workshop introduced us to Sky Building. This simply means to build objects that are positioned above your land in the sky. An example of this is a Sky Box which is some type of platform situated in the sky that can be used as extra space for building, classroom or meeting space.

Our first objective for this session was to discuss purposes for sky building. Some of the reasons for sky builds that came out of this discussion were privacy, increase building space, get away from griefers or people on the ground and allows for division of space (e.g. space divided into content areas/social areas/building areas).

Mali Young then explained to us that privacy in virtual environments like SL is an illusion and that there really is no privacy in SL. Even when communicating in SL there is no privacy unless talking to someone through instant messaging. One question that I have in the privacy issue is, can I not set my land to not allow visitors unless invited? I visited NAIT's (Northern Alberta Institue of Technology) location in SL and I was allowed into the visiting area but I was not allowed into their main campus location. I see this as being able to providing some level of privacy and control as to who can visit your property, if so desired.

The second objective of session 5 was to design and build in the sky. To build above 200 meters in the sky, avatars must wear what are called flight or Ninja feathers. Without these feathers avatars cannot fly higher than 200 meters, however with the feathers avatars can exceed this limit. We learned that most sky builds are between 250 meters and 750 meters. The reason for going above 250 meters is to get out of sight range of people on the ground.

We then completed our first building project for this session, a sky build. To build in the sky you must have a platform to work from. We simply rezzed a cube and sat on it. We then raised it into the sky to approximately 500 meters. At this point we rezzed another cube and stretched it into a platform to stand on. This was the platform from which we would be able to build. Mali then asked us to mark down our coordinates, of the platform, so we could use them for our next project...the teleport system.

We then moved into our final objective and building project for the session...creating a teleport system between two locations. It was explained to us that there are many teleport options and scripts. This includes ones that teleport between 2 locations, between 3 or more locations, across SIMS, etc. The one we used allowed us to teleport between 2 locations. To create it we put the teleport script into the contents folder of the first object or prim located on the lower level. We then modified the script on the lower level teleport with the coordinates of the upper level platform. We then teleported to the upper platform and added the teleport script to the contents folder. We then modified the script by adding the coordinates of the lower platform or prim. One problem that a few of us ran into was not having the proper coordinates for our platform. A couple of times I teleported to open air and fell to the ground. I finally entered the proper coordinates to my platform, into the teleport script, and everything worked fine.

Construction Junction participants working on teleport systems. (photo taken August 19/08)