Mariis' digitale refleksioner

On Ogle Earth I read about an interesting project in SL, where an accurate map of Sweden had been made, so I decided to go see for myself ..

And wauw .. Sweden 3D Map is worth visiting!

Here I stand in Germany looking at Scandinavia!

The creator is Magnuz Binder/Magnuz of Sweden an engineer, scientist, teacher, programmer, designer, artist and much more, from Stockholm, Sweden. And lukcky me! While I was walking around taking pictures Magnuz himself showed up, and I had the chance to ask him about the project …

Chatting with Magnuz of Sweden

Magnuz tells me that he spent about 50-60 hrs. building the map, and he continues:

But I’m still working on it. The neighboring country flags are new for today, as is the possibility to walk around here without stumbling on all those sculpted prims that forms the topography.

I aim at adding a search/browse and marker function for the municipalities/cities markers. I already added the capacity in the markers, but the interface isn’t done yet.

Plus, I hope to be able to add animated models of the major traffic routes, like railroads, roads, coastal carriers and airlines.

I ask Magnuz, how he expects people to use his map, and he answers:

Well, it could be one example of a tool in geography classes. I aim at building a small portfolio of interactive teaching aids here in SL, to give people some inspiration about what can be done.

I especially like the possibility to build “4D models”: 3D models where the watcher can slide the time ruler to see how things develop. I hope to be able to build some of those soon. Like cell division, evolution of buildings or cities, and such.

Magnuz has other ideas with educational puposes:

One idea I have is to build animations of reactions in enzymes. Only the active site then, since the whole molecule would cost too many prims. And of course the viewer would control the pace of the reaction, giving possibilities to stop or rewind it at interesting steps.

Magnuz also gave me some details on his scripting process, but since I don’t know anything about that, I suggest contacting Magnuz for further info on that topic ;-)

Magnuz has build other things in SL, e.g. a planetarium and it turns out that he’s quite interested in astronomy. You’ll find a newsletter about this on his website (click on Second Life).

I really was quite happy when leaving Magnuz – it’s just so great and satifying meeting people, who seriously try to use SL in both innovative and educational ways .. Yeah! I’ll be back to visit more of Magnuz’ creations :-)

/Mariis