Mirror Worldlet: Couple create topographic globe with dynamic real world weather (Updated)

Yesterday a man named AM Radio sent me a terse message, imploring me to drop everything and seek out the world that was hovering over the backyard of Zora Spoonhammer and Zee Pixel.  "I don't get impressed much in SL," Mr. Radio said. "This blew me away."  Strong words, especially coming from the man who recreated David's "Death of Marat" in a forest glade, so I teleported off to their place in Areumdeuli (direct teleport here), and was duly impressed. Floating just above a babbling brook and a signpost pointing you to the Curiosity Shop or Jellyfish Heaven was, indeed, a topographic 3D globe of the earth, comprised of sculpted primitives that convey the shape of the continents, the thrusts of the mountain ridges, the fissures along the ocean floor, and the planet's other features.

But then again, to call it a globe is an understatement, which you discover when you enable the viewer's video playback feature, and disable Second Life's clouds, which are a distraction from the true thing.  Because whirling and coursing above Zora Spoonhammer's planet are the earth's cloud layers, taken from real time data.  It's streamed as video on an interlocking, transparent layer just above the globe.  This video shows the phenomenon in action, though at the time I took it, Zora had not finished importing data from various government/resource sites.  "I'm storing historical data to create the animation," she tells me, "so you can see direction of motion of the clouds. Since I just started tracking, it will take about a day before the animation looks smooth. After that, it should be continuous."

In effect, she's created a mini-Google Earth within Second Life itself.  "It's a mash-up of a lot of different data from different sources, so it's a good demonstration of ways to make divergent data accessible to non-technical people," she explains. "In a very collaborative way, as well. It's easier to have group discussions about geography in SL than over Google Earth, for example. It's more an experiment than anything."

Perhaps, but it's easy to see practical applications emerging.  I ask her which she'd like to see, and she has to think about that. 

"Gosh, I'm not sure," she says. "I'd really like to see maybe some kind of classroom use, though... maybe some kind of geography wiki of sorts. If I can get the tracking data to work, I'd also like to get a bunch of satellites up here. I don't think most people realize how crowded our skies really are."

It should be added that Zee Pixel helped Zora develop Sculpty Earth, but when I ask him to pose for a screenshot with her, he attempts to flee to Antarctica.

Zee Pixel and Zora Spoonhammer

"Come back up here!" Zora Spoonhammer shouts after him, before he disappears over the horizon.  "He's my husband in real life. He's silly that way.”  She’s a developer in the game industry, she explains, “and I think some of it is women in games don't get a lot of recognition in the industry as is. So he's sensitive to that.”  On the other hand, few men have wives who build dynamic planets in their spare time.

Zora's FAQ for Sculpty Earth below, with important info on visiting and viewing Sculpty Earth.

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About “Sculpty Earth”
(Click this link for a direct teleport to location)

FAQ by Zora Spoonhammer, lightly edited by Hamlet

The Second Life Clouds are Blocking the Sculpty Earth Clouds! Help?

You can turn off cloud rendering from the Client menu. Select Client > Rendering > Types > Clouds. If you don't have a Client menu, you can press Control-Alt-D to enable it.

How Do I See the Clouds?

To see current cloud data, you need to turn on parcel media. There's a media\movie button on your toolbar, near where you enter chat messages. Click the circle with the right-arrow in it to play.

Sculpty primitives convey geologic elevation etc.

Is Sculpty Earth Based on Real Data?

Yes. Sculpty Earth is based on actual satellite photography and geological survey elevation data. The elevation data has been exaggerated to make it easier to see.

Is It Possible to Do a Higher Resolution Version?

Yes... but it’s not very practical, at least not yet.

The C++ program used to process the data is able to handle full-resolution geodata by processing it in tiles. (FYI: that’s a horse load of data… more than a 32-bit computer can address in a single memory segment, hence the need for tiling.) That said, you could easily consume all the prims on an entire sim, and still not display the whole thing pixel for pixel.

Originally, I started with a much higher resolution version of the Earth--although still much lower resolution than the data I had available--however, on most video cards the viewer frame rate was unacceptably slow.

Sooner than have my neighbors beat me for putting up lag-planet, I opted for a more lightweight version that hopefully still has enough detail to be interesting.

Why Is SL Slower? Google Earth Does It

While there are certainly many optimizations that can be made to the SL viewer, the truth is that because the SL viewer is a general-purpose renderer it will likely never be as fast as a task-specific renderer like Google Earth. This is for the same reason that NASCAR vehicles turn left faster than street cars, but are in trouble if they have to turn right. It’s always possible to take optimizations that would never work in the more general case when you know exactly what your dataset will be.

However, SL lets you do a lot of other things that wouldn’t be so easy with other tools. Earth mapping in Second Life still makes a lot of sense, because you can use maps in SL in collaborative ways that other applications aren’t as well suited to. Second Life’s real power is the ability to work in groups.

Where Did You Get the Data?

Elevation data used to generate the sculpt maps is from the US Geological Survey. Additional elevation data is from NASA:
http://www.usgs.gov/
http://seamless.usgs.gov/

High-resolution satellite photography of the Earth’s surface is provided by NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation project.

Real-time cloud data is provided by University of Dundee, courtesy the xplanet team. Alternatively, cloud data is available from the Space Science and Engineering Center.

If you’re interesting in learning more about the different kinds of data involved and how to process it, Chris Hoffman--who has done some wonderful planetary renders with POV-Ray--has a very detailed explanation of both the data involved and how to process it, as well as some important commentary about the different types of data available. I would highly recommend reading Chris’s site if you are interested in doing your own Earth project.

How Often is the Cloud Data Updated?

Animated cloud sequences depict the last 24-hours of weather activity. Satellite data is updated every three hours.

How Was the Model Created?

A custom-written C++ program was used to process the raw source data and convert it to a format that could be imported into Second Life. An LSL helper script was used to generate the planet from the imported data.

Is There an Easy Way to Make My Own Landscape Models? I Don’t Code.

In fact, yes.

AC3D is an excellent 3D modeling program for beginners, with very good support for Second Life. It also has support for importing Terragen terrain files. Many locations around the world are already available for free download in Terragen format; Terragen itself is also able to import DEM files and other elevation formats.

Here are the steps in a nutshell:

1)    Import your .ter file into AC3D
2)    Export from AC3D as a normalized sculpted prim
3)    Upload the sculpt map and any texture you want to apply into Second Life
4)    Set your sculpt mode to “planar” with llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "uuid", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_PLANAR); Replace “uuid” with the UUID of your sculpt map, which you can find by right-clicking the texture in your inventory and selecting “Copy UUID”

You’ll find AC3D here:
http://www.inivis.com/

If you have AC3D questions, please post to the AC3D forums. I check messages there a lot more regularly; and even when I don’t, there’s a lot of other smart, nice people on the forums who might be able to help you out.

Enjoy Sculpty Earth!!

Zora Spoonhammer

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Music for the video is "Eden" by Torley Linden, available here.

UPDATE, 11/15:  Replaced original video with updated version which includes fuller demonstration of dynamic weather.

Comments

[Sin Trenton]

This is simply amazing. Unfortunately I am working (supposed to work) right now, but as soon as I can log in, I have to get there.

I wonder if it could be done for smaller areas, like countries or like the EU, for instance. One vision would be to have several specialised maps/"slices" and get them linked.

A very nice thing for educators in SL.
Not to mention next time someone snicker that SL is just for cybering, point them in this direction.

[Torley]

This does look astounding! I wanna visit!

[Bettina Tizzy]

Why oh why don't SLers DIGG things? If more did, we could DIGG this incredible story right onto the front page of major newspapers and magazines all over the world. This is NEWS peeps. Get DIGGING! It's easy, it's cool and it's IMPORTANT. Look here: http://digg.com/

[TBird]

Something like this was done:

Google Earth in Second Life: GeoGlobe -- http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/03/google_earth_in_seco.html

and

GeoGlobe: GeoRSS and KML meet Second Life
http://www.ogleearth.com/2007/03/geoglobe_georss.html

[Zee Pixel]

Hi TBird,

Did you visit Areumdeuli and examine it. The only comparison between what you've referenced and Zora's work is that they feature representations of the Earth.

This really is something different than what those other builds were doing.

Zee