Does the Emperor have any clothes?
New Zealand’s NZVWGrid ‘newbies’ get
free avatar skins, hair, eyes and clothing
A ‘noobie’ appearance is no longer necessary in the NZVWGrid …
free avatarskins, eyes and hair have been made available for users …
New Zealand academics, researchers and virtual world builders, using and testing the alpha phase of the New Zealand Virtual Grid (NZVWG), no longer have to look like ‘noobs’ even though given some of the vagaries of the OpenSim environment they might sometimes feel like that.
Open source avatar skins, eyes, hair and clothing have now been made freely available on the Auckland portal of NZVWG at Kapua 6 (NZVWG Kapua 6/88/116/34), and are likely to be made available near the Auckland entry point to the MUVE on Kapua 3 as well as at other Portal entry points.
The full permissions skins have been created by the likes of Eloh Eliot, Ziah Li, Greybeard Thinker and others, with the clothing obtained from a variety of sources outside the Second Life environment, such as free, full permission listings of clothing textures.
All are being made available under “Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported” Creative Commons licenses.
The NZVWG Project which grew out of Otago University’s ONGENS programme is a joint venture of the University of Auckland, the University of Otago the University of Canterbury and the Wellington Institute of Technology, Weltech. A number of other institutions both in New Zealand and oversea have expressed interest in the project which is supported by New Zealand Telecom.
It is an open access national virtual world grid based on open source software. It operates on NZ-based servers hosted at Otago, Auckland and Canterbury Universities, and leverages other national investments in IT infrastructure through deployment on the high-speed KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network).
The grid has been set up with an academic focus and will be used for research and education, as well as for proof-of-concept application deployments and testing.
The project, based on opensource OpenSim technology, is being led by one of New Zealand’s foremost virtual world education champions, Dr Scott Diener, an academic and Associate Director, AC Tech, Information Technology Services, at the University of Auckland. Diener is well-known, both as himself and as his Second Life personna, Professor Noarlunga, in MUVE education circles around the world for his development of medical simulations and teaching programmes within Second Life.
Although little educational research is currently being done in the alpha test phase of the NZVWGrid there are opportunities once testing is completed. Besides Diener’s Second Life University of Auckland virtual medical centre project in Second Life, which may migrate to the NZVWG, Otago University has set up the Otago Virtual Hospital in NZVWG (OtagoMedicalSchool/162/99/2800) and is also hosting scenarios for medical students to gain experience practicing as doctors. Some members of the now completed SLENZ Project are also active in the NZVWG although there are no plans at this stage for a sequel to that successful research project.
… as well as both men’s and women’s avatar clothing
and a limited range of footwear.
Filed under: Education, Education in Second Life, Education in virtual worlds, NZVWG, ONGENS, SL Medicine, SLENZ Project, Virtual Worlds | Tagged: Eloh Eliot, Greybeard Thinker, KAREN, NZVWG, OpenSim, Professor Noarlunga, Scott Diener, slenz, Telecom, The University of Auckland, the University of Canterbury, the University of Otago, VLENZ, WelTech, Ziah Li | 1 Comment »
