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Sunday, October 14, 2007

Second Life Will Revolutionize Engineering Design

Later this October, my first in-print article hits Design News Magazine. The culmination of several months of research, I report on the virtual world of Second Life (SL) and show how this new technology will impact engineering design. My conclusion: SL is disruptive technology that will revolutionize computer aided engineering design and facilitate new kinds of global design collaboration.

Second Life, created by Linden Lab, is a computer-generated universe (a metaverse) that is free to use for anyone with an Internet connection. Within this world, virtual objects can be created from scratch using a library of primitives, basic shapes such as cubes and spheres. By manipulating these elemental objects, adding uploaded image textures, and combining components, anything that can be imagined can be constructed. Completed objects are then augmented with additional layers of sophistication by adding software scripts, making them intelligent, responsive, and interactive.

These tools fundamentally alter engineering design by allowing end-users to interact with functional, virtual, prototype objects in real-time without anything ever having to be built.

I interviewed Assistant Professor Chang Liu of the Virtual Immersive Technologies and Arts for Learning (VITAL) Laboratory at Ohio University and Pam Broviak, P.E., public works director and city engineer for La Salle, IL. These individuals are pioneering the utilization of SL for engineering design. Professor Liu uses the metaverse to improve software engineering by incorporating end users in initial stages of product development. Broviak uses SL to construct walk-through building plumbing systems for her clients, and she manages the Second Life Public Works Resource Center, a clearing house for information related to engineering and public works in SL.

Design News is breaking new ground as the first engineering publication to recognize the utility of SL for engineering design. We may be responsible for kicking off the CAD revolution our article foretells. It is only very rarely in a career that one is so fortunate to discover an opportunity so revolutionary as SL for engineering design and then be the first to articulate it to our engineering peers.

Ironically, MIT’s notoriously engineering-saturated Technology Review (TR) magazine missed a golden opportunity to scoop Design News on this topic. Just as I was submitting my SL article to my editor, TR ran a comprehensive piece entitled “Second Earth” in their August edition. Their article covers the confluence of virtual worlds like SL with so-called mirror worlds like Google Earth. While the author, Wade Roush, did a great job covering the social networking and business potential of SL, he completely missed the implications of this computational platform to revolutionize engineering design.

A missed opportunity at Technology Review is an opportunity gained for the readers of Design News.

For some additional reviews of TR’s “Second Earth” article, check out the following blog posts: “Technology Review talks Second Earth” at veryspatial.com; “Technology Review: Second Earth” at the Wired blog network, and “Second Earth” at the Google Earth blog.

Related entries in: Design News | Electronics/Test |

(Add your comments)

at 10/17/2007 5:49:45 AM, Cywalker said:
The barrier is that commercial designs are done using standard CAD packages. It is a disincentive to have to make the model again using prims. Somebody needs to come up with a conversion tool for CAD to prim. Then this gets more interesting.

at 10/18/2007 6:52:26 AM, csven said:
It's nice to see an engineering design publication finally grok what's going on. I've read a fair share of commentary on engineering sites casually dismissing SL, and the lack of imagination is stunning; apparently most people can't get past those juicy headlines (the articles for which are usually badly-researched pieces written by poorly-informed journalists who are too often motivated by metrics rather than accuracy). People need to get past the rudimentary modeling tools/methods (in addition to those headlines) and see the wider "implications", but it doesn't seem most are able to do that, imo. There's good reason so many 3D software vendors are either interested/involved in Second Life or working toward the kinds of interactive 3D to which it point (e.g. Dassault's "3D Flickr" effort). I look forward to your coverage as I expect the issues you'll have to eventually raise will catch some readers completely off-guard. And perhaps "transreality" product development will get a boost. csven reBang weblog

at 10/18/2007 12:17:24 PM, Coyote said:
Cywalker: there apparently is now an AutoCAD based SL design tool called Henshin III. See ai-designstudio.net N.B., I've not tried this myself. That and a near-free demo are available on SLExchange.com as well.

at 10/19/2007 9:18:14 AM, www.bigbadwolf.ie said:
Yes, for second life and virtual worlds to succeed they need to work with industry standard 3D softwares including - MAX9 and MAYA. Also chack out other worlds including - there.com, entropia universe, activeworlds, www.forterrainc.com etc

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