So here, for your viewing pleasure, are some before and during snapshots of an experiment I'm doing in SecondLife to see just what SL can do. :)

	Experiment: STAGE 1 In order to fully grasp the possibilities of what SecondLife could do, I needed to spend a little. I bought a membership, which then allowed me to buy land and build. I found a cute little hillside for sale overlooking the water and built a pre-fab house, shown to the left. I experimented with using different building textures, moving parts of objects, etc.
	STAGE 2: THE EXPERIMENT GROWS
	STAGE 3: AND GROWS (AERIAL VIEW)
	STAGE 4: PIECES ARE COMING TOGETHER! In the background you can see the beginnings of the Gettysburg Battlefield at Little Roundtop sim, complete with sky!

End Note: This project has kind of grown and evolved as I've communicated with other educators both in-world and in the field. I was also influenced by some of the more intricate sims I've seen. One particular sim gave the user a taste of being schizophrenic and provided information about schizophrenia, etc.

While many of the educational sims are still a little stark visually, some have gone above and beyond and are pretty impressive. My hope is to combine the immersive element of the educational sims with the visual WOW factor of the gaming sims. There are apparently some gaming areas just around the corner from my humble abode, and they floored me with the textures and graphic elements. As tempted as I was to enter, the extremely readable sign that said 'You can die here.' kept my curiosity in check as far as entering... but I flew all around the outside and looked in the windows. :)

The Experimental as it stands in Manua today is now three full stories high, with spiral staircases, new and improved textures, a fully immersive Gettysburg Battlefield at Little Rountop sim with talking images, an art and texture gallery with some of my images and textures for sale in Lindens- cheap!- personal living space in a very industro-SoHo Loft-esque minimalist decor, and a rooftop garden with talking plants, koi pond, and fountain.

For more pictures and info, check out The Gallery Without Walls @ the Experimental.

Questions in-world should be IMed to Xirconnia Morphett.