The museum at Forum Europe is notable for it’s models of dinosaurs and dinosaur fossils. It’s a lot like going to a real museum, except without any actual information about what you’re looking at. If you like to look at neat stuff and don’t care about filling your brain with, oh, I don’t know… knowledge, it’s a nice trip.
What I find almost more fascinating than the actual exhibits are the lobby and the passageways between halls. Though some sleight of hand or optical illusion they’re using photographs of a real museum to make you feel like you’re passing through a much larger space than you really are. Walking through these passages is almost dizzying. Everything around you moves in a way that isn’t quite right, and you get the feeling of moonwalking or walking on an escalator.
In a way it’s kind of a cheat — creating the illusion of a build rather than actually building. Visually, it looks as if your avatar has crossed over in to the real world. It’s a neat trick, and I have no clue how they do it (though no doubt someone will tell me).
The dinosaur models are numerous and entertaining. Many of them have controls that will open and close the jaw, make a sound, or swing the tail. And, unlike a real museum, the curator isn’t going to run you out for screwing around with the exhibits.
On the second floor of museum there’s a Steampunk sculpture exhibit by Bryn Oh. The sculptures glitter and move and are probably the best thing about the museum. No offense to the dinosaur creators, but metal insects are cool.
June 2, 2008 at 4:29 pm |
VIDEO: Tour of Vienna Dinosaur Museum in SL…
Garth Goode posts a nice blog entry about a dinosaur museum in Second Life that I had to check out. It appears to be based on the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria, although there is almost no information…
June 26, 2008 at 5:44 am |
[...] little while back I encountered a museum that featured holodeck-like rooms that made you feel like you were inside the real thing. I [...]