Site Description: NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is the virtual home of a real location.
Overall impressions: This is a beautiful looking site with some great ideas, but I feel like it could be made more effective with some additional explanations built into the interactivity. I felt like the whole environment was designed by people who were more familiar with making videos than interactive games or environments.
Things to see and do:
Hurricane Ride The first thing I did at this location was ride a plane through a hurricane. It was nicely animated, and let you see what a hurricane would look like from the air. The churning vortex of the hurricane was well done. However, I kept expecting that there would be some text or narration giving me some insights into what I was seeing. There was a clickable information kiosk that one could look at before or after the flight, but it would have been nice to have something more embedded into the experience.
Plane Ride After the plane ride, I climbed onto a weather balloon and was taken into the sky. This gave me a nice view of the island, but again, I hoped that the relevant information would be built into the ride, but it wasn't.
Particle Accelerator The ride through the DOE particle accelerator was very visually impressive, and the most immersive of all the interactions that I engaged in at NOAA. Notecards did sometimes come up and explain things, but I didn't feel that I left this with a clear understanding of what the accelerator is used for. Anything I know about it I learned from outside reading, not as a result of the simulation.
Tsunami FULL DISCLOSURE: I was unable to participate in this interaction within Second Life. I couldn't find it on the map, and each time I tried to use a kiosk to teleport there, Second Life crashed. Therefore, I had to view a video on youtube.
The tsunami demonstration was interesting, as you could see how the tide will recede from the beach before big waves hit. The youtube video did a good job of explaining how to tell if a giant wave could be approaching, and what you can do to avoid it.
Site Description:
NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is the virtual home of a real location.
Overall impressions:
This is a beautiful looking site with some great ideas, but I feel like it could be made more effective with some additional explanations built into the interactivity. I felt like the whole environment was designed by people who were more familiar with making videos than interactive games or environments.
Things to see and do:
Hurricane Ride
The first thing I did at this location was ride a plane through a hurricane. It was nicely animated, and let you see what a hurricane would look like from the air. The churning vortex of the hurricane was well done. However, I kept expecting that there would be some text or narration giving me some insights into what I was seeing. There was a clickable information kiosk that one could look at before or after the flight, but it would have been nice to have something more embedded into the experience.
Plane Ride
After the plane ride, I climbed onto a weather balloon and was taken into the sky. This gave me a nice view of the island, but again, I hoped that the relevant information would be built into the ride, but it wasn't.
Particle Accelerator
The ride through the DOE particle accelerator was very visually impressive, and the most immersive of all the interactions that I engaged in at NOAA. Notecards did sometimes come up and explain things, but I didn't feel that I left this with a clear understanding of what the accelerator is used for. Anything I know about it I learned from outside reading, not as a result of the simulation.
Tsunami
FULL DISCLOSURE: I was unable to participate in this interaction within Second Life. I couldn't find it on the map, and each time I tried to use a kiosk to teleport there, Second Life crashed. Therefore, I had to view a video on youtube.
The tsunami demonstration was interesting, as you could see how the tide will recede from the beach before big waves hit. The youtube video did a good job of explaining how to tell if a giant wave could be approaching, and what you can do to avoid it.