Second Life was a really cool 3D platform to build and script custom items.

Working on the script of the ambient light.

Spent quite some time in public sandbox areas to build stuff. All started with some 3D objects but quickly became scripted objects, which could be interacted with.

It was also possible to trigger HTTP calls from within scripts to interact with external web servers. For example, this was used to build a moodle integration, which allowed university students to directly answer polls or download documents from within Second Life.

Marketplace

To avoid putting real cash in to buy L$ (Linden dollar), i rented a small vendor space on a marketplace and sold some fun items. The intention was never to get rich, but rather get some pocket money to upload more custom textures (each upload was 10L$).

top-selling items

#	Item
1	Mailbox
2	Incense stick
3	Incense stick bowl
4	Ambient light
5	Ant farm

Surprising learning: People LOVE virtual incense sticks! :O

Holo deck

The amount of prims (primitive, is a single-part object) in Secondlife is limited per area and costs money. Therefore, there's always an incentive to keep the amount of prims low.

To be able to use different "interior" at different times, i created a holo deck, which lets you swap all items.

The holo deck consists of a ground plate and a remote control, which provides a menu on click. The menu lets the user select a "scene". Each scene can have any amount of items, which are then automatically placed. This way the same room can have multiple functions while saving prims at the same time.

It was built for a university and i was paid in real cash, not L$!