Complex system modelling in Second Life
I have known Turner Boehm in RL for a long while, so I was more than happy to see he enter Second Life with eightbar. He was straight in modelling and scripting as I would have expected. We had the dematerializing tardis a little while back, but now he has got serious as I indicated he would, not that Dr Who does not count as serious!
Anyway, he has built an modeller in Second Life that, driven by external complex system information ,produces a self organizing atomic looking structure showing how (as in this case) multiple software systems could be interconnected.
In full mode the model is able to be manipulated in realtime. I had seen the original as was impressed but after this SL update I popped to North East Hursley island and had a chat with Turner whilst sitting on this fabulous dynamically built structure.
The elements and linkages have text associated with them to indicate the nodes and links in the model.
The whole thing is very scaleable, imagine a whole sim full of 15000 nodes and links.
For the techies and architects among you I think you will get where he is coming from.
Everyone else, it looks cool too I think.





October 11th, 2006 at 23:04
Nice.
October 12th, 2006 at 15:43
This is very interesting. Now we turn the typical Blink decision making into Think decision making!
October 14th, 2006 at 06:57
[...] Complex system modelling in Second Life eightbar: a modeller in Second Life driven by external complex system information producing a self organizing structure able to be manipulated in realtime. (tags: modelling secondlife visualization build complexity data datadriven 3d) [...]
October 19th, 2006 at 03:22
[...] 19 – eightbar » Blog Archive » Complex system modelling in Second Life “…he has built an modeller in Second Life that […] produces a self organizing atomic looking structure showing how (as in this case) multiple software systems could be interconnected.” (tags: SL IBM architecture software information system complex tools visualisation scripting world synthetic metaverse Life Second) [...]
December 3rd, 2006 at 13:14
great stuff, this could turn into a very useful application for those working with complex datasets
December 4th, 2006 at 16:53
[...] SL resident Turner Boehm has developed an application that allows to automatically model the links and nodes of a complex system using SL objects. The picture above shows multiple interconnecting software systems represented by an automatically generated set of prims, based on information stored outside SL. [...]
March 11th, 2007 at 19:20
I would like to understand more from Turner Boehm how I can use the 3D application for a strategic planning scenario. Currently we can map out in 2D the issues, stakeholders, and inter-relationships. 2D maps have been successfully created by an academic at Stanford.
In 3D, with network analysis tools we could get strength of ties, distance etc.
Can he or Ian respond to follow up on this application?
Thanks,
vaxelrod
March 19th, 2007 at 15:36
I’m working on a problem right now with the visualization of software systems in relation to the design rationale behind the decisions made in creating the software. Right now, my plans are to to do 2D network visualization, but now that I’ve seen this, I’d really like to explore 3D visualization. If you could send me some more information about this, that would be wonderful.
I’m also a member of Second Life, so if can tell me how to view what you have created there, that would be great, too!
Cheers,
Bill Callahan
March 20th, 2007 at 11:05
[...] Maar het is momenteel al een hele kunst om een presentatie in second life te geven met powerpoint. En de scripttaal van second life lijkt niet heel geschikt om echt spectaculaire data visualisaties te bouwen. Second life is gewoon niet gebouwd met dat doel voor ogen. Hoewel er hier en daar toch mooie data visualisaties zijn te vinden, zoals realtime visualisatie van het weer en dit model om complexe informatie weer te geven. [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 11:34
Thanks for all the comments and questions, the tool is being developed as part of a project looking at Brownfield re-engineering of businesses and IT systems (soon to be the subject of a book from IBM Press). The latest public model can be viewed on IBM 1 (follow the Turner Boehm link above). Due to IP reasons, I cannot release the tool outside of IBM at the moment (but that could change).
Thanks for your interest, and expect more developments…
March 20th, 2007 at 11:45
The SLURL didn’t save well, so the location of the latest model is here
http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%201/136/154/59/?title=Brownfield%20Model%20Visualisation
or if *that* doesn’t work its on IBM 1
Thanks
Richard Hopkins (Turner Boehm)
July 18th, 2007 at 18:33
[...] Christian explained to me later: This will allow a network manager to export HPOpenView or CiscoWorks topology data, and input it into a tool such as the one created by Turner Boehm at IBM. No large back end Network Operation Center required, as this isn’t ongoing real time monitoring, rather a one-shot troubleshooting session with a network engineer. [...]
July 31st, 2007 at 20:08
[...] Do you remember seeing this image and post back in october 2006 Well now there is more as this has advanced a great deal and Turner and a team have been working to get more data, more understanding and to dynamically build metaverse versions of system architecture representations. This time its video, and its a talky too with Turner’s northern tones. See what you think. It all started on Hursley sim :-) [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 21:35
I’d love to find out more about the system he used with to generate the data and how he interfaced it with Second Life. Where can I get some more info?
November 16th, 2007 at 15:51
I would like to understand more from Turner Boehm how I can use the 3D application for a strategic planning scenario. Currently we can map out in 2D the issues, stakeholders, and inter-relationships. 2D maps have been successfully created by an academic at Stanford.
January 15th, 2008 at 16:14
The Brownfield development work that created the impetus for this model can visited via this link.
May 30th, 2008 at 15:23
[...] then when this exploded into using Second Life for visualization of existing system architectures (starting on Hursley island) it got me even more interested. Image from snapzilla The book is not solely about using virtual [...]
April 23rd, 2009 at 16:33
[...] Modelación de sistemas complejos [...]