Using Second life to replicate real life enivronments

The Institute of Quarrying in conjunction with the University of Derby has been working on a project called the Virtual Quarry. This project has been designed to showcase the capabilities of using a virtual environment to simulate real world scenarios and without doubt the project has shown what is possible.

With the help of SME's and second life developers we were able to sit down and work out different hazards which could come into play in a real life quarry, this ranged from fawlty traffic lights, to full on torrential rain and also included things like unsafe roads and blast sites. In reality in my own opinion I did not see the second life having chance of being able to complete this as I saw Second Life as a play area for novelty, but I must admit my eyes were opened.

From what I gather what you can do in second life mainly depends on the quality of SL developers at your disposal and your own imagination.