With a new copy of Flight Simulator X, now relatively cheap compared to its original release pricing, and the two service packs installed (SP1 and SP2) which were necessary to correct black parts on some add-on craft (including Supercar), I was ready to fire things up. And things look good with high frame rates at ultra settings for the displays. Its nice to see 3D models that improve over time in new releases of Flight Simulator without change to the basic visual model.

I have always liked the Lockheed Martin SR-71 "Blackbird" and North American X-15 rocket plane and am amazed that these craft designed and built in the 1950s could achieve such performance.  I take every opportunity to see the real craft at museums in the USA. An X-15 is in the Smithsonian in the Mall, and an SR-71 can be found in the Smithsonian at Dulles Airport and at the Intrepid Museum in New York for example.

Reasonably good free add-on craft are available for the SR-71 and X-15... but the improved visuals prompted me to try a paid for add on X-15 which is reported to be one of the best Flight Simulator add-ons.. and it really does look very good indeed...

The experience itself runs through in a chapter by chapter format for each of the books.  Myst style graphical elements are overlaid and respond to mouse clicks and interactions as the various features and artifacts are gradually exposed. Items can be collected into a "trunk".  After you discover Diagon Alley, and open an account at Gringotts Bank with an initial 500 "galleons", further gold galleons can be found in various places and saved in your account to purchase necessary supplies. Then you must explore Diagon Alley to get all the required items for your first year at Hogwarts.

Your wand will choose you at Ollivanders - makers of fine wands since 382 B.C. - via a set of questions and choices.

The its off via Platform 9 and three-quarters to Howarts.  And term starts.  Points can be earned for you and your "house" as you go along. The Great Hall shows the progress of all four school houses, your Common Room shows the progress for your own house, and your own profile area maintains all the information about your progress, skills acquired and artifacts collected.  You can also make friends and pass around gifts.

The currency used in the experience is all provided and does not require real money to play.  The e-books do cost real money. 

A playground for experimentation with Moodle for the School of Informatics distance education initiatives is now available with course name "Playground Informatics" (pginformatics).  The UoE Moodle is currently only available for such distance education courses as the service is built up.

People who would like to participate as a course teacher or student should initially contact Austin Tate and provide their EASE UUN, as all users are currrently being added manually.

Note that we also have our own experimental Moodle setup, running in Appleton Tower on an AIAI server... for testing use only as its on one of our manually managed windows desktop servers at http://virtual2.aiai.ed.ac.uk/moodle/

The web site for the game information and links to allow access to the areas in which some elements of it can already be played in Second Life are at:

• http://atate.org/mscel/gbl/MoonBloom/

More details of the elements that went into the design are in this blog entry - Game Design Preliminaries.

One possibility for use could be to record a synchronised speaker and presentation, and make that available via the recording.  Screen capture tools such as TechSmith Camtasia can be used to capture off a recording to allow for transcoding into a regular video format for other uses, YouTube, streaming, etc.

Shadowfang Keep is entered via a portal into an "Instance" of the game. These are special areas in World of Warcraft where your group or raid party is able to interact with a dungeon privately; that is, without interference from other parties. See http://www.wowwiki.com/Instance

I also learned that taking in plenty of food in advance, to sit down("x" key), and preferable to eat as well, is important to allow a quicker recovery. Free to play accounts cannot receive health boosts or food supplies from other players.

Good team support meant that weakening players, like my dwarf, were assisted when set upon by multiple "mobs". Carnage did at times occur.

The team prevailed and completed the quest.  We all now have stronger bows thanks to the rewards given by the grateful occupants of the Keep.

I think we had fantastic teamwork. If we had just sailed in to the Dungeon with 4 strong players and even my short legged dwarf we could have wiped out everyone. Without much stratgey. But Coranich left to pick up a classmate.. and we all got wiped out! We tried again with much more care and planning and despite a few "deaths" we won through. Folks covered one another better, and we went to find lost characters - like myself once too. We had to learn new tricks for blasting open doors too. We were definitely in our ZPD.

I entered as one of the races of Daeva (assigned to me on account creation), and selected the Elyos faction and Scout class. It was raining, hence the leaf umbrella.

The free to play Aion game allows for only 2 characters to be created, but gives access to all 55 levels, nearly 4,000 quests, and all territory travel, unlike the level 20 restricted World of Warcraft free starter edition.

• There is an official wiki and getting started guide at http://gameguide.na.aiononline.com/aion/
• A community contributed wiki with information of the land, characters and play is at http://aion.wikia.com/wiki/Elyos

Entering a new world, with a new character, even though the interface had many similarities to World of Warcraft, reminded me how important scaffolding was, and the value of the community created wiki information sites. I will hold off creating my main (male) character with my usual name prefixed aith "Ai" until I know more about the game and the factions.