Procedural Virtual Worlds

2011 ◽  
pp. 16-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Rodrigues ◽  
Luís Magalhães ◽  
João Paulo Moura ◽  
Alan Chalmers ◽  
Filipe Santos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Exponential Growth ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
The Impact ◽  
3D Content

With the increasing demand for more complex and larger models in different fields, such as the design of virtual worlds, video games, and computer animated movies, the need to generate them automatically has become more necessary than ever. Manual tools are no longer sufficient to match this rising need, and the impact that automatic tools may have within these fields is essential and may lead to an adoption of virtual worlds in a growing number of applications. Indeed, it is possible to eliminate most of the effort associated with the creation of such environments, by providing tools that may generate “massive” 3D content automatically. In consequence these tools may lead to an exponential growth of virtual environments and represent an important turn into the design of realistic virtual cities, which may have a huge impact on virtual world users. This chapter discusses the very complex issue of where and when procedural modelling may be used and presents some solutions and methods that have been successfully used in the aforementioned fields of application.

scholarly journals ArchHouseGenerator – A Framework for House Generation

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Rodrigues ◽  
Luís Magalhães ◽  
João Paulo Moura ◽  
Alan Chalmers ◽  
Filipe Santos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
3D Models ◽  
Automatic Generation ◽  
Level Of Detail ◽  
Complex Models ◽  
Floor Plans ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
High Level

The manual creation of virtual environments is a demanding and costly task. With the increasing demand for more complex models in different areas, such as the design of virtual worlds, video games and computer animated movies the need to generate them automatically has become more necessary than ever.This paper presents a framework for the automatic generation of houses based on architectural rules. This approach has some innovating features, including the implementation of architectural rules, and produces 2D floor plans as well as complete 3D models, with a high level of detail, in just a few seconds. To evaluate the framework two different applications were developed and the output models were tested for different fields of application (e.g. virtual worlds). The results obtained contain evidences that the proposed framework may lead to the development of several specific applications to produce accurate 3D models of houses representing different realities (e.g. civilizations, epochs, etc.).

Virtual Worlds

2017 ◽  
pp. 549-568
Author(s):  
Michelangelo Tricarico
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Specific Field ◽  
Early School ◽  
Virtual Reconstruction ◽  
3D Virtual Environment ◽  
Master Builder

This chapter discusses the author's experience in virtual environments, with particular reference to virtual reconstruction. The events are narrated from the perspective of a student who at first developed his skills in this specific field at school, and then became competent and passionate enough to teach what he had learned in the course of time. He describes his experience from early school projects to the personal ones; from his award as a “Master Builder” to his early teaching lessons. Other learning activities that can be carried out in a virtual world are also illustrated, with particular reference to “coding”, which appears to be of great interest to the author. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the potential of a 3D virtual environment for the reconstruction of monuments, i.e., the author's area of expertise. It also provides a description of other activities that can be performed in a virtual environment, while illustrating the most common issues that can be experienced and suggesting how to solve them.

A 360-Degree Perspective of Education in 3-D Virtual Worlds

2010 ◽  
pp. 291-309
Author(s):  
Brenda Eschenbrenner ◽  
Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah ◽  
Keng Siau
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Learning ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Real World ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
Virtual World Environments ◽  
The Impact

Three-dimensional virtual world environments are providing new opportunities to develop engaging, immersive experiences in education. These virtual worlds are unique in that they allow individuals to interact with others through their avatars and with objects in the environment, and can create experiences that are not necessarily possible in the real world. Hence, virtual worlds are presenting opportunities for students to engage in both constructivist and collaborative learning. To assess the impact of the use of virtual worlds on education, a literature review is conducted to identify current applications, benefits being realized, as well as issues faced. Based on the review, educational opportunities in virtual worlds and gaps in meeting pedagogical objectives are discussed. Practical and research implications are also addressed. Virtual worlds are proving to provide unique educational experiences, with its potential only at the cusp of being explored.

Impact of Flow and Brand Equity in 3D Virtual Worlds

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah ◽  
Brenda Eschenbrenner ◽  
David DeWester ◽  
So Ra Park
Keyword(s):  
Brand Equity ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Behavioral Intention ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Flow Experience ◽  
3D Virtual Worlds ◽  
3D Virtual World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This research is a partial test of Park et al.’s (2008) model to assess the impact of flow and brand equity in 3D virtual worlds. It draws on flow theory as its main theoretical foundation to understand and empirically assess the impact of flow on brand equity and behavioral intention in 3D virtual worlds. The findings suggest that the balance of skills and challenges in 3D virtual worlds influences users’ flow experience, which in turn influences brand equity. Brand equity then increases behavioral intention. The authors also found that the impact of flow on behavioral intention in 3D virtual worlds is indirect because the relationship between them is mediated by brand equity. This research highlights the importance of balancing the challenges posed by 3D virtual world branding sites with the users’ skills to maximize their flow experience and brand equity to increase the behavioral intention associated with the brand.

scholarly journals Piracy vs Control: Various Models of Virtual World Governance and their impact on Player Experience

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa De Zwart
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Online Games ◽  
Security And Privacy ◽  
Regulatory Control ◽  
Property A ◽  
Real Money ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The recent (February 2009) defection of a key member of the Band of Brothers Alliance in EVE caused a major restructure of the EVE gaming environment, much to the joy of the game’s operators, CCP games. (So much so, that many accused them of having staged an ‘inside job’ to disrupt the stranglehold of BoB). The defection was made possible through the design of the game and the need to maintain corporate structures to effect control over key regions. The defection of Haargoth was catastrophic to BoB, destroying years of player time and significant real money investment in game time. Some calls were made for CCP to intervene, but such action would have contradicted the game character of EVE itself as a piractical world. If such conduct had occurred in the corporate world of any RL nation, clear demands for regulatory control would have been acceded to (see, for example, the demand for repayment of AIG bonus payments made to executives). In another virtual world, World of Warcraft, the operators Blizzard, have recently announced (March 2009) a new policy regarding add-ons, which will affect the way in which many keen WoW participants will interact with the game. This follows on from the litigation regarding Glider, which divided the WoW community regarding what is acceptable in terms of mods and automated play. Again response to the add-on policy has attracted heated debate in the dedicated WoW community. The relationship between practice and theory regarding treatment of mods and add-ons by Blizzard has been inconsistent and frustrating for many keen WoW players. The legal status of mods and add-ons in other worlds remains unclear. Finally, the operators of Entropia have just announced that they have been granted a banking licence in Sweden. It remains to be seen how this will impact on the gaming experience and the regulation of that experience by external authorities. This article will consider the important influence of game design and game governance on the nature of the player’s experience. It will also compare social world environments, such as Second Life. It will consider increased calls for inworld regulation and the impact this would have on the nature of the players’ experience. It will explore the need to acknowledge the particular nature of the world under consideration and discuss ways how this might be respected and protected. It will consider the relationship between real world laws, inbuilt game standards and the players’ own negotiated understanding of the world with which they are engaged and how this may change over time, according to gaming experiences and investment in the game world. It will explore the relationship between the underlying governance structures of the virtual world and the developing nature of that world and make suggestions regarding the possible effects of law reform and standards setting in this area. This paper will build on work I have been doing on virtual world governance, such as ‘Legal Issues in Virtual Worlds: Governance and Intellectual Property’, a presentation to the OECD Workshop on Innovation and Policy for Virtual Worlds, 11 March 2009, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/2/42347580.pdf; my contribution to the ENISA Position Paper: Virtual Worlds, Real Money, Security and Privacy in Massively- Multiplayer Online Games and Social and Corporate Virtual Worlds, November 2008, http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/deliverables/enisa_pp_security_privacy_virtualworlds.pdf; ‘The dark side of online games : fraud, theft and invasion of privacy’, (2009) 11(9) Internet Law Bulletin 147-151 and ‘Governance and the Global Metaverse,’ (with David Lindsay) presented at the Cybercultures Conference , Salzburg, 15 March 2009, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/cyber/cybercultures/conference-programme-abstracts-and-papers/session-8-cyber-policy-and-cyber-democracy/.

Worldlets: 3-D Thumbnails for Wayfinding in Large Virtual Worlds

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 565-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Todd Elvins ◽  
David R. Nadeau ◽  
Rina Schul ◽  
David Kirsh
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Modeling Language ◽  
Psychological Experiment ◽  
Web Content ◽  
Image Representations ◽  
Time Required ◽  
Clear Support

Finding one's way to sites of interest on the Web can be problematic, and this difficulty has been recently exacerbated by widespread development of 3-D Web content and virtual-world browser technology using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Whereas travelers can often navigate 2-D Web sites based on textual and 2-D thumbnail image representations of the sites' content, finding one's way to destinations in 3-D environments is notoriously troublesome. Wayfinding literature provides clear support for the importance of landmarks in building a cognitive map and then using that map to navigate in a 3-D environment, be it real or virtual. Textual and 2-D image landmark representations, however, lack the depth and context needed for travelers to reliably recognize 3-D landmarks. This paper describes a novel 3-D thumbnail landmark affordance called a worldlet. Containing a 3-D fragment of a virtual world, worldlets offer travelers first-person, multi-viewpoint experience with faithful representations of potential destinations. To facilitate an investigation into the comparative advantages of landmark affordances for wayfinding, worldlet capture algorithms were designed, implemented, and incorporated into two VRML-based virtual environment browsers. Findings from a psychological experiment using one of these browsers revealed that, compared to textual and image guidebook usage, worldlet guidebook usage: nearly doubled the time subjects spent studying the landmarks in the guidebook, significantly reduced the time required for subjects to reach landmarks, and reduced backtracking to almost zero. These results support the hypothesis that worldlets facilitate traveler landmark knowledge, expedite wayfinding in large virtual environments, and enable skilled wayfinding.

scholarly journals A Postphenomenological Framework for Studying User Experience of Immersive Virtual Reality

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Vindenes ◽  
Barbara Wasson
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Immersive Virtual Reality ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Cognitive Changes ◽  
Flexible Technology ◽  
Human World

Virtual Reality (VR) is a remarkably flexible technology for interventions as it allows the construction of virtual worlds with ontologies radically different from the real world. By embodying users in avatars situated in these virtual environments, researchers can effectively intervene and instill positive change in the form of therapy or education, as well as affect a variety of cognitive changes. Due to the capabilities of VR to mediate both the environments in which we are immersed, as well as our embodied, situated relation toward those environments, VR has become a powerful technology for “changing the self.” As the virtually mediated experience is what renders these interventions effective, frameworks are needed for describing and analyzing the mediations brought by various virtual world designs. As a step toward a broader understanding of how VR mediates experience, we propose a post-phenomenological framework for describing VR mediation. Postphenomenology is a philosophy of technology concerned with empirical data that understand technologies as mediators of human-world relationships. By addressing how mediations occur within VR as a user-environment relation and outside VR as a human-world relation, the framework addresses the various constituents of the virtually mediated experience. We demonstrate the framework's capability for describing VR mediations by presenting the results of an analysis of a selected variety of studies that use various user-environment relations to mediate various human-world relations.

“You Can't Mess with the Program, Ralph”

2016 ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Theo Plothe
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Relative Position ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Digital Games ◽  
The Real

This essay posits two crucial elements for the representation of digital games in film: intertextuality and player control. Cinematically, the notion of player-agency control is influenced greatly by this intertextuality, and player control has been represented in a number of films involving video games and digital worlds. This essay looks at the use and representation of player-agency control in films that focus on action within digital games. There are three elements that are essential to this representation: 1) there is a separation between the virtual and the real; 2) the virtual world is written in code, and this code is impossible for player-agents to change, though they can manipulate it; 3) the relative position of the player to the player-agent, is one of subservience or conflict. I argue that the notion of player-agency control is essential to the cinematic representation of video games' virtual worlds.

scholarly journals Navigation, Wayfinding, and Place Experience within a Virtual City

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 435-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig D. Murray ◽  
John M. Bowers ◽  
Adrian J. West ◽  
Steve Pettifer ◽  
Simon Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Real World ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Place Experience ◽  
Virtual City

We report a qualitative study of navigation, wayfinding, and place experience within a virtual city. “Cityscape” is a virtual environment (VE), partially algorithmically generated and intended to be redolent of the aggregate forms of real cities. In the present study, we observed and interviewed participants during and following exploration of a desktop implementation of Cityscape. A number of emergent themes were identified and are presented and discussed. Observing the interaction with the virtual city suggested a continuous relationship between real and virtual worlds. Participants were seen to attribute real-world properties and expectations to the contents of the virtual world. The implications of these themes for the construction of virtual environments modeled on real-world forms are considered.

The Impact of User Biases Toward a Virtual Human’s Skin Tone on Triage Errors Within a Virtual World for Emergency Management Training

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 2057-2061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Zipp ◽  
Tyler Krause ◽  
Scotty D. Craig*
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Management ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Management Training ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Mixed Design ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
Ethnic Biases ◽  
The Impact

Biases influence the decisions people make in everyday life, even if they are unaware of it. This behavior transfers into social interactions in virtual environments. These systems are becoming an increasingly common platform for training, so it is critical to understand how biases will impact them. The present study investigates the effect of the ethnicity bias on error behaviors within a virtual world for medical triage training. Two between subjects variables, participant skin tone (light, dark) and avatar skin tone (light, dark), and one within subjects variable, agent/patient skin tone (light, dark), were manipulated to create a 2 X 2 X 2 mixed design with four conditions. Effects on errors were observed on errors made while helping patient (agents). Participants made considerably more errors while triaging dark-skinned agents which increased the amount of time spent on them, in comparison to light-skinned agents. Within a virtual world for training, people apply general ethnic biases against dark-skinned individuals, which is important to consider when designing such systems because the biases could impact the effectiveness of the training.

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