Virtual culture training for soldiers
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Games, Virtual Worlds
Thanks to a link from ACM TechNews, I’ve been reading that folks at the University of Texas have been doing some research into the use of virtual worlds for training soldiers (click for the article). The focus of the training is dealing with cultural situations. I’m not a particularly well-travelled person myself, but I can imagine that even the slightest differences in cultural interpretation of verbal and non-verbal cues can become major issues in a conflict scenario.
Another SL presentation tool: Slide Wheel
Posted by Peter | Filed under Programming, Virtual Worlds
My supervisor (Daniel) and I were giving a SLOODLE presentation at a conference in Second Life today. When we were discussing it earlier this week, Daniel suggested a really novel way of presenting the slides… and since I’m never one to back down from a programming challenge, I built it!
The result is the Slide Wheel. All the slides in your presentation are displayed in a big wheel in mid-air. When you want to show a particular slide, the whole wheel rotates, and the current slide jumps to the foreground. I’ll upload a video of it soon, but for now, here’s a screenshot:
Slide Wheel screenshot
You can get this item free on XStreetSL, as I am releasing it open source. I am sorry it is not perfect yet, but the requests for me to make it available tell me it’s in high demand! Please give it a try, and contact me if you have any questions or if you find any bugs.
Happy presenting!
SLOODLE / PhD Research - Survey Invitation
Posted by Peter | Filed under SLOODLE, Software, Virtual Worlds
SURVEY CLOSED
Thanks for your interest, but I’m afraid this survey is now closed. I will be running the next set of evaluations in the coming months, so pleased stay tuned if you’re interested.
——————————————
Hello readers!
I am plastering everywhere else on the web with this, so I thought I might as well put it on my own blog too! 
I am conducting a survey alongside the SLOODLE project and as part of my PhD work. Your participation would be greatly appreciated:
https://avid-insight.co.uk/limesurvey/index.php?sid=16321〈=en
It contains 35 questions, taking around 20 minutes to complete, and the software allows you to save your responses for later completion if you are pressed for time. All data will be handled anonymously.
The broad topic of my PhD is usability and user centred design in the context of integrating technologies such as Second Life and Moodle. This particular survey is exploratory in nature, asking for general feedback (quantitative and qualitative) on a few initial concepts for the software.
The front page of the survey provides further information if you would like to know more, and you are welcome to contact me with any questions. It will hopefully be online for 3 weeks, after which time selected data will be released here for the SLOODLE community, and to any individual participants who request it.
Many thanks,
Peter R. Bloomfield (SL: Pedro McMillan)
PhD student / Research Assistant / SLOODLE developer
Supervisor: Dr. Daniel Livingstone (SL: Buddy Sprocket)
University of the West of Scotland (School of Computing)
http://peter.avid-insight.co.uk/research
Virtual Happenings
Posted by Peter | Filed under Software, Virtual Worlds
Lebanese business and tourism
Some interesting things happening lately in the realm of virtual stuff, be it worlds or otherwise. One article which particularly caught my eye was the Bab-ilu portal, which is designed to help foster international business and tourist interest in Lebanon. (I did some brief mission work in Lebanon in 1999, while they were at war with Israel. One thing which struck me wonderfully was the kindness and generosity of many people; despite being in a warzone, and despite the fact that we were outsiders from another religion, they treated us with utmost respect. Parts of it were also absolutely beautiful… if I can find and scan some of my old photos, I’ll post them.)
Virtual conferencing
In other news, a company called Altadyn has released “Online Meeting”, which is designed to support business meetings, based on their 3DXplorer platform, encouraging more participation than you typically get in video-based tele-conferencing. It’s good to see some competition opening up in this area, since Second Life seems to have been the virtual platform of choice for many business happenings of this nature, seeing lots of support from IBM in particular. I have nothing against SL being used for that purpose, but competition is healthy for the market and it’s healthy for innovation.
Music world
Similarly, there is talk of a music-centred virtual world, designed with “live” online concerts in mind. Once again, Second Life has been used for this quite a lot, but having something developed which is dedicated to the particular feature is great. (My experience of “live” music in SL is rather less-than-wonderful, usually due to technology issues.)
Ignorance ain’t bliss!
Let’s balance all the hope of good things with a shot of negativity. Teresa Hunter, writing for Scotland on Sunday, took a hefty, and downright ignorant swipe at Second Life, calling it a “virtual world for sad losers”. I am glad to say my good friend Gia dutifully reprimanded the shocking excuse for an article! (Woo! Go Gia…)
“Twinity” — my initial experience
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games, Software, Virtual Worlds
This evening, I decided to try out Twinity — a new virtual world which is in public beta at the moment. I’m still learning my way round, but it’s looking quite interesting so far… albeit running a tad slowly on my PC! Here’s a review of my first couple of hours playing with it, but be warned, this is pretty long!
Upon Arrival…
I started in a Welcome Area, which consisted of wide open spaces with information displays and tutorials around. Large texture-based signs load in from fuzzy blobs, but they are remarkably legible, giving all the basic pointers. As an introduction to the world, it definitely needs work though — I think I was only comfortable because I have been using virtual worlds for a while. Total newbies would likely get dazed and confused rather quickly.
Identity
When you first sign-up, you provide your first and last names, and it doesn’t seem to suggest anything other than real names (although I assume you could use anything quite happily). By default, your first name will appear above your avatar in-world, but you can make your last name visible too. I am not sure how wise it is to go by first-names only in a virtual world, given the scope for confusion, but things may change.
Graphics
I can’t say I’m impressed with the graphics in general at this stage, as the system requirements are fairly huge for (quite frankly) not a lot. It’s possible that the system automatically scaled-down the graphics level to suit my lower-end processor, but unlikely, and the only 2 graphics detail settings I’ve found are resolution, and anti-aliasing level.
Interface
The visual element of the user interface is fairly nice and clean, with that rounded-corner web-2.0-feel that everybody loves… or at least, that’s what designers tell us we’re supposed to love. The basic UI is fairly unobtrusive, primarily occupying a small panel at the bottom-middle, with some important buttons. (There’s also some important but small buttons at the top-right.) Everything appears in various windows, which can be moved and closed, but not resized or minimized. It looks like they’ve implemented a totally bespoke interface system, which is impressive, but was probably an unnecessary use of their development time (how many times can the wheel be re-invented?), and it’s not as responsive as I would like, but it certainly does the job admirably.
Regarding control scheme, I think it’s a little unintuitive, and it feels restrictive after being used to Second Life (although SL has unusually good controls) — you walk around with arrow keys or WASD, but your camera keeps a fixed angle/distance as you do that, even if you double-back on yourself. You rotate the camera around your avatar by clicking and holding the right-mouse button, and moving the mouse. You can zoom in/out using the scroll wheel, but I haven’t found a way to change the camera’s centre of focus though, so it seems that you actually have to walk right up to a sign in order to read it… although I could be wrong.
You can also run, by holding the shift key or toggling with Caps Lock, but I don’t think you can fly. Interacting with items occurs mostly by left-clicking on them, and right-clicking can bring up some other information/options. When you are near a seat, a nifty little ’seat’ 3d icon appears over it, which you click to sit down. It means you can’t just sit anywhere, but it’s more reliable where you can.
Appearance
Plenty of avatar customization is possible, and it seems you can even upload your own photographs to create your virtual face. Besides that, it’s the usual maniacally large number of slider controls in various categories, and a certain degree of control over your skin tone. It’s also possible to buy various attachments to wear, including different hair, hats, jackets, trousers, and so on. The selection is not huge yet, but I am sure it will increase as the virtual world matures. (I did notice the somewhat risky “Third Life” T-shirt, although chose not to wear it!)
One thing I will say is that it was unclear exactly whom I was buying the items from, as the menu of items just appeared as part of the process of altering my avatar. I was definitely using my starting supply of “Globals” (the in-world currency) to do it though, and I assume I was just buying them from ‘the game’, so the currency didn’t actually go anywhere… it just got deducted from my account. The great thing though is that you can preview items on your avatar before attaching them, although no customization of the items seems possible (e.g. colour changes).
Currency
Since we’re on the topic, the in-world currency (”Globals”) is intended to work as part of an actual economy, and you can buy more Globals through the website apparently. It seems that you can’t trade Globals back for real-world money, although I have seen job adverts around, suggesting that you can ‘earn’ money in the virtual world, as with MMORPGs. Quite what such jobs entail is a mystery to me, but I shall endeavour to find out.
Animation
The default animations look fairly nice… nothing to write home about, but fairly smooth. Clicking a button on the interface brings up the neat little animations window, which has one particularly nifty feature to check out: moods. You can pick from: Confident, Default, Depress, Drunken, and Relaxed. This will affect the basic way your avatar stands and walks, which is great, although I would like to see a broader range of moods, and/or the ability to explicitly change the animations used (maybe those will come in a later version).
You can also create a custom set of animation buttons (up to 10 viewable at a time) which you push to perform a certain animation/gesture on-demand. As with editing your own appearance, you populate these slots by purchasing stuff with your Globals. There’s already a fairly huge number available, with plenty of dance moves, of course! The animations certainly seem fairly detailed, with facial expressions included in many, which is very nice.
User-Content
There is differing information regarding user-content — some of the support information on the website says it’s not yet possible, and yet there is an interface for it in-world. The interface indicates “you must be a premium member to upload content”, and since I am on a student-budget, I am not even considering paying them anything just now! If/when user-content is enabled though, it seems to support at least avatar attachments and animations, and perhaps other stuff will come along too, such as separate objects. There does not appear to be any facility for in-world creation though, a la Second Life, so it looks like everything would need to be created off-line, potentially with proprietary tools.
Membership
Basic membership is free, and as mentioned above, you can pay to get more “Globals” to spend in-world. There is also a premium membership level, which seems to be free during the public beta period, but which will cost more money later on. What does premium membership get you? Aside from being able to upload custom content (if/when that is implemented), it lets you buy a virtual apartment, which you seem to pay for with real-world money. From what I have picked-up, you can customize your apartment to some degree, and even designate ‘flatmates’ who can customize it too. Eventually, I think people will be able to buy and sell virtual apartments from/to each other, creating an in-world real-estate market.
Communication
There’s not a whole lot of people with whom to communicate at the moment (I should have tried this out with a friend!). However, I’ve experimented with text-chat a little, and it seems to appear as chat bubbles over avatars’ heads. That’s an option I’ve tried in Second Life, but which I didn’t like, because it makes it very hard to follow a line of conversation unless you can negotiate your camera to view all the other avatars. It apparently supports voice-chat though, which is very important. No idea how reliable it is! There seems to be an asynchronous messaging system too.
Conclusion
It’s got a lot of promise, and it seems fairly well-made so far. From the point-of-view of education, I am not hopeful at all, since it looks like custom content creation will require a substantial outlay, and potentially expertise with offline tools (which are often very hard to learn, in my experience). Having said that, though, I have got used to the remarkable affordances of Second Life, so perhaps I am being pessimistic, and teachers could work with far less customization, with more ready-made education packs.
That aside, the text chat system being based on chat-bubbles, combined with the lack of camera freedom, would make discussions of more than a few avatars very difficult to do in text… but perhaps the aim is to encourage voice chat in Twinity anyway. The camera issues would also make it hard to present information to a group of people, or for multiple avatars to use a single resource, since they all need to be close to it ‘physically’ in order to see it.
Attempting a modicum of objectivity (since I have undoubtedly glossed-over many important differences between this and other such platforms), the tag-line of Twinity is “Powered by real life”. They seem to be aiming for a much more real-life-based experience, which means all the above issues of chat bubbles, camera freedom, and even lack of content creation tools, are entirely in-line with the philosophy. They want the virtual world to mimic the real-world in layout, too, with Berlin being their first virtual city. The aim seems to be a good deal of integration with other media forms too, as I have seen in the form of much “Quantum of Solace” advertising! (Consider: how often do you see advertisements for real-world stuff when you’re just out-and-about in Second Life?)
I am looking forward to seeing where Twinity goes. Nobody can predict these things, so I won’t even guess how popular it is likely to be, but it has plenty of potential. Granted, the transition will likely be uncomfortable at first for folks used to other platforms, as it seems to do things in very much its own way, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. A little originality and character in a sometimes-saturated market is well worth the plunge.
Virtual Rome
Posted by Peter | Filed under Software, Virtual Worlds
I never was much good at history (and neither were most of the rest of my family), but nonetheless, I enjoy a few histories in moderation: Scottish, Egyptian, and Roman. As such, the recreation of ancient Rome on Google Earth sparked my interest.
I can’t say I’ve used Google Earth in quite a long time — it was OK last time I used it, but never showed a whole lot of detail around the area I live, and I honestly don’t normally care much about the terrain of downtown New York and such like! Expanding the horizons of the app is therefore a good thing, opening up a wide range of interesting possibilities for educational uses (beyond present-day geography, that is). Perhaps I can incorporate Google Earth into my own research? (It’s not exactly a virtual world in the usual sense… but it seems pretty close sometimes…)
Theft, Divorce, and Murder
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games, Software, Virtual Worlds
A less-than cheery topic to accompany some interesting virtual activity, starting with the NY Times report of the theft of some virtual inventory in RuneScape (also reported with slightly different details by the Telegraph), in which a 13 year old player was violently coerced to log-in to his account to let the thief (~16 years old) transfer the goods to another account. The incident occurred over a year ago, but a Dutch court ruled earlier this week that it amounted to theft under real-world law, and sentenced the thief accordingly. It’s a tough area to deal with from a legal standpoint, but I think it has been handled well.
A somewhat more bizarre case sees the recent arrest of a scorned divorcee who allegedly murdered her ex-husband. Sounds grim… until you realise she has been arrested on suspicion of (effectively) computer hacking, and nothing more. Seemingly, the pair were only virtual spouses in the Maple Story MMORPG (admittedly, I had never heard of it before). After the ‘husband’ unexpectedly terminated the virtual marriage, the ‘(ex-)wife’ gained unauthorised access to his account, and killed off his avatar in May earlier this year. The arrest itself is very real though, and if charged, she faces a fine of $5000, or a whopping 5 years in jail (though she claims no intent to seek revenge of a more real-world sort).
Pondering…
A comparison of these two cases brings up a fascinating judicial conundrum — isn’t murder worse than theft? On the one hand, you’ve got virtual goods being attributed a real value, so that the legal system perceives virtual theft in the same light as real theft. On the other hand, you’ve got virtual murder, which is completely ignored as the legal system tackles a mere case of unauthorised access to (and modification of) personal data. Why do real-world legal values apply to the one and not the other?
Virtual goods may represent an investment of time, and thus a certain personal value, since it will take time and effort to re-acquire them following a theft. However, does a person’s avatar in an RPG not count for a greater investment of time and personal sentiment? From a purely logical standpoint, it seems like the virtual murder should be treated more seriously than virtual theft… and yet, try as I might, I cannot bring myself to consider punishment for virtual murder as anything but ludicrous! Maybe I just don’t take virtual worlds as seriously as some people.
I’m confused. And I’m glad I never wanted to be a lawyer. 
INSILICO - amazing SL sim
Posted by Peter | Filed under Virtual Worlds
Quick note about this incredible Second Life ® sim I saw today: INSILICO. It’s very much the futuristic, sci-fi kind of theme… imagine movies like The Matrix, The Fifth Element, Judge Dredd, and so on… totally awesome:
Screenshot from INSILICO
Screenshot from INSILICO
(Most of it is real geometry… no pre-rendered backdrops or anything… absolutely astoundingly good!)
Virtual Theatre Studies
Posted by Peter | Filed under Virtual Worlds
OK, so it’s not really a course in virtual theatre studies… but it’s pretty close: students at Kent State University are putting on a virtual play (in Second Life ®) as part of their final exam.
I know from my own experience in music and theatre that creativity often flourishes when your options are constrained. For example, one of my favourite exercises when I studied drama in high school was taking a short section of script, and acting it out in 2 or 3 different ways — we had to utilise techniques other than dialogue to convey differences of meaning. I should imagine that something similar is true of acting in Second Life — one must learn to focus on what is possible, and squeeze every drop of dramatic potential out of it.
In this case, there is great flexibility with costume, since you can make them look pretty much however you like. However, programming animations must be quite a laborious task, requiring careful thought and planning (you’d need to be very careful to keep everything in sequence!). The article doesn’t mention whether the dialogue is delivered by text or voice.
I love to see this kind of thing happening… it’s a genuine challenge for the students, and promotes great innovation. It also benefits the SL community as a whole.
(Not Quite) Virtual Teachers
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Virtual Worlds
The BBC carries a video report about teachers making videos (’vodcasts’) to help pupils revise material. While I somewhat challenge the claims of ‘virtual’ and ‘interactive’ made in the report, I do believe this is a positive use of technology… to a certain extent.
I have learned a lot of interesting stuff by watching some educational videos on YouTube and elsewhere on the web (check out the awesome Periodic Table of Videos, for example), but I think it’s crucially important that pupils aren’t lulled into a sense of it being OK to rely too much on ‘after-the-fact’ learning resources. Learning is a process by which information is absorbed and retained. In the same way that mobile phone address books have destroyed people’s ability to remember important phone numbers, these kinds of quick-fix education hits run the risk of reducing pupils’ retention of the material if they are over-used or over-emphasised.
I am still positive about it though. Carry on, but tread carefully!
