Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Diana Brauhn on October 24, 2007 at 7:54pm

Hi Mathieu,

I am also studying toward my doctoral degree, done with classes, on to the exam and dissertation now.

You may be interested in a group in SL, Educators Coop. We are a group of educators who are doing research on education in SL. Here is our web address http://www.educatorscoop.org/

We meet on the Mesa (center of our island) on Tuesdays 5pm SLTime. SL coordinates 142 115 42

Good luck with your research.

Diana

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Permalink Reply by Hanan Gazit (VRider) on October 25, 2007 at 7:56am

Mat hi,
U can find relevant articles on the DiGRA on-line journal: Games and Culture
here: http://gac.sagepub.com/
The scope of your research relay and depends on your research Qs !-)
Good-luck
Vrider

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Permalink Reply by Chloe Giusti on November 9, 2007 at 4:13pm

Bonsoir Mathieu,

I'm no specialist in VW, but one of my first question when SL, WoW, or social communities (say, Facebook, Plaxo), are mentioned all together is: how do you differentiate them in terms of defining virtual worlds. I'll confess, I do not play Wow, neither do I spend time on Second Life, but I do use Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo for business and social networking.
I somehow feel some distance from what I refer to more 'hardcore' virtual' worlds, but I would be interested in knowing how you define VW as part of your research - would you include lighter, social networking website in this catgory or is it different all together?

All the best,

Chloe

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Permalink Reply by Jack Ryker on November 9, 2007 at 5:14pm

Hello,
I think its important to outline the history of web3d and the reasons behind the existence of web3d.
The current state of web3d is game oriented and theme park oriented. I wonder what the future
of web3d pages are? I am wondering if and when 2d web pages (.html and flash) will be seamleass
with 3d content (including 3d shared spaces).
At this point, wouldn't it be cool if you went to a lapstoreonline.com and had 2d specs and a
web3d interactive product display which allows a live customer service person to share
the space if the user has questions.
The theme park VW are all very important, but I think the outworlds are even moreimportant.

The key is a small automatic, download like flash.
However its impossible in 3d to have such a small download time.
But then again, it seems broadband is starting to get mass usage... and thus a small
VRml browser ( 2megs) is absolutely reasonable , as opposed to VW worlds
which run 20 Megs at the absolute low end of file size.

With 20 megs, I want the entire universe in detail down to the sand particles. heh 8)

In VRML/x3d the entire range of content possiblity exists. From the amateur
webbuilder to entire VW's(see blaxxuns cybertown.com). Thus with a small
initial download, a user can jump from a 3d webpage to a x3d VW.

The problem with VW's is that they are propietary and you could not make
a stand alone world on your webpage without requiring users to
download at least 20 megs. And the world on your site is probably
only 5 megs, at the most with all resources.

8)

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Permalink Reply by Alex Fedotov on November 11, 2007 at 6:06am

Hi, Cloe.

The difference of VW and MMO is very simple: VW are PERSISTENT - you return to VW and find items and objects you left there in a state you left or in other (if somebody has changed somethnig). In MMO this is generally not true - you mostly always return to the SAME environment (created by game producer). However there are and sure will be examples of 'hybrids'.

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Permalink Reply by Jack Ryker on November 11, 2007 at 1:39pm

Persistent state of objects is great. Once I made a chessboard and allowed it to be shared. I was thinking ofcreating a chess universe, much like Unreal Tournament with teams and spectators but th war field is a big chessboard.
In order to have persistent objects, I needed a server with software. And for an amateur 3d builder,
this is where the problem comes in. Luckily blaxxun offered public servers for free, that allowed
me to share my chess world.
I am not sure how these servers can be used, and as I am aiming at commercial uses, my current
web page doesn't use shared content, or persistent content.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Fedotov on November 11, 2007 at 6:01am

Hi, Mathieu,

Our company is building a product that involves a specialized search engine for information about VW and MMO. It's available in demo here: http://yolto.com
It only searches the proven reliable sources of information and is spam free.

How to use: type in the name of the game or world in a search bar and start clicking sections (tabs) and links on the left - groups of sources.

The results for now have the same rank as in Google, which means - the more people were reading a material - the higher it is in the results.

2All: Please feel free to contribute any sites you know if you think we are not indexing them.

I hope it will help you in your research. And, please don't forget to post the URL of your thesis when it will be available on the web! :) Regards.

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Permalink Reply by 9mmbooks on November 20, 2007 at 9:23am

Hey folks I just registered with VWC... I'm very interested in this topic Comparative Study of Virtual Worlds. Should a list be formed before study begins. Here are the worlds I have knowledge of...

Second Life (reading knowledge only)
Kaneva (I'm an Adviser in Kaneva)
vSide (I've spent a few hours in vSide)
There.com (reading knowledge only)
MetaVerse (Can't Connect with my graphics card)

My Sons are WOW players and War Hammer Beta Testers
They use to play Dark Age Camelot (Internationally ranked)
and other virtual world combat games.

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Permalink Reply by Mathieu Bertolo on December 6, 2007 at 10:53am

thx for all. I haven't read this forum since a long time ago. My survey (thesis), surely begun on January. Maybe I say here what platforms I choose to learn, and the differents steps during the processus. Once more time thx for contributions that help me to choose. Than, to speak out of my research object, wee can talk here on the comparison between virtual worlds in general ? What do you think.

For example what criteria are pertinent to make comparison. the number of subscribers, the target, the linked usages, the structur of platform... I want to choose differents aspects to make a first typology of platforms. It make sense for you ?
Thx
Friendly,
Mathieu

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Permalink Reply by Rod McCall on December 10, 2007 at 5:35am

There is also Active Worlds, I was using it back in 1999 on an Intel P75, and the graphics were not that far behind the resource hog that is Second Life :-)

I am not sure how Active Worlds has progressed in recent years, but excluding the "functioning" economy of SL it seemed to have pretty much everything people could want. Also at the time you could also create your own closed virtual world servers, which were ideal for research projects etc.

If you are looking for studies of virtual reality and increasingly SL and similar platforms from a user experience view, then try the links below:

www.presence-research.org

Or google "International Society for Presence Research" or "Presence 2007". There was also a conference a few years ago called "Collaborative Virtual Environments". You could also do worse than look at the "VR" conferences run by IEEE or the ACM.

A good journal is "Presence: Tele-Operators and Virtual Environments" by MIT Press.

While the areas of research mentioned may not always relevant, they may help you identify some of the core user experience aspects which are required to make people feel present with others and in turn those that make people feel part of communities. There has been a surprisingly large amount of research on this area dating back to the 90´s and in some cases earlier.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Fedotov on December 10, 2007 at 8:49am

Despite the fact, that ActiveWorlds is pretty active (the last step was Facebook/Myspace mashup capability) it sure doesn't have '...pretty much everything people could want'. Namely: people want to EXPRESS THEMSELVES, that's exactly what AV is not capable of. Very limited customisation, clumsy animations, running characters/avatars...
But I like AV platform, it's pretty much open for mash-ups and that's exactly what is necessary right now... So, please, consider the brief outline of drawbacks as a constructive critisism. :)

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Permalink Reply by Rod McCall on December 10, 2007 at 9:03am

Ok, it s a few years since I last used it. However from memory the graphics were not too far behind SL, well not given the hardware which most people were using at the time to run AW. I should really check it out again.

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