Scientific Activity on (in) Virtual Worlds

Posted by Mathieu Bertolo on December 10, 2007 at 5:30am in Technology and Development

A discussion about scientific activity on and in virtual worlds. Maybe you have links, references, resources to share about that ?
- who are the actors interested in scientific activity and make it on virtual worlds ?
- what kind of scientific works are accessible by public ?
- what are the different theorizes and scientific positions about virtual worlds ?
- are you practicer, what is your postulate ?

Ps: have you slurl (links) of differents scientific locations in Second Life ?

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Permalink Reply by Rod McCall on December 10, 2007 at 5:47am: Interesting discussion. I have been involved in VR research since about 1996 (if you include being a student). Surprisingly SL has not really taken off as yet, although increasingly people like Mel Slater and others are using it within projects. You will however find plenty of research on user experience and technical aspects of virtual worlds, most dating back for several years. The aspects range from graphical fidelity, through to interaction issues and sense of place and presence. Presence and place research is my main area, and sense of "being somewhere" or social presence "being with others" is a very hot topic, as yet there are many opposing views on what it means to be. Some argue that it is entirely based on your sensory experience, with almost no link to content. Where as other postulate that it is combination of form, content, senses and internal mental models.

Sense of presence does seem to be one of the key elements of user experience, in particular when it comes to creating experiences which are "like" reality. Indeed without it people do not always react as expected e.g. running away from real or virtual fires, or when socialising with avatars. Of course it is naive to assume that all experiences in virtual worlds are or should be copies of reality, indeed I cannot fly in real life but can do so with a quick key press in SL.

There is also increasing research into law and ethics. For example just how real are the experiences and which laws should we borrow from reality? Also what effects do virtual marriages, deaths and relationships have on the real person? Many of the legal and ethical issues are quite new as until comparatively recently "normal" people were not using virtual worlds, hence many of the problems simply did not arise. However as they become increasingly mass market there really is a need for strong legal frameworks, even if the laws are radically different from those in reality.

A large amount of research work can be found simply by using Google, however much of it is within paid for journals although conferences such as "Presence" make their papers available online for free.; ▶ Reply to This