I had reported here the very interesting work that the two researchers, Erica Driver and Sam Driver of ThinkBalm, made and now I am very happy that they will show all this at3DTLC Conference @ Engage Expo in San Jose next month (Sept. 23-24) as described in this article here.
Real-time HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering in SketchWorlds
Artistic flexibility, graphical fidelity and interactivity
SketchWorlds currently support importing 3d models from Google SketchUp and Autodesk 3ds max. This is done through an exporter plugin, which quickly and easily converts the model to the .mesh file format. There are exporters available for other 3d packages as well, such as Blender, Lightwave, Autodesk Maya and C4D, however SketchWorlds does no’t currently support them.
3d artists and beginners are able to create interactive virtual worlds for various purposes, communicate and collaborate in real-time 3d.
ARCHITECTURE
SketchWorlds allows 3d models to be viewed, modified and shared by participants in a construction project.
PARTECIPATORY PROCESS DURING URBAN PLANNING
Municipalities can use to call citizens in urban planning offering the tool and the chance, supported of course by other methodologies and tools and by facilitators, to express and communicate their ideas.
ALL THE MASSIVE SIMULATORS USED TO SIMULATE PROTITYPE REDUCE THE ENVIROMENTAL IMPACT AND CARBON FOOTPRINT allowing people to share stuff and collaborate without travel. The online environment makes it easy to use 3d models together, to clarify concepts and build a strong understanding over any distance.
BUILD GAME WORLDS
By SketchWorlds is possible to build game worlds, simulations and more. Using Python, scripting language, or LSL, the scripting language that also powers Second Life, almost any type of interactivity can be achieved with relative ease.
Platforms online aid Health and Life Sciences
Platforms online aid Health and Life Sciences research projects in building database, sharing, visualization and meeting.
(this post is not intended to be exhaustive on the list and on topic)
is a game in which people from all over the world compete in improving structural models of proteins. There’s no deep knowledge required – a brief tutorial contains essential introduction to the topic and exercises testing if user understands some basic concepts. Playing the game does not contribute directly to the science, but helps in improving protein structure prediction software and in understanding protein folding.
Two other examples of non-expert participation in science are and
is a dedicted online bioinformatics training environment. Trainees are invited to annotate metagenomic DNA fragments added to their personnal sequence cart from various oceanic locations (Global Ocean Sampling project by Venter et al.). The analyses include the detection of potential coding regions, the search for sequence homologs and identification of conserved protein domains, as well as the reconstruction of phygenetic trees.
The Annotathon is designed to manage large trainee cohorts grouped into teams (such as students following the same course) supervised by instructors. Each sequence annotation produced by trainees is examined, commented on and evaluated by instructors twice. This allows trainees to revise their initial annotations, thus improving their bioinformatics skills. After the team closing date, trainee evaluations are compiled into an overall grade.
These are servers that combine “required” and “useful”, that is combine teaching and data annotation. Both servers aim at enhancing learning process and at the same time use crowdsourcing approach to curate data – metagenome sequences in first case and chemistry spectra in the second.
was developed by Jean-Claude Bradley, Andrew Lang and Antony Williams.
It is a game with a purpose. It was conceived by Jean-Claude Bradley (Drexel University) and Andrew Lang (Oral Roberts University) based upon a 3d nmr spectra game they developed for Second Life. It is not just a fun game to enhance learning for college chemistry students, but the game itself uses crowdsoucing techniques to help curate spectra files submitted to ChemSpider. By keeping track of spectra files that are missed most often it helps identify low quality or incorrect spectra files. Players may also flag and comment of spectra, helping ChemSpider curators.
“The eIUS Project highlights the successful use of e-Infrastructure, in this case by researchers in Bioinformatics at the University of Manchester who, in collaboration with the myGrid Consortium, use the Taverna Workbench and the myExperiment virtual research environment to assist with the analysis and sharing of data relating to sleeping sickness (Trypanosomiasis) in African cattle. The eIUS Project is funded by the JISC and supported by the University of Oxford and University of Manchester.”
myExperiment is a collaborative environment where scientists can safely publish their workflows and experiment plans, share them with groups and find those of others. Workflows, other digital objects and collections (called Packs) can now be swapped, sorted and searched like photos and videos on the Web. myExperiment makes easy for the next generation of scientists to contribute to a pool of scientific workflows, build communities and form relationships. It enables scientists to share, reuse and repurpose workflows and reduce time-to-experiment, share expertise and avoid reinvention.
“While Second Life was first sold to scientists as a conference platform, it turned out it’s not very useful for such purpose – but scientists stayed for SL’s very good visualization capabilities. How many times instead of explaining via email/phone some concept to a colleague, you said “come here, I’ll show you”? SL allows to prepare interactive visualizations of chemical structures, genomes, proteins or multidimensional data and as such, to communicate some difficult concepts faster than via other channels.” (by Pawel Szczesny)
Second Life blog
Second life blog tags: meetings , research, simulations, casestudy
(Nature work forum about Second life)
General References:
Digital Preservation 001
As digital information is becoming more ubiquitous and indispensable and at the same time extremely fragile, there is the need to provide tools and techniques for secure, reliable and cost-effective preservation of digitally encoded information for the indefinite future. In the video the project coordinator, David Giaretta, presents what the CASPAR project has to offer.
How can digital data still be used and understood in the future when systems, software, and everyday knowledge continues to change? This is the CASPAR challenge.
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“The goal of digital preservation is to maintain the ability to display, retrieve, and use digital collections in the face of rapidly changing technological and organizational infrastructures and elements.”
To learn more Cornell University Library/Research Department
- Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) in the UK is developing a decision-making tree to be used in cost-benefit analysis of digital preservation options (Administrative and Managerial Frameworks Preservation Management of Digital Materials). The Arts and Humanities Data Service is a UK national service funded by the JISC and AHRC to collect, preserve and promote the electronic resources which result from research and teaching in the arts and humanities. (NOTE: From April 2008 the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) will no longer be funded to provide a national service.)
- The online resource for visual arts
- DCC Digital Curation Centre What is digital curation? Digital curation is maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use; specifically, we mean the active management and appraisal of data over the life-cycle of scholarly and scientific materials.
I will continue with more posts soon about this subject.
IMPORTANT CONFERENCE AT IBIZA “Metaversos, Web 3D virtual worlds and social network”
The 26th and 25th june si the II Congress at Ibiza “Metaversos, Web 3D virtual worlds and social network” , had been in Ibiza.
The theme was about the future developments of these tecnologies.
The conference was open to all teachers, university teachers, experts and professionals linked metaverso, the farmers concerned to develop virtual business, the users of platforms in 3d and the general public that want to know or learn everything on the virtual worlds, their potential in the world of education, training, work, etc…. The Congress has the support of national prestige and international experts to help with their vision and experience in this field. Prestigious national and international experts attended the conress and gave a contribute to their vision and experience in this field.
It is a reality that million people daily use virtual worlds like Second Life for multiple aims, between which we can include the socialization and creation of communities of interests, the application of creative processes, the investigation, the education and formation, the accomplishment of economic transactions etc.All this requires an interdisciplinary approach that integrates the perspective social, educational, technological and of marketing and businesses.
The II National Congress Worlds Virtual 2009, also tried to send a glance the future, analyzing which can be the evolution and challenges that foreseeably they will have to confront investigators, educators and companies due to the evolutionary tendencies of the different technological platforms in 3D.
to learn more
3rd International Conference on e-Democracy “Next Generation Society: Technological and Legal Issues” 23 – 25 September 2009, Athens, Greece
Is our society ready to adopt the technological advances in ubiquitous networking, next generation Internet, and pervasive computing?
To what extent will it manage to evolve promptly and efficiently to a Next Generation Society, adopting the forthcoming ICT challenges?
to learn more
Learning and Teaching with Technology in Art Design and Communication
Designs on e-Learning 2009 – Online Conference:
Many exciting presentations will be available including Digital Games and Education, Creating an online design atelier, Developing the use of blogs as a reflective tool, The Personalisation of Learning Framework and Harnessing Technology or the Tail Wagging the Dog.
Important report and video about Immersive Worlds “What is the business value of using immersive technologies for work?”
A new video is live: a 9-minute tour of the ThinkBalm Data Garden, which is an experiment in data visualization. The ThinkBalm Data Garden is open to the public on ThinkBalm Island in the virtual world of Second Life. A tour through the garden is an interactive next-generation “webinar” experience based upon the findings of the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009. This video is a ThinkBalm production, with special help from ThinkBal Innovation Community members Eric Hackathorn, Jeff Lowe, Jonas Karlsson, and Keely Algiere.
Watch the video:
ThinkBalm published the last 26th May a ground-breaking new research report: “ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009.” The core question is, “What is the business value of using immersive technologies for work?” They surveyed 66 highly-qualified Immersive Internet practitioners and conducted 15 in-depth interviews.
This research report contains the findings and analysis. To view or download a PDF version of this 36-page report, click here
Thanks to: ThinkBalm Immersive Internet insights & expertise , Erica Driver , Sam Driver and click on the first link to visit this important site.
Multiverse platform
Multiverse platform allows to build new Virtual Massive Worlds.
The Multiverse technology platform is free—no upfront costs. Download the SDK (software development kit) with the full platform, the sample game, the complete documentation, and the starter assets, all for free. Multiverse makes its money through revenue-sharing.
Multiverse gives developers code, content, and consumers:
- A comprehensive, pre-coded client-server infrastructure and tools. Includes multiple pre-coded MMOG-functionality plug-ins like movement, combat, AI, and more. Also includes an actual MMOG for modification
- An online store where game developers can buy and sell all the assets for games built on the Multiverse Platform. Loaded with free starter assets from Multiverse.
- A built-in market of players, enabled by a single program–the Multiverse Client–that lets them play all of the MMOGs and visit all of the non-game virtual worlds built on the Multiverse platform.
This technology allowas to build:
- Online Gaming Solutions.
- Media and Branding Solutions.
- Enterprise Solutions.
- Enterprise Solutions.
- Government and Military Solutions.
- Academic and Educational Solutions
To learn more …
The military is turning to the virtual world to treat traumatized veterans of the Iraq war
The military is turning to the virtual world to treat traumatized veterans of the Iraq war, giving troops a high-tech way to confront and overcome mental war wounds.
Courtesy of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Creative Technologies An insurgent in Virtual Iraq, a simulated warzone designed to help troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder confront and overcome the incidents that scarred them.
Courtesy of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Creative Technologies A local child waves to the convoy in Virtual Iraq.
Virtual Iraq uses electronically re-created Iraqi environs that look like a video game, as well as the sounds and smells of deployment, to help those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder revisit the events that affected them so profoundly.
It is a joint venture of the Air Force, Navy and Army, along with the University of Southern California and Virtually Better Inc. The visual environs created for the therapy are based on the video game “Full Spectrum Warrior.”
To learn more
Using Virtual Worlds for Successful Behavioral Therapy
Greenleaf Pioneers Virtual Worlds Behavioral Therapy
Troubled Kids & Computer Games: Using Virtual Worlds for Successful Behavioral Therapy
(…) Child and adolescent mental health therapy through this medium is conducted with realistic 3D avatars that mimic natural human interaction, creating a powerful, immersive virtual environment. The focus of SECTER is to facilitate interactive role-play, practice of interpersonal skills, exploration of past behavior, and drug and alcohol refusal skills. In addition to the real-time capabilities for clinicians to interact with their client, SECTER includes 3D playback capabilities, a built-in OLIVE feature that allows for the examination of sessions from multiple perspectives, including the capability to see events through the eyes of other participants. The replay capabilities enable discussion and exploration with patients that can lead to a faster and deeper understanding of what the antecedents to the patient’s problem behaviors are. (…)
to learn more
Forterra Systems OLIVE platform
Videos about the different uses of Forterra Olive Platform. All the avatars are played by real people:
- to simulate emergencies, in this case a fire and explosion on an oil rig
- showing VOIP interaction between sales clerk and customers
- integration examples showing using IBM Lotus Sametime used to locate contacts, view them on a 3d map and call them from a virtual conference room in Forterra’s OLIVE platform
- for training airline attendants to handle difficult situations. This example deals with a drunk passenger.
- for training police officers and paramedics to handle different events. This example deals with a car accident and injured passengers
- for training military personnel to handle different events and cultural issues in foreign countries. This example deals with army guys trying to work with local Iraqi police regarding rumors of terrorists in the neighborhood
- for hospital operating room training for different scenarios like mass casualty events. Behind the nurses, doctors, and the patient avatars are real people going through a training exercise. The benefit of this technology is to get nurses or doctors to consider the patient symptoms and treat the patient. If the patient is treated correctly he/she lives, otherwise the patient dies.
Project Wonderland: Toolkit for Building 3D Virtual Worlds
Project Wonderland is a 100% Java and open source toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio, share live desktop applications and documents and conduct real business. Wonderland is completely extensible; developers and graphic artists can extend its functionality to create entire new worlds and new features in existing worlds.
The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time
Directly from the Official website:
The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between IBM and the Palace Museum in Beijing, China. For more than five hundred years, the Ming and Qing emperors ruled China from the palaces of the Forbidden City. The art and architectural treasures from this period are the cultural heart of modern China.
The principal goal of the project is to provide the means for a worldwide audience to celebrate and explore Chinese culture and history. As an IBM Corporate Citizenship project, the project marries world-class subject matter with world-class technology innovation. It is a premiere showcase of IBM’s leadership in virtual worlds and cultural preservation.
The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is the world’s first online virtual world dedicated to a country’s cultural heritage. This is presented as a three-dimensional replica of the square-kilometer palace grounds called The Virtual Forbidden City. The project partners’ goal was to create an experience that is as authentic as possible by being true to important Chinese principles of balance and harmony.
Rather than being an isolating virtual experience, the Virtual Forbidden City allows visitors to see and interact with each other and with a wide range of volunteers, staff, and automated characters. To welcome the broadest range of visitors, a simple, easy to use interface guides interactions with the Virtual Forbidden City. As they explore the Virtual Forbidden City, visitors can choose to simply observe the buzz of activity, participate in activities that provide insights into important aspects of the Qing dynasty, or even take guided tours that uncover new insights into the stories of the Forbidden City.
Go to visit!
