the future of virtual environments
DESCRIPTION
A presentation by Ralph Schroeder at Eduserv's Where next for Virtual Worlds in UK higher and further education event held in London in January 2010.TRANSCRIPT
![Page 1: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The Future of Virtual Environments
Ralph SchroederOxford Internet Institute
Where Next…Jan 25, 2010
![Page 2: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Overview
• Why are Virtual Environments Important? • Definition of VEs and Two End-states• Different Media For Being there Together• VEs in Education and Science• Some Non-Obvious Conclusions and a Big
Question
![Page 3: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Why are VE’s Important?
• They are the most ‘extreme’ form(s) of being there together mediated by technology
• Technologies for Mediated Copresence are proliferating, and will continue to do so
• There are many preconceptions about ‘being there together’ (not as good as ftf, relations not as rich, realism is needed)
• VEs can help us to understand a range of mediated states
![Page 4: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
Real World Applications
• Business Meetings – time and travel, few uses, many to come?
• Training– if difficult otherwise
• Design and Visualization– Rarely multi-user
• Online worlds– For socializing, or commerce?
![Page 5: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Shared Virtual Environments and two End-states
• Definition of VE technology as presence, plus interacting, and copresence (Sensory experience of being in a place other than the one you are physically in, and being able to interact with it, and being there with others)
• Two End-States (video vs. computer-generated, or blue-c vs. Cave)
• Different capabilities (affordances)
![Page 6: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Blue-C: the video captured immersive end-state
Courtesy of Markus Gross, The blue-c project, ETH Zürich
![Page 7: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Blue-C
Courtesy of Markus Gross, The blue-c project, ETH Zürich
![Page 8: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
CAVE-like Systems: the computer generated end-state
Chalmers’ Tan VR-CUBE UCL’s Trimension ReaCTor
![Page 9: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
London – Gothenburg ‘Caves’
![Page 10: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Doing the Rubik’s cube
![Page 11: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Task: The Rubik puzzle
![Page 12: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
FtF
![Page 13: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
Other Tasks
With Anthony Steed and Dave Roberts
![Page 14: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
Activeworlds
![Page 15: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
![Page 16: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
Onlive Traveler
![Page 17: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
HP Halo
![Page 18: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
![Page 19: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
The Varieties of ‘Being There Together’
• Videoconferencing is proliferating in different forms, has practical constraints, and is merging with other technologies
• Online spaces support spatial interaction, the development of social norms, and content that engages users
• Social networking relates to ‘always on’ togetherness, and expresses identity and social ‘availability’ and ‘awareness’ (as with IM, mobile phones and social spaces)
![Page 20: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
Different Media for Being Together
• Instant Messaging• Social Networking• Videoconferencing• Virtual Worlds on Mobile Phones• Other Online self-presentations and forms of
Interaction• All have
– High-Low Spatial Component– Self-presentation component– Large or Small Groups
![Page 21: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
Why SVEs will not happen:
• videoconferencing has not happened even though it has been available for decades. People don’t feel the need to see each other, and the ‘I’m having a bad hair day’ problem
• online worlds have proven to have a limited range of things people do together
• economic activity in online worlds has so far - and can ever mostly be ‘self-referential’ - designing for online worlds
• it is difficult or impossible to arrange many in-world or in-space activities, such as large and small meetings, complex training, and many forms of co-visualization and co-manipulation
• there is a limit to how multimodally co-present we want to be• Some social cues are absent in meetings and interactions
![Page 22: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
Why SVEs will happen:
• time and money and environmental reasons dictate less travel
• co-visualization and co-manipulation of spaces works well and there are great needs for it
• it’s possible to do lots of things together in online worlds and spaces that can’t be done in the real world
• the technology for large and cheap 3D displays and interaction will surround us and become more widespread in any event
• people are sociable and like to see things, and online sociability can better than real world sociability and online spaces more imaginative and interesting than real ones
![Page 23: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
Virtual Worlds in Science and Education
• Purpose– Science: Public Understanding, Meetings,
Exhibitions– Scripting Classes: Various levels of building
• Setting • Communication• Offline versus Online Norms• Tools
![Page 24: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
![Page 25: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/25.jpg)
![Page 26: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/26.jpg)
![Page 27: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/27.jpg)
![Page 28: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/28.jpg)
![Page 29: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/29.jpg)
Observing education in action through scripting classes
![Page 30: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/30.jpg)
![Page 31: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/31.jpg)
![Page 32: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/32.jpg)
Lessons of Three Types of Second Science
• Exhibition: Co-visualization is difficult; object display could benefit from immersion or more engaging object interaction
• Mixed Real-Virtual: interplay between virtual and real still bifurcated, and needs better integration
• Pure Virtual: Still struggling with the question of “can virtual go beyond traditional chalk and talk lecture format?”
![Page 33: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/33.jpg)
Outlook
• Technological problems are solvable• Users will adapt to modality and self-
representation • A Convergence of modalities will take place
with a continuity of high-end and low-end, video and computer-generated, small and large groups – though systems will also be used differently according to context
![Page 34: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/34.jpg)
Futures
• Only Two End-States, with few options– Facial or Spatial– Large population worlds or small groups– Collaborating or socializing– Video or Computer-Generated
• All other forms co-presence approximate these end-states
• Mixed or Augmented Reality are subject to attention limits
![Page 35: The Future of Virtual Environments](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3a15f4a795997608b45b5/html5/thumbnails/35.jpg)
Some Non-Obvious Conclusions, a Big Question
• Face-to-Face interaction is not the Gold Standard
• Two (and only two) End-State Options are Foreseeable, with different consequences
• Are the key issues in design, or in what kind of mediated presence we want in society?