Virtual world

Figure 6.2 Virtual reality uses computer graphics to simulate the experience of being in a 3-D world. This type of therapy is used to treat phobias. By wearing a headset and entering a virtual world, patients can come face-to-face with their fears while remaining in a safe environment.

The term place refers to where the business will be located, or more generally, what channels will be employed to get the product or service to customers. Companies selling software to the financial sector will do well to locate in New York, London, and other major financial capitals to be close to companies in then-market. Companies that depend on recruiting specialized scientific and engineering talent will do well to locate near universities with excellent reputations in the needed talents. Of course, the virtual world of the Web has reduced somewhat the competitive advantage of physical presence or place. The Web permits customers almost anywhere to communicate, buy, and be serviced after the sale by companies that use e-mail, Web browsers, and other tools of online communication. 

Physics-based synthesis can provide extremely high quality and expressivity in a very compact algorithm. Such computational models can provide extremely low bit rates at very high quality levels for certain sounds. In addition to data compression applications, such models can also provide a foundation for the future evolution of musical instruments, moving it from the real world of wood and metal into the virtual world where formerly impossible modifications are easily tried out. 

Even if they progressively slow down, they could rim a virtual world in their minds much like a computer runs a program, and the Diffuse Ones would not perceive any slowdown. This means that although the physical Universe is a black emptiness of electrons, neutrinos, and leptons, a rich virtual Universe could unfold from within. 

Numerical solutions are experiments in the virtual world of computers. As such, they share many similarities with laboratory experiments in the real world. Each solution is a data point much like a data point in a laboratory setting, and certain parameters, such as flow rate, temperatures, and geometry, are allowed to change and new solutions obtained so that a trend of variation can be identified. Just as laboratory experiments involve preparation, data collection, and data analysis, numerical solutions involve preprocessing, solution control, and postprocessing, three common steps to be discussed next. 

A small example will illuminate this setting. Users that participate in a collaborative session in an immersive VE are usually tracked and use mouselike input devices that provide six degrees of freedom and additional buttons for specific commands that can be used to interact with the system. As stated above, the collaborative part of this setting is that more than one user interact in the same shared virtual world. That means that all users have access or at least the possibility to interact with the presented objects at the same time, usually with a mouse-like device, gestures or speech recognition. E.g., the system detects the push of a button on the 3D-mouse over a virtual object and utters an event to the application that has then the possibility to interpret the push of the button over the object as a try to select that object for further manipulation, e.g., dragging around. In a different implementation, the user application does not see the push of the button as such, but is presented an event that indicates the selection of an object within the world and can react on that. 

Another perspective is that not only becoming at one with the computer for our health is inevitable, but that it was already the case eons ago (in a sense different to the above, but at least showing that a computational universe is far from impossible). Many theoretical physicists who call themselves cos-mologists or information theorists have argued that the universe already is a computer, and we are immersed in its program. That may come as no shock to a generation so immersed in cyberspace, virtual reality, and business and leisure environments like Second Life (a virtual world developed by Linden... 

In a further effort to characterize the leading chemists in the world, the panel asked experts from the United States and abroad to identify the best of the best whom they would invite to an international conference in their subfield. The national makeup of these virtual congresses provides another indicator of U.S. leadership in chemistry by the strong predominance of U.S. speakers (50-70 percent) selected for virtual world congresses. (Caveat When the organizer of the virtual congress was a U.S. chemist, about 15 percent more of the speakers were from the United States than when the organizer was not from the United States.)... 

In an effort to determine the leading chemists in the world, the panel called on an international group of chemists for their qualitative assessment of the subareas of chemistry. This exercise is referred to as the virtual world congress. ... 

The virtual congress data were used to characterize the relative position of the United States in each of the subfields. The panel considered the following criteria to assess research leadership as determined by the virtual world congresses ... 

FIGURE D-l Virtual world congress organizers by area of chemistry and U.S. residency. 

TABLE D-2 List of Experts Who Organized the Virtual World Congress by Nominating Its Keynote Speakers... 

To fight a war with poison gas requires highly efficient mass-production, a demand which the IG (then capitalized at an estimated 400 million) was ideally suited to meet. Most First World War gases could be manufactured in bulk using the methods and machinery normally employed in making dyestuffs. By the start of the war, Germany had a virtual world monopoly in the production of dyes Britain on the other hand could produce only a tenth of what she needed. The imbalance was to be a serious handicap to the Allied... 

Simulation is now considered one of the key technologies. Modem simulation systems such as virtual reahty are real-time oriented and allow interaction with the operator. The operator can chemge the visual point of view in the graphical, 3D picture by means of input devices (e.g., data gloves) and thus is able to take a look around in the virtual world. The virtual objects can be interactively manipulated so that modifications can be executed more quickly, safely, and comfortably. 

All VE applications are founded on the generation, perception, and manipulation of naturalistic or abstract virtual worlds without any physical equivalent Objects existing within virtual worlds can possess various qualities and behaviors. Examples are graphics, sound, and force feedback. By multiple addressing of the human senses, the attempt is made to generate the greatest possible intuitiveness of virtual environments VE can be experienced through visualization, meuked out by 3D object representations and real-time-orientated interaction modes. 

Augmented reahty (AR) combines real worlds/objects with virtual worlds/objects. AR is a novel approach to the interaction between human and machine. It is possible, for example, to view information using a head-mounted display. The information is displayed context sensitive, which means that it depends on the observed objects, such as a part of an assembly. The engineer can now display job-related assembly data while viewing the real object. 

Streiz N.A., Tandler R, Muller-Tomfelde C., and Konomi S. 2002. Roomware toward the next generation of human-computer interaction based on an integrated design of real and virtual worlds. In J.M. Carroll (Ed.), Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium, pp. 553-578. ACM Press, New York. 

In this section, we introduce situation theoretical notions and objects that are fundamental for fine-grained modelling of information and information components. Situation Theory takes some set-theoretic objects as its basic objects. These basic objects then are used in the recursive construction of more complex situation theoretic objects. Informally, the basic informational pieces, called infons, are composite objects carrying information about relations and objects filling the arguments of the relations, at certain time and space locations. Infons can be basic or complex, by recursively defined system of objects. Infons are the ground, informational content of basic and complex informational objects, the informational content of situated propositions (introduced in Sect. 3), and other objects that carry information about situations. Infons are facts when supported by actual situations, e.g., in real or virtual worlds, theoretical models, or computerized models. 

Simulation exercises create a virtual world for users and require them to make active decisions and come up with the best result in a certain situation to better understand and prepare for what happens in real life (Zoroja 2010). 

Esteves, M., Fonseca, B., Morgado, L., Martins, R (2011). Improving teaching and learning of computer programming through the use of the seeond life virtual world. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42 4), 624-637. 

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