The main objective of the workshop was that of having inputs about possible application for the platform. Concrete ideas that can become opportunities not only for the consortium, but especially for the stakeholders; the aim was not that of selling the platform, but that of nurturing the participants interest towards it, and let them brainstorm and thinking about concrete and useful projects and commercial application to be developed with it.

The participants were people coming from in industry, education, commerce and university experiences.

PART ONE

The workshop started with a very brief presentation of the Project, supported by the demo videos realized since now. Then some of the partners performed an interactive demo of it (about 30 minutes).

PART TWO

The brainstorming part started with some very interesting considerations focused on the problematical issues and most valuable features of virtual worlds in general, based on the participants’ experiences.

Among the problematical issues identified within the e-learning sector, the difficulty of exploiting the persistency of the virtual environment (people have no reason of using virtual environment outside the lesson or the activity) and the difficulty in involving students in the construction of tools. In particular the fact of having participants able to build things by themselves seems to be essential as courses and activites need a countinous and active support, as the distance and virtual learning experience can be conceived as a sort of work in progress

Some participants have suggested that an answer to the problem of involving users can be found in the construction of a very strong community, making the learning space a sort of “emotional place”. The possibility to change the appearance of the avatar could be also very appealing and can support the creation of an emotional place. Moreover most of the students tend to conceive a virtual world as a game, and this makes difficult the transition from the real classroom to the virtual environment.

Shifting to experiences with customers, the attention has been focused on the difficulty of industrial customers in understanding the correct use of a real time application and distinguishing it from a simply 3d graphic simulation. The frequent demand for high standard of graphic quality is incompatible with common real time systems.

After this first wide approach to the complexity of the use of virtual worlds, the focus of the discussion has been put on considerations about the most interesting features of VirtualLife.

IDENTITY AND SECURITY

The strong connection between real and virtual identity can be useful but also risky, as in many cases people don’t want to disclosure their real identity; in this case the different level of accesses and the security infrastructure that VirtualLife implements can guarantee a correct management of identities and private information.

SCRIPTING LANGUAGE

The use of a very flexible and customizable scripting language is seen as a key value as it can support:

• a wide range of possibilities of manipulating objects and conducting experiments
• the connection between an external already existing database and objects of the 3d virtual world
• the possibility of integrating social network systems within the platform (trying to answer also to the need of creating a more involving and emotional place)
• the possibility of having very complex autonomous avatars / objects / robots with specific behaviours (a feature that was particularly appreciated by an industrial participant

VIRTUAL CONSTITUTION AND RULES

Having an editable virtual constitution can be useful from several points of view.
One of the problems highlighted by the participants is the widespread digital pollution; the virtual constitution can contain rules for managing this issues and of course rules can be autonomously and democratically set in each nation.
A feature that is highly demanded both by the educational and the industrial participants is the possibility of logging and recording things in world mainly for research or analysis purposes; in this case too constitution can help dealing with privacy issues.

PEER-TO-PEER INFRASTRUCTURE

It is seen as an interesting feature as it reduces costs and allows to be independent from huge central servers.

PART THREE

The third part of the workshop was dedicated to the identification of the most promising uses of the platform. This allowed us to collect valuable inputs in order to focus our attention on the choice of validation scenarios which can be useful and promising also from an exploitation point of view.

HIGHLIGHTED SCENARIOS

Below the list of scenarios that were suggested by participants merging the features of the platform with their personal experiences and fields of application; at the moment the consortium is conducting an analysis of them in order to choose 2 or 3 scenarios to develop for the validation of the platform.

1. language learning platform
2. volunteer education for emergency management
3. use and promotion of complex machinery
4. anatomy lesson
5. civil education: driving license
6. distance learning
7. 3d storyboard for movies (both for actors and for animated movies)

The workshop has been organized in order to present the VirtualLife platform to possible stakeholders and discuss with them opportunities and promising application scenarios (e-business, e-learning, e-commerce…).

Workshop agenda (.pdf), registration form (.doc) .

Speaker will be Olaf Wolters (German Trade Association of Interactive Entertainment Software (BIU)). The event will take place on April 16th 2010 at 12:00 p.m in University of Goettingen (Germany), ZHG 005.

Event summary (pdf)

More VirtualLife demos:

• a tram departs from tram-stop, inside view
• a tram departs from tram-stop: outside view,
• a tram in virtual life: waiting at terminal,
• a tram moving within final station.

For more pictures see our Gallery