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Case Study: Shared Virtual and Augmented Environments for Creative Applications

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Research and Development in the Academy, Creative Industries and Applications

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Computer Science ((BRIEFSCOMPUTER))

Abstract

The origin of shared virtual worlds is summarized. They were predicted by many novelists as well as envisaged in blockbuster movies at the start of the computer era. Constructing the first shared virtual worlds began in the last decade of the twentieth century when the Internet became ubiquitous. Extensions of the hypertext mark-up language (HTML) to immersive 3D graphics were proposed by several vendors and research groups that eventually materialized into what we know now as Extensible 3D (X3D) and its predecessor Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Academia has capitalized on these new horizons for education by setting up virtual campuses in Active Worlds—online shared virtual worlds based on the Renderware rendering engine. Thousands of virtual citizens populated CyberTown—a 3D online community developed in VRML language and the Blaxxun collaborative platform. The beginning of the new Millennium saw a start to many new developments and paradigms ranging from massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) to serious networked gaming and simply living in virtual reality. New development tools, new businesses, and new psychological, ethical, and judicial problems had arrived. Second Life had a major impact on the field as the countries were opening their embassies there, and international corporations used to set up their offices for interviewing job applicants. For many years, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. was exploring how useful their very own networked virtual world “PlayStation Home” could be. However only a small fraction of the billions of Internet browsing users were involved in virtual 3D living—and these were mostly content creators. Virtual 3D cities were implemented in Google StreetView which brought together augmented reality (AR) and a global positioning system (GPS) in mobile devices. Internet gaming using AR has become a “national sport” and the most popular leisure activity for young people in some countries. Tourists have become accustomed to utilizing AR and GPS navigation in the places they visit. All these new opportunities of “being concurrently here and elsewhere” with mobile phones, just a click away, are encapsulated in Pokémon Go. Its impact is analyzed. The future for shared VR and AR is summarized.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that features advanced science and technology in an urban, new-future dystopian society. It pictures advanced technological and scientific achievements in information technology and cybernetics as well as conflicts between some powerful mega-corporations and private security forces on one side, and underworld of illegal trade, gangs, drugs, etc. on the other side. Classic cyberpunk characters are marginalized, alienated loners who live on the edge of society where daily life is impacted by rapid technological changes, ubiquity flow of computerized information, and invasive cybernetic modification of the human body.

  2. 2.

    Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) and its current successor Extensible 3D (X3D) are ISO standard file formats for describing interactive 3D objects and virtual worlds. They are designed to be used on the Internet, intranets, and local client systems. They are also intended to be universal interchange formats for integrated 3D graphics and multimedia. VRML and X3D are capable of representing static and animated dynamic 3D and multimedia objects with hyperlinks to other media such as text, sounds, movies, and images. VRML and X3D are following declarative programming style, i.e. they tell the computer what to do. It differs from the imperative programming style, like in C and in a popular graphics library OpenGL, which tell the computer how to do things. VRML and X3D are maintained by Web3D Consortium—international, non-profit, member-funded, industry standards development organization founded in 1997.

  3. 3.

    Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are a combination of role-playing video games and massively multiplayer online games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a shared virtual world. In MMORPG, the player usually assumes the role of some fictional character and takes control over many of that character’s actions. The players may form teams to achieve a common goal. The roles in the team differ depending on the game. While progressing through the game, the players acquire new weapons, avatars and other items which form their personal inventories. MMORPG are usually exchanging events between the participating computers which update the status of the virtual world as it is seen by each individual player. MMORPGs are played throughout the world.

  4. 4.

    Anshe Chung is an avatar in the online world Second Life. Referred to as the “Rockefeller of Second Life” by a CNN journalist, she has built an online business involving development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies. According to Chung, in June 2004 she began selling and creating custom animations and then used this money to buy and develop virtual land.

  5. 5.

    Bintan Island is an island in the Riau archipelago of Indonesia. For some reason Pikachu pokémon, which is very rare in other parts of the world, can easily be spotted and captured near Nirwana Resort Hotel and Bintan Ferry Terminal, as reported by the author’s niece Lidia who managed to capture three Pikachus in one day at this location.

  6. 6.

    Pikachu is a fictional creature that appears in many video games. It is one of the most sought after poket monsters (pokémons) in the Pokémon Go mobile game.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Alexei Sourin

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  1. Alexei Sourin
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Correspondence to Alexei Sourin .

Summary of the Hot Links to Embedded URLs in This Chapter

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Section 5.2

Section 5.3

Section 5.4

Section 5.5

Section 5.6

  • Further Reading

  • Brutzman, D., Daly, L.: X3D: Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors, p. 470. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Burlington, MA. ISBN-13: 0-12-088500-X (2007)

  • Sourin, A.: Computer Graphics: From a Small Formula to Cyberworlds, 3rd edition, p. 370. Prentice Hall, Singapore. ISBN: 978-981-06-9234-6 (2012)

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Sourin, A. (2017). Case Study: Shared Virtual and Augmented Environments for Creative Applications. In: Research and Development in the Academy, Creative Industries and Applications. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54081-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54081-8_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-54080-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-54081-8

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