Over the past three years (2006-2008), the medical/health and public health communities have shown a growing interest in using online 3D virtual worlds like Second Life(R) (http://secondlife.com/) for health education, community outreach, training and simulations purposes. 3D virtual worlds are seen as the precursors of 'Web 3D' , the next major iteration of the Internet that will follow in the...

Immersive 3D worlds have increasingly raised the interest of researchers and practitioners for various learning and training settings over the last decade. These virtual worlds can provide multiple communication channels between users and improve presence and awareness in the learning process. Consequently virtual 3D environments facilitate collaborative learning and training

Virtual Institutions (VI) provide many interesting possibilities for social virtual environments, collaborative spaces and simulation environments. VIs combine Electronic Institutions and 3D Virtual Worlds. While Electronic Institutions are used to establish the regulations which structure participants interactions, Virtual Worlds are used to facilitate human participation. In this paper we pro...

In this paper we propose viewing Virtual Worlds as open Multiagent Systems and propose the 3D Electronic Institutions methodology for their development. 3D Electronic Institutions are Virtual Worlds with normative regulation of interactions. More precisely, the methodology we propose here helps in separating the development of Virtual Worlds based on the concept of 3D Electronic Institutions in...

In this paper we propose viewing Virtual Worlds as open Multiagent Systems and propose the 3D Electronic Institutions methodology for their development. 3D Electronic Institutions are Virtual Worlds with normative regulation of interactions. More precisely, the methodology we propose here helps in separating the development of Virtual Worlds based on the concept of 3D Electronic Institutions in...

Universities and educational institutions are currently becoming more dependent on delivering courses within online virtual worlds, such as 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLES). There is insufficient research on how environmental and architectural design elements of 3D virtual educational spaces and buildings inside these virtual worlds can affect the e-learning process of the students an...

Architectural design has relevance to the design of virtual worlds that create a sense of place through the metaphor of buildings, rooms, and inhabitable spaces. The design and implementation of virtual worlds has focused on the design of 3D form for fast rendering to allow real time exploration of the world. Using platforms that were originally designed for computer games, some virtual worlds ...

Architectural design has relevance to the design of virtual worlds that create a sense of place through the metaphor of buildings, rooms, and inhabitable spaces. The design and implementation of virtual worlds has focused on the design of 3D form for fast rendering to allow real time exploration of the world. Using platforms that were originally designed for computer games, some virtual worlds ...

The ActiveWorld toolkit is an open source toolkit developed at Indiana University. It allows researchers to explore social diffusion patterns in three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds, specifically those built using ActiveWorlds technology. Written in pure Java, the toolkit provides the ability to not only visualize the structure of virtual worlds (spatial position of 3D objects, their size and ...

The ActiveWorld toolkit is an open source toolkit developed at Indiana University. It allows researchers to explore social diffusion patterns in three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds, specifically those built using ActiveWorlds technology. Written in pure Java, the toolkit provides the ability to not only visualize the structure of virtual worlds (spatial position of 3D objects, their size and ...