Video streaming is becoming more mainstream as the availability of Internet and bandwidth is increasing. At the same time, the surge in computational power in laptops and stationary computers for home use has caused persistent 3D online worlds to gain momentum, and these worlds are now big contenders in the entertainment industry. Recently, we have also seen the start of a synergy of online vir...

T he Virtual Reality Modeling Language sets an open-standard file format for designing 3D multimedia and shared virtual worlds on the Internet. VRML was originally designed to support the interaction of multiple participants in the World Wide Web environment—that is, to network virtual worlds via hyperlinks. However, even version 2.0 of the standard, published in August 1998, did not fulfill th...

Three-Dimensional (3D) Game Engines are large and complex, but very efficient at creating huge, artificial worlds for entertainment. As they mature, they improve and mimic the real world ever more realistically than competing Virtual Reality (VR) systems. In the present paper, we describe the key components that form a modern 3D Game Engine such as the ‘Source’ or ‘Quake III’ engines (by Valve ...

Topics covered • Review of the current tools, design software and techniques used in the industry (artist drawings, photorealistic renderings, virtual worlds, CollaborativeMap, 3D annotations) • Understanding of several primary technologies: Quest3D, XML3D, 3D Repo, Android, CollaborativeMap • The opportunities offered by the new developments in virtual environments on the web such as XML3DRepo...

In recent years developments in gaming technology have focused on Massively Multi-User Persistent Worlds. This virtual communities host thousands of users interacting with each other through the Internet in real time. Such communities require new distributed programming paradigms for implementing the virtual life management. In this work we present a practical methodology to add Virtual Agents ...

The growing emphasis on learner-centered education focuses on intrinsically motivated learning via engaging problem-solving activities. Habitable 3D learning environments, in which learners guide avatars through virtual worlds for role-based problem solving, hold great promise for situated learning. We have been investigating habitable learning environments by iteratively designing, implementin...

Most existing 3D virtual worlds are based on a ”meeting-space”model, conceived as an extension of textual chat systems. An attractive 3D interface is assumed to be sufficient to encourage the emergence of a community. We look at some alternative models of virtual communities, and explore the issue of promoting community formation in a 3D meeting space. We identify some essential or desirable fe...

Recently, virtual worlds like “Second Life” have received a lot of attention not only as environments that promote social interaction, but also as media in which scientific research can be performed effectively. In this latter aspect, they offer several advantages over traditional 3D visual applications, such as the capacity of supporting true collaborative endeavors in which real people, throu...