A guest post providing informative insights into the future of 3D computer technology.

This week, I welcome Andrew Barras, Instructional Designer at Full Sail University, and author of the blog “Education Stormfront“. Andrew has been a 3D Modeler, Computer Programmer, Web Designer, and Professor over the course of the last 15 years. His post discusses the future of 3D graphics technology.

The potential for 3D video applications in education has received increasing media attention lately. Thanks, Andrew, for sharing your knowledge about this topic with us – it sounds like what’s coming down the road with this technology is going to be pretty amazing.

If you have had an opportunity to see Second Life, you probably don’t have a very good opinion about 3d graphics.  While it has improved over the years, Second Life is designed to run on as many computers as possible, not just the ones with the big graphics cards.  Therefore it has to be somewhat primitive looking.  Still, I would like to lay out a case for not dismissing 3d, because you haven’t seen anything yet.

I believe when we get to the year 2020, we will look at our world and one of the biggest changes will be that 3d graphics are everywhere.  Between Augmented Reality and true Virtual Reality this technology will transform the world. 

Second Life isn’t state of the art.  It’s about five years behind actually.  If you want to see something closer to state-of-the-art in Virtual Environments, check out Blue Mars. This is based on a video game graphics engine and is very much improved over Second Life.  Naturally, not all computers can run it, but every year the average machine is getting faster.  In fact, the iPhone almost has enough computing power to run it (but not the right software).

If you want to see what 3d graphics will look like in 10 years, look at Hollywood.  Interactive 3d graphics are about five years behind what Hollywood can do as Special Effects today.  Therefore in less than 10 years, we can expect truly photorealistic (meaning lifelike) graphics that we can overlay on top of reality.  This will blur what we consider real.

So how long do we have to wait?  In order to do true interactive Raytracing, which is the biggest difference between what Hollywood does and what video games can do, you need a processor with 16 cores in it.  You can now buy processors that have 8 cores.  So we are almost there.  We will most likely see this sometime in 2011.  Now that doesn’t automatically get us photorealism, but according to Nvidia’s own timetable, we should probably see graphics that are nearly photorealistic in 2012. 

The other problem is not just graphics quality, but displays.  The human eye is an amazing object. According to this paper, a 1080p HD TV can display 2.07 million Pixels.  In those terms, the eye can see approximately 14.83 million pixels. Sounds like we are a long way off right?  Not exactly. Japanese researchers are working on UHDTV.  As in Ultra High Definition.  The best way to describe watching a UHDTV display is that it will be like looking out a window.  You won’t be able to see the pixels anymore.

Think back to what you were doing in the year 2000.  Since then the iPod and iPhone were invented.  Facebook and Twitter weren’t yet thought of.  What we are going to see in the next 10 years will make the last 10 look like slow motion, and 3d graphics are going to be a huge part of that.  I, for one, can’t wait!

Stop by and check out Andrew’s blog, Education Stormfront, today.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Google’s Liquid Galaxy Project – too cool not to share
Telepresence (this is just too cool!)
What’s going on with Virtual Worlds in Education today?

Holy Holodeck! Imagine being able to virtually travel the earth in 3D.

This is a prototype product at this stage, and it is not focused specifically on education, but man is it cool! Seriously though, there’s no doubt this type of tech could play a constructive part in the instructional process. Of course, this assumes that affordable commercial versions of this technology can be produced.

Google’s Liquid Galaxy system uses images from Google Maps and a panoramic layout of screen displays to create a virtual 3D world you can ‘fly’ through.

These YouTube videos show the technology being demonstrated. The first video contains a lot of footage of actual use of the tool (although I wish it showed more of the full surrounding panel configuration of the system). The second video gives further perspective on the technology, with a focus on applying it to scientific uses such as climate change modeling, interspersed with visuals of the tech in action.

This CNN video article is where I came across this first, and provides additional insight into the technology. 

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Immersive Technologies and the Future of Education
Telepresence (this is just too cool!)
Insight into the future of virtual worlds & virtual reality

(Final post in a series on current uses of Virtual Worlds in Education)

This week I will wrap up the series of posts I published throughout June, focused on Internet based Virtual World technologies as they are being used in Education today. As I researched current VW tech options for education, it became apparent to me that Second Life remains the most widely known and used VW app. SL is also readily accessible by users worldwide (unlike some other VW technologies which are more proprietary in nature). Today’s post concludes this series by providing examples of Second Life worlds that could potentially be useful to educators.

The following listing of Second Life islands is intended to provide some insight into resources within SL that have potential usefulness as an engaging part of an instructor’s lecture, a student project, or a more extended classroom effort. The arts and sciences include many disciplines that can go hand in hand with SL’s ability to display images and provide ‘virtual tour’ functionality, and these types of sites dominate the list. SL’s ability to echo many real world interactions opens the door to emulate many kinds of constructs and processes, such as conducting business, or doing architectural design, but these types of activities require a much larger investment of time and effort than simply taking virtual tours. Below I have focused on experiences that require little more than a “walk around and check things out” level of activity engagement in order to be somewhat engaging.

For some of these sites, I have included a Second Life URL, for some I have included a link to an associated web site, and for others I have included a simple search phrase for locating the site in SL’s Search window [note that accessing an SL URL requires that you have a SL account]. I also should mention that all SL sites also have 3 digit mapping coordinates, but that’s rather advanced for lay users such as myself, and I will not indicate them here.

Art Galleries of SL (web site):  This site lists over 600 SL based art galleries, and provides SL URLs for most of them, plus links to associated web sites when available. Many of the galleries are ranked (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars). I checked out a few of the 5 star sites, and there were many nice paintings and sculptures displayed (there may also be erotic works in these sites, so keep that in mind before sending students there). Many of the pieces in museums are for sale (they can be bought with ‘Linden Dollars‘ and hung up in your own SL property if you acquire some).

Star Trek Museum of Science: This was one of the easiest sites I came across to get easy ‘response’ from – that is, many of the wall hangings and objects have some sort of easily accessible functionality (mostly ’notecards’ with information), that just walking around and checking things out was rather enjoyable. Moreover, the site goes somewhat beyond Start Trek and “promotes the study of the scientific and engineering technologies found in Star Trek” to “encourage interest in the real-life physics, astronomy, information technology and other sciences that are the foundation of those technologies”.

International Spaceflight Museum (web site): Features virtual models of various spacecraft, and links to wiki pages that provide an overview of the crafts and their missions, in a multitude of languages.

Music: Blue Fusion Jazz Club (web site): This site features live performances, and it seemed like it should be a pretty cool island, but I was unable to get much interaction out of it. Even though I saw people dancing in one area, I couldn’t get the system to play any music for me. There was also supposed to be a YouTube video available on a screen here, but it wouldn’t play either. Not sure what I was doing wrong, but I am guessing that these limitations were operator error and not necessarily functions that didn’t work.

The Museum of Robots (web site): As per the notecard that is offered to you as soon as you transport to this island, “The Museum of Robots is dedicated to the appreciation of robots. Its mission is to promote understanding of the place of robots in popular culture, art, and science. We realize this mission through permanent and special exhibits, entertainment, and events.” Have a look around if robots interest you!

The Museum of Philosophy (SL URL): Explore ideas through their Philosophers. A beautiful garden and some of SL’s best fine art and sculptures. Some very nice artwork, including a number of cool shimmering and vibrant sculptures, but I didn’t come across much content about philosophy in my initial walk through parts of the site.

The Newggenheim Museum (search for ‘newggenheim’ in SL): A fully interactive re-working of the original Guggenheim Museum.

Mental Health (SL URL): The virtual hallucinations project seeks to educate people about the mental illness schizophrenia.  This clinic building site is based on the hallucinations of two specific people with schizophrenia, who were interviewed in detail and gave feedback on early designs for the hallucinations. While the hallucinations are not glamorous, they fairly accurately reproduce these patients’ experiences.  You can get a sense of just how intrusive the voices of schizophrenia really are by visiting this site.

Genome Island (search for ‘genome’ in SL): This is a pretty interesting interactive world focused on Genetics, featuring exhibits such as a slideshow that explains the inheritance of the X-linked Orange gene in cats, and cat avatars you can click on to see the colors of their offspring, as a demonstration of gene sharing outcome possibilities. This site gets heavy with scientific jargon, and familiarity with Genetics is required to fully appreciate this Island.

The Most Beautiful Campus in SL” - DePaul University College of CDM (Computing & Digital Media) (search for ‘depaul’ in SL): While being rather different from the museums and art displays above, it just didn’t seem like this listing would be complete without including at least one well done SL college or university Campus, and this one is a beauty. This Island is richly detailed and possible to appreciate for that quality alone. Stop by and have a look around!

Conclusions
Second Life has the potential to play a variety of interesting roles in the educational process and can provide a more interactive experience than the average web site or tool, but it requires more of an investment in time to learn and use than many other web based tools require. Educational institutions across the world are finding many interesting ways to leverage SL, and I could spend many more weeks learning about and reporting on Education related SL activities there. In fact, I have become interested enough in the tool to continue working with it on my own time, and I am looking forward to providing an update here in a few months, after I have given the environment more of a workout. I feel I have yet to fully grasp the various mechanics of using the environment, and that there is more of interest awaiting me as I take the time to explore further.

Longer term, it could be quite interesting seeing how this immersive toolset evolves over time and how Second Life and other Virtual World technologies are adopted by education in years to come. As the speed of processors, bandwidth, and other relevant resources continues to evolve, the potential utility of this type of complex tool could be very impressive. Better integration of video, more interactive objects, characters with artificial intelligence (and quicker rendering of the landscape) could turn what is already an intriguing environment into an Internet experience with little comparison.

This week I am on vacation with my family, and unfortunately the Internet connection at the Historic Powhatan Resort here in Williamsburg, VA has only been working inconsistently since I arrived on Saturday. It looks like I’m going to have to postpone the final post in my series on using Virtual Worlds in Education until next weekend. In the meanwhile, here’s a few insightful and informative YouTube videos about using SL for educational purposes:

• This highly viewed ”tour” video (imbedded below) focuses on “educational uses of Second Life”.
• This video focuses on “Learning in Three Dimensions” and “The 7 Sensibilities that Differentiate Virtual Social Worlds from other Interactive media”.
• Finally, here is one additional video that gives a real nice overview of how educators can use SL in the classroom.

See you next week for the wrap up on our series of posts focused on Virtual Worlds in Education, where we’ll check out a bunch of Second Life worlds that can be useful for educators and instructional applications. Thanks, and have a great week!

The 3rd part in a series of posts looking into the use of Virtual Worlds in Education

After spending the last two weeks researching what’s going on with the use of Virtual Worlds in education related applications, I came away feeling that Second Life (abbreviated ‘SL’ from here forward) is by far the predominant tool in this (and any) Virtual World space. This week, my goal is to sink my teeth into SL, see how well it works on my laptop and cable modem, how easy or difficult it is to use, and how useful it may be.

When I first checked SL out a year or more ago, the computer I was using was a few years old, and was not maxed out with RAM, and the performance of the environment was just too slow to use. This led me to think that this may have been one of the significant factors behind what seemed to me to be a lagging use of the environment. After all, SL has been around for years, and certainly seems cool and interesting, but of the people I knew using an array of Internet technologies, none were working with SL. This time, I was able to easily move around the environment, and it seemed that functionality was more than adequate to allow me to play around and see what the environment had to offer. This page provides System Requirements specifications. It is certainly a widely used tool these days, as each time I logged on there were over 50,000 other people logged on!

Getting started
After creating an account and logging in, I proceeded to search for and ‘teleport’ to various worlds, which was easy to do. It was also pretty easy to move around and change my perspective. I even learned how to fly! By paying attention to the options available on the screen, and trying things out, the basic navigation issue was not terribly challenging. What struck me as more difficult was figuring out how to actually interact and do things. It took a couple hours of playing, and the help of this tutorial I found on YouTube (below) to get the hang of things. One of the difficulties I found with the environment was the lack of a consistent way to tell what a world has to offer. Some worlds (a.k.a. Islands) in SL provide a nice overview, usually on a billboard or sign of some sort, close to where you land when you ‘transport’ there, but not all do. It would seem very beneficial to me if there were some standard sort of mechanism, maybe linked to the map, that would make it real easy to know what’s available in a given SL world, and make it easy to teleport there (the map tool provides some functionality like this, but it seems a bit short in terms of completeness of functionality and ease of use). [If I'm just missing something here, please comment and point it out! - KW]

Touring a Virtual College Campus
As one example of my wanderings and attempts to work with SL, I traveled to Bryant & Stratton’s virtual Campus (which I found by searching for ‘colleges’ in the search box in the upper right hand corner of the SL screen).

After transporting to the virtual campus, I saw a “Welcome To Our Virtual Campus” sign that pointed out 7 different facilities on the campus. I walked over to the Open House building, where I immediately saw a large board labeled “2009 Online Commencement”, with a ‘Start’ button, but I could not get it to do anything (even though I followed the instruction to select the ‘Touch’ option from the right-click menu). This was kind of typical of some of the frustrating experiences I had as I came across objects in SL that looked like they were going to do something, but often didn’t. It turned out that this object signified a live event that had already happened, and there were some arrows near the board that would allow you to scroll through listing of awarded degrees. The only reason I discovered that was because an avatar approached me and initiated a chat, and this was when SL finally felt like it was coming to life for me. Once I realized where and how to chat interactively, this gentleman (Scott Traylor, Director of Admissions at B&S, who exists in SL as ’Traylorman Lane’) was very helpful and provided some insight into how Bryant & Stratton is using SL to engage prospects with online open houses and virtual tours, and to give existing students across their 15 campuses a chance to interact in a different way.

I spent a little more time strolling around the virtual campus and saw useful information services like kiosks (these typically led to external web pages), and places to apply online or request a brochure.

Other SL resources for Education
I was particularly interested in checking out museums and other types of online resources in SL that can be useful to educators. I poked around a little and visited some sites. Being able to see images of paintings or other purely visual media is a certainly a straightforward application of the toolset. Another interesting construct was this rich technology timeline mural (image below), found at the New Venture Hall at The Tech Virtual museum. There is a statement on this mural that says “This mural is an invitation to dialogue about the vision of Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart …”, but it was not obvious to me how to participate in that dialogue (or even if it was possible to do so). The mural itself contained a great deal of information, and seemed to have been contributed to in some sort of interactive fashion. In any case, it was clear to me that I wanted to further explore sites like this. I will continue this post next week and look further into these kinds of resource sites.
 

Other observations

• I spent far more time working to learn about SL than I care to admit - 2 or 3 time more than it takes to learn most of the other Internet tools that I blog about. There is a pretty significant user ramp-up effort required to learn how to use the tool, and you need decent bandwidth and a PC with some power, to have a smooth experience. Simply put, SL isn’t an environment where the casually interested can just stop by and try it out – it requires more of an investment in time than many other Internet tools.
• Second Life certainly has some useful and intriguing functionality to offer, such as getting an introduction to a place you haven’t visited, learning more about what that real-world location has to offer, tapping into an array of resources about a topic in a fun and different manner, and attending live events and performances. It also serves as a virtual meeting place, with sophisticated and unique functionality (but it does require a good deal more effort to use than other remote technologies, like conference calls, web meetings, forums and chat rooms, etc.).
• The most advanced means of interaction, and the best way get the most out of SL, is to interact with other users by chatting, IM’ing, or talking directly. Of course, there are also imbedded mechanisms and online interactions, such as web links, video and audio casts, scheduled events, and the occasional more creative interactive object. If one gets into building and/or transacting business in SL, that’s a bigger effort, and gets much more involved/interactive.
• One of the most impressive aspects of SL is the thoroughness of many of the built out worlds. There are many tours of existing places, such as the entire city of Amsterdam (although this isn’t a particularly wholesome  place for student-aged young people). You really can get some sense of what a place is actually like. One caveat of navigating a large area can be waiting for sections of the world you are in to render while you fly or walk around – this can make it difficult to see what’s around you without going in a given direction to get it to build out.

Next?
I look forward to spending a little more time in Second Life, and wrapping up this series of posts next week with further insights into SL resources that can be useful to education.

Gaming company creating amazing interactive space populated by ’intelligent’ virtual boy

During my research over the last two weeks into Virtual Worlds and their use in education, I came across this incredible video demonstration of Lionhead Studio’s Project Natal. The gaming company has created a truly interactive virtual world environment, where people can interact with a very real seeming young boy named Milo. This is pretty incredible, so much so that I simply had to mention it here, as my mid-week post.

Take five minutes and check out this video – I’ll bet you’ll also be amazed by the potential that this presentation demonstrates for Virtual World & Virtual Reality applications:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluWsMlfj68

Investigating VW alternatives to Second Life, for educational applications

Last week, I focused on education related uses of the premier Virtual World application – Second Life. This week I am looking into other Virtual World environments that are being used for education and instructional applications.

There are dozens of Virtual World applications in existence today, and some have areas devoted specifically to use by/for education. There are also a handful of VW apps that are intended solely for use in the educational field. Of these many tools, I was surprised to find only one application (Edusim3D) that appeared to me to be worthy of serious consideration. All of the other applications and information I came across left me with the impression that none of them offered anything truly worth considering in comparison to the highly functional known entity that is Second Life.

Here are the few Virtual World applications (other than Second Life) that I felt warranted mention here following my exploration into this category of tools:

Edusim3d (www.edusim3d.com)
Edusim was one of the few applications I came across for which there was a respectable set of easy to access information. While it is consistently referred to as a whiteboard based virtual world tool, it would appear that it can function outside of the whiteboard environment. The Edusim home page states, “Edusim is a 3D multi-user virtual world platform and authoring toolkit intended for your classroom interactive whiteboard (but equally powerful on the students laptop or desktop computers!)”. This YouTube video provides a nice overview of Edusim. This page from the Edusim site offers “5 ways to use Cobalt – Edusim in the Classroom”. This Video explains how to get started with Edusim, and this Wikipedia Edusim page provides further information.

Edusim was developed using the Open Croquet Consortium’s application tools. Per their website’s Welcome message, “Croquet is a powerful open source software technology that … can be used by experienced software developers to create and deploy deeply collaborative multi-user online virtual world applications on and across multiple operating systems and devices.”  This page provides insight into other projects under way utilizing the Croquet application tool set.

3D Learn (www.wilostar3d.com)
This is a unique fully functional application of Virtual World technology, focused specifically on home schooling. As stated on the site’s main page, “WiloStar3D LLC is a privately held immersive education company [providing] interactive 3D learning environments for K-12 students. WiloStar3D owns and operates WiloStar3D Academy, a Nationally recognized SACS/CITA accredited full-time school for homeschool students.” This page provides a further overview of the application. While this is certainly a robust and highly functional utilization of the technology, it’s niche focus is too narrow to warrant further coverage here.

Active Worlds
I learned of Active Worlds years ago, and was impressed to learn that they have an area specifically focused on education – “AWEDU”, which is what made me feel compelled to mention it here. Here is the AWEDU web page: http://edu.activeworlds.com/. There is a tour of some of their education sites available there (but it requires installation of software, learning how to navigate it, and doing your own investigation). Unfortunately, I simply could not find much discussion on their site or on the web that really illustrated the productive education-specific use of this app, and was left with the impression that it has been used very little for this purpose.

Conclusion
There are quite a few Virtual World environments on the Internet, and many tools under development to facilitate the creation of Virtual Worlds. After spending hours investigating these sites and tools, the bottom line for me is that Second Life is easily the most functional and worthy Virtual World environment for educational use. The wide array of available examples, related resources, and potential uses for Second Life is simply unmatched by any other tool set.

Next Week
I look forward to getting acquainted with hands-on use of Second Life next week. We’ll take a closer look at how easy it is to get started with the app as a user, whether it still requires a good deal of computing power to get acceptable performance, and what it takes to establish your own Second Life ”island” presence.

Before closing, I want to ask – do you know any other Virtual Worlds that are being used productively in educational applications? If I’ve missed anything important in my research, I sure would like to know, and to bring it to my reader’s attention. Of course, any other observations about these types of tools are welcomed as well. Thanks.

Exploring current uses of Virtual World tools in educational applications

Over the next few weeks I want to catch up with what’s been going on in the fascinating world of “virtual world” tools (like Second Life) and how these tools are being used in educational applications.

Second Life remains the “gold standard” in Virtual World applications, but there are many other VW tools available, and we will consider some of those in our exploration. When I first experimented with Second Life a year or so ago, the laptop I had at the time was pretty old, and it could not support the demands of this resource-intensive environment. This led me to conclude that widespread adoption of this type of tool would lag a bit, as the average computer at the disposal of students and educators gradually catches up to these requirements. I now have a new computer, and will see how the app performs on it, but first I want to research what some of today’s educators are doing with these types of tools.

I found a “SLeducation Wikipages” site, which provided examples of many educational uses of Second Life over the last few years, grouped into over 40 categories [ed note - as of 03/22/10, this site seems to have moved or been removed, so I can no longer provide a link to it]. I borrowed heavily from this resource and compiled the following sampling of applications mentioned there:

• The New Media Consortium Campus: This is the largest educational presence in Second Life. The NMC Campus supports events, classes, demonstrations, art exhibitions and learning experiences. It was established in 2006 and continues to provide virtual spaces and experiences for educators and artists around the world. This YouTube video provides an overview of the NMC Campus, and some insight into Second Life.
• Second Life Writing – ENG104 at Ball State University: Sarah Robbins of BSU used Second Life to teach an English class focused on writing for academic research. The course was a hybrid course with at least half of the class time spent online.  This online article discusses the project.
• Really Engaging Accounting: Robins Hermano uses Second Life to teach a financial accounting course at the University of Central Florida titled “Really Engaging Accounting”. The aim of the project is to engage students in what is normally a very non-engaging course and ensure they develop basic accounting literacy. This Slideshare presentation provides some insight into the project.
• Thomson Netg Training: In 2006, Thomson Netg offered training in Cisco and Microsoft Certification, business development, and sales and customer service skills via Second Life. The company used Second Life to run live classes, to provide mentorship and to offer on-demand training with individualized media and streamed audio and video presentations or podcasts. Their aim was to use the unique qualities of a shared 3D space to allow students to interact with technology demonstrations and to enact elaborate role plays (the project ended in 2007 when Thomson Netg was acquired by SkillSoft). This brief article discusses the project (unfortunately, the associated video has since been removed from YouTube).
• Self-paced Learning – Ohio University Campus Learning Kiosks: This kiosk was developed in 2008 as part of a blend of learning resources for students in a “Managing in the Innovation Age” course. Since then several other kiosks have been developed including Ohio University Libraries Orientation and ‘Ask the Techies’ which provides useful IT tips and information. These kiosks are now part of a larger set of features incorporated into Ohio University’s Second Life Campus. View this promotional YouTube video to learn more about Ohio U’s robust SL presence.

These are just a small sampling of the many examples in the above mentioned SLEducation Wiki, and there are so many others that be can found with a quick web search and a little reading. Some of the other education related applications of Second Life that I came across included language labs, holding ‘virtual’ office hours, and leveraging the many virtual resources (like museums, libraries, scientific modeling, virtual tourism, etc.) available in these environments.

Next?
Next week I’m going to look into education applications like these on Virtual World applications other than Second Life. After that, I’ll jump into one (or more) of these environments and see if I can get a sense of where things stand today in terms of the resources required to use the tools productively.

As always, don’t hesitate to offer any comments, observations about related experiences, questions, etc. Thanks.