Virtual environments define a new interface for networked multimedia applications. The sense of "presence" in the virtual environment is an important requirement for collaborative activities involving multiple remote users working with social interactions. Using virtual actors within the shared environment is a supporting tool for presence. In this paper, we present a shared virtual life networ...

In this presentation, we will talk about how we came to build our Fish4Knowledge (F4K) Gallery and an Underwater Aquarium, what we have provided in the aquarium and how it is relevant to our research work. The F4K gallery and its underwater aquarium is an experimental outreach platform to showcase the scientific work that we have carried out in a large collaborative international project. We wi...

It has become commonplace to hold the view that virtual surrogates for the things that are good in life are inferior to their actual, authentic counterparts, including virtual education, virtual skill-demanding activities and virtual acts of creativity. Virtual friendship has also been argued to be inferior to traditional, embodied forms of friendship. Coupled with the view that virtual friends...

This paper is about electronic services in healthcare. I begin by providing a virtual organisation model that contains four variables: connectivity, purpose, technology and boundary. Based on the model, some predictions for the stability of virtual organisations can be done. The theoretical part is followed by a real-life example of a virtual hospital. The focus is on finding and naming the fou...

This paper is about electronic services in healthcare. I begin by providing a virtual organisation model that contains four variables: connectivity, purpose, technology and boundary. Based on the model, some predictions for the stability of virtual organisations can be done. The theoretical part is followed by a real-life example of a virtual hospital. The focus is on finding and naming the fou...

Continuing improvements in computing power and high-speed Internet access have led to an explosion in the popularity of multi-player online environments. In addition to providing a new form of entertainment, several of these environments have proven useful for educational activities. Specifically, the Second Life environment, which provides a physics and graphics engine for anyone to display 3D...

The Second Life ® virtual world provides 3D building tools and scripting capabilities which facilitate the prototyping and presentation of engineering designs. A physics engine is also supported which provides the effects of gravity and collision detection. Within the Second Life virtual environment, engineering designs, physical models, and prototypes can be constructed, tested and evaluated i...

the subject under investigation has been electronic learning (e-learning) or electronic education (e-education), specifically concentrating on virtual university. virtual university has been the subject of much debate in recent years. in short, the concept of virtual university denotes a learning/educational system/environment based on internet where higher education is promoted using tools and...

A cyber-character is a kind of artificial life inhabiting a virtual world. To be a life form in the virtual world, cyber characters need sensors and control systems. The sensor system enables the cyber character to recognize not only the virtual world but also the real world in such a manner that it can respond to user's commands. The control system provides the cyber character with life-like b...

background : along with emersion of the internet, virtual education increasingly has been growing. many studies discussed this method and its impact on learning. present study investigated students’ attitude towards virtual education as well as its effect on learning. methods : this was a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study. the nursing students, who had selected fluids and electrolyte di...