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Virtual Worlds Viewpoints

In partnership with the Explorer service, Viewpoints, a monthly bulletin, alerts VWC members to commercially significant virtual-worlds developments. See the Virtual Worlds Technology Map for a comprehensive assessment of issues, uncertainties, and opportunities. These and related issues and developments will also be discussion topics at VWC meetings.

2008
April:	Second Life behind the Firewall Areas to Monitor in the Technology Map highlights secure virtual worlds, interfaces to enterprise applications, and the performance of Second Life as key issues affecting the further commercialization of virtual worlds. A recent announcement that IBM and Linden Lab will enable companies to host regions of the Second Life Grid behind their firewalls has impact on all these issues. This Viewpoints provides analysis of the development.
March:	Real Gestures for Virtual Movement Areas to Monitor in the Technology Map highlights major improvements in usability as one of the highest-impact factors affecting the future of virtual worlds. Many of today's virtual worlds are very difficult to use for people unfamiliar with gaming (and in some cases still difficult for people who do play games). Various recent developments suggest that the prospect of using natural motion to control avatar movements and in-world objects is becoming a reality. This Viewpoints reviews the prospects of the potential development.
February:	Governance of Virtual-Worlds Economies Areas to Monitor in the Technology Map highlights the growth of virtual-worlds economies as the aspect of virtual worlds that most interests many businesses. However, today's virtual-worlds economies are governed by little (if any) regulation, and providers' attitudes toward governing the economies vary widely. This Viewpoints reviews recent events affecting virtual-worlds economies and discusses the long-term implications of the changing financial frameworks that underpin today's large-scale virtual worlds.
2007
Dec/Jan:	2007: The Year in Review Look for These Developments in 2008
November:	How to Harness the Innovation in Second Life APPLICATIONS in Opportunities in the Technology Map highlights virtual worlds as potential tools to help companies innovate and develop new products. Although virtual worlds for innovation is a nascent field, some companies are already trying to tap the creativity and innovation potential within the current generation of Second Life residents.
October:	Virtual Worlds and Interoperability Areas to Monitor in the Technology Map describes open standards that provide interoperability between virtual worlds as a high-uncertainty, high-impact issue for virtual-worlds commercialization. Without interoperability, virtual worlds will remain (as they are today) isolated "islands" on the Internet, and the vision of the 3-D Internet that IBM, Microsoft, and others espouse will never come to fruition. But virtual worlds have a long way to go before they can achieve even basic interoperability, such as avatars that users can export from one virtual world and import into another. This Viewpoints discusses the latest thinking on the standards issue from the recent Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose, California.
September:	Moving Virtual Worlds into Mainstream Markets Areas to Monitor in the Technology Map discusses virtual social worlds and massively multiplayer online games in a variety of contexts. Despite the media attention that surrounds virtual worlds, regular users, especially outside massively multiplayer online games, are rare. This Viewpoints discusses the issues in moving virtual worlds beyond their current early stage of adoption into more mainstream markets.
August:	Google and Microsoft's Future Role in Virtual Worlds This Viewpoints looks into the future of virtual worlds and speculates about the potential role for two of the most formidable players into today's software marketplace: Google and Microsoft.
July:	Opportunities and Challenges in Virtual Worlds Developments in virtual worlds may enhance or enable new forms of socialization, communication, entertainment, collaboration, and commerce in ways that would be difficult or impossible in real life. Moderating the opportunities are a number of challenges that include the need to have substantial computing power, improve usability, deal appropriately with issues of identity and privacy, manage and control commercial brands, and develop new models of governance. The opportunities and challenges ahead for virtual worlds will likely intertwine in ways that are not yet predictable but will likely result in successful business outcomes for individuals and organizations that are willing to explore, test, and develop new ideas in these virtual worlds as the technologies and related business models coevolve.

Related Learning-on-Demand Publications

Although the VWC is a new service, SRIC-BI has a long history of researching, analyzing, and reporting on learning technologies and their enterprise adoption. Below is a selection of Viewpoints that relate to virtual worlds from our former Learning-on Demand (LoD) program. These LoD Viewpoints are available free of charge to VWC sponsors.

2007
June:	Revolutionary Consumer-Level Haptic Interface Device and Its Possibilities in Virtual-World–Based Training Accurate provision of touch and force sensations (haptics) can give users a more realistic representation of virtual environments than they now experience and enable more complex applications, such as specialized surgical training or accurate representation of activities in 3-D environments, in ways that would otherwise be impossible. Because of their inherent complexity and high cost, development of haptic interfaces has generally lagged behind work on visual and sound interfaces, but may now become more common given the reduction in price and high volume of controllers for computer games and could—with the proper software—make operating in virtual environments faster and more intuitive.
May:	The Potential and Risk of Three-Dimensional Virtual Collaboration and Learning Environments Developments in multiplayer virtual environments may enhance collaboration, exploration, and learning for corporate professionals and others by enabling them to test ideas and solutions in complex, open-ended virtual settings in ways that would be difficult or impossible in real life. Corporations are testing the value of multiplayer virtual environments to connect and communicate better with customers and potential customers, even though the value of these environments is not yet well defined for business, and these environments need to evolve further and become demonstrably reliable and practical.
April:	Recent Developments: Language Learning in Second Life Shows Potential Developments in multiplayer virtual environments, particularly the provision of high-quality voice communications, may enhance learning and collaboration for language students by enabling them to learn and practice in complex, open-ended, virtual settings in ways that would be difficult to replicate in real life. Language learning is a general-purpose application for virtual worlds that could become commonplace once interface issues find resolution. When interfaces improve, other applications that require virtual-face-to-face with voice communications will also follow. Recent Developments: U.S. National Science Foundation Funds Leading-Edge Research Project: "Towards Life-like Computer Interfaces that Learn" Combining several leading-edge technologies—including motion capture, natural-language understanding, speech recognition, and knowledge engineering—in addition to developing humanlike avatars that appear lifelike and respond intelligibly to questions could create remarkable results. Software agents that understand speech and can respond, through speech, to topic-specific questions could create a variety of new applications and services in learning, as well as in customer services, sales, and other people-facing roles.