Learning with Games 2007 Conference 24–26 September Sophia Antipolis, France

[Lucia Pannese]

The aim of Learning with Games is to promote excellence in the use, research, production and deployment of Serious Games, Business Games and Pervasive Games to support the learning of individuals within the academic, industrial and business schools environments.

September 24th – 26th September 2007
Hotel Mercure – Sophia Antipolis - France

Join us there!

[Maria Carlesi]

The preliminary programme of LG2007 is now available on the website www.lg2007.org
We (imaginary) organize an interactive workshop in order to get a sort of common roadmap of dissemination activities to increase SGs awareness and market opportunities in Europe.
These are some of the topics we will discuss:
- Serious Games and professional training: challenges and opportunities
- Best practices and business experiences with SGs
- Experiential vs immersive training: SGs and Virtual Worlds

Join us!

[Ken Rigby (MellaniuM, Tele3dworld)]

Tele3DWorld and Educational Experience.

Presentations should be in 3D; 2D should be consigned to history.

Shared Virtual Real Worlds (VRWs) are innovative applications where several users, represented by Avatars, simultaneously network in a 3D first-person viewpoint environment. Users co-operate through interaction within the 3D environment and with each other, manipulating objects and speaking as they go. Apart from in the well-documented online gaming industry, now played out in real-time over the Internet, the success stories of virtual worlds and shared 3D environments have been mixed. Interest wanes from an enthusiastic beginning: the 3D world looks both enticing and promising, but the attention curve drops sharply as the users find the space either too difficult to navigate or not satisfyingly engaging. The key to the success or failure of these environments relates directly to the content offered and the ability of the environment to hold a critical mass of users in real time. This is the desperately sought after magic social glue that determines the experience to be meaningful and actively keeps the users under its virtual spell.

Tele3DWorld presents a new and innovative method, a shared virtual real world geared to information in an educational, hyper-resolution, and highly structured environment. 'Tele3DWorlds Educational Experience,' is a co-operative project offering a pioneering edutainment environment based on shared 3D virtual real worlds, where groups from all over the world can meet in order to learn and discuss issues related to the virtually created famous events and interesting places.

MellaniuM Design and Tele3DWorld have pioneered a patented process and developed a huge database of artefacts and textures that will allow for easy and economical VRWs to be designed, developed, and tested for any subject and/or domain.

Virtual real worlds can serve different purposes, such as entertainment, education, design, architecture, interior design, maintenance, communication, e-commerce, GIS, networking, etc. They have the ability to recreate an infinite variety of 3D environments or landscapes ranging from virtual museums, art galleries, shops, offices, and hotels to fantasy worlds and objects created by the human imagination. The applications of virtual real worlds are numerous for virtual offices, online classrooms, virtual factories, virtual museums/art galleries, re-creations, etc. The majority of currently existing virtual worlds are still focused on the gaming, game-play, and entertainment sector with lo-res structures and textures with hi-activity emphasis. However they are starting to switch to various business initiatives to establish a VRW web (teleporting from a 3D VRW to a 3D VRW via cyberspace; rather than from 2D web page to 2D web page).

Advantages:

* Amazing and 'hyper-realistic' user experience;

* Worldwide connectivity, communication, and implementation;

* Possibility to create or recreate any desired 3D environment;

* Simultaneous multi-user collaboration for separate groups;

* Simultaneously running processes and actions that affect the virtual real world but will not affect other system users.

Greater understanding of the real world will enable a higher truth to be established; not based on the assumptions of history.

In short:

Virtual Real Worlds provide the path for your imagination to embark on the strangest journey it will ever take; a journey which will help you develop your insight, expand your understanding, unlock the genius, and enable you to focus on your destiny.

See http://mellanium.com/ for detailed information and supporting articles for additional anecdotes. Skype: id joe133952 for live demonstration.

Copyright © Ken Rigby for Tele3DWorld and MellaniuM Design.

All Rights Reserved.

2007


Cheers




Ken Rigby