Shake-your-head

Purpose– This paper examines the three-dimensional (3D)virtual world users’ perceptions of authenticity and trustworthiness in the virtual prototypes and users’ potential purchase behavior in the real-world settings. The 3D virtual worlds provide a new platform that exhibits virtual prototypes as a promotion channel for new products of real-world and online service, where users can communicate “face to face” via their representative avatars.Design/methodology/approach– The authors conducted an experiment in Second Life and collected data in a post-study questionnaire to test our proposed conceptual model. Structural equation modeling was the main methodology.Findings– The research results showed that 3D virtual world users obtained a high sense of telepresence and social presence. The sense of telepresence positively leads to users’ perceptions of online trust in the virtual prototypes and thus increases their intention to purchase real-world objects; the users’ sense of social presence positively associates to their perceptions of authenticity and online trust and, therefore, their purchase intention.Research limitations/implications– In survey research, the common method variance is a problem. A more robust way is to use objective measures.Practical implications– A new channel was proposed for businesses to enhance their online strategies that will increase their business value.Social implications– 3D virtual world is also a cutting-edge platform for remote education, public information service, etc.Originality/value– This paper initially contributes to the literature that interprets underlying factors in 3D virtual worlds associated to purchase intention in real-world objects. We demonstrated the advantages, i.e. the communication efficacy and vivid virtual design in the 3D user-generated environment.

3D virtual worlds are networked environments designed using the metaphor of architecture. Recent developments in 3D virtual worlds focus on interactivity, flexibility and adaptability. Rather than creating virtual environments in which the objects have intelligent behaviours, our research takes a different approach to develop an agent model that is associated with an individual person in the 3D virtual world as a personal design agent. This paper presents a Generative Design Agent (GDA), a kind of rational agent capable of representing a person in a virtual world and designing, implementing and demolishing 3D virtual places based on the occupants’ current needs in the virtual world. The core of a GDA’s design component is a generative design grammar that is able to capture a style of 3D virtual worlds. 3D virtual worlds designed using the GDA model is another kind of architecture for the “moment”.

The proliferation of the Internet and other technological innovations has transformed the structure of the tourism industry as well as affected how tourism destinations are perceived and consumed. The 3D virtual world provides opportunities for destination marketing organizations to communicate with targeted markets by offering a rich environment for potential visitors to explore tourism destinations. However, as of yet, there is little understanding about how to effectively market tourism destinations to virtual world participants who are technology users as well as potential consumers. The purpose of the present study is to develop a research framework that integrates the technology acceptance model (TAM) and self‐determination theory to understand how tourists use a 3D virtual world. Primary data were obtained for this study through self‐administered Web questionnaires. The data were conducted in a laboratory setting with 186 participants. This study contributes to the empirical TAM literature by applying the model to a 3D virtual tourism site. Additionally, this study provides a research framework to capture the entertainment nature of a 3D virtual world by extending the TAM to incorporate psychological elements of self‐determination theory to understand consumer experience. From the perspective of tourism professionals, this study contributes to an understanding of how best to construct informative and interactive tourist destinations in 3D virtual worlds to attract potential online and real‐world tourists. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Within most architecture and design schools, 3D virtual worlds are traditionally perceived and used as a CAAD tool for modelling and collaboration. Building on the understanding of virtual worlds as the extension of our physical environments where people can inhabit and participate in a variety of activities, we teach designing virtual worlds as a design subject which considers 3D virtual worlds as a different kind of environment design other than a technical tool for supporting design simulation and collaboration. This paper reports on our teaching experience, as well as discusses the principles for designing and teaching in 3D virtual worlds.

We have discussed important Java 3D objects that are basically static in the last few chapters. Starting from this chapter, we will be looking at universe and objects that are dynamic in nature. Specifically, we will discuss issues on animation and interaction in this and the next chapter, respectively. As well demonstrated by popular interactive computer games, animation, and interaction are crucial in making a Java 3D world more interesting. Technically, animation is associated with changes in graphical objects and images as time passes without any direct user action, while interaction corresponds to any such change in response to an action or input from the user (Tso, Tharp, Zhang, & Tai, 1999). In any virtual reality or game application, animation and interaction are often crucial and critical. Through animation, the user is able to have a more realistic feel of the real 3D objects through looking at the object at different angles and perspectives. Through interaction with these objects, the user will become more integrated into the virtual 3D world in the same way as sensing our own reality in the real world. Under Java 3D, the “behavior” class is used to define and control both animation and interaction. However, note that the behavior class is an abstract class and cannot be directly used (Stromer, Quon, Gordon, Turinsky, & Sensen, 2005). Instead, there are three classes that extend the behavior class and that are commonly used. They are the “interpolator,” the “billboard,” and the “level of detail (LOD)” class. Furthermore, we can create a new behavior class by extending the behavior class to fit any special need. Briefly, in this chapter, we will discuss the important interpolator classes by using a number of illustrating examples, followed by some details discussions on the billboard and LOD classes.

This project seeks to demonstrate the use of remote experimentation and 3D virtual environments applied to the teaching-learning in the areas of exact sciences-physics. In proposing the combination of remote experimentation and 3D virtual worlds in teaching-learning process, we intend to achieve greater geographic coverage, contributing to the construction of new methodologies of teaching support, speed of access and foremost motivation for students to continue in scientific study of the technology areas. The proposed architecture is based on a model implemented fully featured open source and open hardware. The virtual world was built in OpenSim software and integrated it a remote physics experiment called “electrical panel”. Accessing the virtual world the user has total control of the experiment within the 3D virtual world.

This research investigates engineering design teams’ performance of a concept selection task in three meeting spaces: face-to-face, 2D online and 3D virtual world. Cisco Systems’ WebEx and Sun Microsystems’ Wonderland were used as the 2D online meeting space and the 3D virtual world, respectively. Twenty-four two-person design teams were formed and randomly assigned to one of the three meeting spaces. The teams performed a cell-phone concept selection task in the meeting space to which they were assigned. Four dependent variables were measured: task completion time, team satisfaction, self-evaluated process quality and expert-evaluated process quality. Following data collection, one-way ANOVA was used to analyze each variable to determine the differences, if any, among the meeting spaces. ANOVA results did not support rejection of the null hypothesis for any variable. These results suggest that 3D virtual worlds support design concept selection as well as 2D online meeting spaces and that both of these te...

It has been well documented how spatial inhibition of return (IOR) interacts with executive functions in a two-dimensional plane, i.e., significantly decreased interference at the cued (inhibited) compared to the uncued location. It remains unknown, however, how spatial IOR interacts with executive functions along the depth dimension of the real 3D world. Here, we adapted the Posner spatial-cuing paradigm into a virtual 3D world. The location-based IOR was orthogonally combined with the flanker effect: The target and its flanker could appear at either the cued or the uncued location in a closer or farther depth plane. Moreover, the flanker effect was differentiated into the pre-response and response levels, and the flankers could appear in the either same (Experiment 1) or different (Experiment 2) depth plane from the target. A simple detection task was also adopted to test the pure effect of how visuospatial attention is prevented from returning previously attended location along the depth dimension. The results showed that there existed significant IOR effects only when target was presented in the farther depth plane. Moreover, significantly reversed response-level conflicts were observed at the cued location in the farther depth plane, indicating that spatial IOR toward the farther depth plane was more than a simple effect of attentional orienting. Rather, the inhibitory tagging mechanism may take place. In addition, orienting to the close depth plane resulted in either a facilitatory or null effect. Accordingly, only the pre-response-level conflict was modulated by attentional orienting to the closer depth plane.

Although teachers play an important role in preventing school bullying, there is a lack of educational programs to enhance the competencies of pre-service teachers regarding how to prevent and address school bullying. To improve the knowledge and self-efficacy of pre-service teachers about school-bullying challenges, this study developed an authentic problem solving activity in a 3D virtual world on the basis of activity theory. In this study, for four weeks, 36 pre-service teachers collaboratively solved school-bullying problems, conducted role-plays in a virtual world, and reflected on their activities. As a result, the participants significantly improved their knowledge (restorative justice) and self-efficacy to handle school bullying. This study also investigated the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the activity through analyzing quantitative and qualitative data with an activity system framework. The findings were discussed to improve the design of the problem-solving activity in the context of Korean pre-service teacher education.

On the Web and on informatics systems, 3D virtual worlds used become big both in number and in size. Therefore, we propose in this paper a new method for retrieving 3D virtual worlds based on the semantics and the content. Firstly, we propose a new classified database of 3D virtual worlds given in VRML format. To achieve the semantic method, we construct an ontology that describes virtual worlds in various aspects including their contents (3D objects building a virtual world) and information about their contents (authors, file format, etc). This ontology is presented by OWL, the W3C recommended language. So as to extract desired 3D scenes from the proposed database we use the SPARQL query language. We propose finally a shape based method for searching desired virtual worlds by content in this database. This method is based on a new distance (metric) that define the similarity between virtual worlds. This method is evaluated using the recall vs. precision curves.

With the rapid development of information in the new era, a concept is put forward. You can observe a scene that doesn't exist near you at home, outdoors and anywhere. It can be a swimming pool, a museum or even an Olympic Games. In this paper, we design a 3D scene roaming system based on augmented reality, which uses augmented reality technology to build a 3D virtual world presented by AR devices in the real world, and with the support of AR devices, users can walk around freely and autonomously in the 3D virtual world to observe the presented scene in an all-round way. The design of the roaming system is mainly developed in Windows environment. The unity3d platform is used for 3D scene design and creation. Mask technology is used to realize the Mask on the basis of 3D scene. A transparent invisible film is pasted on the surface of 3D scene to hide some scenes. It is required that the hidden scenes can be seen only after the scene roaming through the Mask film. Using the ARcore development technology of building the software platform of augmented reality application launched by Google to realize the presentation of 3D scene and human-computer interaction. Package all programs into SDKs and send them to Android platform for running and effect verification.

One of the most useful and important advantages of 3D graphics rendering and applications is that there is the possibility for the user to navigate through the 3D virtual world in a seamless fashion. Complicated visual objects can be better appreciated from different angles and manipulation of these objects can be carried out in the most natural manner. To support this important function of navigation, the user will often need to use a variety of input devices such as the keyboard, mouse, and joystick in a fashion that befits a 3D scenario. Also, collision handling is important as it will be unnatural if the user can, say, walk through solid walls in the virtual world. The functionality of navigation therefore has a close relationship with input devices and collision detection, all of which can be handled in Java 3D through a variety of straightforward but not so flexible utility classes as well as more complicated but at the same time more flexible user defined methods. The main requirement of navigation is of course to handle or refresh changes in the rendered 3D view as the user moves around in the virtual universe (Wang, 2006). As illustrated in Figure 1, this will require a modification of the platform transform as the user changes his or her position in the universe. Essentially, as will be illustrated in them next section, we will first need to retrieve the ViewPlatformTransform object from the SimpleUniverse object.

Although graphical user interfaces started as imitations of the physical world, many interaction techniques have since been invented that are not available in the real world. This paper focuses on one of these previewing, and how a sensory enhanced input device called Keypad can provide a preview for users before they actually execute the commands. Preview important in the real world because it is often not possible to undo an action. This previewable feature helps users to see what will occur next. It is also helpful when the command assignment of the keypad dynamically changes, such as for universal commanders. We present several interaction techniques based on this input device, including menu and map browsing systems and a text input system. We also discuss finger gesture recognition for the PreSense Keypad.

In this paper we present an integrated, game-like e-Business environment that follows the role model of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). The interface is realized as a 3D virtual world using affordable game engine technology. Our environment provides a platform for conducting business and it is supposed to be a community facilitator to create and establish a lively and sustainable online community involving both, providers and consumers. It is information-rich and multimedia-based offering transparent access to disparate information sources.

Over the past three years (2006–2008), the medical/health and public health communities have shown a growing interest in using online 3D virtual worlds like Second Life® (http://secondlife.com/) for health education, community outreach, training and simulations purposes. 3D virtual worlds are seen as the precursors of ‘Web 3D’, the next major iteration of the Internet that will follow in the coming years. This paper provides a tour of several flagship Web 3D experiences in Second Life®, including Play2Train Islands (emergency preparedness training), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—CDC Island (public health), Karuna Island (AIDS support and information), Tox Town at Virtual NLM Island (US National Library of Medicine - environmental health), and Jefferson’s Occupational Therapy Center. We also discuss the potential and future of Web 3D. These are still early days of 3D virtual worlds, and there are still many more untapped potentials and affordances of 3D virtual worlds that are yet to be explored, as the technology matures further and improves over the coming months and years.