Virtual World for Education and Entertainment

Ravinsingh Jain Srikant Iyengar Ananyaa Arora University of Mumbai, India University of Mumbai, India University of Mumbai, India

ravinjain9819@gmail.com srikant0390@gmail.com ananyaa15@gmail.com

Abstract—Interest in virtual worlds and their application to

learning have increased significantly in recent years. There are

many different types of virtual worlds and they are used for a

multiplicity of purposes including gaming, play, social

networking, learning and development, work, and also business.

Virtual worlds are a new tool that we can use to enhance real-

time online communication and collaboration and to construct

engaging online activities. They provide users with a very strong

sense of presence through their avatars and also a sense of space.

When we’re immersed inside a virtual world, we usually feel that

we’re really sharing a certain space with other users. There are a

number of promising examples showing the benefits of using

virtual worlds in i) entertainment and social networking, ii)

education and training, iii) e-commerce and e-business; iv)

research and development, v) tele-working and tele-conferences;

and vi) e-government and public sector information. This paper

aims at concentrating on the virtual world in education and

entertainment sector.

Keywords— Virtual Reality, Learning, Virtual Theater, Virtual

Entertainment.

I. INTRODUCTION

A virtual world is an internet-based, simulated environment

where users interact via motionable avatars, graphical images

that represent people. Over the past several years, educators

have begun exploring virtual worlds as a powerful medium for

instruction.

• Virtual worlds’ persistence allows for continuing and

growing social interactions, which can serve as a basis for

collaborative education.

• Virtual worlds give users the ability to carry out tasks that

could be difficult in the real world due to constraints such as

cost, scheduling or location.

• Virtual worlds can adapt and grow to meet different user

needs.

Most accepted definitions of virtual worlds require that it be persistent; in other words, the world must continue to exist

even after a user exits the world, and user-made changes to the

world should be preserved. Virtual worlds usually provide a

deeper sense of immersion than other real-time online

collaboration tools and can therefore be used for very diverse

activities, such as gaming, education and business [1]. It is

worth noting that the term virtual world can be applied to a

broad spectrum of applications. Some virtual worlds focus on

the social aspect of user interaction and are usually aimed at

younger users, some are built for a specific purpose and

audiences (e.g. medical training), and a big share of the

market is held by virtual worlds that are basically

collaborative video games and which attract users of different

ages and interests.

II. VIRTUAL WORLD FOR EDUCATION

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Skype and other online

communications media have allowed billions of people around

the world to share ideas in a matter of seconds, mostly at a

very low cost. These advances in computer technology are as

remarkable as they are familiar. But most people are not aware

of how computers and Internet technology are transforming

the way students learn. This emerging education paradigm is

often called “virtual learning,” and it has the potential to

improve student achievement, educational access and schools’

cost-effectiveness. Specifically, virtual learning uses computer

software, the Internet or both to deliver instruction to students.

This minimizes or eliminates the need for teachers and

students to share a classroom. Virtual learning does not

include the increasing use of e-mail or online forums to help

teachers better communicate with students and parents about

coursework and student progress; as helpful as these learning

management systems are, they do not change how students are

taught.

Fig 1. Traditional and Virtual Classroom

IEEE - 31661

4th ICCCNT 2013 July 4-6, 2013, Tiruchengode, India

A. Virtual Playground

The Virtual Playground (VP) is a shared virtual world,

developed to demonstrate and evaluate how people learn,

perform cooperative work, and engage in entertaining activity

within three dimensional (3D), distributed virtual

environments (VEs). The Virtual Playground project is part of

a multi-year effort to develop a distributed virtual medium that

allows participants to interact and employ tools in cooperative

work and play settings [2]. We believe there are four key goals

for shared virtual world vitality: economic validity, technical

validity, spatial validity and social validity. Economic Validity

refers to an underlying economic model that includes revenue

generating business plan to ensure the economic viability of a

virtual world. Technical Validity emphasizes the importance

of providing a technically feasible implementation that ensures reasonable performance for interactions within the virtual

world. Spatial Validity refers to the appropriateness of the

digitally built environment, or spatial architecture, with

respect to the user, the task, and the tools. Social Validity

requires that a shared virtual environment be designed for the

user and the task, and support social interactions between

people at distant locations.

Fig 2. Virtual Playground

The Virtual Playground is a multi-year project. The first year

involved designing the world and implementing a subset of

essential features. A large component of the Virtual

Playground implementation involved development of the

underlying structure to enable distributed worlds to connect

together over the network [3]. Without this framework, it

would not be possible to support higher level behaviors. This

structure included a framework for handling user-input events

in a device independent manner, rendering the world,

propagating changes to other hosts and message passing

between hosts.

The Power of Virtual Worlds in Education

Fig 3. Virtual learning activities engage students in higher level cognitive

thinking.

Educational games and simulations in virtual worlds engage

students in higher-level cognitive thinking, such as

interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting and

problem solving. The ability to interact with one another

simultaneously provides students the opportunity to learn

concepts not easily learned from a textbook or lecture.

Fig 4. NOAA Island for real time virtual weather reporting

Earth Science – National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration Island: A virtual weather map overlays real-

time weather on a map of the United States. Soar through a

hurricane on the wing of a research aircraft, rise gently

through the atmosphere atop a weather balloon or search for a

hidden underwater cave on a side trip from a NOAA

submersible.

IEEE - 31661

4th ICCCNT 2013 July 4-6, 2013, Tiruchengode, India

Fig 5. The International Spaceflight Museum hosts exhibits and

events about real life space vehicles and rockets.

Space – Spaceflight Museum: Experience flight and

weightlessness.

B. Virtual World as Communication Medium

Virtual World can be especially valuable in distance learning, giving students a common place to interact regardless of their physical locations [4].

Fig 6. Discussions in virtual worlds provide distance students a common

place to interact.

Both students and faculty can create video from within the

virtual world, called machinima.

Fig 7. Student and faculty presentations “come to life” in

virtual worlds.

III. VIRTUAL WORLD FOR ENTERTAINMENT

A. Virtual Dance

There are mainly two ways to learn dancing. The first way is

to attend a dance lesson in which a teacher demonstrates the

moves, points out the mistake made by the students, and

guides them to improve. The second way is self-learning by

watching demonstrations in videos such that students observe

the moves and practice by themselves. There exist some

commercial dancing games such as Dance Revolution Hottest

Party [5]. The game is played with Wiimote and a pad which

contains four arrow panels: up, down, right, and left. The players have to step on the correct panels and wave the

Wiimote with correct timing according to the instructions

provided by the game. A score will be given according to how

well they can follow the instructions [5]. Although such

decimation is acceptable for entertainment, the system cannot

give appropriate advice for training purposes of the whole

body movements. The games usually provide only a scalar

score, which is not enough for users to know how to improve.

To summarize, the recent games are not appropriate for

training purposes because of the following limitations: 1) the

captured data does not cover all the movable body parts and 2)

the game design is more focused on having fun instead of

providing training.

A virtual reality (VR) training application integrated with

motion capture technology for dance training is proposed. The

user can simply wear the motion capture suit and follow the movements of the virtual teacher and further receive feedback

on how to improve the movements [1] [7]. The motion capture

system can collect enough data, which is useful for evaluating

the difference between the learner and the virtual teacher.

1) VR-Based Dance Learning

Davcev et al. [6] presented a dance learning system based on

synchronized presentation of several streams of data,

including video streaming, 3D animation, music, textual

description, and Labanotation representation. The user can

interactively switch between the streaming modes while

learning the dance. For example, he/she can switch from the

video mode to the 3D animation mode in the middle, which

helps to vide the motion from different viewing angles. Soga

et al. [7] developed an integrated system for contemporary

dance by 3D motion clips. The system can help the teacher

design sequences of dance motions by basic motions. The system also provides 3D demonstration of motion by a virtual

avatar. In their experiments, the dancers commented that

feedbacks of the performance such as teacher’s comments are

required for dance lessons.

Hachimura et al. [2], [7] integrated motion capture and VR

technology to develop a dance training system. A head-

mounted display shows the professional dancer’s motion

overlapped with the body of the virtual character controlled by

the user. The trainee can observe where his/her body does not

overlap with that of the professional dancer. In their system,

IEEE - 31661

4th ICCCNT 2013 July 4-6, 2013, Tiruchengode, India

the user needs to perform a motion and observes his/her avatar

at the same time. This may affect the performance and require

enough experience to identify mistakes. One of our

contributions is to provide a learning tool that makes use of

the motion matching technology and provide feedback to the

user. The user can thus focus on his/her own performance and

at the same time identify the weaknesses.

Fig. 8. System Architecture

2) Animation with Motion and Music

Magnenat-Thalmann et al. presented their advanced

technology on digitizing and rendering 3D folk dance.

They first used the optical motion capture system to capture dance motion from real dancers. Then, some post processing

techniques such as retargeting and music synchronization were

applied to the motion data. Finally, the animation was

presented to users through the internet. Alankus et al. [8]

proposed an automatic system that can synthesize dancing

motions given a song or melody. A virtual character can be

driven according to the beat of the music. Kim et al. [8]

proposed a scheme to synthesize a new motion from unlabeled

example motions by synchronizing the motion beat and the

beat of an input music. Furthermore, Shiratori et al. proposed a

system that can synthesize a new dance sequence, which

considers both the beat of the music and its emotional aspects.

Fig. 9. (a) Layout of the 3D viewer. (b) The actual movement

3) Usage for Teachers and Students

Students are recommended to use the system by looping these

steps: watching the demonstration, practicing, and

understanding the feedback [7] [8]. Students can first get the

basic knowledge about the moves in the demonstration. Then,

they can practice the moves with our proposed learning tool.

From the feedback, students find out the mistakes and

understand how to improve. They can then go back to the

demonstration for the timing information. Afterward, they can

practice again. Actually, this process is analogous to a

physical dance lesson. Teachers can also make use of the

system. Although, the system aims to provide lessons when

teachers are not available, teachers can help to prepare the

teaching materials by having their dance motions captured. At

the same time, they can prepare a suitable syllabus for the

students, for example, a set of moves and the order to learn.

B. Virtual Theatre

Theatre is a field where collaboration between technicians and

artists has been an inherent component for centuries. Virtual

Theatre merges these two collaborative arenas with the goal of

providing a springboard for learning through interdisciplinary

collaboration and teamwork [8]. Most academic programs in

Computer Graphics focus specifically on one of the two areas:

art or technology. This situation is problematic for students

looking to enter the field of electronic entertainment as they

must choose between the two and, more often than not, will

not have the chance to collaborate with, or even meet students

on the other side.

Theatre is an interactive multimedia composition. Here, the

joint effects of action and text, sounds and lighting, stage and

costume design produce a highly complex art form. But it has

gone through some variations as all the other disciplines [5]. It

is technically possible to produce a virtual theatre, using a variety of techniques: footage of real actors, scenes and

buildings; animation, audio and architectural software; and

digital rendering tools to control lighting effects. Locations,

sets, and, to a certain extent, performers, can be simulated.

Displayed online, results could be made accessible to a wide

number of people at the same time [7] [1]. While significant

financial and technical resources will be needed to get started,

student users might not have to invest in software to use a

virtual theatre: a range of free VRML (Virtual Reality

Modeling Language) browsers and decompressing software

facilitate the streaming of even large 3-D animation files;

transmission speed and storage space have significantly

improved in recent years, and capacities will continue to

increase dramatically [8].

Fig 10. Virtual Theater

IEEE - 31661

4th ICCCNT 2013 July 4-6, 2013, Tiruchengode, India

Over the past decade, Virtual Reality (VR) has been used in a

wide range of artistic applications including virtual theater.

Virtual theater preserves the theatrical performance form

through direct mediated interaction of avatars and objects, and

it is known for its flexibility of interaction, and its potential to

create novel theatrical elements that would be impossible to do

in the real-world. However, performances in virtual theater are

often prerecorded which make them pre-programmed, difficult

to use, and lifeless compared to the spontaneity and improvisation of a real performance. Theatre, by its very

nature, is a collaborative art. Traditional theater story telling

involves a number of artists who create a space and action

viewed by an audience. The various artists involved are:

Playwright - describes space, sound, movement, and defines

the blueprint for the characters and the story.

Director - interprets playwright’s plans and applies them to

the space.

Designers - Technicians – design and create and control the

actual physical and audio elements placed into the space.

Actors - execute the actions within the space; create the

motion and action of the characters.

Audience - reacts and sometimes interacts to the actions.

Fig 11. Technologies for a Virtual Theater System.

Examples of Virtual Theatre

There are many examples of virtual theatres. The Woggles are depicted as small oval-shaped creatures, inhabiting a world where they can interact with each other [7]. The Woggles world has been used to examine directed improvisation [7]. The ALIVE project featured virtual animals which users could interact with in an unencumbered way [8]. There are also commercial products, e.g. the computer game Creatures, where the players can breed their own creatures that live in an animated world [8]. However, one thing most existing applications have in common is that they are complicated. We had the goal to make an interesting virtual theatre with simple and understandable code. We also felt that it would be easier, both to write the program and to keep the users’ interest for a longer while, if we used well-known characters.

1.) Bamse-land

The virtual theatre Bamse-land is an entertaining virtual

world, where characters taken from the Swedish comic book

Bamse are implemented as autonomous agents. The agents

interact with each other according to their different

personalities, which were derived from the comic [8]. Our

main concern has been to make an entertaining and believable

application, and by keeping the algorithms non complicated

show that there can be easy solutions to the problem of

designing believable agent applications. Experiences with

users show that entertaining agents based on well-known

characters bring many advantages, including a simplified

design process and higher user involvement. The characters live in the Valley, which in the computer is represented

graphically by a map containing some houses and a forest. On

the map the icons representing the agents act and interact in

different ways: they walk around; meet other agents; talk;

give, take or steal things; harass and comfort each other; etc.

2.) Trickster at the intersection

Trickster at the intersection is a virtual theater system

designed to explore audience interaction and involvement in a

participatory theater performance [8]. Allowing participants to

enact change in the development of a theatrical experience

allows them to function not only as users of the creative

system, but also as co-creators. Trickster at the intersection is

devised to explicitly explore the relationships between

narrative author, performer, and audience, within the context

of virtual theater. Virtual theatre allows participant audience

members to collaborate with performing artists and digital avatars to experience a story unfolding inside an interactive

virtual environment. Using interactive technology to facilitate

participation enables participants to transcend their role as

audience member from that of a passive spectator to that of an

active collaborator, allowing them to take part in the unfolding

of the virtual story.

Fig. 12. On the performing set, an actor is driving an avatar and its virtual

world to push forward the narrative development.

Fig. 13. The rendered image of the virtual world.

As a new form of digital media, the Trickster system [6]

extends previous forms of virtual theater in many ways.

IEEE - 31661

4th ICCCNT 2013 July 4-6, 2013, Tiruchengode, India

Conventional technology that uses virtual reality in a theatrical

performance often integrates prerecorded animation, making

the play feel stilted, lifeless and unresponsive [7]. We explore

a new relationship between actors and audiences in a theatrical

set embodied in the virtual world. Integrating perspectives of

director, performer and audience, the play designed by the

system not only preserves the theatrical performance form

through direct mediated interaction of avatars and objects, but

also innovates by introducing aspects of flexible interaction amongst different play elements (e.g. audience, actor, avatar,

virtual objects etc.) The ability to allow an audience member

to also function as participant and improvisational collaborator

allows us to explore a novel form of performance that is

impossible to realize in a traditionally uni-directional

theatrical form.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion we can summarize that a Virtual World is a computer-simulated environment with its own physical and biological laws, populated by dynamic interacting entities such as artificial creatures and human avatars. Virtual Worlds have many applications in 3D simulation, computer games and online business. However, the approach is still broader and more fundamental. It also addresses the crucial problem of elucidating the constitutive principles by which large numbers of interacting elements can self-organize and produce emergent phenomena as they are observed in the natural world. Therefore the study of Virtual Worlds is particularly concerned with the formal basis of synthetic universes and offers a promising new way to contribute to the understanding of nature and of complex systems in general.

REFERENCES

[1] R. J. Neagle, K. Ng and R. A. Ruddle, “Developing a Virtual Ballet

Dancer to Visualise Choreography” In Proceedings of the AISB 2004 on

Language, Speech & Gesture for Expressive Characters (AISB’04).

[2] Joe Geigel and Marla Schweppe, “Virtual Theatre: a collaborative

curriculum for artists and technologists” presented in SIGGRAPH2005.

[3] Pelin Yildiz , “The Multimedia Interactive Theatre by Virtual Means

Regarding Computational Intelligence in Space Design as HCI and

Samples from Turkey” International Journal of Humanities and Social

Sciences Volume 2 Number 1.

[4] Xuxian Jiang , Dongyan Xu , Helen J. Wang , Eugene H. Spafford,

“Virtual Playgrounds for Worm Behavior Investigation (2005)” Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Recent Advances in

Intrusion Detection.

[5] Paul Trafford and Yukari Shirota “An Introduction to Virtual Learning

Environments”.

[6] Monica Johannesen, “Introduction to the notion of Virtual Learning

Environment” presented at Teaching Problem-based learning in Virtual

Learning Environments: Scaffolding Critical Reflection.

[7] Pál Pentelényi, “Virtual Learning Environments training material”.

[8] John Gardner, Mary Mallon, Pamela Cowan and Miriam McArdle ,

“Evaluating The Potential for Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs):

VLE for Teaching Citizenship” Research Report in 2005 at Northern

Ireland Research Agency.

IEEE - 31661

4th ICCCNT 2013 July 4-6, 2013, Tiruchengode, India