VR Takes The Stage As Conferences Cancel
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/03/11/vr-takes-the-stage-as-conferences-cancel/
Katie Kelly, Program Owner at AltspaceVR. “I did a rough estimate and factoring in the travel time and CO2e estimates that would have been spent. This summit took about 9 thousand cars off the road for the week of the summit and saved attendees around 5 million miles of travel. So whether we’re combating a global outbreak, climate change or remote work – there’s a lot that AltspaceVR and other VR platforms can do to help.”
HTC is moving its annual Vive Ecosystem Conference (VEC) in China to a virtual world built by Engage, a product of Immersive VR Education.
The crisis has put new wind in the sails of the first virtual world, Second Life, which continues to thrive. “We are seeing increased interest in Second Life as it is a safe place for people and organizations to socialize and work during this time of great anxiety and social distancing,” said Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, which created and operates Second Life.
VictoryXR is an AR & VR school curriculum provider that also uses the Engage platform. They are now in the process of becoming accredited in Iowa and California to become an online virtual reality school (as opposed to a virtual school on a platform like Second Life, which is PC based).
Exp Realty is a virtual, cloud-based real estate brokerage founded nearly a decade ago, similar to Second Life. It is also optimized for PCs and laptops. The virtual real estate company has more than 27,000 agents who they log on to “eXp World.” The technology is provided by VirBELA, which also builds virtual tools for universities and virtual classes like Coursera.
Glue, based in Helsinki, Finland, today introduced significant upgrades to its virtual world platform, Glue Team Space. Team Space is immersive 3D environments optimized for teams of up to twenty people.
Spatial.io, a new remote conferencing system that works with every device and creates convincing avatars who can collaborate in the virtual space where participants can share whiteboards, post-its, videos and 3D models.
I explored the inside of a human nose and it convinced me that the real business in VR isn’t gaming, it’s all about training workers
https://www.businessinsider.com/htc-vive-releases-headset-that-shows-the-future-of-vr-is-enterprise-2018-11
Rosalie Chan
- On Thursday, virtual reality company HTC VIVE announced its new headset called the Vive Focus, which is aimed at enterprises.
- It can be used for business collaboration, training and education, such as teaching medical students about sleep apnea, showing car designers how to fix and prototype a car, and conducting remote meetings in a 3D virtual space.
Although virtual reality is typically associated with consumers, such as for video gaming, the technology is increasingly being adopted for use in professional settings. VR and augmented reality are projected to grow to $162 billion by 2020, and more products are targeting enterprise use.
What makes this hardware significant is that it’s much simpler and more portable for customers to use, says Dan O’Brien, General Manager of the Americas at HTC VIVE (My note: so he said…). Other VR headsets that only developers may use might involve expensive hardware and require users to stay in one place.
VIVE Sync. This can be used to help employees collaborate with each other in a virtual space, especially when they work remotely. Each employee’s avatar can share ideas, show presentations, import images, show videos and more all in a 3D virtual space (My note: Second Life tried this; and failed; Do you have any NEW ideas, Dan?).
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more on VR in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+reality
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dVtIha1-P1t6t7GEFjzGYd8aegU_OVzRQM-BHzxYwNg/edit
VWMOOC18 August 1-31, 2018
Excerpts from the program
| Sun.
August 5 |
12NOON SLT |
CVL Librarians |
Networking Forum at Community Virtual Library |
How can librarians help educators in virtual worlds?
Held at CVL main library SLurl:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cookie/206/219/21
Embedded librarianship holds potential for immersive learning. Come learn how to promote your virtual world communities and the great work of educators in virtual worlds through networking. https://communityvirtuallibrary.wordpress.com/ |
| Fri. August 10 |
12pm SLT |
Dieter Heyne (Edward Tarber) |
Web Based Virtual Worlds in Education |
Organizing collaboration for 400 students in a web based virtual learning environment. Setting up a “synthetic” college.
In the VWMOOC HQ: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Madhupak/113/66/62 |
| Sat. August 11 |
Noon SLT /
3pm Eastern |
Lyr Lobo, Cynthia Calongne
Kae Novak (SL: Kavon Zenovka, WoW: Maskirovka)
Chris Luchs (SL: Abacus Capellini, WoW: Cheerwine) |
What Can We Learn from the World of Warcraft? |
Join us as we host a blended reality session featuring a live stream from the World of Warcraft (WoW) as we explore educational opportunities in a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG). We will have a YouTube live stream, a Discord channel for voice discussion, and an immersive event in WoW. Educators from the International Society for Technology in Education – Games and Simulations Network (ISTE G&SN) will host an immersive event & discuss learning in a multiuser virtual environment (MUVE).
To join us in WoW: visit this site: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/3128270
Click Try for Free and download the Blizzard Launcher, which manages the download. You’ll need 52GB for the game. Create an account, select Sisters of Elune realm and create a troll if you are new to WoW and using a Free Trial account.
Location: In the World of Warcraft and for those who do not have the game, over a YouTube Live stream (available that day) and hosted after the event over https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesmooc/videos |
| Friday
August 17 |
9 am slt |
Lynne Berrett (Wisdomseeker) |
Howard Gardner’s “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” explored through an Interactive, Immersive Experience in Second Life |
Dr. Gardner has proposed 8 different types of intelligence, ranging from Interpersonal to Kinesthetic. Join us to discover your own most innate type. You may be surprised, like many of the teachers who have tried this challenge as part of our whole-brain training program.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Inspiration%20Island/48/54/22 |
| Fri. August 17 |
Noon SLT |
Mark Childs (Gann McGann) |
Theatrical performances in virtual worlds |
This is a summary of various performance-based activities in Second Life and how performance studies can provide an insight into the experience of virtual worlds.
Presented in the VWMOOC HQ: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Madhupak/113/66/62 |
VR, AR, and the Internet of Things: Life Beyond Second Life
https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2016/12/06/Life-Beyond-Second-Life-VR-AR-IoT.aspx
But it gets even more interesting when virtual and augmented reality meet the Internet of Things
when Second Life began, there was a lot of interest, but the toolset was limited — just because of the timeframe, not that the toolset wasn’t a good one for that period. But, things matured. I think it was, in particular, the ability to work in HD that improved things a lot. Then came the ability to bring in datasets — creating dashboards and ways for people to access other data that they could bring into the virtual reality experiment. I think those two things were real forces for change.
A dashboard could pop up, and you could select among several tools, and you could get a feed from somewhere on the Internet — maybe a video or a presentation. And you can use these things as you move through this hyper reality: The datasets you select can be manipulated and be part of the entire experience.
So, the hyper reality experience became deeper, richer with tools and data via the IoT; and with HD it became more real.
We can’t deny the fact that curriculum and the way we teach is becoming unbundled. Some things are going to happen online and in the virtual space, and other things will happen in the classroom. And the expense of education is going to drive how we operate. Virtual reality tools, augmented reality tools, and visualization tools can offer experiences that can be mass-produced and sent out to lots of students, machine to machine, at a lower cost. Virtual field trips and other kinds of virtual learning experiences will become much more commonplace in the next 5 years.