Papers about Virtual worlds

During the last decade research groups as well as a number of commercial software developers have started to deploy embodied conversational characters in the user interface especially in those application areas where a close emulation of multimodal human-human communication is needed. Incarnations of such characters differ widely in type and amount of embodiment - starting from simplistic cartoon-style 2D representations of faces, fully embodied virtual humans in 3D virtual worlds to physically embodied androids co-habiting... Read more

In this paper we describe a commercial platform for the development of net environments, virtual spaces inhabited by avatars which have been created and are subsequently visited and instructed by users via the Internet. The platform allows extensive data collection. Which data are collected and the scope of analysis will be explained on a theoretical level and by examples from data sets collected from different applications. Read more

At most institutions, medical students learn communication skills through the use of standardized patients (SP’s). Virtual patients (VP’s) may offer several advantages over SP’s, but little data exists regarding the use of VP’s in teaching communication skills. Therefore, we report our initial efforts to create an interactive virtual clinical scenario of a patient with acute abdominal pain to teach medical students history-taking and communication skills. Read more

It has become increasingly common for websites and computer media to provide computer generated visual images, called avatars, to represent users and bots during online interactions. In this study "The Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism, Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction ", participants (N=255) evaluated a series of avatars in a static context in terms of their androgyny, anthropomorphism, credibility, homophily, attraction, and the likelihood they would choose them during an interaction.... Read more

This is a research of graphical multi-user communication environments. I have studied the interactive behavior of and between humans and chatterbots. First I will describe the emotional and behavioral impacts that a chatterbot can provoke in users as individuals and as members of a group. Sometimes it is not self-evident to recognize who in a chat room is a bot and who is human. This is due to the limits and possibilities of digital interface,... Read more

This paper was presented at The First International Conference on Cyberspace held in May 1990 at the University of Texas at Austin. It was published in Cyberspace: First Steps, Michael Benedikt (ed.), 1991, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Lucasfilm's Habitat was created by Lucasfilm Games, a division of LucasArts Entertainment Company, in association with Quantum Computer Services, Inc. It was one of the first attempts to create a very large scale commercial multi-user virtual environment. The Habitat... Read more