Teleportation of Objects between Virtual Worlds: Use Case: Exer-gaming

Abstract

The Internet and virtual worlds are increasingly become a part of our daily lives. Currently these two are not capable of exchanging information, largely because of the lack of a global accepted standard for information exchange. Interaction between the real world and virtual worlds is mostly limited to classic mouse and keyboard devices, and exchange of information between different virtual worlds is virtually non-existent. We present a Use Case in the Metaverse1 project to increase motivation for continued physical exercising for the elderly by connecting real-world devices to virtual worlds, and allow information exchange through the teleportation of virtual objects from Second Life to our custom virtual biking world created in the Logos3D engine. We show that the principle of exchanging information between real and virtual worlds is simple, but the solution is non-trivial and requires not only a globally accepted standard to facilitate information exchange. From the results of a focus-group study, we show that a virtual environment does have the capability to increase motivation for exercising and that users do respond to a virtual exercise coach.