Development Of Virtual Worlds Research Articles

Unfolding the role of metaverse in agri‐food supply chain security: current scenario and future perspectives

SummarySince its inception, the metaverse has evolved drastically and opened up many opportunities for many stakeholders, including individuals and businesses. The agri‐food supply chain is currently starting to incorporate metaverse technology. Retailers and prominent companies use this technology to achieve particular goals, such as ensuring traceability or boosting sales and reputation. Concurrently, there is an opportunity for the metaverse to affect food chain performance more broadly. Even so, the literature provides little evidence for this effect and primarily focuses on specific indicators, leaving little knowledge about it. By exploring the rapidly evolving field of metaverse technologies and their potential impacts on the security of agri‐food supply chains, this study aims to fill this knowledge gap. The study aims to improve collaboration and communication throughout the agri‐food supply chain by providing a structured framework covering a variety of metaverse technologies, from the development of immersive virtual worlds to the deployment of blockchain for traceability. The findings offer valuable insights, particularly for researchers, decision makers, and industry partners who aim to better comprehend the potential benefits and challenges related to integrating metaverse solutions into the agri‐food industry. The study concludes with recommendations for future research directions and strategic factors that could assist in ensuring the effective adoption of metaverse technologies and the security and resilience of agri‐food supply chains.

Liabilities of virtual world developers as intermediary service providers: the case of Second Life

Through a review of the EU and the US regulation and case law, this article discusses the extent to which virtual world developers can be held liable as intermediary service providers with regard to potentially infringing user-created and user-uploaded virtual items. Among many virtual worlds, this study focuses on Second Life, developed by Linden, as it allows user-created and uploaded contents, and offers services such as the Marketplace and LindeX exchange, which enable users and the developer to financially benefit from these contents. The article argues that, beyond mere game developers, virtual world developers such as Linden are intermediary service providers and may be liable with regards to user-created and uploaded content on their services. Within the scope of the EU regime, Linden is too active to benefit from the E-Commerce Directive’s safe harbors. However, it should not be considered as an online content-sharing service provider within the scope of the DSM Directive because Second Life does not compete with other online content services for the same audiences. According to the comprehensive protection brought by the DMCA in the US, Linden can benefit from the safe harbors if it takes the necessary steps after becoming aware of specific infringing activity and fulfills the procedural measures listed in the act.

Future of virtual education and telementoring

To summarize recent technological advancements in medical and surgical education and explore what the future of medicine might be as it relates to blockchain technology, the metaverse, and web3. Through the use of digitally assisted ophthalmic surgery and high dynamic range 3D cameras, it is now possible to record and live stream 3D video content. Although the 'metaverse' is still in its early stages, there are a variety of proto-metaverse technologies that exist to facilitate user interactions that can mimic the real world through the use of shared digital environments and 3D spatial audio. Advanced blockchain technologies can allow for further development of interoperable virtual worlds where a user has an on-chain identity, credentials, data, assets, and much more that they can carry across platforms seamlessly. As remote real-time communication becomes an integral part of human interaction, 3D live streaming has the potential to revolutionize ophthalmic education by removing traditional geographic and physical constraints of in-person surgical viewing. The incorporation of metaverse and web3 technologies has created new outlets for knowledge sharing that may improve how we operate, teach, learn, and transfer knowledge.

The concept, features and prospects for the metaverse construct development

The paper discusses formation features of the metaverse concept in terms of the active introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) into the state governance and business. The work’ goal is to study the concept content, its structure and development prospects. The author used such general scientific research methods as content analysis, comparative and correlation analysis, grouping, synthesis, systematization. In order to reveal the concept content, the paper reflects various approaches to the definition of the term “metaverse”. The author proposes his understanding and analyzes the issues of transition to the Web3 era and its relationship with the metaverse in the digital transformation of society and economy. The research presents a vision of the major elements of the metaverse at the current time. Despite the emerging risks, it assumes the active use of ICT and trends towards decentralization of the economy will contribute to the further implementation of the metaverse concept in our daily life. A practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using its provisions in the compilation of strategies for the development of corporations and state institutions. As an inference, the study gives some recommendations to corporations on taking part in the creation and it makes development of virtual worlds and a conclusion about the prospects for the concept progress in the medium term.

Gaming the System: Playbour, Production, Promotion, and the Metaverse

Abstract As much as tech giants like Microsoft and Meta promote the metaverse as a new haven for social connection and enterprise, popular and academic presses credit the development of persistent virtual worlds that underlie the emerging space to digital gamemakers. This paper argues gaming’s centrality to the metaverse, upon which its hardware, controls, distribution platforms, economic models, and even socio-cultural attributes rely. Building on research into early adopters of virtual reality, it examines a “playbor production system” that solidifies hardware and software providers in both immersive media and the metaverse’s ecosystems by capitalizing on gamers’ and enthusiasts’ labor. The paper concludes that such models epitomize endemic concerns in the evolution of virtual worlds, economics, and technologies contingent upon imbalanced power structures between producers, providers, and consumers.

Towards Sinophone Game Studies

The editor’s introduction discusses progress so far and possible future directions in the emerging field of Sinophone game studies, taken to mean the study of games – in this case, specifically video, computer, digital, or electronic games – in a Sinophone context, including mainland China and the broader Chinese-speaking world. Recent industry figures and news stories related to video gaming in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) paint a picture of continued expansion and growing global ambitions, albeit tempered by the regular introduction of fresh government regulations surrounding game content, gaming permissions for under-18s, game streaming, and game license approval. The eleven contributions to this issue, however, reflect the diversity of possible approaches to the study of Sinophone gaming, focusing not just on the often-conflicting politics and economics of the PRC games industry, but also exploring Taiwan’s flourishing indie game scene, political uses of games in Hong Kong, game-based representations of online and offline realities, issues in the transnational adaptation and localisation of games, and more besides. Sinophone game studies is a highly fruitful area of academic research that is intrinsically inter- and cross-disciplinary in nature and well placed to respond to some of the most pressing issues of our time, whether they be international conflict, ecological crisis, identity politics, minority rights, or even the development of disparate virtual worlds into a cross-platform ‘metaverse’ in which many of us may one day live our lives.

Metaverse beyond the hype: Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy

The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight to the potential socio-economic impact of a fully functional persistent cross platform metaverse. Separating the hype and “meta…” rebranding from current reality is difficult, as “big tech” paints a picture of the transformative nature of the metaverse and how it will positively impact people in their work, leisure, and social interaction. The potential impact on the way we conduct business, interact with brands and others, and develop shared experiences is likely to be transformational as the distinct lines between physical and digital are likely to be somewhat blurred from current perceptions. However, although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale - one that our avatars could transcend across platforms, researchers are increasingly examining the transformative impact of the metaverse. Impacted sectors include marketing, education, healthcare as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption, and issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and impact on vulnerable people. This study examines these topics in detail by combining the informed narrative and multi-perspective approach from experts with varied disciplinary backgrounds on many aspects of the metaverse and its transformational impact. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda that is valuable for researchers, professionals and policy makers alike.

TECHNOGENY: THE GENIUS LEARNING UNIT

Fragmented knowledge, the lack of adequate synthetic learning units, its forms and content, the contradiction of the Education faces humans to nowadays existential problems, like global challenges of climate change, pandemics, wars, poverty, international terrorism, migration, etc. In the article the author presents more than 40 years of sociogenic innovation on the author science Technogeny, dedicated to construction of virtual models of the origin and development of learning and self-improvement seeking to gain necessary for success practice skills and arts. Grounding on the Virtualics, as virtual modelling metatheory and World development spiral virtual models, it gives opportunity to apply virtual approach to the Learning phenomenon and its transition qualities from the Past through Nowadays and towards the Future. Anthropogenic analysis of gaming as a learning procedure enabled to define the action programme of an animal or human as the natural learning unit, which is also a practical Natural knowledge unit. Composed learning virtual model evidently confirmed transition of the form of learning from the Education to Self-Improvement through Education contradiction resonance sinusoid. The learning form transits three qualitative leaps of a virtual trichotomy: autocratic face-to-face education, democratic blended learning, and virtual liberal Self-Improvement. The content of learning is transiting from Metaphysics (academic scholastics) to Virtualics (Smart Innovation). Matrixes of learning form and content fixed clear trends from an Old to the New qualities of the learning. Genius learning unit and virtual Self-Improvement tools innovations and application for forty years of international pedagogic innovations enabled to confirm the right path to the future of learning towards virtual Smart Innovation. COVID-19 pandemic gave additional confirmation of this learning development direction.

The Development of Virtual Worlds as a Tool for Providing Virtual Grocery Store Tours

Poor dietary choices are a leading cause of preventable chronic disease. Consequently, improving dietary choices is a key public health goal. While several approaches are available to influence dietary choices, consumer education is likely a key to improving the diet. One approach to educating consumers is to provide grocery store tours where consumers are provided with nutrition education where purchasing decisions are often made. At this time, there has been limited research to show the effectiveness of this approach or to develop best practices. A possible barrier to innovation in this area concerns the difficulty to get access to grocery stores to conduct tours. Moreover, these barriers may also hamper research efforts to identify best practices. A possible alternative approach is to create virtual worlds where grocery store tours can be conducted remotely. This present manuscript describes an approach to developing virtual grocery stores as a method for providing nutrition education with a description of the design possibilities.

On Insufficient Documentation of a Virtual World's Economic Development

Literature on Second Life (SL) was retrieved, reviewed, and aggregated. Although it was found to provide sufficient information about SL's social, technological, business model, and legal issues, and although SL received overall dense media coverage, the literature was found to be lacking when it came to a thorough documentation of its economic development in 2003-2008. Using the retrieved literature, the attempt to reconstruct the development of the number of avatars, active users, prices and fees, and monetary development exposes the limits of reconstructing the economic development of a virtual world years after its popularity peak. This article serves as an argument and a reminder for a proper documentation of such developments. Future documentation of virtual worlds in academia should thoroughly track the economic development of next-generation virtual worlds. Otherwise, post-analysis, economic development reconstruction, and trace backs might prove difficult, costly, or infeasible.

Serious games

Anders Engberg-Pedersen: “Serious games. Harun Farocki and MilitaryAesthetics”This article charts the emergence of a military-aesthetic regime in the twenty-first century. It shows how the US military has co-opted and militarized the field of aesthetics through the development of virtual worlds that train, prepare, and process military engagements. Using the German artist Harun Farocki’s installation Serious Games as a prism for this development, the essay charts the collaborations between military institutions, academics, and the creative industries. The key question is: what happens to the notion of “war experience” in the age of immersive virtual reality technologies? To find plausible answers, the article situates military aesthetics along a historical axis with the emergence of the modern wargame around 1800, and along a theoretical axis by drawing on key thinkers in philosophical aesthetics (Baumgarten, Dewey, Rancière).

A cyber-threat analytic model for autonomous detection of virtual property theft

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide a framework to detect and prevent virtual property theft in virtual world environments. The issue of virtual property theft is a serious problem which has ramifications in both the real and virtual world. Virtual world users invest a considerable amount of time, effort and often money to collect virtual property, only to have them stolen by thieves. Many virtual property thefts go undetected and often only discovered after the incident has occurred.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents the design of an autonomic detection framework to identify virtual property theft at two key stages: account intrusion and virtual property trades. Account intrusion is an unauthorized user attempting to gain access to an account and unauthorized virtual property trades are trading of items between two users which exhibit theft characteristics.FindingsInitial tests of this framework on a synthetic data set show an 80 per cent detection rate. This framework allows virtual world developers to tailor and extend it to suit their specific requirements. It provides an effective way of detecting virtual property theft while being low maintenance, user friendly and cost effective.Originality/valueTo the author’s knowledge, there is no detection framework, system or tool that works on virtual property theft detection in virtual world environments without access to authentic virtual world data or attack data (because of privacy issues and unwillingness of virtual world environments companies to collaborate). The topic of virtual property theft, lack of existing labelled data sets, user anonymity, size of virtual world environments data sets and privacy issues with virtual world companies and a number of other critical factors distinguish this paper from previous studies.

Virtual Reality Smoking Cessation–Designed for Teens, by Teens

Introduction: Today, about 90% of adult smokers started smoking before the age of 18. As the largest preventable cause of disease and death in the United States, tobacco use accounts for nearly 500,000 deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars to care for smoking-related illnesses every year. While most smoking cessation programs are geared toward adults, there is a void in attempts to curb teen smoking. Objective: With funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Virtual Reality Medical Center (VRMC) sought to create a more effective way to help teens quit smoking. Utilizing cue exposure therapy to eliminate the association of smoking with objects and activities, the program uses virtual environments containing smoking cues to elicit the addictive behaviors and teach the users how to recognize and resist these triggers. Method: In a novel approach, VRMC recruited students from a local high school to aid in the design and development of virtual worlds in order to create an entertaining and effective program for teens. Researchers and the participants of this TeenSmoking program created a variety of anti-smoking environments ranging from scenarios at home, to peer pressure situations at school, all intended to elicit and educate users on addictive smoking behaviors. Conclusion: With past clinical success, researchers at VRMC hope to continue to implement widely available teen smoking cessation programs with enhanced usability, graphics, and multiplayer functionality. Overall, researchers hope to advance more comprehensive use of virtual reality to curb teen smoking addictions.

Diseño y usabilidad de interfaces para entornos educativos de realidad aumentada

The aim of the paper is to determine the elements, components and key facts to design interactive interfaces for augmented reality environments, focusing on the design and development of virtual worlds for educational applications.The article focuses on the usability study of three augmented reality applications interfaces developed for non touchable natural environments. The aim is to determine the menu and interactive items the user accesses without difficulty and also their navigation patterns. The most viewed elements and the ones that can´t be seen by the user, generating problems of navigation and usability, are analyzed too. The research results indicate that applications developed for non-touch environments can be stressful for the user, especially because of the time they spend with their hands up. The space around the student is also important for the learning process, and all the applications must be designed with some educational, rather than leisure tasks, or a fully open navigation.

Artefato Metodológico de Autoria Aplicado aos Mundos Virtuais para Educação

By the growing consolidation of the convergence between technology and education, there are many studies found in the literature that involves virtual worlds in the educational context. By observing low applicability and dissemination of this technology, it is important to have a debate about the authorship of these environments. In the research described here, it is intended to develop a methodological artifact that aims to guide and motivate the development and consequent use of virtual worlds in educational contexts.

Improvement in the physiological function and standing stability based on kinect multimedia for older people.

[Purpose] The increase in the Taiwanese older population is associated with age-related inconveniences. Finding adequate and simple physical activities to help the older people maintaining their physiological function and preventing them from falls has become an urgent social issue. [Subjects and Methods] This study aimed to design a virtual exercise training game suitable for Taiwanese older people. This system will allow for the maintenance of the physiological function and standing stability through physical exercise, while using a virtual reality game. The participants can easily exercise in a carefree, interactive environment. This study will use Kinect for Windows for physical movement detection and Unity software for virtual world development. [Results] Group A and B subjects were involved in the exercise training method of Kinect interactive multimedia for 12 weeks. The results showed that the functional reach test and the unipedal stance test improved significantly. [Conclusion] The physiological function and standing stability of the group A subjects were examined at six weeks post training. The results showed that these parameters remained constant. This proved that the proposed system provide substantial support toward the preservation of the Taiwanese older people’ physiological function and standing stability.

<p>History of the (Virtual) Worlds</p>

Virtual worlds represent a small but dynamic sector of the computer technology field with global applications ranging from art and entertainment to online instructional delivery and educational research. Despite their worldwide acceptance and usage, few educators, researchers, or everyday gamers fully understand the history and evolution of virtual worlds – their genres, platforms, features, and affordances. Many of the innovations we readily recognize today (e.g., user creation of in-world objects in worlds like Second Life) began as grassroots efforts by gaming and computer enthusiasts who were long on passion but short on documentation. The end result is a twisted and often thorny history for a technology that now actively engages hundreds of millions of users worldwide and millions of users within education alone. This article synthesizes histories and definitions from virtual world developers, industry leaders, academic researchers, trade journals, and texts in order to form a coherent historical narrative of events that contributed to the evolution and shaping of the virtual worlds as we currently know and use them in education and society in general.

Privacy in Virtual Worlds: A US Perspective

Virtual Worlds (VW) are intricate 3-dimensional, vivid environments that are the digital equivalents of the physical world (Glibert, 2011). VWs offer new and engaging methods of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) used for conducting many kinds of processes and functions, from education and training, to new product development and customer service. A vast amount of personal information can be recorded, stored, and analyzed in VW. This paper presents a rich account of what today’s VW consist of and the current state of privacy rights in VW in the United States.First the paper explains why VW should be considered separate from other ICT. Then privacy rights in the United States are discussed, and how these rights could, or should, apply to VW. Currently privacy rights of VW users are wholly created and defined by the Terms of Service (TOS) of the VW. The argument is put forth that privacy rights need to be approached in two ways, from the VW users working to improve their rights in the TOS and improved government privacy regulation as called for by the VW community. Privacy laws or the right to privacy is critical at this point in the development of VW. As in the days of the Wild West, the law has been slow to make its way into the realm of VW. In conclusion, critical issues are identified to be addressed in future research projects.

3D Virtual worlds and the metaverse

Moving from a set of independent virtual worlds to an integrated network of 3D virtual worlds or Metaverse rests on progress in four areas: immersive realism, ubiquity of access and identity, interoperability, and scalability. For each area, the current status and needed developments in order to achieve a functional Metaverse are described. Factors that support the formation of a viable Metaverse, such as institutional and popular interest and ongoing improvements in hardware performance, and factors that constrain the achievement of this goal, including limits in computational methods and unrealized collaboration among virtual world stakeholders and developers, are also considered.

The cognitive apprenticeship theory for the teaching of mathematics in an online 3D virtual environment

Research spanning two decades shows that there is a continuing development of 3D virtual worlds and investment in such environments for educational purposes. Research stresses the need for these environments to be well-designed and for suitable pedagogies to be implemented in the teaching practice in order for these worlds to be fully effective. To this end, we propose a pedagogical framework based on the cognitive apprenticeship for deriving principles and guidelines to inform the design, development and use of a 3D virtual environment. This study examines how the use of a 3D virtual world facilitates the teaching of mathematics in primary education by combining design principles and guidelines based on the Cognitive Apprenticeship Theory and the teaching methods that this theory introduces. We focus specifically on 5th and 6th grade students’ engagement (behavioral, affective and cognitive) while learning fractional concepts over a period of two class sessions. Quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate considerable improvement in the engagement of the students who participated in the experiment. This paper presents the findings regarding students’ cognitive engagement in the process of comprehending basic fractional concepts – notoriously hard for students to master. The findings are encouraging and suggestions are made for further research.