The book deals with the challenges that arise when virtual worlds are used for learning and teaching. The ideas and practices emerging from this field are relevant to all educators, and offers insights into the development of a pedagogy that is authentic, inclusive and enjoyable. Each chapter addresses a particular issue and is illustrated with examples drawn from both research and practice. These examples cover a wide range of learning scenarios, both formal and informal, involving teenagers, school pupils, undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as a variety of lifelong learners. The issues include the importance of virtual worlds, the influence of online games and physical-world economics and politics, the relationship between avatars and learner identity, the challenges of ensuring child safety and protection, interaction between real-world and in-world environments and activities, accessibility and the development of new pedagogues. The authors are all teachers and learners in virtual worlds; many have been responsible for designing, programming and maintaining virtual environments.

Mass spectrometry has proven its applicability to the measurement of almost any molecule. However, different substances require special knowledge in the respective field and scientists tend to focus on their particular task in collaborations and meetings. Nevertheless, disciplines have become more and more interdisciplinary and scientists now have to acquire knowledge in many scientific fields other than our own. Especially mass spectrometrists, who often find them selves learning about the history of their sample, be it from a zoologist, clinician, microbiologist, or biochemist. This was evident with the rise of proteomics, which reaches across species and research projects, uniting scientists through the methodology. This book presents research from around the globe in the fields of biomacromolecules such as proteins, DNA, and other biopolymers studied with mass spectrometry.

How does virtuality affect reality? Fourteen experts consider this question from the perspective of law, architecture, rhetoric, philosophy, and art. Nearly all of the contributors have been online since before Netscape and a graphical World Wide Web; thus they have a thorough understanding of the cultural shifts the Internet has produced and been affected by, and they have a keen appreciation for the potential of the medium. Most scholarship on cyberculture has repeatedly emphasized that our offline selves determine how we are able to use technology, that real life affects what we do online. This volume is an attempt to reverse that discussion, to demonstrate that how we live online affects our lives offline as well. A virtual public is not an unreal one.

Through interviews with developers, gamers, and journalists examining the phenomena of bedroom coding, arcade gaming, and format wars, mapped onto enquiry into the seminal genres of the time including driving, shooting, and maze chase, Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames examines how 1980s Britain has become the culture of work in the 21st century and considers its meaning to contemporary society. This crucial and timely work fills a lacuna for students and researchers of sociology, media, and games studies and will be of interest to employees of the videogames and media industries. Research into videogames have never been greater, but exploration of their historic drivers is as elided as the technology is influential, giving rise to a range of questions. What were the social and economic conditions that gave rise to a billion dollar industry? What were the motivations of the early 'bedroom coders'? What are the legacies of the seminal videogames of the 1980s and how do they inform the current social, political and cultural landscape? With a focus on the characteristics of the UK videogame industry in the 1980s, Wade explores these questions from perspectives of consumption, production and leisure, outlining the construction of a habitus unique to this time.

A comprehensive guide to computer assisted exercises

Readers can turn to this indispensable reference guide for comprehensive and lucid coverage of the operational, technical, and organizational knowledge needed to harness successful and constructive computer assisted exercises (CAX) and war games. It is geared also toward large civilian organizations that are looking to teach and test their strategies and procedures without the added cost of manpower. Divided into two clear parts, the book covers:

Fundamentals and Theory--conflict and warfare; probability and statistics; simulation; distributed simulation; and experimentation and analysis

Combat Modeling, Computer Assisted Exercises, and Practice--CAX architectures; CAX process; combat modeling; CAX support tools; communications/information system issues, technical risks, and risk miti-gation; and exercise centers and facilities

Computer Assisted Exercises and Training: A Reference Guide is indispensable reading for research engineers, computer scientists, software engineers working with modeling and simulation, homeland security specialists, staff in simulation training centers, military strategists and commanders, and many others. It also serves as a valuable textbook for modeling and simulation courses at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels.

The purpose of virtual reality is to make possible a sensorimotor and cognitive activity for a user in a digitally created artificial world. Recent advances in computer technology have led to a new generation of VR devices such as VR headsets. Accordingly, virtual reality poses many new scientific challenges for researchers and professionals. The aim of this book, a manual meant for both designers and users of virtual reality, is to present the current state of knowledge on the use of VR headsets in the most complete way possible. The book is divided into 13 chapters. The objective of the first chapter is to give an introduction to VR and clarify its scope. The next chapter presents a theoretical approach to virtual reality through our Immersion and Interaction methodology also known as "3I(2) model''. Then, a chapter about human senses is necessary to understand the sensorimotor immersion, especially vision. These chapters are followed by several chapters which present the different visual interfaces and the VR headsets currently available on the market. These devices can impart comfort and health problems due to sensorimotor discrepancies. A chapter is devoted to these problems, followed by a chapter that gives a detailed discussion of methods and 32 solutions to dispel, or at least to decrease, VR sickness. The following three chapters present different VR applications that use VR headsets (behavioural sciences, industrial uses and Digital Art) and the final chapter provides conclusions and discusses future VR challenges.

This book summarises research findings relating to virtual reality implementation for pain assessment and treatment, reviewing the literature in pediatric and adult pain care for acute and chronic conditions across several pain populations. The authors provide detailed information about the effect mechanisms of virtual reality for Parkinson's disease, and the virtual reality interventions for rehabilitation of Parkinson's disease in terms of assessment and treatment. Anxiety disorders, such as specific phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and social anxiety disorder have garnered the greatest therapeutic attention due to the advantages that applying exposure therapy techniques in a virtual reality environment has over many real-life exposure situations. Later, in order to further improve the intelligence level of a fully mechanized coal mining face and construct a stable and reliable monitoring system of hydraulic support, a monitoring method of hydraulic support in a virtual environment is proposed. In order to further improve the intelligence level of fully mechanized coal mining face and construct a stable and reliable monitoring system of hydraulic support which is of guiding significance to actual production, a monitoring method of hydraulic support in virtual environment is proposed. In the concluding study, using meta-analysis methods and combining the basic elements of teaching system design, a quantitative analysis of 60 quasi-experimental or experimental virtual reality and augmented reality studies is conducted.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com While all media are part of intermedial networks, video games are often at the nexus of that network. They not only employ cinematics, embedded books, and in-world television screens for various purposes, but, in our convergence culture, video games also play a vital role in allowing players to explore transmedia storyworlds. At the same time, video games are frequently thematized and remediated in film, television, and literature. Indeed, the central role video games assume in intermedial networks provides testament to their significance in the contemporary media environment. In this volume, an international group of contributors discuss not only intermedial phenomena in video games, but also the intermedial networks surrounding them. Intermedia Games-Games Inter Media will deepen readers' understanding of the convergence culture of the early twenty-first century and video games' role in it.

Microsoft Kinect changes the notion of user interface design. It differs from most other user input controllers as it enables users to interact with the program without touching the mouse or a trackpad. It utilizes motion sensing technology and all it needs is a real-time cameras, tracked skeletons, and gestures. This title will help you get into the world of Microsoft Kinect programming with the C/C++ language. The book covers the installation, image streaming, skeleton and face tracking, multi-touch cursors, and gesture emulation. Finally, you will end up with a complete Kinect-based game.

Virtual environments simulate a physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones. In this book, the authors discuss the new developments, applications and challenges of virtual environments. Topics include measuring brain activation during spatial navigation in virtual reality; spatial representation of a multilevel building; user experience in a virtual art gallery; virtual environments in education; social networks and virtual environments from an adolescent point of view; and bringing skin observations to a higher level with 3D immersive virtual environments.

Computer-Generated Images (CGIs) are widely used and accepted in the world of entertainment but the use of the very same visualization techniques in academic research in the Arts and Humanities remains controversial. The techniques and conceptual perspectives on heritage visualization are a subject of an ongoing interdisciplinary debate. By demonstrating scholarly excellence and best technical practice in this area, this volume is concerned with the challenge of providing intellectual transparency and accountability in visualization-based historical research. Addressing a range of cognitive and technological challenges, the authors make a strong case for a wider recognition of three-dimensional visualization as a constructive, intellectual process and valid methodology for historical research and its communication. Intellectual transparency of visualization-based research, the pervading theme of this volume, is addressed from different perspectives reflecting the theory and practice of respective disciplines. The contributors - archaeologists, cultural historians, computer scientists and ICT practitioners - emphasize the importance of reliable tools, in particular documenting the process of interpretation of historical material and hypotheses that arise in the course of research. The discussion of this issue refers to all aspects of the intellectual content of visualization and is centred around the concept of 'paradata'. Paradata document interpretative processes so that a degree of reliability of visualization outcomes can be understood. The disadvantages of not providing this kind of intellectual transparency in the communication of historical content may result in visual products that only convey a small percentage of the knowledge that they embody, thus making research findings not susceptible to peer review and rendering them closed to further discussion. It is argued, therefore, that paradata should be recorded alongside more tangible outcomes of research, preferably as an integral part of virtual models, and sustained beyond the life-span of the technology that underpins visualization.

Get practical tools to successfully develop collaborative online learning projects! Virtual museums provide an opportunity to spark learning through online access to multi-sensory information, and collaboration between sources is needed to efficiently and effectively catalog and present material. Collaborative Access to Virtual Museum Collection Information: Seeing Through the Walls presents respected authorities exploring the world of virtual collections, from the identification and selection of objects to be included to providing online access using common terminology. Future possibilities and problems are fully detailed, taking into consideration the need for fixed metadata, descriptive standards, and negotiated compromise. Solutions to difficult issues are provided to allow successful development of collaborative virtual museum projects of all types. A virtual museum can provide users with direct, easy access to information, photographs, drawings, sound files, and video clips. However, discipline-based differences in terminology between collections are as much a challenge as integrating detailed locally-developed vocabularies with more general descriptors. Collaborative Access to Virtual Museum Collection Information: Seeing Through the Walls shows how to best achieve consistent information access by providing studies of successful collaborative museum projects which resulted in the creation of catalogs of material from a number of separate collections. The book helps you to understand the challenges of dealing with an unknown online user community as well as the opportunities for presenting information to the virtual museum visitor that differs from that information available during an on-site visit. Four case studies are presented in depth and highlight practical strategies on the development of collaborative common language for future projects. Extensive references provide opportunity for further research while tables clearly illustrate data. Collaborative Access to Virtual Museum Collection Information: Seeing Through the Walls thoroughly explores: cataloging and the digital collection at the Experience Music Project the collaborative cataloging efforts using Dublin Core to unite local heritage organizations the compromises and negotiations necessary to build a common catalog for multiple collaborating organizations the challenges of creating contextual information that places objects in relationship to their creators and the circumstances of their use the partnership between museums with Native American collections and tribally controlled schools the types of images indexed by museum practitioners indexing procedures and systems identifying potentially sensitive information for inclusion or exclusion in online collection databases Collaborative Access to Virtual Museum Collection Information: Seeing Through the Walls is cutting-edge information for museum archivists, librarians, collection curators, and anyone involved in creating catalogs or providing online access to existing museum collection information.

Virtual Politics is a critical overview of the new - digital - body politic, with new technologies framing the discussion of key themes in social theory. This book shows how these new technologies are altering the nature of identity and agency, the relation of self to other, and the structure of community and political representation.

Virtual Culture provides a unique analysis of a previously undocumented aspect of the cybersociety. Until now, the debate about participation in cyberculture has tended to focus on the ways that certain segments of the population are denied access to communications technologies. By contrast, the contributors to this volume scrutinize the way in which under-represented groupsùgay men, women, and special interest groupsùare exploiting the opportunities that the Internet provides for social and political change. Virtual Culture presents contributions from a range of subject disciplines, including communication, sociology, and anthropology in order to reflect on the diverse paradigms currently engaged in the study of electronic communities and networks. It sets out the definitions, boundaries, and approaches to the studies of these topics while demonstrating the theoretical and practical possibilities for cybersociety as an identity-structured space. Virtual Culture will be required reading for all students of communication, media and technology.

An examination of subversive games-games designed for political, aesthetic, and social critique. For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games-games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry-and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of "playing house" include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks at artists' alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns-including worldwide poverty and AIDS-can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that this kind of conscious practice-which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium-can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.

A Complete Toolbox of Theories and Techniques The second edition of a bestseller, Handbook of Virtual Environments: Design, Implementation, and Applications presents systematic and extensive coverage of the primary areas of research and development within VE technology. It brings together a comprehensive set of contributed articles that address the principles required to define system requirements and design, build, evaluate, implement, and manage the effective use of VE applications. The contributors provide critical insights and principles associated with their given areas of expertise to provide extensive scope and detail on VE technology and its applications. What's New in the Second Edition: Updated glossary of terms to promote common language throughout the community New chapters on olfactory perception, avatar control, motion sickness, and display design, as well as a whole host of new application areas Updated information to reflect the tremendous progress made over the last decade in applying VE technology to a growing number of domains This second edition includes nine new, as well as forty-one updated chapters that reflect the progress made in basic and applied research related to the creation, application, and evaluation of virtual environments. Contributions from leading researchers and practitioners from multidisciplinary domains provide a wealth of theoretical and practical information, resulting in a complete toolbox of theories and techniques that you can rely on to develop more captivating and effective virtual worlds. The handbook supplies a valuable resource for advancing VE applications as you take them from the laboratory to the real-world lives of people everywhere.