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The Archives
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09.11.09NATO Awards Virtual World Development Project to NexusImage via Massively by way of NATO Insiders indicate that NATO has awarded development of its 'virtual campus' to Florida-based company Engineering & Computer Simulations. The company specializes in military simulations built on the government off-the-shelf (GOTS) software US Nexus. The winning bid, at $100,000 USD, will see the development of two scenarios: one, a replica of key buildings at the NATO command in Norfolk, Virginia, and the second a representation of Afghanistan. The bid ends weeks of speculation over whether NATO was serious about including Second Life as one of the three platforms of choice, the other being Forterra. However, NATO ...
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04.21.09Google 3D Take Two: Moving Towards the 3D BrowserGoogle released an experimental plug-in that may one day be released as a standard component of browsers and is said to supplement the efforts my Mozilla to bring 3D to Firefox. Ars Technica reports that it will be several years before the approach to 3D in a browser is refined enough to make it ready for serious production. But with the efforts by the Mozilla folks to accomplish something similar, and the moves to bring 3D as a native component of Flash (building off of approaches similar to that of Papervision), and Microsoft looking to deepen the appeal of Silverlight, ...
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02.12.09Bioinformatics Scientist Vouches for Second LifeIn tough times, one biologist/bioinformatics scientist, Sandra Porter, has come to recognize the benefits of Second Life as a meeting place for the scientific community. Writing for the Genome Technology newsletter, Porter acknowledges not only the cost savings in terms of travel, but also that, compared to a virtual conference or Webinar, "there are some things that you can do at a Second Life meeting that wouldn't be as easy in the physical world." Second Life is gaining a reputation in the health and science world for its ability to house 3D body parts and simulations through which an avatar ...
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11.18.08Navy Goes VirtualAccording to Mass High Tech, the US Navy has created a virtual version of its Naval Underseas Warfare Center in Second Life, the latest in a string of military-related activity in Second Life. The island is intended to duplicate the 128-acre R&D center located in Newport, Rhode Island and replicates buildings, exhibits, and the USS Virginia submarine, as shown above. Mass High Tech also reports that "NUWC said the virtual base is intended to eventually enable remote users, such as Navy sailors, to use their Second Life avatars to control actual tactical hardware/software via video networking capabilities while immersed in the ...
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05.16.08Video Captures Virtual Nursing Training in SLAt a recent Games for Health conference John Miller Tacoma, Washington joined a panel to talk about the use of virtual worlds for training. Joined on the panel by participants from much larger institutions (Stanford among them, if I remember) John has managed to put together a nursing curriculum in Second Life pretty much on his own, whereas the larger institutions worked with companies like Virtual Heroes to develop highly complex simulations. John's presentation at the conference in Baltimore was thoughtful. I was impressed as well with the SL work - may not be the best build in the world, but ...
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09.17.07Metaverse – RoadmapThe Metaverse Roadmap is the working vision for where it's all headed. The Roadmap tries to unravel the future by looking at two continua against which there is uncertainty: focus of identity and focus of technology. Uncertain because, well, to cut through the futurist clutter "who the hell knows". "To construct our scenario set we selected two key continua that are likely to influence the ways in which the Metaverse unfolds: the spectrum of technologies and applications ranging from augmentation to simulation; and the spectrum ranging from intimate (identity-focused) to external (world-focused)." So the road map gives four scenarios seen in the picture ...
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