Raleigh (NC) - A research team led by Dr. Mitzi Montoya of North Carolina State University has developed a way to put a number on how realistic online virtual online words are. His measure of realness is being sought after by corporations to identify better training tools and ways to conduct business. The idea is that virtual environments cost less than moving people around the globe, lodging them, etc. If businesses pick up on this idea of going virtual, then how soon until we will see a major push toward perfecting the technology? And how far away are we today?


Virtual influence

Several recent technology events including those with major hardware designers like Intel and Motorolla, have spent considerable stage time demonstrating the power of virtual worlds and their communities. The commonplace nature of such presentations now generates a real feeling that virtual worlds may completely shape education, the methods of transacting business and much more. And very soon at that.

There's no doubt these technologies are influencing the way many of us interact even today - thanks to high-end gaming. These forms of virtual worlds set the standard or baseline for what's real, what's possible and what's not. But is it subjective? Is it up to the end-user to decide for himself or herself how real a world is? Dr. Montoya believes it is not.


Gauging realness

Dr. Montoya developed a tool to measure something called Perceived Virtual Presence (PVP) in conjunction with Dr. Anne P. Massey, Dean's research professor of Information Systems at Indiana University. PVP is a gauge which gives a number or level of the realness. Montoya says, "[PVP] can be used to determine what levels are most conducive to training, collaboration or other applications."

Their desire is to use the PVP scale to help companies design virtual environments that have a degree of reality which best fits their specific needs. Classroom reality levels might need to be different than demonstration reality levels, or reality levels seen in virtual meetings. The whole concept stems from the belief that "if users feel they are 'present' in the virtual world, they will collaborate better with other members of their team – and the more effective the virtual world will be as a setting for research and development or other collaborative enterprises," says Montoya.

No information about the mechanics of this process are currently included in press releases.


Cost factors

Using different forms of realistic online environments, even those as simle as remote desktop connections for help desks, have already shown to save large corporations literally millions of dollars annually. And virtual classrooms, meetings and presentations has been shown to users around the globe with stunning success, also saving 10s of millions of dollars.

In addition, previous meetings, educational worlds and demonstrations can all be recycled, copied and reviewed at any time in the future. Having either the original presentation, or a playback of a recorded version of the original presentation, one given in its exact form is as easy as copying a file. And that is one if this technologie's greatest benefits.


Conclusion

Education, demonstration and collaboration are the future of the business needs of online virtual worlds. Specific tools like Montoy'as PVP may help develop these virtual tools far more rapidy. And while games, sim worlds and other "fun things" will undoubtedly push the technology, performance and coding methodologies as far as they can go, it will ultimately be the business ends which benefit the most from the application of that which is possible through virtual reality.

os-independent?

Oct 30, 2008 08:19     

It would be great if these virtual worlds was operating system independent; any one could use them not matter what operating system is on their computer. Usually their accesable only to those using Windows or Mac. I prefer eComStation and many prefer Linux among other operating systems out there. It would be neat if I could use these virtual world on my eCS pc.
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