WOW

Still haven't been able to get the screenshot to work while I'm playing in WOW

FINAL PROJECT: TESTING MY FELLOW CLASSMATES' IMMERSIVE LIBRARIES.

While I was testing one of my classmates libraries firefox and Meshmoon stopped working and forced my computer to restart. So i was only able to get 2 screenshots.

Amanda's world

Ryan's world

FINAL PROJECT: ADDING 10 NEW CONTENT

The 10 new content in my world which includes 5 videos and 5 pdf files

FINAL PROJECT: ADDING 5 PDF PAPERS TO MY IMMERSIVE LIBRARY.

The 5 PDF files in my world

World of warcraft

As you can see when taking a screenshot of me playing WOW (World of Warcraft) all that shows up is my desktop. I switched lands and started over at level one now I am at level 4.

Building my immersive library

To this day Meshmoon will not fully load on my laptop. I've signed for an account, I have closed down the program completely and I have restarted my laptop but it just will not work.

IMMERSIVE LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS

Immersive libraries and museums are becoming more and more popular as immersive education continues to grow. Scholars no longer have to make a trip to a library or museum to gather information from hard copies. They can cut back on that old book smell that gets all up in your nose. People can now log onto their computers and retrieve that information that would desire. Multimedia makes it even easier to obtain information. Being able to look at pictures, animated or non-animated, videos, listening to sounds and so on and so on, but the best part of this is that students learn to collaborate on different projects and actually get to see what is being put into the whole thing. Without having to leave the comfort of their bedrooms.

Now for librarians they are left to struggle with all the information constantly updating. Before immersive libraries were so popular librarians could wait for the next edition of a book to come up and then update files that way. But having the ability to instantly update information makes it a little more time consuming which also keeps the librarians on top of everything.

Museum education gives more visual experience than libraries do.  Immersive libraries also provide that same visual experience because the internet can provide three dimensional imaging. So that similar experience is being enhanced by having technology, take the guiding hand.

The information that can be found in libraries and museums no longer is bounded by physical boundaries due to immersive libraries. The amount of information that can be gathered and sent out has exponentially grown. With all of the technology at our fingertips gathering information is endless. Collaborating with people has become easier, even big corporations use all of these advancing technologies to stay on the cutting edge.

http://JiED.org.

Summary of interview

       To begin the Article Lamont introduces Professor Walsh. He states that Walsh has two courses at Boston College in which are mostly in a Virtual Reality Word. Walsh informs Lamont that he was misinformed and that he teaches three courses. But he affirms Lamont that two out of his three courses are mostly in a Virtual World. “Why not Second life?” was a question that was asked relatively early in the conversation and Walsh answers that question by stating “Second Life is a candidate for the new Immersive Education platform that we're defining today, but it wasn't a viable option for the previous generation which we selected in 2003.”

       Next Walsh was asked about some challenges and advantages there were. Walsh talked about how it was hard at first because not every computer was up to par when it comes to the graphic cards. So the classes could not have been mostly in the VR; also the connection was a problem that arouse. But once most of the students were either living in residence halls, which has high speed internet connection, or at home, which has DSL connection, it became easier to do. “Other advantages include the time saved in traveling to and from class, which can be significant for students who live off campus. I've had some non-traditional students live over an hour away from Boston College, meaning they waste more than two hours traveling ever time we have class in person (on campus).”

     

To end the article Lamont asks if every institution could staff and fund immersive education programs. Walsh exclaims that most can’t so that is why they are trying to make it virtually in expensive. As in they want to make it well documented and free. Even though that is the goal, it is still very hard to achieve.

·         http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/05/teaching_in_vr_.html

Current video game addiction

 The first 3 videos were no longer on youtube.

Class 10, Assignment 4: Making a Virtual Human

The site did not allow me to download the program. And when I was on Poser I couldn't find the free trial and paying 129.99 for the program is a little to expensive for me.

Class 10, Assignment 3: Entering the Uncanny Valley

Class 10, Assignment 2: Real or Fake (CG: Computer Generated)?

I only got half of them right but I was impressed at how closely real pictures and computer generated pictures are.

Class 10, Assignment 1: Synthetic Humans, Moore’s Law and GPUs

I was Cloud party because Meshmoon just is not working on my computer.

The Future of Immersion in my mind

Well as Video Games become more and more realistic the expectations will continue to grow. A very popular game series is the 2K sports series. NBA 2K14 came out for every current game console and the graphics for it are better than last years. NBA 2K13 was the most current one and the NBA players almost looked like their human counterparts like to the tee. Granted some of the attributes were a little off but that is kind of expected.

It does not seem like the improvements to the games will ever stop. One day the video games will look exactly like their human counterparts and thus making the game even more realistic. It will be as if a gamer is fully partaking in the game and can really control of the outcome.

With that said there will be some major drawbacks. For instance there is a possibility that fans will fully watching sporting events and just play the game with will decrease revenue for professional teams. Bonding time with friends and family will become more of a competition instead of a time to relax and enjoy people's company. Students will show even more of a lack interest in school and more interest in whatever game they are playing.

Or there will be the exact opposite. Many people could react in a freaked out way. As the games become more human like it could get extremely weird for gamers to play. Yes they will only be able to control a character on a screen but that character will represent something more than just whats on the screen and that will creep the gamers out. With that said the future of Immersion in my mind will be that some people will like it and others won't. We just have to wait and see what happens.

World of Warcraft addiction

Professor Aaron E. Walsh notes:

The following account was written by "John" in July 2007. John was a student of mine. He was in my Discovering Computer Graphics course at Boston College (http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc), and was much more advanced with 3D graphics than the other students. When I asked why he was taking this class, when he clearly had enough experience to take one of my more advanced classes, he explained that he had no choice: he had failed out of school, and was starting over. After we talked  more as the semester went he explained why. I asked him to write it down for future students. Here’s what he wrote in one sitting about why he was “starting over”.

Video game addiction and related concerns are addressed by the Immersive Education Initiative’s Psychology of Immersive Environments (PIE) group. For details visit http://JiED.org/1/1/7

World of Warcraft (WoW): My Addiction

I've played various MMORPG games over the years, some being fairly addicting, some not even catching my interest, but one stands out above the rest as the most addicting and life consuming thing I've ever encountered in my life. You might have guessed it already, but that game is World of Warcraft, a game that I would recommend everyone stays away from.

Like most addictions, it didn't start out that way. It was just harmless fun; I'd log on for a few hours every day and level my character, talk to some friends I had on the game... it was nothing that took me away from other things. I was in high school at the time, and was still managing to get on with my work at first, even though that was a struggle in itself sometimes, and I kept in touch with my friends and saw them regularly.

At first I was surprised at how little interest I had in playing the game for long stints, as I had heard some things about how enticing and gripping the game was, and the first few months were fine, until I started to get near the level cap. Approaching the maximum level I began to play the game more and more, as reaching the end game content opened up a whole new world. I became involved with a hardcore raiding guild, competing to be the best guild on the server, and it all went from there.

The first thing that changed was that I now had raiding times to meet every weekday evening in addition to the gold farming I had to do during the day in order to be able to afford all the potions and items I needed to raid, and somehow, my guilds progression through the bosses in the game became the most important thing to me in my life, and I slowly started to phase out my friends. At this point I was still going to school, so between the school day and the game, I had no time for anything else.

Contrary to what people might think, I didn't lack a social life at all, even without seeing or talking to any of my friends from school. In fact, it was quite the opposite, I had a whole new group of friends... in World of Warcraft. Now I didn't even have to leave my room to hang out with my friends, I could just pop on my headset and hang out with them in the game.

Now, to rewind a bit, I remember when I was creeping up on the level cap, and my parents were beginning to get concerned with how much I was playing the game, I kept telling them that it would be all over soon. Heck, even I thought it would! Little did I know, the game would be even more demanding of me after that.

I wanted to be the best, I wanted to have the best items, I wanted to have the most gold. I wanted to be popular with the people on my server, I wanted to be known. I wanted to top the damage meters on every single fight. I don't know why, I can't explain it, but the game was just the most important thing to me, I wanted to do nothing else. I wanted to play every single day all day and night and would do whatever I could to keep myself awake and at the computer. Whatever it took, energy drinks, amphetamines, I would keep myself awake for hours on end, not getting any exercise and rarely leaving the house.

The more and more I played, the more and more things I felt compelled to spend my time doing inside the game. It seems that they create the game in such a way that even though there technically is a way to have the ultimate everything and clear all the bosses etc.. etc...... By the time you get close they add more content to the game to keep you going, its a never ending story. I would pick up my prescription for amphetamines just so I could stay up all night farming items to sell for gold, I wanted to have the best enchantments and to get all the rare random world drops... and so much more. I completely stopped going to school, completely stopped seeing my friends.... and the most worrying fact was that I didn't really care. It just stole my heart and mind from everything else, gave me a false sense that everything was okay and that I wasn't ruining the rest of my life. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't stopped, I had stopped going to school and cut off social contact with everyone but the people I knew in the game, it was like a world within itself. I didn't even want to stop until I had a taste of life without it, a taste that was forced, however. If I hadn't been forced to live somewhere without a computer I don't know what would have happened.

Class 9, Assignment 6: Immersive Education Virtual World and Video games

Meshmoon would not install on my PC and I could not figure out why that happened.

Class 9, Assignment 5: Casual video games.

Angry birds to me is a classic. Having played it on my iPod touch and on my iPhone it was easy to translate on the PC. As you can see I got 3 stars on some of the levels.

Class 9, Assignment 4: Role Playing video games.

 The top 4 screenshots are from the Role playing game called Sinjid. For about an hour I kept playing and got completely immersed into this game. And the bottom four to me was the only other game I would have played from that site and the name of the game was Magic Heaven.

Class 9, Assignment 3: FPS Games Based on Quake.

Only UFO would load on my computer. All of the other files were downloaded but none of them would install on to my laptop.