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What is a virtual world? Definition and classification

Everything you need to know about the virtual world!

What is a virtual world? Definition and classification

Thus far, definitions of virtual worlds lack a necessary conceptualization of what a virtual world is. The propensity towards a techno-centric definition has its benefits because it permits for a myriad of user experiences, however ever, it ends up in confusion between technologies with similar technical features, possibly as a result of a virtual world, very similar to a smartphone, depending on a mix of various technologies. For example, it's unclear how Bell’s (2008) definition of a virtual world couldn't as simply be applied to associate MMORPG, while at constant time, others argue that virtual worlds aren't games. However, alone focusing on the expertise is equally meagerly as we'd think that such definitions may equally be accustomed describe learners' experience employing a variety of cooperative eLearning tools.


The inconsistent use of terms and descriptors means it's unclear whether or not these terms are synonymous or check with delicate variations between applications. It additionally raises queries as to whether analysis conducted in one has relevancy to the others and to what extent there's a natural overlap. This inconsistency isn't uncommon within the field of instructional technology, however as jazzman (2005) notes, a plan that is allowed to drift and become ambiguous risks changing into analytically worthless. whereas it's vital to accurately outline what's meant by the virtual world so as to guide analysis within the space (Schroeder 2008), it is equally important for instructional follow and policymaking. For instance, practitioners learning regarding the potential of virtual worlds for education could also be unable to produce the experiences for their learners that they'd expected, because of investment in technologies incorrectly labeled as virtual worlds. As a result, definitions have implications from the getting of technology in a very faculty to the expectations we've got around its use.


Any technology is associated with physical objects at intervals with a wider milieu. Therefore, a definition of technology must take under consideration the activities and practices when victimization, we tend to toll|also|additionally|further|furthermore|in addition, |likewise|moreover|similarly|still|yet} because the social arrangements and structure form close its use. whenever we re-engage with technology as a part of our everyday social experience, we encounter it afresh, re-establishing and reformulating its use in terms of operation and functionality. therefore a definition needs to embrace these several potentialities and be sufficiently versatile for future developments while maintaining its distinctiveness from different technologies.


To achieve a transparent and usable definition of a virtual world, this text begins by examining this literature, highlighting the importance of the user expertise inside the rationales given for victimization of virtual worlds in education, while fashionable definitions akin to Bell’s concentrate on the technical aspects of the technology. whereas there are typically refined variations in definition or description of virtual worlds between articles, alternative terms such as multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) or 3D immersive virtual environments, have had varied quality and may be thought-about to be either bridging terms, accustomed to attract a reader’s familiarity with existing concepts to bridge a niche in expertise, or delineating terms, to signal the distinctiveness of the technology. however, issues emerge once totally different terms are accustomed to consulting with constant technology, or when one term is employed to refer to disparate things leading to the term turning conceptually degraded and introducing confusion.


we tend to then take a step back to create mentally what a world is and what it means for this world to be virtual in relevance to the experience of its users and therefore the necessary underpinning technical options. This takes under consideration that as features and uses will amendment over time, any definition should balance specificity and adaptability for it to possess long-run value. to complete the definition, the link between virtual worlds and others, on the face of it similar terms and decussate technologies are explored.


whereas this paper preponderantly attracts on analysis from education, the definition and implications are of relevancy to anyone curious about victimization or conducting research using virtual worlds.


What Does Virtual World Mean?

A virtual world is a computer-based online community environment that is designed and shared by individuals so that they can interact in a custom-built, simulated world. Users interact with each other in this simulated world using text-based, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional graphical models called avatars. Avatars are graphically rendered using computer graphics imaging (CGI) or any other rendering technology. Individuals control their avatars using input devices like the keyboard, mouse, and other specially designed command and simulation gadgets. Today's virtual worlds are purpose-built for entertainment, social, educational, training, and various other purposes.


All virtual worlds possess the qualities of persistence and interactivity. This enables the users to explore the inherent benefits of socialization and allows them to study human nature and users' abilities.


"A virtual world may also be called a digital world".


Initially, virtual worlds were limited to text and document sharing such as in chat rooms and through conferencing systems. With the advancement in two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphics rendering technologies, graphical models called avatars became the hallmark of virtual worlds. Today, virtual worlds depict a world very similar to reality, with real-world rules and real-time actions and communications. Avatars are real-world or fictionally adapted personalized characters that depict humans, pets, or other imaginary characters that inhabit virtual worlds. Today's avatars are three-dimensional, interactive icons that exist in realistic virtual worlds.


There are two types of virtual worlds:


  • Entertainment-Based: The launch of multiplayer 3-D games in the 1990s gave birth to new advancements in interactive virtual worlds. In this category of virtual worlds, users play games through their avatars. These virtual worlds are strongly influenced by fantasy, science fiction, and anime genres of literature and film. Entertainment-based virtual worlds represent the majority of virtual worlds in existence today.

  • Social Interaction-Based: Focuses on user interaction, education, and training through simulated worlds. These worlds offer a more open-ended experience such as exploring landscapes, playing adventurous sports, socializing with communities, taking part in political debates or experiments, attending educational sessions, training in a simulated environment, and countless other virtual possibilities. Although younger than gaming worlds, these social virtual worlds are quickly gaining popularity, particularly in educational, political, commercial, and military organizations.

Virtual world user experiences

Using the framework of what a virtual world is, conferred above, this section considers 2 aspects of the user expertise that are necessary elements of a virtual world: a way of presenting and shaping the world. whereas these are broad experiences, not concerning any specific academic context, they will be applied to such virtual or alloyed learning contexts equally and highlight key experiential variations between physical and virtual worlds.

Sense of presence :

A user’s sense of presence, a way of being ‘in’ a virtual world, is important user expertise that depends on a variety of options and should be regarding different experiences within the virtual world. Another unremarkably spoken feature is immersion, however, I argue that presence could be a lot of helpful term for our purposes. The blurring of boundaries between worlds is especially important here. will we tend to feel as if we are in a very virtual world and at a similar time recognize that we are within the physical world?


a way of presence (a feeling of being in a very shared area) or a way of co-presence (being in a shared space with others and with whom the user will interact) is commonly spoken within the literature (e.g. Boughzala et al. 2012) and is frequently cited united reason for exploring virtual worlds for instructional purposes. a way of presence suggests that the user feels that they're diagrammatical in the space which others can see that illustration of the user. they're aware that others recognize their arrival, departure, and any of their actions while in the virtual world. it's troublesome to hide from others in a virtual world, though it's potential to be alone.


Another expertise, powerfully related to the sense of presence, is immersion. though immersion is additionally often cited united of the explanations for mistreatment of virtual worlds in education (e.g. Grenfell and Warren 2010), and maybe a lot of often than a way of presence, it is less clear what's understood by immersion. Brown and Cairns (2004) recommend that total immersion ends up in a loss of awareness of the physical world. However, this is often seldom experienced, and users are more probably to experience engagement or engrossment that Brown and Cairns recommend are closely joined to the users’ familiarity with the interface and controls.


however what of the learner who doesn't report any sense of immersion, or flatly states that they are doing not expertise immersion, or those that are new to the interface and controls. will they still feel a gift within the virtual world? I might argue that they can, significantly once in the virtual presence of others, through a way of being co-present in one very area with another. it'd even be logical that co-located learners (in each physical and virtual world), act with one another and might switch seamlessly between the 2 areas in terms of their engagement or engrossment while maintaining a way of presence in each the physical and virtual world. while the amount of immersion user expertise is possibly joined by extra factors, appreciation of the educational experience students are engaged in and their familiarity with the user interface, these are factors that are on the far side of the virtual world itself. Therefore, whilst immersion could be a helpful concept, it doesn't encapsulate the variety of user experiences that a sense of presence does. Thus, a sense of presence is an important part while immersion could be a product, in part, of that experience.

the shape of its inhabitants :

The user, or the mortal, in the virtual world, becomes a customer of the content and the producer of the content. Fisher (2010) describes this type of user as a consumer, someone who is accelerated by a network infrastructure of tools to create content for others to consume. While this may be common to users of web2.0 tools, similar to bloggers and bloggers; I would argue that being inhabited in a virtual world, facilitated by personification through an avatar, implies that users not only create content for others but also shape the experience of others in that same world. By participating in technology - creating an avatar, interacting with others, making things, or just moving about the world - they are shaping the virtual world in real-time. We have a tendency to argue that this could be just a synthesis of an experience that is consumed by others, however, that these others share in the same moment. However, even though we are not the avatar, we are unaware of others and they are unaware of us. Even humans can have a more economical way to describe the user, embodied in an avatar.


It is the action or response to actions that make up the virtual world, as in the physical world, and thus is a central experience. However, the virtual world is shaped, and how it is practiced { thus | As well as the types of experiences (for education or not) that are created, therefore, you trust users and standards of technical choices.


This also emphasizes the social nature of virtual worlds, although, even in the physical world, it is possible for residents to create non-public areas for the individual connected to the public or semi-private spaces of the world. This can be accelerated by a variety of technical features that can vary from the virtual world to the virtual world. However, the individual user's butler, as I suggest, provides a simulated environment rather than a virtual world as there are no alternate dwellers at intervals in this space.

Virtual world technical features

The options of individual virtual worlds influence the expertise of users inside those spaces. though we will expect the parameters to vary, on the far side of a simulated environment, the subsequent broad features are needed to realize the experiences delineated  on top of and meet the necessities of the framework:


1. Avatars :

Any world is old and mediated through our bodies. inside a virtual world, this can be achieved through the employment of an avatar—the dweller of the virtual world—which provides the user with a vigorous agent with that to encounter the world. These avatars, their appearance, and their talents mediate our expertise in the virtual world and our interactions with others. whereas the user might render their avatar invisible, the presence of every avatar is registered within the system, creating their actions observable. By affording embodied movement within the virtual world, avatars support our sense of presence within a shared space.


The avatar provides the body through that the user experiences the virtual world, occupation 3 dimensions, interacting with objects and others, inside the parameters of that virtual body, and therefore the data input device or the user’s ability in victimization that device to manage the avatar. Thus, the user experiences the virtual world through the avatar, however, that isn't essentially restricted thereto avatar’s view. in an exceedingly first-person view, we have a tendency to don't see the avatar described but others see our avatar and its actions, an identical experience to our everyday lives. However, virtual worlds permit us to take a third-person view, which could be a typical default view. therefore we have a tendency to see each of our own and others’ avatars and the way they act within the shared house. A lot of realistic actions, or the more closely they check the interactions between individuals within the physical world, the more possible they're to support a way of being in an exceeding space with others (Yee et al. 2007).

2. Multiple concurrent users :

to support a sense of being in a shared space with others, a virtual world has got to support multiple users to log in at the same time. this needs every user to attach to a central server via a consumer on their computer, via a public or native network. As such, each user should expertise the passage of their time inside the virtual world in a similar way. this can be achieved in real-time. though we have a tendency to might imagine a virtual world that operates at, for example, double or 0.5 the speed of our physical world, our actions within the virtual world would still be strained by the temporal arrangement of our actions within the physical world. Therefore, owing to the blurred boundary between these 2 worlds, the passage of your time in an exceedingly virtual world is the same as, or strained by the physical world.

3. Communication tools :

Communication tools are essential in virtual worlds, facilitating communication between users. counting on applying these tools to embrace voice and text-based media, through public and personal electronic messaging systems. It might additionally include the transfer of images, symbols, or the look of shared space. it's through these communication tools that we have a tendency to co-construct a shared understanding of the planet that we, through our avatars, inhabit.

4. Content creation tools :

to support the creation of content by users, construction and programming options have to be compelled to be available. this might embrace tools to transfer the content created in external software package packages, reminiscent of 3D meshes in Blender. Some virtual worlds, such as There.com, give users the chance to make content however this has to be submitted and approved before it will seem in-world. whereas this limits the prosumer expertise and limits the sense of immersion, a lot of in-style virtual worlds such as Active Worlds and Second Life permit users to freely generate and distribute content while remaining within the virtual world throughout.

5. Persistence :

Like ANy world, inhabitants will return and go. Persistence ensures that some trace of their actions remains. A persistent setting remains whether or not users are logged in or not, retaining the situation of individuals and objects furthermore as info concerning object ownership. Thus, if a user creates an object and leaves it within the virtual world, a user will read the item within the same location whether the primary user is online or not. If the second user removes the object from the location, once the first user returns to the location they're going not able to view the object. this can be achieved through the employment of a client-server architecture, during which the central server(s) manages the persistence and interactions by storing serialized versions of the objects the user creates and is an important feature to alter a prosumer experience.

6. Representation of space :

Finally, the technology should offer users a graphical illustration of the shared space, the user inside that space, moreover as alternative users and objects within that space. this is often a dynamic representation expedited through the client-server architecture, showing every action that a user makes within the virtual world.


The extent to that realistic fidelity could be considered a learner’s engagement is contested. whereas Dionisio et al. (2013) recommend that the extent to which the virtual world is realistic might impact the extent to which users feel psychologically and show emotion immersed, we can question whether or not this may limit engagement or the user’s sense of presence inside that space, notably if we tend to contemplate the recognition of applications adore Minecraft.


Conclusion


To date, there has been a variety of various terms accustomed to describe identical technologies and therefore the over-extension of terms to dissimilar tools. the paradox within the use and understanding of the term virtual world limits the advancement of analysis and has the potential to render the term analytically worthless. while not a transparent understanding of what a virtual world is and the way it's similar and distinct to different technologies they'll take into account using, academics are unlikely to speculate the time and cash needed to use the technology for instructional purposes.


to handle this, this paper has bestowed a replacement framework for the definition of virtual worlds distinctive what a world is, what it suggests that for that world to be virtual, the categories of user expertise and technical options that are necessary, and supported these, however virtual worlds take issue from different similar technologies. Distilling the on top of the discussion, we can outline virtual worlds as:


Shared, simulated areas that are underpopulated and formed by their inhabitants who are drawn as avatars. These avatars mediate our experience of this area as we have a tendency to move, move with objects and interact with others, with whom we construct a shared understanding of the globe at that time.

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