Emerging technologies

This is a good example of a game: http://www.open2.net/historyandthearts/philosophy_ethics/playprisondilema.html

Games present an opportunity to join the two basic types of interactivity – peer to peer activities and computer activities involving only one student and the computer. This could be something like a national leader board of top scores, but it could also be a virtual environment in which students meet and solve problems collaboratively. A prominent example that is being developed by the Open University is the 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game MMORPG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG Second life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

What happens when we push the level of realism as far as we can? Arguably we reach a point where games turn into truly interactive simulations.

Returning to second life, real-time 3D graphics rely on dedicated graphics chips to offer a rasterised representation of a 3D world. This approach begins with primitive geometric shapes (triangles and polygons) that are made to look more lifelike using shaders. One shortcoming of this approach is that reflection, refraction, shadows and realistic lighting are very difficult to emulate, especially when mirroring objects face one another. Doors can be tricky too: doors will open and close gradually, but typically the real-time graphics engine will only distinguish between two states – open and closed – so that we sometimes see parts of the entrance hall before the door to a Second Life building has swung open.

The goal is to achieve reflection, shade and lighting on a par with films consisting entirely of computer-generated imagery  (CGI). The principal technique used is ray-tracing: the computer determines the paths of rays of light hitting each pixel on the screen until an overall picture begins to form. If a ray of light hits a mirror, it will change direction, making reflections of reflections possible; if it hits ground fog or clouds, complex light effects can be achieved. The drawback of this approach is that it is very labour intensive for the processor.

In order to turn Second Life into a simulation that allows us to investigate the effect of sunlight breaking through a thick layer of cloud on a rainy day – ideally forming a rainbow in the process – we need to replace the current, rasterised rendering model of Second Life with one that uses ray-tracing at an appropriate speed.

With careful programming Second Life already does a fair job representing the effects of gravity and movement on virtual objects, so the next challenge is to make sure that light effects are adequately represented as well. (To this we could add that we have barely begun to find satisfactory ways of generating ambient sound to break the ghostly silence that characterises current virtual worlds.) Unsurprisingly, current research in this area has tended to focus on games, but there can be no doubt that virtual worlds have the potential to change the way we teach and do research in some areas.

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