Bruce Damer's talk on Virtual Worlds and Simulating Space for Immersive Education Summit, London April 24, 2009

1. I. The Virtual World Bruce Damer [email_address] Contact Consortium, DigitalSpace II. Simulating Space Immersive Education Initiative's London Summit at the London School of Economics (May 23-24th):

2. I. The Virtual World Virtual Worlds: The New Medium for the 21st Century

3. So where did (digital) virtual worlds come from? We first learned to play together in a digital world in Spacewar! in 1962 (on a PDP-1)

4. … and in 1974, the first 3D virtual worlds in Maze War

5. And then we learned how to imagine and describe worlds, players and objects in text-based worlds: MUDs, Adventure, Plato, LambdaMOO & etc (70s-80s)

6. … then in 1986 affordable personal computers are connected to dial-up networks And Lucasfilm’s Habitat (and avatars) were born

7. And then… Worlds Chat, 1995: where Avatars first teleported into the Internet Also in that year Steven Spielberg created the marriage of virtual worlds and Hollywood with Starbright World

8. Followed by an explosion of worlds in the mid 1990s…

10. Explosion of Social Virtual Worlds platforms (Book Avatars by Damer – 1997)

11. Case Study: Alphaworld Ron Britvich’s design notes (Spring 1995)

12. Alphaworld 1995 “first teleport” And in-world building

13. And emergence of community And shared building

14. … learning to meet, greet, build in Summer 1995… 1997 and onwards

15. AlphaWorld “satellite map” 1995-96

16. Working out how to meet (talking circle) and working together to build-Sherwood Forest Towne (Jan ‘96). Roles, Robin Hood, Town Crier, old towne layout, new town, vandalism, first informal ethnographic practice

18. The Avatars IRL Conferences Earth to Avatars 96 (San Francisco)

19. Avatars 97 (San Francisco)

20. Design of the first large scale event in avatar cyberspace: Avatars98 Inside Cyberspace first CyberConference

21. AW-versionDesign elements: single large meeting space - avatars, chat, web cams, streaming voice, bots

22. Visual and functional elements of Avatars98

23. Virtual Worlds Design enters outerspace in: Avatars 99 & 2000

24. … and through common media archetypes: Avatars2001

25. Preview the Dipity VWTimeline & Internet Archive Video Collection

26. Preview the Dipity VWTimeline & Internet Archive Video Collection

27. www.VWTimeline.org

28. II. Simulating Space Learning Cases for Virtual Worlds www.DigitalSpace.com

29. Learning case study: Virtual Walk on the Moon with Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart Rusty Schweickart in Cyber Space - 1999 Rusty Schweickart in Outer Space - 1969

30. Rusty became our historical actor and narrator to commemorate the 30 th anniversary of the Apollo XI moon landing

34. ` DriveOnMars: DigitalSpace’s simulator/experience for the public (2004)

35. Lunar Rover Polar Ice Mission – DigitalSpace/NASA MSFC, ARC (RLEP2)

37. DigitalSpace “DSS” modular plug-in architecture – all Open Source!

38. Now lets jump into 2009.. NASA’s Educational Spacewalk Simulation, STS-125 (find it all at www.DigitalSpace.com)