The use of immersive 3D virtual worlds for education continues to grow due to their potential for... more The use of immersive 3D virtual worlds for education continues to grow due to their potential for creating innovative learning environments and their enormous popularity with students. However, scalability remains a major challenge. Whereas MOOCs cope with tens of thousands of users downloading or streaming learning materials, the highly interactive, multi-user nature of virtual worlds is far more demanding supporting even a hundred users in the same region at the same time is considered an achievement. However, if the normal number of concurrent users is relatively low and there is only an occasional need to have a large group in-world at the same time for a special event can the Cloud be used for supporting these high, but short-lived, peaks in de-
The growth in the range of disciplines that Virtual Worlds support for educational purposes is ev... more The growth in the range of disciplines that Virtual Worlds support for educational purposes is evidenced by recent applications in the fields of cultural heritage, humanitarian aid, space exploration, virtual laboratories in the physical sciences, archaeology, computer science and coastal geography. This growth is due in part to the flexibility of OpenSim, the open source virtual world platform which by adopting Second Life protocols and norms has created a de facto standard for open virtual worlds that is supported by a growing number of third party open source viewers. Yet while this diversity of use-cases is impressive and Virtual Worlds for open learning are highly popular with lecturers and learners alike immersive education remains an essentially niche activity. This paper identifies functional challenges in terms of Management, Network Infrastructure, the Immersive 3D Web and Programmability that must be addressed to enable the wider adoption of Open Virtual Worlds as a routi...
Climate change poses a real and present threat to cultural heritage. Responses to climate change ... more Climate change poses a real and present threat to cultural heritage. Responses to climate change have focussed on strategies for prevention and physical protection. Developments in technology have made possible a new type of virtual museum that actively supports the work of museums and enables the creation of immersive digital exhibits. This paper proposes that it is important to address the role that community museums play in the digital preservation of natural and cultural heritage. It focusses on the contribution of virtual museums and proposes a distributed virtual museum architecture to support digital preservation. The architecture addresses both the need for high quality local interactions that enables preservation and the need for a global infrastructure that makes the results accessible and enables the development of links between communities.
As the Internet continues to establish itself as a utility, like power, transport or water, it be... more As the Internet continues to establish itself as a utility, like power, transport or water, it becomes increasingly important to provide an engaging educational experience about its operation for students in related STEM disciplines such as Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Routing is a core functionality of the global Internet. It can be used as an example of where theory meets practice, where algorithms meet protocols and where science meets engineering. Routing protocols can be included in the Computer Science curriculum in distributed systems, computer networking, algorithms, data structures, and graph theory. While there is a plethora of computer networking textbooks, and copious information of varying quality about the Internet spread across the Web, there is still an essential need for exploratory learning facilities of the type that support group work, experimentation and experiential learning. This paper reports on work using open virtual worlds to provide a mult...
To understand the performance of networked computer systems it is necessary to consider client, s... more To understand the performance of networked computer systems it is necessary to consider client, server and network components. Virtual Worlds are resource intensive interactive systems. As such they are liable to degradations in system performance which have a negative impact upon users’ Quality of Experience (QoE). To efficiently use system resources it is necessary to understand when and how changes in Quality of Service (QoS) impact upon the QoE. This study investigates the factors that affect the performance of Open Virtual World Servers and how these impact upon users. It presents quantitative experimental results that establish factors which affect QoS performance and qualitative results of user QoE. The central research question asks ’to what extent can we identify easily measurable system properties that will enable us to make efficient use of server resources whilst preserving QoE? This paper identifies the Server Frame Time (SFT), the time taken by the server to create a f...
Cultural heritage artefacts act as a gateway helping people learn about their social traditions a... more Cultural heritage artefacts act as a gateway helping people learn about their social traditions and history. However, preserving these artefacts faces many difficulties, including potential destruction or damage from global warming, wars and conflicts, and degradation from dayto- day use. In addition, artefacts can only be present in one place at a time, and many of them can not be exhibited due to the limited physical space of museums. The digital domain offers opportunities to capture and represent the form and texture of these artefacts and to overcome the previously mentioned constraints by allowing people to access and interact with them on multiple platforms (mobile devices, tablets and personal computers) and network regimes. Through two experiments we study the subjective perception of the fidelity of 3D models in web browsers in order to discover perceptible resolution thresholds. This helps us create models of reasonable graphical complexity that could be fetched on the bi...
Multi-User Virtual Worlds (MUVW) such as Open Wonderland and OpenSim have proved to be fruitful p... more Multi-User Virtual Worlds (MUVW) such as Open Wonderland and OpenSim have proved to be fruitful platforms for innovative educational practice. However, when compared with the way educational activities have flourished through the use of the constantly evolving WWW, MUVW learning environments remain a relatively obscure niche. Since the advent and promise of Second Life, there has been no critical mass reached and no movement towards standardisation. Concomitantly, the 3D Web has emerged as a recognisable if loosely defined concept. With the advent of technologies such as WebGL and a plethora of plug-in 3D viewers for web browsers, the question arises: will MUVWs converge with the 3D Web? If so, can existing educational content be migrated to the 3D Web for mass dissemination? The paper contributes a survey of 3D Web and MUVW terms, concepts, technologies and projects, illustrating their similarities, their value for education and discusses the likelihood of convergence. The survey i...
The continuing advances in computer graphics and Internet bandwidths are supporting a gradual con... more The continuing advances in computer graphics and Internet bandwidths are supporting a gradual convergence between multi-user virtual worlds (MUVW), such as Second Life and OpenSim (SL/OS), and the nascent 3D Web. However, significant networking barriers remain to exploiting these capabilities for developing the 3D Web. These barriers include latency of content update and firewall blocking. In MUVWs the firewall and latency problems are related as the SL/OS network protocols designed over twelve years ago sought to minimise latency through the use of multiple concurrent UDP-based virtual circuits. Most firewall administrators are loathe to open up over fifty unknown UDP ports to accommodate such applications. New protocols now being deployed on the web such as SPDY, HTTP/2 and QUIC seek to reduce latency and routinely traverse firewalls. One of the key goals of the convergence between MUVWs and the 3D Web is for MUVW functionality to be provided in a standard web browser, with option...
Metaverses such as Second Life (SL) are a relatively new type of Internet application. Their func... more Metaverses such as Second Life (SL) are a relatively new type of Internet application. Their functionality is similar to online 3D games but differs in that users are able to construct the environment their avatars inhabit and are not constrained by predefined goals. From the network perspective metaverses are similar to games in that timeliness is important but differ in that their traffic is much less regular and requires more bandwidth. This paper compares Second Life and TCP traffic. It focuses on bandwidth utilization and shows that SL can be made to compete fairly with TCP traffic. Furthermore we have implemented TCP fair congestion control algorithm in a Virtual world browser and present the result of a series of experiments using this browser. These experiments confirm our analysis that the window tracking rate based algorithm produces TCP fair behaviour from Second Life. I. INTRODUCTION
In the recent past 3D and immersive technologies were not supported by standard business and educ... more In the recent past 3D and immersive technologies were not supported by standard business and educational computers. Yet new generations of Intel and AMD processors and improved networking provide a basis for the spread of immersive technologies, into all aspects of education, business and leisure. Consequently, it is critical that computer science and IT degree programs facilitate the graduation of professionals with an understanding of and experience in working with immersive technologies. The work reported in this paper addresses the need to support learning about how to develop, engineer, use and evaluate 3D and immersive systems. The Apollo Virtual World GRID [1] provides a platform designed to support collaborative learning and exploratory project work with 3D technologies. Apollo provides an environment for the creation of 3D content, a framework for the development of 3D systems and a platform for the delivery of distributed immersive systems. It is built around the open source and freely available OpenSimulator project and extends it by providing educational content, a rapid application development environment and a measurement infrastructure. Using the Apollo GRID student projects have expanded the scope of experiential learning by creating interactive 3D environments that simulate specific learning contexts. For example a Virtual WiFi laboratory supports exploratory learning and experimentation with WiFi network protocols and the LAVA virtual fieldwork resource supports archaeologists in learning how to manage archaeological excavations. This paper reflects upon experience in using Apollo for 30 collaborative projects involving more than 100 students over a period of four years.
The use of immersive 3D virtual worlds for education continues to grow due to their potential for... more The use of immersive 3D virtual worlds for education continues to grow due to their potential for creating innovative learning environments and their enormous popularity with students. However, scalability remains a major challenge. Whereas MOOCs cope with tens of thousands of users downloading or streaming learning materials, the highly interactive, multi-user nature of virtual worlds is far more demanding supporting even a hundred users in the same region at the same time is considered an achievement. However, if the normal number of concurrent users is relatively low and there is only an occasional need to have a large group in-world at the same time for a special event can the Cloud be used for supporting these high, but short-lived, peaks in de-
The growth in the range of disciplines that Virtual Worlds support for educational purposes is ev... more The growth in the range of disciplines that Virtual Worlds support for educational purposes is evidenced by recent applications in the fields of cultural heritage, humanitarian aid, space exploration, virtual laboratories in the physical sciences, archaeology, computer science and coastal geography. This growth is due in part to the flexibility of OpenSim, the open source virtual world platform which by adopting Second Life protocols and norms has created a de facto standard for open virtual worlds that is supported by a growing number of third party open source viewers. Yet while this diversity of use-cases is impressive and Virtual Worlds for open learning are highly popular with lecturers and learners alike immersive education remains an essentially niche activity. This paper identifies functional challenges in terms of Management, Network Infrastructure, the Immersive 3D Web and Programmability that must be addressed to enable the wider adoption of Open Virtual Worlds as a routi...
Climate change poses a real and present threat to cultural heritage. Responses to climate change ... more Climate change poses a real and present threat to cultural heritage. Responses to climate change have focussed on strategies for prevention and physical protection. Developments in technology have made possible a new type of virtual museum that actively supports the work of museums and enables the creation of immersive digital exhibits. This paper proposes that it is important to address the role that community museums play in the digital preservation of natural and cultural heritage. It focusses on the contribution of virtual museums and proposes a distributed virtual museum architecture to support digital preservation. The architecture addresses both the need for high quality local interactions that enables preservation and the need for a global infrastructure that makes the results accessible and enables the development of links between communities.
As the Internet continues to establish itself as a utility, like power, transport or water, it be... more As the Internet continues to establish itself as a utility, like power, transport or water, it becomes increasingly important to provide an engaging educational experience about its operation for students in related STEM disciplines such as Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Routing is a core functionality of the global Internet. It can be used as an example of where theory meets practice, where algorithms meet protocols and where science meets engineering. Routing protocols can be included in the Computer Science curriculum in distributed systems, computer networking, algorithms, data structures, and graph theory. While there is a plethora of computer networking textbooks, and copious information of varying quality about the Internet spread across the Web, there is still an essential need for exploratory learning facilities of the type that support group work, experimentation and experiential learning. This paper reports on work using open virtual worlds to provide a mult...
To understand the performance of networked computer systems it is necessary to consider client, s... more To understand the performance of networked computer systems it is necessary to consider client, server and network components. Virtual Worlds are resource intensive interactive systems. As such they are liable to degradations in system performance which have a negative impact upon users’ Quality of Experience (QoE). To efficiently use system resources it is necessary to understand when and how changes in Quality of Service (QoS) impact upon the QoE. This study investigates the factors that affect the performance of Open Virtual World Servers and how these impact upon users. It presents quantitative experimental results that establish factors which affect QoS performance and qualitative results of user QoE. The central research question asks ’to what extent can we identify easily measurable system properties that will enable us to make efficient use of server resources whilst preserving QoE? This paper identifies the Server Frame Time (SFT), the time taken by the server to create a f...
Cultural heritage artefacts act as a gateway helping people learn about their social traditions a... more Cultural heritage artefacts act as a gateway helping people learn about their social traditions and history. However, preserving these artefacts faces many difficulties, including potential destruction or damage from global warming, wars and conflicts, and degradation from dayto- day use. In addition, artefacts can only be present in one place at a time, and many of them can not be exhibited due to the limited physical space of museums. The digital domain offers opportunities to capture and represent the form and texture of these artefacts and to overcome the previously mentioned constraints by allowing people to access and interact with them on multiple platforms (mobile devices, tablets and personal computers) and network regimes. Through two experiments we study the subjective perception of the fidelity of 3D models in web browsers in order to discover perceptible resolution thresholds. This helps us create models of reasonable graphical complexity that could be fetched on the bi...
Multi-User Virtual Worlds (MUVW) such as Open Wonderland and OpenSim have proved to be fruitful p... more Multi-User Virtual Worlds (MUVW) such as Open Wonderland and OpenSim have proved to be fruitful platforms for innovative educational practice. However, when compared with the way educational activities have flourished through the use of the constantly evolving WWW, MUVW learning environments remain a relatively obscure niche. Since the advent and promise of Second Life, there has been no critical mass reached and no movement towards standardisation. Concomitantly, the 3D Web has emerged as a recognisable if loosely defined concept. With the advent of technologies such as WebGL and a plethora of plug-in 3D viewers for web browsers, the question arises: will MUVWs converge with the 3D Web? If so, can existing educational content be migrated to the 3D Web for mass dissemination? The paper contributes a survey of 3D Web and MUVW terms, concepts, technologies and projects, illustrating their similarities, their value for education and discusses the likelihood of convergence. The survey i...
The continuing advances in computer graphics and Internet bandwidths are supporting a gradual con... more The continuing advances in computer graphics and Internet bandwidths are supporting a gradual convergence between multi-user virtual worlds (MUVW), such as Second Life and OpenSim (SL/OS), and the nascent 3D Web. However, significant networking barriers remain to exploiting these capabilities for developing the 3D Web. These barriers include latency of content update and firewall blocking. In MUVWs the firewall and latency problems are related as the SL/OS network protocols designed over twelve years ago sought to minimise latency through the use of multiple concurrent UDP-based virtual circuits. Most firewall administrators are loathe to open up over fifty unknown UDP ports to accommodate such applications. New protocols now being deployed on the web such as SPDY, HTTP/2 and QUIC seek to reduce latency and routinely traverse firewalls. One of the key goals of the convergence between MUVWs and the 3D Web is for MUVW functionality to be provided in a standard web browser, with option...
Metaverses such as Second Life (SL) are a relatively new type of Internet application. Their func... more Metaverses such as Second Life (SL) are a relatively new type of Internet application. Their functionality is similar to online 3D games but differs in that users are able to construct the environment their avatars inhabit and are not constrained by predefined goals. From the network perspective metaverses are similar to games in that timeliness is important but differ in that their traffic is much less regular and requires more bandwidth. This paper compares Second Life and TCP traffic. It focuses on bandwidth utilization and shows that SL can be made to compete fairly with TCP traffic. Furthermore we have implemented TCP fair congestion control algorithm in a Virtual world browser and present the result of a series of experiments using this browser. These experiments confirm our analysis that the window tracking rate based algorithm produces TCP fair behaviour from Second Life. I. INTRODUCTION
In the recent past 3D and immersive technologies were not supported by standard business and educ... more In the recent past 3D and immersive technologies were not supported by standard business and educational computers. Yet new generations of Intel and AMD processors and improved networking provide a basis for the spread of immersive technologies, into all aspects of education, business and leisure. Consequently, it is critical that computer science and IT degree programs facilitate the graduation of professionals with an understanding of and experience in working with immersive technologies. The work reported in this paper addresses the need to support learning about how to develop, engineer, use and evaluate 3D and immersive systems. The Apollo Virtual World GRID [1] provides a platform designed to support collaborative learning and exploratory project work with 3D technologies. Apollo provides an environment for the creation of 3D content, a framework for the development of 3D systems and a platform for the delivery of distributed immersive systems. It is built around the open source and freely available OpenSimulator project and extends it by providing educational content, a rapid application development environment and a measurement infrastructure. Using the Apollo GRID student projects have expanded the scope of experiential learning by creating interactive 3D environments that simulate specific learning contexts. For example a Virtual WiFi laboratory supports exploratory learning and experimentation with WiFi network protocols and the LAVA virtual fieldwork resource supports archaeologists in learning how to manage archaeological excavations. This paper reflects upon experience in using Apollo for 30 collaborative projects involving more than 100 students over a period of four years.
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Papers by Iain Oliver