Tuesday, January 13, 2009

CFP: Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments (MMVE 2009)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2nd International Workshop on Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments (MMVE 2009) at the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality 2009 (VR09)

March 15th, 2009
Lafayette, Louisiana, USA
http://peers-at-play.org/MMVE09/
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With the increasing number of potential users of virtual and augmented reality systems, as indicated by the recent booms of massively multiuser online societies, the design of distributed, massively multiuser virtual environments

(MMVEs) becomes increasingly important, posing new requirements on both distribution platforms and virtual reality systems. Facing these challenges is a community-spanning effort that requires pooling the resources and experiences of both the virtual reality and the networking/ distributed computing communities.

This workshop hopes to provide a link between these communities to foster the development of highly distributed, flexible and robust virtual environments. We aim to gather both practitioners and researchers under one roof to discuss their findings, incite collaborations, and move the state of the art forward.

Ross

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Farsighted UK Minister

Came across this article where Civil Service Minister Tom Watson has stated that serious games could play a "substantial role" in overcoming a UK recession expected to last throughout 2009.

"The government's constant aim is to improve delivery of public services, but the economic downturn means that right now, we have pretty much no margin for error," Watson said at a recent serious games conference in the UK. "Delivering more for less has never been so important, at least not in my lifetime, and serious games can play a substantial role in helping do that at a time when public services will be more and more in demand."

Have had similar discussions with people in government in Qld and the rest of Australia about using such gaming systems for public service delivery. Good to see high level government support for the idea in the UK. In addition, he sees this as a great money spinner for their Computer Game Industry.

So, I think it is about time to do this in Australia...

Ross