1
1
Introduction to Virtual Worlds
and Designing for Them
Education is not the lling of a pail, but the lighting of a re.
—William Butler Yeats
1.1 WELCOME TO THE INFINITE VISUALIZATION TOOL, A VIRTUAL WORLD
Like the universe with its glittering galaxies oating over our heads on a summer night, cyberspace continues
to expand, full of people like you creating worlds for exploration, entertainment, and learning. Within this
three-dimensional manifestation of our collective imagination, you will nd new ways of understanding time
and space. Terrestrial and temporal identiers become insignicant as you work with people from around the
world. Unlike any visualization tool that precedes it, a virtual world in cyberspace provides you with a place
where your creative concepts can be shared as a 3D form with the world, in any scale, at any time. Let your
mind unfold to the possibilities of how a virtual platform works, and you will be rewarded with a new under-
standing of design and the human perception of it. Almost 2.5billion people are in cyberspace worldwide [1],
and according to KZero, the number of registered virtual world accounts has broken 1 billion [2]. Obviously,
virtual worlds are here to stay, and they need people who will design and create content for them. If you are
interested in becoming a virtual world designer, the virtual worlds that run on user-generated content (UGC),
like the open grids created with OpenSim (OpenSimulator; http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List) or pri-
vate membership grids like Second Life (http://secondlife.com/), are good places to start. Mesh model based
content created for those worlds can also be used on game development platforms like Unity.
1.2 A SHORT HISTORY OF VIRTUAL WORLDS
Figure 1.1 is an illustrated timeline showing an overview of virtual world concepts and how the evolution of
presentational devices has created the possibility of immersive virtual environments. This process started
long ago, in our ancient world.
1.2.1 Visual Theory and CreaTion of The firsT illusions
Let’s jump into an imaginary time machine and look at how historical concepts in philosophy and observa-
tions on perception can inform us about virtual reality and the virtual worlds it contains. What is it about
perception and illusion that fascinates us? Perhaps when early humans noticed the effects of a icker ing
campre on the painted animals that decorated their cave walls, they began to see a story in their minds.
This imaginary story was brought into being by their primitive projection technology: relight. As civiliza-
tion developed, perceptions of reality and the attempt to describe it gave rise to philosophy, which gave rise
2 Virtual World Design
Virtual Worlds Timeline
Plato's “Allegory of the Cave,” discusses the
relationship of Philosophy, perception and
understanding of the perceived world
AD23 – AD79
Pliny the Elder wrote about
illusion and human perception
Giambattista della Porta,
CameraObscura/
Pepper’s Ghost 1580
1962 Space War! and Sensorama (Heilig)
1968 Ivan Sutherland and Bob Sproull create first VR Head Mounted Display (HMD)
1983 Krueger's Video Place was the first graphics and gesture recognition environment
1992 CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE)
invented at the University of Illinois at
Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory
1995 Worlds Chat, Alphaworld, Active Worlds, WorldsAway, Onlive Traveler,
The Palace Blaxxun, and other online social, constructive virtual worlds
1986 Habitat - Lucasfilm Games, Quantum Link and Fujitsu
1987 “Star Trek: The Next Generation” introduced the Holodeck
1940s Admiral Luis de Florez pioneered
the use of flight simulators.
Étienne-Gaspard Robert (Robertson) “Phantasmagoria” 1799
Laterna Magica 1671
1974 Maze War
1978 1st MUD
1989 Tiny MUD
1999 Everquest MMORPG
2003 Star Wars Galaxies
Second Life, Toontown, and There 2003
World of Warcraft 2004
MTV Virtual Laguna Beach 2006
Multiverse, and Kaneva 2007
OpenSim, and Twinity 2008
Kinect 2010
Oculus Rift HMD 2012
2001 Runescape
1993 Doom
1894 Edison’s Kinetoscope
1895 Lumiere Brothers Cinema
“All that we see or seem is but a dream
within a dream.” Edgar Allan Poe
“We all live every day in virtual environments,
defined by our ideas.” Michael Crichton
“Virtual Reality developed from ficon in 1984 to a rich
discourse and a marketed technology by 1992.” Chesher
Sources include:
Bruce Damer’s Virtual Worlds Timeline, the
origins and evolution of virtual social worlds
http://www.vwtimeline.org
Wikipedia, Virtual worlds,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_worlds
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a
very persistent one.” Albert Einstein
500
BC – 1
000
A
D
1000
– 1
500
1
500 – 190
0
1
9
00
– 19
50
1950 – 1
99
1990
1990
– 1
1
995
9
1
99
5
– 2
000
2
2
000 – 200
5
2
2005
– 2
0
1
0
2
010 –
FIGURE 1.1 This timeline shows some of the key ideas, devices, companies, games and projects that have contributed
to the development of virtual environments as we know them today.
3Introduction to Virtual Worlds and Designing for Them
to theories, experiments, and debate. Early concepts about the nature of reality and virtual reality may have
started with Plato (approximately 424–348 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC). In his “Allegory of the Cave,”
Plato constructs a model for reality and how it is perceived [3]. Within the allegorical environment of a dark,
deep cave, he describes four kinds of individuals: prisoners, puppeteers, the released prisoners, and observ-
ers, all experiencing a different reality. The prisoners are chained to a bench and forced to watch a shadow
play performed by the puppeteers, carrying shapes and objects back and forth in front of torchlights. The
prisoners think that the moving shadows they see and hear are reality. The third group, the released prisoners,
has been unchained from the bench and, as they make their way out of the cave and into the sunlight, they
are beginning the process of acknowledging that the shadows on the cave wall are not reality. The observers
are standing outside the cave and learning about the sun and how it lights the world.
Plato disagreed with Aristotle regarding how humans perceived reality; he believed that the true “Forms”
of natural things or concepts were imperfectly understood by humans, whereas, Aristotle believed that
systematic observation and analysis could lead to the human understanding of the “Forms” of natural things
or concepts. [4]. Plato’s belief that our experience was only a shadow of the real and unknowable “Forms,”
represents an interesting philosophical juxtaposition to the virtual reality we create today. In today’s world,
we have another kind of CAVE (cave automatic virtual environment) for virtual reality. Invented in 1992, this
CAVE is a virtual reality environment made from projected images on walls surrounding a person wearing
a head-mounted display (HMD); it is not a holodeck yet, but it is approaching it.
Almost 400 years after Aristotle, Pliny the Elder wrote about the origin of painting, sculpture, illusion,
and human perception in his book, Natural History, circa AD 77–79. You can almost imagine Pliny, relaxing
on the patio of his villa in Pompeii, telling the story of how Butades of Corinth, seeing a line drawing his
daughter had traced on the wall from her lover’s shadow, lled it in with clay and red the relief to make the
world’s rst portrait [5]. Maybe later in the evening, Pliny would tell of the painting contest between Zeuxis
and Parrhasius, two great painters of the fth century BC. Smiling at the memory, Pliny tells you of how
Zeuxis created a still life containing a bunch of grapes painted so realistically that the birds ew down from
a nearby tree to eat them. Seeing that, Parrhasius invited Zeuxis to remove the curtain from his painting to
reveal the image. When Zeuxis tried to do that, he discovered that the painting of the curtain was so realistic,
that he was fooled into thinking it could be drawn aside. Pliny concludes with the account of Zeuxis ceding
victory to Parrhasius, saying: “I have deceived the birds, but Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis” [6]. As Pliny
undoubtedly noted, the creation of realistic images fascinates us, and each successive development in the
visual arts has been inuenced by that fascination.
1.2.2 Trompe l’oeil, phoTorealism, and The projeCTed image
In the centuries from AD 1000 to 1700, great painters and sculptors discovered more ways to make illu-
sions. Trompe l’oeil was invented, and images that could create 3D spaces in our mind’s eye lled churches
and mansions. The tools to create those illusions involved the scientic analysis of perception and optics
by Alhazen Ibn al-Haytham (965–1039), the observations of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) and others.
In 1580, Giambattista della Porta perfected the camera obscura and another device that eventually became
known as Pepper’s ghost [7]. Pepper’s ghost is named after John Henry Pepper, who popularized it in 1862
from a device developed by Henry Dircks. This ancient device nds everyday use in the television studio as
a teleprompter and occasionally makes an appearance in a stage show or fashion video when they want to
include the animated image of someone in the performance space.
4 Virtual World Design
Projected reality began with the magic lantern (mid-seventeenth century); its invention is credited to both
Athanasius Kircher and Christiaan Huygens. Étienne-Gaspard Robert (Robertson) and his “phantasmagoria”
(circa 1799) used the magic lantern to great theatrical effect with complex shows involving moving projec-
tors, live voices, and elaborate arrangements of curtain masking and projection screens. In one long-running
show, staged in the crypt of an abandoned Parisian monastery, hesucceeded in creating the virtual reality of
a supernatural world in the minds of the audience. As an eyewitness describes: “In fact, many people were so
convinced of the reality of his shows that police temporarily halted the proceedings, believing that Robertson
had the power to bring Louis XVI back to life” [8]. Once the lens and a reliable source of illumination were
worked out, moving images and the cinema were soon to follow.
1.2.3 The BirTh of Cinema, eleCTroniC sCreens, and The sTarT of immersiVe 3d design
On December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers did something that changed our perception of reality again.
Inthe rst public screening of commercially produced cinema, they showed 10 short lms at Salon Indien
du Grand Café in Paris [9]. Later that year, one lm in particular captured the public’s imagination: L’Arrivée
d’un Train en Gare de la Ciotat (“The Arrival of a Train at Ciotat Station”). By setting the camera intention-
ally close to the tracks, they captured a dramatic image of the train as it progressed diagonally across the
screen, from long shot into close-up shot. There were many other creators of motion picture devices at the
time, including Thomas Edison with his kinetoscope (circa 1891), but the Lumière brothers are credited with
being the rst to see the potential for cinema and modern lmmaking. They went on to develop and establish
many of the lmmaking techniques and cinematographic methodologies that are still used today.
Many of the modern imaging devices have long histories. The ancient Romans, in their time, created
wonderful mosaics. They also created a conceptual model for the functioning of a computer screen—the
concept of producing an image from many small colored dots, tiles to them, pixels to us.
At some time at the end of the nineteenth century, photographic manipulation began to appear; the Maison
Bonls Company connected four aerial photographs to create a panorama of the city of Beirut, Lebanon.
Another step toward illusionary immersion was made and is now shown in the 360-degree panoramic stereo-
graphic projections stitched together from dozens of images and seen all over the World Wide Web today [10].
1.2.4 CompuTer-CreaTed 3d spaCe and early VirTual Worlds
The war years gave virtual reality and the means to create it a big boost. Admiral Luis de Florez (1889–1962),
who fought in both World War I and II, pioneered the use of ight simulators to save pilots’ lives. Military
usage of virtual reality and training simulations continues to this day and now includes the use of virtual
worlds built on OpenSim platforms and others [11]. In 1962, Morton Heilig built the Sensorama device. Itwas
described by a witness this way: “The Sensorama was able to display stereoscopic 3D images in a wide-angle
view, provide body tilting, supply stereo sound, and also had tracks for wind and aromas to be triggered during
the lm” [12]. Shortly afterward, Ivan Sutherland, working with Bob Sproull, developed the rst HMD (head
mounted display) and called it the “Sword of Damocles” because of the great elongated cable and arm hanging
above the head of the wearer. With this device, they opened the door to full-immersion virtual reality [13].
Meanwhile, haptic devices were being developed at the University of North Carolina’s Haptics Research
Department; in the late 1960s through the early 1980s, devices like Grope I, II, and III and the Sarcos Arms
were created there. At the AT&T labs, Knowlton’s virtual push-button device was built. It projected a virtual
graphic of symbols on a half-silvered screen above the hands of an operator using a keyboard, effectively
combining the virtual with the real [14]. More developments in virtual reality physical feedback (haptic)
interfaces started to happen in the 1980s. The Sayre Data Glove (developed at the University of Illinois with a
5Introduction to Virtual Worlds and Designing for Them
National Endowment for the Arts grant) lead to the Mattel Power Glove. Thomas Zimmerman, Jaron Lanier,
and ScottFisher met at Atari and later worked on the VPL glove [15].
At the same time, virtual worlds were being created in computers and in the early versions of the Internet.
In 1974, Maze War was created, an early ancestor of the rst-person shooter game; this included the rst
appearance of avatars, game space maps, and a rst-person 3D perspective within the game space [16].
By1978, the rst MUD (Multi-user Dungeon) arrived. Known as the “Essex MUD” and played on the
Essex University (UK) network, it ran until late 1987 [17]. The Essex MUD was a text-based game, creating
a “ constructivist” approach to virtual reality by allowing the players’ imagination to construct the virtual
world as they role-play with others online. Also notable was Krueger’s Videoplace, created in 1983. It was
the rst graphics and gesture recognition environment [18].
1.2.5 gaming and VirTual Worlds
By 1986, Lucaslm Games, Quantum Link, and Fujitsu had opened “Habitat” [19]. This was a signicant
step toward creating online gaming communities in virtual worlds. The imagination of the public and the
appetite for immersive virtual worlds was stimulated by the appearance of the holodeck in Star Trek, the Next
Generation (1987) [20]. MUDs were reinvented with the appearance of TinyMUD in 1989. This codebase,
which created a socially oriented MUD, was based on player cooperation rather than competition and opened
the door for socially based virtual worlds [21].
The early 1990s saw the invention and construction of the rst CAVE at the University of Illinois in
Chicago (1992). In the CAVE, all the technologies that had come before it were combined into one powerful
device, creating intense immersive experiences. Still active today, the CAVE has video images projected in
stereoscopic 3D. When they are inside it, visitors wear an HMD containing stereoscopic LCD (liquid crystal
digital) shutter glasses to view the environment. Sensors collect information about the location and body
position of the visitor and adjust the projection elds accordingly [22]. In 1993, Doom started the craze for
gamers’ rst-person shooter games, creating the foundation of a gamer subculture, and was played by over
10million within the rst 2 years of its appearance. Full of graphic violent imagery, Doom has been named
one of the 10 most controversial games of all time by Yahoo Games [23].
The mid-1990s ushered in a wave of online, socially based, constructive virtual worlds; among the most
popular were, Worlds Chat, Active Worlds, and WorldsAway [24]. Although it seems impossible these days,
these worlds functioned on a dial-up connection. In 1995, the ban on commercial usage of the Internet
was lifted, and a home-based connection to more sophisticated games became possible. Eventually, broad-
band cable and Internet connections became available, paving the way for increased popularity of online
gaming and virtual worlds [25]. EverQuest and Runescape were early members of the online virtual world
MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) category [26]. Soon, large, established games
and entertainment franchises like World of Warcraft and Star Wars created their own virtual worlds [27].
Also in the early 2000s, the virtual worlds of Second Life and There combined social connection with user-
generated content that could be bought and sold in the virtual world market [28,29]. As the midpoint of the
second decade of this century approaches, increasing interactivity and immersion is being interwoven into
the online home-based experience of virtual worlds. Many game makers and virtual world developers are
striving toward creating an open game, one without levels or barriers that creates a compelling story through
the emergent play of its visitors [30]. In 2007, OpenSimulator (or OpenSim, the abbreviation used in this
book) arrived and started the creation of a system of virtual world grids, the foundation of a 3D Internet. This
software, based on the Second Life protocols, does not seek to be a copy of Second Life; it seeks to expand
the virtual worlds’ Metaverse and provide connectivity among them all [31]. Kinect for Xbox 360 has been
hacked to capture real-time motion tracking, and the Oculus Rift HMD holds promise for eager customers
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