Speaking of Virtual Worlds… (Week of October 26-30)
October 31st, 2009
A weekly wrap-up on what’s going on within the Virtual World sphere and beyond! Click on any of the below titles to read the full story.
Players May Soon Use One Avatar for Multiple Worlds
Making the virtual world learning experience better
KZero VW registered accounts increase by 92m to 671m in Q3 2009
Requirements for Virtual Training- Do They Match Up?
October 28th, 2009
eLearn Magazine recently posted a feature article on “Knowledge Transfer from Virtual Environments” among the key take-aways from the article was the outline of six requirements of virtual training.
6 Requirements for Virtual Training
Macedonia and Rosenbloom (2001), citing also Michael Zyda, identified six characteristics that simulations must have to create realism and allow for the acquisition of knowledge that can be transferred to real situation.
1. Immersion. Immersion is the impression that a user is participating in a realistic activity. Immersion occurs when the learner, through intellectual, emotional, and normative reactions, has to take meaningful actions in order to influence the state of the virtual environment.
2. Networking and databases. The distribution of virtual environments enables a large number of users to interact in the same virtual environment. People can collaborate and perform group tasks over networked virtual environments but in order for this to be realistic, databases must be updated frequently in order for the actions of one user, as well as the effects of these actions on the environment, to be visualized by the others.
3. Story. Constructivism learning theory argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their experiences. Success of learning within virtual environments would therefore be linked to interactions, which should be designed to provide the learners with challenging experiences in which they will build new or consolidate existing knowledge.
4. Characters. Animated characters can play various roles in a virtual environment. They can facilitate learning by helping learners accomplish their tasks or by challenging them. To be effective, their behavior must be realistic and responsive to the user’s actions. Characters can be automated as part of the scenario, or they can also be instructors or other learners interacting within the virtual environment.
5. Setup. The environment in which the story takes place must be realistic and provide conditions that will foster learning. Not only does the virtual environment need to be properly designed, the physical environment in which learning takes place must also be adequate.
6. Direction. Learners need to be guided and monitored within the virtual environment. They need to be told that what they do is right or wrong, and they need to understand why. This can be accomplished by an instructor observing the learners, or through the use of a virtual coach providing visual or auditory feedback when the learner executes an action or completes a task.
With the outline of these keys to virtual world training- I believe that all are equally important to a creating a compelling training program.
Embedded Training Technology- A Monthly Review of Visual Purple Technologies
October 26th, 2009
Embedded Training simulations use stories to train users of complex software systems. These embedded training simulations contain all the best features of Visual Purple decision-based simulations (described below), but are built in to (or essentially reside as a layer on top of) the client software. Users experience a compelling story that motivates them to excellence while training on their own software system. One hundred percent of Visual Purple embedded training translates into performance improvement because the on-the-job software becomes the training software – nothing gets lost in translation!
Complex systems are ripe for embedded training. The U.S. military recognizes the value of fusing realworld software applications with advanced training simulations. This fusion permits the trainee to use the actual software application and become proficient in not only the buttonology, but to gain an appreciation and understanding of the “big picture” as well. Future Combat Systems (FCS), a major Army modernization program (and currently being redefined and renamed), has as one of its core tenets that both collective and individual training be embedded to increase efficiency, improve retention, enable on-demand, anytime-training, reduce costs and ultimately reduce or eliminate the often costly and cumbersome logistics tail associated with in-theater training.
In late 2008, Visual Purple released its first embedded trainer to support our warfighters in theater. Utilizing a vast array of proven simulation technology, Visual Purple is able to provide immersive 3D embedded training to a variety of sectors. Resident in Visual Purple’s approach to embedded training is that the advanced training simulation reacts to the software application as it is driven by a training database. This approach allows users with no training whatsoever on the software application to be guided to mastery at their own pace. As trainee skills evolve the embedded trainer reacts and increases the tempo reducing time-to-train. Visual Purple’s proven approach to embedded training in some ways represents the Holy Grail of training in today’s increasingly complex and data intensive world.
“- Link to”
YouTube Visual Purple Visual Purple Embedded Training Trailer
Speaking of Virtual Worlds…(Week of October 19-23)
October 24th, 2009
A weekly wrap-up on what’s going on within the Virtual World sphere and beyond! Click on any of the below titles to read the full story.
Linden Lab CEO on Second Life’s growth, future
The Virtual World in 2015: Our Readers’ Predictions
Journal of Virtual Worlds JVWR Volume 2, Number 3: Technology, Economy and Standards
Linden Lab to Unveil Nebraska at Enterprise Conference
Why Do Government Islands Frequently Fail?
A Virtual Clinic to Treat the Stresses of War
Beta Launch of 3D Browser-Based Virtual World
October 22nd, 2009
We are excited to announce the beta launch of our first ever 3D browser-based virtual world, Winning in Wireless: Year 1. Initially launched in April of this year as a downloadable application, Winning in Wireless: Year 1 is a pilot program that BTS and Visual Purple embarked on by taking an existing BTS Computer-based training (CBT) simulation and transferring the content into a realistic virtual world environment complete with Non-Player Characters (NPCs). This entirely 3D based virtual world application allows for automatic updating. Advanced features that are offered include a custom plug-in for behind the firewall, ability to work off of an LMS, playability on private networks and a standalone mode.
In following the trend of virtual worlds moving into the web browser this is just one more distinct advantage that Visual Purple can offer its clients by allowing its customized and low cost virtual world simulations to be viewable in any browser. This is a big step in offering companies full deployment behind their firewall or through a firewall plus the ability to run a typical PC. This complete 3D browser based virtual world solution allows for anytime, anywhere play.
Winning in Wireless: Year 1, provides an interesting environment and experience for the single-player (can be designed in a multiplayer format) and, at the same time, will show how a single-player can be taught key skills and develop empathy for the roles and skills of others within an organization. Successfully navigating Winning in Wireless: Year 1, the player learns critical insight and knowledge about the role of the CEO and why a strong CEO is valuable and important; it will provide a refresher on developing forecasts and plans, decision making using an “iTool”, and alignment of the company’s vision, values and mission. Three months after its initial beta launch to the public with a downloadable version of Winning in Wireless: Year 1 is now an entirely browser-based 3D virtual world that runs directly from the browser.
“- Link to”
YouTube Visual Purple Winning in Wireless Virtual World trailer
When Your Musician is a Robot (Can Automated Minstrels Play Nice in a Virtual World?), Part 2
October 22nd, 2009
By Rudy Helm, Audio and Quality Assurance Tech, Visual Purple, LLC.
How does one tame a virtual musician? For a discussion on the UI, let’s go step by step with the process I underwent to generate a music bed. What follows is the style palette. (Other competing software tools may not look like these screenshots but will offer similar functions.) In one scenario, I chose one of the very many available country styles, but one that includes pedal steel guitar, as in Figure 1.
Figure 1 – The Country music selection from the musical styles palette window. Note that there are many sub-styles to choose from.
You can set the key (Figure 2). If you don’t care what key, leave this alone, your music will default to the key of ‘C’ (I didn’t; and mine did the default – for both styles). You can also set the tempo (Figure 3). This is a trial-and-error kind of thing. Experiment until it feels right for your purposes. If you don’t set the speed, it will default to 120 BPM (beats per minute…think Sousa March).
Figure 2 – Key selection menu.
Figure 3 –Tempo selection dialog box.
Figure 4. The interface is like a spreadsheet. Each cell entry represents which of the (1,4,5) chords will fall in the timeline. The first cell defaults to ‘1’ (in this case ‘C’), so you don’t need to enter any values yet.
Figure 4 – Cell one defaults to ‘C’ chord
Figure 5. But move over to the next cell (‘bar 2’ in musical lingo) and enter the number 4. It automatically knows which proper chord to enter within that key (in this case, the ‘F’ chord).
Figure 5 –Enter ‘4’; the ‘F’ chord appears
Figure 6. Move to the next cell and let’s enter the number we haven’t used yet, ‘5’. Let’s leave cell four empty.
Figure 6 – Enter the digit ‘5’ into cell three
Figure 7. Now, at cell three, you will see that the tool has automatically assumed the ‘G’ chord for you.
Figure 7 – The ‘G’ chord appears
What you have then is 1 bar of C, one bar of F and two bars of G. To finish preparing the body of your new music bed, highlight and copy the upper row of cells you instantiated, as in the following Figure 8.
Figure 8 – Copy four bars of music (cells one through four)
The next step is to paste those 4 copied bars into three more rows of cells. Now you end up with a 16 bar loop, as in Figure 9.
Figure 9 – Four bars pasted three times results in sixteen bars
Figure 10. Enter 16 bars (16 cells) to define the start and end of your loop.
Figure 10 – Enter 16 to indicate which cell is the end
Figure 11. Choose how many repeats for your loop. How many times your music bed should loop-play depends on how long you need it to play. If the music engine in your project will repeat the loop as many time as you need, set the loop count to ‘1’. If not, set it to the number of loops that will fill the time required.
Figure 11 – Click the loop button and select repeats from a pull-down menu.
Conclusion
I commonly say that whenever you can afford real musicians for crucial sonic moments such as main themes, hire them. But when budget cries Mary, maybe try some of the things I have offered in these blogs about synthetic music production, especially for BGM.
Let’s review the positive points — copyright free, royalty free, original music…that can be created by anyone on your team (with the help of your synthetic musician, of course). In our next blog we will cover a few more fascinating creations from our virtual composer, so stay tuned! And by the way, if you would like some consultation or some help developing your project please don’t hesitate to contact us.
When Your Musician is a Robot (Can Automated Minstrels Play Nice in a Virtual World?), Part 1
October 21st, 2009
By Rudy Helm, Audio and Quality Assurance Tech, Visual Purple, LLC.
This writing is a follow-up to a promise I made at the end of my previous blog ‘Emulating Human Voice-overs with TTS Voices’. For now, consider this proposition — what if your project’s background music (BGM) had these characteristics:
· copyright free
· royalty free
· original composition
· authored by you!
Does this appeal to you virtual-world developers of cutscenes, trailers or Machinima projects? Moreover, if you consider yourself a non-musician, then this should certainly be happy news for you! It’s true that being musically inclined can be a boon to this process, but there is no reason why a non-musician can’t generate some musically useful results.
I thought that this exercise would be a fun opportunity to exhibit two musical styles and apply them to the same animation sequence (not at the same time, of course!). The first exhibit will portray a rural cafe where the clientele would be people who appreciate country music. The second exhibit, while actually the same animation, let’s pretend is a ‘blue-collar’ cafe where the clientele would appreciate, um…, ‘roadhouse rock’ (whatever that is – let’s use our imagination!). In keeping true to my past themes of NPC VO, our YouTube animations embedded in this blog will star synthetic actors with synthetic speech as foreground elements (and which have been synced to the phrasings of a prerecorded human model; click here for a refresher on the technique). With this test-scene we utilized only 1 TTS male voice to cover a small cast of 2 adult males.
I borrowed the animation sequence from one of our past projects and the original voice-over tracks were actual professional VO talent. For these exhibits, however, I replaced the VO with TTS voices reading scripts I made up off the top of my head. The Country script and the Roadhouse script are largely nonsense, so please don’t strain yourself too hard trying to make sense of it (although I did try very hard to keep the lip sync to match the syllables). The original voice track may have expressed some confidential things (it was a training project), so it was prudent to make up nonsense TTS chatter and replace the original speech. Remember. The intent of this study is to focus on ambient BGM production, and not the TTS actors! So let us begin.
First, I’d like you to listen to the musical elements my automated composer has generated for this test (click here for the roadhouse sample). Notice how realistic the electric slide guitar and backing instruments sound. People, we have come a long way in auto-generated music in just the last two years!
Now, please listen to the country sample. Notice how realistic the steel guitar player sounds. And yes, you non-musicians can do this, nearly effortlessly. And it is equally easy to deal with almost any musical style!
Next, view and listen to the animation sequence for both BGM scenarios. After that I will discuss the usage of the music tool and present some screen shots.
“- Link to”
YouTube Visual Purple Can Automated Music Play Nice in Virtual Worlds? #1
The Roadhouse Cafe example – note the effective emulation of the synthetic musicians. The slide guitar is very convincing.
“- Link to”
YouTube Visual Purple Can Automated Music Play Nice in Virtual Worlds? #2
The Country Cafe example – note that the steel guitar is very realistic. Also notice how well background sound effects and music work together.
Remember these numbers: 1-4-5 (say, “one four five”). These three numbers represent the three principal chords of any given musical key (in Western culture). The number 1 represents the tonality of the key’s foundation. If the key is the key of ‘C’, then ‘1’ informs musicians to play the ‘C’ chord. The numbers 4 and 5 represent two other complimentary chords in the key structure. Almost any combination of the 1-4-5 chords sound ‘right’. There now, you know all you need to know about music theory to proceed. Three chords are all it takes!
While there are a number of choices that can be made as to selecting software packages that generate automatic or algorithmic music, this tutorial will reflect a user interface as found in a tool available by Canada’s own PG Music. This company, I believe, has recently set the bar rather high. Their impressive technology now allows you to generate music where the output is actual human recordings. And at the price of a song (pun intended). While MIDI is still an available technology in this tool (good for Rave/Techno/HipHop, etc), we have the good fortune of not being locked in to MIDI-only renders. [To be continued]
How Much Should Training Really Cost?
October 19th, 2009
So how much should training really cost- well it is all dependent upon the type of training. Fun fact: Did you know that the global market for learning is worth over $2 Trillion dollars? The price for different types of training does vary significantly from medium to medium. Training Industry recently estimated the following numbers:
• 2008 expenditures for training services was approximately $129.2B, down from $132B in 2007.
• The 2009 market is predicted to drop to $116B; the steepest single year decline in the industry since 2001.
According to Bersin & Associates – The Corporate Learning Factbook 2009:
“The U.S. corporate training market shrunk from $58.5 billion in 2007 to $56.2 billion in 2008, the greatest decline in more than 10 years. Average training expenditures per employee (which include training budgets and payroll) fell 11 percent over the past year – from $1,202 per learner in 2007 to $1,075 per learner in 2008. Staff resources also took a hit. In 2008, large companies employed 3.4 training staffers per 1,000 learners, down from 5.1 per 1,000 in 2007; mid-sized companies employed 4.9 staffers per 1,000 learners in 2008, compared to 7.0 staffers per 1,000 in 2007.”
Other findings:
• The average number of formal training hours dropped from 25 hours per learner in 2007 to 17.2 hours in 2008. Training consumption dropped most substantially among small and midsize businesses, with learners taking 33 percent fewer training hours, on average, than in 2007
• Although instructor-led classroom training remained steady (at 67 percent of all training hours), the proportion of e-learning decreased for the first time ever in 2008. Companies also reduced their use of virtual classroom training, so that (combined with self-study e-learning) the total amount of online training dropped from 30 percent of training hours in 2007 to 24 percent in 2008. This shift illustrates the industry’s steady move toward informal learning and social networking.
• As companies downsized their training staffs, many turned to external providers to fill the resource gaps. Large businesses, in particular, outsourced more functions to third-party providers in 2008, as their staffing numbers were hardest hit.
Virtual worlds are now the new go- to for the government, military and corporate sectors as a cost savings proposition. But not only cost savings exists- organizations are also turning to virtual worlds for immersive training environments. Virtual worlds are easily tailored to the customers’ needs- thus allowing for lower cost of development and a shorter development time frame when compared to traditional training and learning delivery methods.
Speaking of Virtual Worlds…(Week of October 12-16)
October 17th, 2009
A weekly wrap-up on what’s going on within the Virtual World sphere and beyond! Click on any of the below titles to read the full story.
China Bans Foreign Investment In Online Games, Virtual Worlds
Nokia to Invest in Virtual Worlds
Engineering and the Question of Hands-On Training in a Virtual World
The Virtual World campus 250+ US universities now offer degrees linked to ‘virtuality’
Are online currencies striking gold?
Virtual Goods To Reach $1 Billion In 2009
Verizon/Cisco Study Finds Improved Performance from Virtual Collaboration
Prepare For Lift Off- My Blue Mars Ramblings
October 14th, 2009
I was excited to finally receive the much anticipated Blue Mars beta registration notification in my email inbox. Not only had I heard a lot about it, I had watched the YouTube teasers, and anxiously awaited my call to test it out. So I began by completing my registration- It was like opening a Christmas present- you have been staring at the beautifully wrapped box under the Christmas tree for weeks and now you finally get to rip the bow and peel the paper off to find the present inside. Well, that was until I began downloading the app. and saw the projected 3 hour, 41 minute download time which had me a little concerned….and yes, it did nearly eat up all of that time.
Finally downloaded, my avatar and I enter Blue Mars for the first time- I spend a little time trying to customize my avatar. Finally settling for the generic tall, slender, younger looking female (Hey I can even put on cosmetics or add a beard… not sure how the whole beard thing would look). Although the avatars seem a little limited- they are in fact very realistic. My avatar enters Blue Mars and I immediately feel like I am modeling on a catwalk and I just saw another avatar that has the same exact look as I do (except for different hair color). Somehow my avatar does a little pose and has a seductive model walk- my computer then becomes bogged down enough that I can’t even open a small Word document. I am standing on top of water, other avatars are running into me, and the navigation doesn’t come to me as intuitively as expected.
Ok- so where is the instruction manual? Come to find out W, A, S, and D are the keys to move around or you can click with the mouse and your avatar will move- oh so many options!
So once getting the navigation pinned down a little bit better (I finally resorted to reviewing the tutorial something I probably should have done in the first place); I proceed to the Royal Aloha Golf Club- once there I decide to play 1 hole (which probably took longer than it takes most people to play 3 holes real life). Ok enough golf- let’s go explore some more.
I then opt to enter ‘Beach City’ of which I am very impressed with the overall graphic quality. I begin to explore some more, walking over to a water-like feature and then all of the sudden I am in the middle of the dance party-maybe these are the intelligent NPC’s that Blue Mars touts as one of the features?! Hum, not sure. But they’re not looking so intelligent dancing around in their short shorts and leopard print mini-skirts.
To me Blue Mars is an eye candy type of virtual world. Guess it may be time to begin creating things in Blue Mars- since that is the professed main appeal of the VW. So the jury is still out- will Blue Mars be the next big thing next to Second Life? Do I dare address a comparison and contrast model of Second Life to Blue Mars… I don’t think I will go there this time around. Some potential for corporate use? Maybe, I guess time will tell. I realize that Blue Mars is only currently in Public Beta and I believe that it could have big potential down the line if the technical cards are played right.
So after all of my rambling you may ask what is Blue Mars? “Blue Mars is a free to play massively multiplayer virtual world featuring stunning graphics, realistic characters, and endless social bonding activities. The Blue Mars virtual world is made up of an expanding set of independently operated cities that feature unique themes, activities, and attractions such as shopping, avatar customization, unique personal spaces, and games like dancing, racing, and golf. Cites on Blue Mars are tied together with a unified login system, persistent global Avatar ID, and platform wide participation based reward system that encourages users to explore, play, and make new friends.”