Pictures from Serious Virtual Worlds '07

My in-world pictures from the Serious Virtual Worls '07 conference are available on Flickr.

Fireworks

I've not seen fireworks in Second Life before but the ones used at the opening of Coventry Island this evening were impressive.

I want some.

The importance of facial animation

Interesting talk by John Burwell of Forterra Inc this morning at the Serious Virtual Worlds 07 conference in Coventry. He demonstrated their virtual world platform, the same platform used to deliver there.com (or a development of it I think), showing its use to train people for disaster recovery scenarios.

The interesting thing for me though was the addition of detailed facial animation to avatars so that the face animates while speaking. This appeared, at least via video, to make voice a much more engaging experience than it is currently in Second Life.

It'll be interesting to see if (or when) this kind of feature gets added to Second Life. I hope so.

Sent to Coventry

Here's my unofficial t-shirt for the Serious Virtual Worlds '07 Conference :-)

Getting serious

The Serious Virtual Worlds '07 conference starts today in Coventry with an academic track culminating in the launch of the Coventry University island at 5.00pm this evening (UK time).

Presentations from the conference are currently being streamed into the Serious Games Institute (SGI) building on the island.

Luckily permissions in the SGI building are open enough that I could build my own seat while I was listening! :-)

I couldn't find an agreed tag for this conference so I'm using 'svw07'.