Newsletter

Delivering immersive visualisation and learning solutions

Apr 2014

New Datascape Video Virual Worlds Education

Roundtable
With the recent launch of the new version of Datascape we thought it an
appropriate time to put together a video of some of the different In March David presented a “future
visualisations that we've created with the system over the past year or so. history” of immersive worlds at a
The important thing to remember when looking at the very varied regular round-table event organised
visualisations is that none of the them required any “programming” as by educators working in virtual
such, all were created just using the Excel type functions within Datascape worlds (www.vwer.org), and chaired
itself to map the various fields in the data to the different parameters in the by Evelyn McElhinney of the
plot. Whilst some mappings are obvious, such as latitude and longitude to Department of Nursing and
the horizontal axes and then height or time onto the vertical axis, the non- Community Health at Glasgow
geographical plots show a far more creative use of the 3D space – such as Caledonian University.
mapping time to a cylinder, or IP addresses and time into a time-tunnel.

You can watch the video at: https://vimeo.com/88655685

Let us know if you'd like to look at how Datascape can better visualise the
data in your business or organisation.

For his theme David took the 2011

Delphi exercise conducted at an
Open University conference which
looked at the next 20+ years in
virtual worlds. David's main point
was that we were actually making
Sochi Winter Olympics medal results, with Cyber-security data showing traffic within and better progress on the longer term
an overlay of annual temperature! to/from a network technical issues (mobile, VR) than
on some of the more basic
technical and non-technical
challenges. Many of the
Emergent Technology Consulting improvements are also coming from
bespoke immersive environments
Over the past decade we've built up a lot of experience in emerging (such as Unity3D) rather than from
technology and how it can impact businesses. Alongside our project and the more “traditional” virtual worlds.
product development work we can also provide strategic consultancy to David also highlighted the need for
organisations and businesses who are looking to get to grips with the whole community to better
emerging technologies such as immersive environments, virtual and communicate the benefits of
augmented reality, virtual worlds and 3D visualisation. We’ve learnt a lot immersive learning, since whilst
along the way about what works and what doesn’t, and how these there are some great case studies
technologies can affect ordinary business, consumer and organisational they are rarely known outside of the
life. VW community.
In order to help you and your organisation get to grips with these emerging Images, presentation and a
technologies we can offer a variety of consulting services, including: transcript of the event are at:
• ”Thought pieces” at study days and strategic planning sessions http://www.vwer.org/2014/03/06/mar
• Demonstration sessions (e.g. using the Oculus Rift) ch-6-2013-david-burden-interview/
• Emerging technology workshops on opportunities and threats
• Formal research and study reports
Webinars
• Technology landscape and forecasting surveys
• Project scoping and definition, technology/vendor selection and Our next webinar dates are:
ongoing expert advice to emerging technology projects - 14 May - Datascape
- 10 Jun - Trainingscapes
If you’d like more information on our emerging technology consulting then
please contact us for a free, informal and no obligation discussion. All at 1600 UK Local Time. Please
email webinars@daden.co.uk if
you'd like to attend.
CONTACT US
Faraday Wharf, Innovation Birmingham Campus, Holt Street, Birmingham B7 4BB

The Evolving Metaverse

The Return of Virtual Reality
A month or so ago The Guardian's
TechWeekly podcast held an
interesting debate between several
game designers about what was
going to the “the next big thing”. This
was a fascinating discussion that
steered clear of many of the more
obvious things and instead spent a
lot of time talking about narrative,
natural language, persistency,
sandboxes, and procedural
generation.

The more I listened to it the more it

struck me that what they were
When prepping for a recent talk I noticed that in the latest version of the describing was a journey from the
Gartner Group “technology hype-cycle” the virtual world space (which is traditional computer game to
just starting the climb up the “slope of enlightenment”) had been renamed something a lot closer to an
the “virtual reality” space. Ever since the Oculus Rift headset hit the news immersive environment or virtual
last year – and especially since Facebook announced their $2billion world – somewhere you could go to,
acquisition of the company behind it – Virtual Reality has once again with others, which offered you wide
become one of the key buzzwords. It was over a decade ago that I was freedom of action and felt “real”.
trying out the Virtuality headset in gaming arcades in London and Working with game engines like
Birmingham, but by the mid 2000s virtual worlds had definitely taken the Unity3D, in virtual worlds like
focus, and even (naturally?) Linden Lab staffers were saying that “it's not Second Life, with AI and chatbots,
in the hardware, it's in the experience”. So it was interesting that Philip and on projects such as immersive
Rosedale (Second Life's creator) was preaching the hardware/VR learning we already knew that there
approach again during his keynote at the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in was a fascinating intersection of
Education conference last week. experiences hear, and it was good to
know that others are thinking along
We've had an Oculus Rift development kit since last summer, and we have similar lines.
the Mk2 kit on order. It is quite an experience, and definitely adds
something to some simulations. However it is going to be a while, if ever, You can hear the podcast at
(and probably several more generations in tech) before headset type VR http://www.theguardian.com/technol
becomes the default mode for virtual world/immersive experiences. There ogy/audio/2014/jan/22/podcast-tech-
is still a lot that we can do with conventional, non-hardware, 3D to give weekly-games-2014
learners a more engaging and effective experience than with standard 2D
eLearning; and we (and you) don't need the fancy headsets to do it. But
what is nice is that since we work in “true” 3D then adding Oculus Rift
support to our projects when required by the client is a relatively painless Next Generation Datascape
process.
Even through the latest version of
The one drawback of the Facebook acquisition though is that the release Datascape is just out of the door we
date for the public version of the Oculus Rift is probably pushed even are hard at work on our next
further into the future. However if you would like to experience one first generation product. As well as a 1
hand then either drop by our offices or give us a call to see if we can come million point plus desktop version we
down and arrange a demo for you and your colleagues. And even before are also planning a web based
the public launch there are still ways in which organisations can leverage version – allowing instant creation
its capabilities now – just check our our web site for details. (and sharing) of 3D visualisations.
As part of this work we are using a
And in other news..... WebGL version of Datascape to act
as a user interface test bed, trying
- We presented on Virtual Worlds at the Birmingham Branch of the out ideas with real users. In May
British Computer Society, and had a follow-up invite to present at we'll be looking for 6 – 12 users to
Wolverhampton. test out an Alpha version of the new
WebGL interface to Datascape. If
t: 0121 250 5678
- On 28/29 April we're speaking at the Transforming Thresholds event you'd be interested in taking part
Faraday Wharf, Innovation Birmingham Campus, Holt Street, Birmingham B7
on using immersive environments to inform museum design at then please email us at
4BB
Leicester University. e: info@daden.co.uk datascape@daden.co.uk.

CONTACT US t: 0121 250 5678

e: info@daden.co.uk
Faraday Wharf, Innovation Birmingham Campus, Holt Street, Birmingham B7 4BB w: www.daden.co.uk