Product Description: Who are we in simulated worlds? Will experiencing worlds that are not 'actual' change our ways of structuring thought? Can virtual worlds open up new possibilities to philosophize? Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools tries to answer these questions from a perspective that combines philosophy of technology with videogame design...read more

Product Description: "Taylor is the Marshall McLuhan or the Neil Postman of our new digital economy, the lonely voice raising urgent questions we need to answer together . . . If "The People's Platform" doesn't spark the conversation about the kind of democracy and culture we deserve, then we'll deserve the one we get...read more

Product Description: Proteus, the mythical sea god who could alter his appearance at will, embodies one of the promises of online games: the ability to reinvent oneself. Yet inhabitants of virtual worlds rarely achieve this liberty, game researcher Nick Yee contends...read more

In an accessible style that will appeal to the professional, student and laymen, the authors explain the methods for creating and simulating clothes for virtual humans. Using numerous detailed illustrations, colourful images, and step-by-step analysis they map out the terrain of this exciting and cutting-edge discipline.Starting with the beginnings in the mid 1980s and the basic foundations from the field of mechanics, the reader is gradually introduced to the subject. The text draws on a number of related fields such as computer graphics, algorithmics, computational geometry, simulation, modeling, animation, visualization, and virtual reality. The MIRACloth system, developed by the authors, is used as a case study for the results and techniques discussed. The book comes with a CD-ROM featuring dynamic demonstrations of 3D clothes and fashion shows. This is an indispensable text for anybody who wants an intelligent and readable book on virtual clothing.

'Uses modern analytical techniques to describe Latin American economic history from early 1800s-early 1990s. Highly empirical work. Includes a superb bibliography. A major contribution'--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

This book is primarily a summary of research done over 10 years in multimedia and virtual reality, which fits within a wider interest of exploiting psychological theory to improve the process of designing interactive systems. The subject matter lies firmly within the field of HCI, with some cross-referencing to software engineering. Extending Sutcliffe's views on the design process to more complex interfaces that have evolved in recent years, this book: *introduces the background to multisensory user interfaces and surveys the design issues and previous HCI research in these areas; *explains the basic psychology for design of multisensory user interfaces, including the Interactive Cognitive Subsystems cognitive model; *describes elaborations of Norman's models of action for multimedia and VR, relates these models to the ICS cognitive model, and explains how the models can be applied to predict the design features necessary for successful interaction; *provides a design process from requirements, user and domain analysis, to design of representation in media or virtual worlds and facilities for user interaction therein; *covers usability evaluation for multisensory interfaces by extending existing well-known HCI approaches of heuristic evaluation and observational usability testing; and *presents two special application areas for multisensory interfaces: educational applications and virtual prototyping for design refinement. To download images and figures free of charge that enhance and clarify materials discussed in chapters 1-7 go to http://www.co.umist.ac.uk/centreULhci/MMVRbook.htm

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming the enabling technology for man-machine communications. Besides entertainment and architectural walkthroughs, VR can be used in industry for better design evaluations, concurrent engineering, etc. This book gives a systematic overview of the fundamental aspects of VR technology and its industrial applications, based on up-to-date information provided by experts from research and industry. All the authors are leading VR researchers. Especially those from industry are pioneers of VR applications. The book contains their newest research results and concrete application examples with illustrations and color images.