37,701 research outputs found
Seamless and Secure VR: Adapting and Evaluating Established Authentication Systems for Virtual Reality
Virtual reality (VR) headsets are enabling a wide range of new
opportunities for the user. For example, in the near future users
may be able to visit virtual shopping malls and virtually join
international conferences. These and many other scenarios pose
new questions with regards to privacy and security, in particular
authentication of users within the virtual environment. As a first
step towards seamless VR authentication, this paper investigates
the direct transfer of well-established concepts (PIN, Android
unlock patterns) into VR. In a pilot study (N = 5) and a lab
study (N = 25), we adapted existing mechanisms and evaluated
their usability and security for VR. The results indicate that
both PINs and patterns are well suited for authentication in
VR. We found that the usability of both methods matched the
performance known from the physical world. In addition, the
private visual channel makes authentication harder to observe,
indicating that authentication in VR using traditional concepts
already achieves a good balance in the trade-off between usability
and security. The paper contributes to a better understanding of
authentication within VR environments, by providing the first
investigation of established authentication methods within VR,
and presents the base layer for the design of future authentication
schemes, which are used in VR environments only
Avatars and Lebensform: Kirchberg 2007
Several years ago, after a decade of experiments in the software industry, I returned to academia and found philosophy colleagues troubled by the term âvirtual realityâ â a term which enjoys wide usage in the ?eld of immersive computing but which raises hackles in post-metaphysical philosophers. Some vocabulary in this paper may create similar unease, so a warning may be in order. What makes sense to software engineers may for philosophers carry too much baggage. Words like âempatheticâ or âempathicâ may cause similar discomfort for those with an allergy to Romanticism. While these adjectives associated with poets like Wordsworth, the term âempathyâ belongs equally to software designers and video-game artists who use it to describe the opposite of â?rst-person shooterâ software. Empathic, as opposed to âshoot âem upâ software, encourages the exchange of viewpoints beyond ?rst-person perspective and may even merge several perspectives. Rather than deepen a userâs ?rst-person point-of-view, empathic software offers a socializing experience, and in fact, is sometimes called âsocialâ software, âNet 2.0,â or âcomputer supported cooperative work.
Defying the âMagic Circleâ: Unethical Acts in Virtual Worlds
Overview: This article investigates the complex and controversial exclusion of real world law from virtual worlds. By including examples of several documented unethical acts that have occurred in virtual worlds, this article suggests that real world law should be carried into virtual spaces in order to protect users. Some forms of protection discussed within this essay include the transfer of property rights and consequences of legal prosecution in order to deter unethical behaviors. Finally, this article includes benefits of adopting these strategies, while also acknowledging the potential negatives.
Imagine a world where you can be perfect; a world where you can be whoever you want, whenever you want. Imagine a space you can retreat to in order to escape the pressures of the real world, achieve a new identity, and interact with a whole new population. Virtual worlds provide all of these ideal opportunities to their users. In fact, over 300 million users had registered accounts for a virtual world, according to data reported in 2008 (Waterburn 2009, 2.) As we move even further into a technological era, one can assume that this number has most likely increased as well.
With such a large user base, it would be ideal for virtual worlds to be safe, enjoyable places where users can enjoy and be immersed in their experience. However, users can have their experience spoiled by others. Much like the real world, virtual worlds serve as a place where many unethical practices occur. Some of the most well-known unethical occurrences demonstrated in virtual worlds are basic harassment, extramarital affairs, sexual harassment, and virtual theft. Although many doubt the seriousness of these practices because they are not committed in the real world, their impact is felt, and has a serious influence on other users. However, the topic of unethical events occurring within virtual worlds has generated some debate in terms of liability and punishment. Some believe that if these unethical practices are not occurring in the real world, then they are not a real world problem. Others argue that the users that witness and are sometimes victims of these practices are real people, and therefore the acts should receive real consequences
Strategies and challenges to facilitate situated learning in virtual worlds post-Second Life
Virtual worlds can establish a stimulating environment to support a situated learning approach in which students simulate a task within a safe environment. While in previous years Second Life played a major role in providing such a virtual environment, there are now more and more alternativeâoften OpenSim-basedâsolutions deployed within the educational community. By drawing parallels to social networks, we discuss two aspects: how to link individually hosted virtual worlds together in order to implement context for immersion and how to identify and avoid âfakeâ avatars so people behind these avatars can be held accountable for their actions
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Bitcoin: the wrong implementation of the right idea at the right time
This paper is a study into some of the regulatory implications of cryptocurrencies using the CAMPO research framework (Context, Actors, Methods, Methods, Practice, Outcomes). We explain in CAMPO format why virtual currencies are of interest, how self-regulation has failed, and what useful lessons can be learned. We are hopeful that the full paper will produce useful and semi-permanent findings into the usefulness of virtual currencies in general, block chains as a means of mining currency, and the profundity of current âmedia darlingâ currency Bitcoin as compared with the development of block chain generator Ethereum.
While virtual currencies can play a role in creating better trading conditions in virtual communities, despite the risks of non-sovereign issuance and therefore only regulation by code (Brown/Marsden 2013), the methodology used poses significant challenges to researching this âcommunityâ, if BitCoin can even be said to have created a single community, as opposed to enabling an alternate method of exchange for potentially all virtual community transactions. First, BitCoin users have transparency of ownership but anonymity in many transactions, necessary for libertarians or outright criminals in such illicit markets as #SilkRoad. Studying community dynamics is therefore made much more difficult than even such pseudonymous or avatar based communities as Habbo Hotel, World of Warcraft or SecondLife. The ethical implications of studying such communities raise similar problems as those of Tor, Anonymous, Lulzsec and other anonymous hacker communities. Second, the journalistic accounts of BitCoin markets are subject to sensationalism, hype and inaccuracy, even more so than in the earlier hype cycle for SecondLife, exacerbated by the first issue of anonymity. Third, the virtual currency area is subject to slowly emerging regulation by financial authorities and police forces, which appears to be driving much of the early adopter community âundergroundâ. Thus, the community in 2016 may not bear much resemblance to that in 2012. Fourth, there has been relatively little academic empirical study of the community, or indeed of virtual currencies in general, until relatively recently. Fifth, the dynamism of the virtual currency environment in the face of the deepening mistrust of the financial system after the 2008 crisis is such that any research conclusions must by their nature be provisional and transient.
All these challenges, particularly the final three, also raise the motivation for research â an alternative financial system which is separated from the real-world sovereign and which can use code regulation with limited enforcement from offline policing, both returns the study to the libertarian self-regulated environment of early 1990s MUDs, and offers a tantalising prospect of a tool to evade the perils of âprivate profit, socialized riskâ which existing large financial institutions created in the 2008-12 disaster. The need for further research into virtual currencies based on blockchain mining, and for their usage by virtual communities, is thus pressing and should motivate researchers to solve the many problems in methodology for exploring such an environment
Chaotic worlds: an analysis of World of Warcraft
Virtual worlds provide new forms of collaboration and social interaction. The World of Warcraft (WoW) is one such virtual world. It is the most popular example of what is called a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). In this paper, we analyze playersâ outcomes with WoW using chaos theory. Our paper suggests that players are highly sensitive to initial conditions which are impacted by style of play and the social structure of groups
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