Will Wright, gaming, and the impact on higher education

The New Yorker's John Seabrook has an interview with Will Wright, creator of the The Sims franchise and Spore (still in development). In the interview, there is a debate on how a new generation of kids, raised on videogames, is impacting teaching and learning. Lara M. Brown, a professor of political science at California State University, Channel Islands has observed the following changes in her students, reports the New Yorker:

"Most of us are in agreement that this younger generation—raised on video games—has learned to be reactive, instead of active, and worse, they have lost their imaginative abilities and creativity because the games provide all of the images, sounds, and possible outcomes for them. Our students tend to not know how to initiate questions, formulate hypotheses, or lead off a debate because they like to wait to see what ‘comes at them.' They also have difficulty imagining worlds (places and/or historical times) unless you (as a professor) can provide them with a picture and a sound to go along with the words. . . . In essence, they seem to have lost the ability to visualize with their minds.”

This is how Wright reacted, according to the New Yorker:

Wright, though, believes that video games teach you how to learn; what needs to change is the way children are taught. “The problem with our education system is we've taken this kind of narrow, reductionist, Aristotelian approach to what learning is,” he told me. “It's not designed for experimenting with complex systems and navigating your way through them in an intuitive way, which is what games teach. It's not really designed for failure, which is also something games teach. I mean, I think that failure is a better teacher than success. Trial and error, reverse-engineering stuff in your mind—all the ways that kids interact with games—that's the kind of thinking schools should be teaching. And I would argue that as the world becomes more complex, and as outcomes become less about success or failure, games are better at preparing you. The education system is going to realize this sooner or later. It's starting. Teachers are entering the system who grew up playing games. They're going to want to engage with the kids using games.”

I am inclined to agree with Wright. And it's not just because of his background (educated at a Montessori Schools) or success at making videogames that encourage creativity and experimentation (The article says that Sims players have gone on to become architects and urban architects, and Sims has attracted a huge legion of female fans). It's because of a few generalizations in Prof. Brown's argument, and a few observations of my own that contradict her conclusions.

Brown says the new generation has learned to be reactive, but doesn't quantify how reactive they are compared to previous generations. Also, how can she be sure that reactiveness is a result of videogames, and not television, twinkies, or some other factor? Many college students have grown up in households with cable or satellite television packages that have hundreds of channels, including specialty kids channels that are on 24 hours per day. Television encourages passivity to a far greater degree than videogames, which really do encourage exploration and testing -- even in the most mundane first-person shooter, players have to learn to use their equipment, and explore for secret passages or tricks to defeat their enemies. Certainly, Prof. Brown is entitled to her opinion, but to win people over she will need to present some quantitative research that isolates video games from other environmental factors in kids' lives.

NASA Mission To Generate 3D Solar Views

The New York Times reports that NASA and researchers from the military and academia are launching a pair of scientific satellites that are designed to get a 3D view of the sun:

Carrying 16 instruments each, the satellites are to help scientists predict the billion-ton eruptions of electrified gas and deadly particles known as coronal mass ejections that cause the Northern Lights and can disrupt power grids on Earth.

The mission, called Stereo, for Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, is the first in which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will use the tug of the Moon’s gravity to send spacecraft to their final orbits.

To gather 3-D views of the Sun, the two satellites have to fly in separate orbits so they can perceive depth, like a pair of human eyes. The orbits will closely track Earth’s, but the two satellites will gradually separate, so that in four years they will be on opposite sides of the Sun.

This mission potentially has real-world benefits. It will let researchers better understand potentially destructive solar phenomena. Potentially, this could lead to technologies or strategies that can better protect power equipment, spacecraft, and astronauts.

The STEREO project website further describes the mission. There is also a multimedia page, which includes a 3D animation of a coronal mass ejection (CME). Once the satellites reach solar orbit, they will begin to provide 3D imagery of the sun and CMEs.

3D News Anchor Uses modding, RSS, speech synthesis

Move over, Ananova and Max Headroom. New Scientist reports that a new 3D news anchor program has been developed, using videogame modding technology, RSS feeds, and a speech synthesizer. Think Half Life meets Speak 'n Spell meets CNN. The application, "News At Seven," was developed by graduate students at Northwestern. The New Scientist article, written by Tom Simonite, describes how the technology works:

Using keywords entered by the user, the program selects news site RSS feeds and specific stories to focus on. "The stories are edited for length, and changed to make them more colloquial and suited to speech," says Hammond.

Active voice

For example, information contained within brackets is turned into something that can be read aloud. Where possible, sentences are also changed from the passive to the active voice. "An offer was made by George Bush..." would become "George Bush made an offer..."

The next step is to extract further key terms from these reports and use these to search for supplementary images and videos on sites like YouTube and Google Video. Technorati and Google Blog Search are also used find opinionated blog posts related to the topic of the broadcast. "The software looks for words and phrases indicative of emotional impact," Hammond explains.

Finally, the software generates a script from the collated material. Text-to-speech software then lets computer animated characters - taken from the shoot-em-up computer game Half Life - take on the role of news anchors, with the pictures and videos shown on a screen behind them.

Other characters are used, as interviewees, presenting material taken from blogs posts. This is treated slightly differently - emphasis is added to these characters' synthesised speech to get a more personal message across.

The project homepage at Northwestern has several demos that showcase the 3D anchors.

Northwestern's infolab research listing has dozens of research papers relating to the "News At Seven" and other cutting-edge graphics and news apps.

3D Gets Creepy

Daniel Terdiman at CNet talks about trying out the Sony PS3 console at a press event in San Franciso, and remarks on the creepiness factor inherent in some titles:

The graphics are beautiful -- as should be expected. But as I've written before, the problem with such realistic graphics is that anything unrealistic stands out. And in every next-generation sports game I've
seen where the realism is so good that you can see muscles rippling, the players' ghostly, vacant eyes leave me feeling so creepy I just want to slink away.

I wish there was something that could be done about this. But this is the concept of the 'uncanny valley', which, to paraphrase, states that the more realistic something seems to people, anything that stands out as not being so makes us uneasy.

Sound familiar? It should. Web3Dnews first started seeing "creepy" references in coverage of The Polar Express movie.

And last week, Web3DNews pointed to "Cyberface", which duplicates facial movements -- including eyes -- which the New York Times also found "creepy."

Will this turn off users too much, or will people eventually get used to ultrarealism in 3D graphics technology? Or, will there be a technological fix?

"Cyberface" to make standard CGI character animation obsolete?

The New York Times has a report on a new graphics technology from Image Metrics that maps real, human-generated facial expressions onto an avatar. The technology is very accurate in capturing movements and even transferring the facial "soul" of the actor to the computer-generated face, says the Times' Sharon Waxman.

It’s not just that the virtual woman looks happy when the actress looks happy or relieved when the actress looks relieved. It’s that the virtual woman actually seems to have adopted the actress’s personality, resembling her in ways that go beyond pursed lips or knitted brow. The avatar seems to possess something more subtle, more ineffable, something that seems to go beneath the skin. And it’s more than a little bit creepy.

While using humans to model computer graphics is old hat (see an example from a 2004 car commercial), it traditionally has been used to capture strong body movements, rather than slight facial expressions. And older "hand-drawn" computer graphics can't capture eye movements, which Image Metrics' technology is able to do.

Potential uses of the technolgy, says the article, are re-animating dead actors, or letting living actors use a younger version of themselves in films. The technology can also save time and money -- it will be used in an animated full-length movie called Foodfight!, and will supposedly take just months to make instead of the years required for typical Pixar or Disney fare.

The technology was created by British experts who were working on image analysis, which was first used to better understand spinal X-Rays, says the New York Times article.

The Image Metrics website notes that the technology helped make the film The Polar Express, which, as noted in a previous Web3DNews article, some people felt to be "creepy."

The real-life toll of virtual gaming

A guest blogger on Soul Kerfuffle talks about beating his World of Warcraft addiction. He talks about how he gave up his real-world friends and hobbies, gained 30 pounds, and played for hours every day, often until late at night when raids took place. He also expresses guilt for encouraging others in his guild to play -- including people with families, students, and others who really should be spending their time on more important things than a videogame:

I know of children and spouses being forced to play and grind for their parents, threats of divorce, rampant neglect, failing grades in school, and thousands of dollars spent on "outsourcing" foreign help. For what, you ask? Honor. The desire to be the best for at least one week. To get the best loot in the game. What do these "heroes" receive? Why, cheers and accolades of course as they parade along in their new shiny gear... which is obsolete the first time they step into one of the premier instances. The accomplishment and sacrifice itself are meaningless a few days later. Then it's usually off to the races again.

There is also a huge comment thread from addicts and former addicts, who complain about the "unwinnable" aspect of the game, and how it's different from other types of addictions:

World of Warcrack is not to blame for me almost losing my family. I am. I am not slagging Blizzard or WOW or anything. But it is a different type of addiction. You jab that needle in your arm, you know there is a good chance that you will get addicted. Even buying a new console game you know you will beat it eventually. But WOW is different. Completely different. It is a virtual world that offers an escapism few people have ever experienced before in their lives, and the fact that the escape from normality has serious impacts is not normally understood until its too late.

Are we going to see a more widespread wave of virtual addiction, and associated social problems? The answer, unfortunately, is yes, as 3D graphics improve, new games are developed, and more people get online to play and interact with other people virtually.