Virtual Reality In Geography

Virtual Reality in Geography covers "through the window" VR systems, "fully immersive" VR systems, and hybrids of the two types. The authors examine the Virtual Reality Modeling Language approach and explore its deficiencies when applied to real geographic environments. This is a totally unique book covers all the major uses and methods of virtual reality used by geographers. The authors have produced a CDROM that comes with the book of virtual reality images that will be a fascinating companion to the text. This book will be of great interest to geographers, computer scientists and all those interested in multimedia and computer graphics.

"The author's capacity to grasp and interpret these [world media] events is astounding, and her ability to provide insights into a world where unbounded information is circling the earth with the speed of light is startling." -- Choice "... a wide-ranging, quirky and dextrous mix of description, theory and analysis, that documents the perils of the global telecommunications network... " -- Times Literary Supplement "... this is a stimulating, even moving, book, dense with ideas and with many quotable lines." -- The New Statesman "Wark is one of the most original and interesting cultural critics writing today." -- Lawrence Grossberg McKenzie Wark writes about the experience of everyday life under the impact of increasingly global media vectors. We no longer have roots, we have aerials. We no longer have origins, we have terminals.

Geography Education in the Digital World draws on theory and practice to provide a critical exploration of the role and practice of geography education within the digital world. It considers how living within a digital world influences teacher identity and professionalism and is changing young people’s lives. The book moves beyond the applied perspective of educational technology to engage with wider social and ethical issues of technology implementation and use of digital data within geography education. Situated at the intersection between research and practice, chapters draw on a wide range of theory to consider the role, adoption and potential challenges of a range of digital technologies in furthering geographical education for future generations. Bringing together academics from the fields of geography, geography education and teacher education, the book engages with four key themes within the digital world: Professional practice and personal identities. Geographical sources and connections. Geospatial technologies. Geographical fieldwork. This is a crucial read for geographers, geography educators and geography teacher educators, as well as those engaging with existing and new technologies to support geographical learning in the dynamic context of the digital world. It will also be of interest to any students, academics and policymakers wanting to better understand the impact of digital media on education.

This is the first text to focus on virtual reality applications for design of the built environment. This guide explores the use of virtual reality at the practical level. It provides an overview of industrial applications of virtual reality and explores relevant scientific research. Virtual Reality in the Built Environment is a guide to the practical uses of virtual design, construction, and management. Providing an overview of industrial applications for virtual reality and exploring relevant research, this book is an accessible and innovative resource for architects, designers and built environment professionals--bridging the gap between technological vision and current practice. Author Jennifer Whyte shows how interactive, spatial, real-time technologies can radically improve modelling and communication of ideas, enable partcipation in the design process, and facilitated planning and management at the urban scale. The experience of lead users of virtual reality is used as the basis for understanding its promise and problems. Explanations of the underlying principles of this exciting interactive medium, a discussion of the cognitive, technical and organizational issues it raises, and international case studies illustrating practical applications are all included in this guide. The author also provides a companion web site which provides online learning materials, including test-yourself questions, virtual reality models, and links to relevant sites, making it a valuable design resource and a stimulus for innovation.

Presents a comprehensive guide to the geography of the world, with world maps and articles on cartography, notable explorers, climate and more.

The intersection of two disciplines and technologies which have become mature academic research topics in the 1990s was destined to be a dynamic area for collaboration and publication. However, until now no significant book-length treatment of the meeting of GIS and Virtual Reality has been available. This volume puts that situation to rights by bringing these together to cement some common understanding and principles in a potentially highly promising area for technological collaboration and cross-fertilisation. The result is a volume which ranges in subject matter from studies of a Virtual GIS Room to Spatial Agents, and from an Environmental Multimedia System to Computer-Assisted 3D Geographic Education. All the contributors are well-known international scientists, principally from the computational side of GIS. It will be a valuable resource for any GIS researcher or professional looking to understand the leading edge of this fertile field.

In recent years, the popularity of virtual worlds has increased significantly and they have consequently come under closer academic scrutiny. Papers about virtual worlds are typically published at conferences or in journals that specialize in something - tirely different, related to some secondary aspect of the research. Thus a paper d- cussing legal aspects of virtual worlds may be published in a law journal, while a psychologist's analysis of situation awareness may appear at a psychology conference. The downside of this is that if you publish a virtual worlds paper at an unrelated conference in this manner you are likely to be one of only a handful of attendees working in the area. You will not, therefore, achieve the most important goal of - tending conferences: meeting and conversing with like-minded colleagues from the academic community of your field of study. Virtual worlds touch on many well-established themes in other areas of science. Researchers from all these fields will therefore be looking at this new, interesting, and growing field. However, to do effective research related to these complex constructs, researchers need to take into account many of the other facets from other fields that impact virtual worlds. Only by being familiar with and paying attention to all these different aspects can virtual worlds be properly understood.